Day: May 27, 2025

A People’s Liberation Army attack on Taiwan is “unlikely in the near future” but “not impossible”, given the risks of misperception and miscommunication with the United States under President Donald Trump, a British think tank has warned. Advertisement The US–China relationship is “more strained than it has ever been at any other point in the 21st century”, according to the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), which published its latest Asia-Pacific Regional Security Assessment on Wednesday. The release of the report’s 2025 edition comes ahead of this week’s Shangri-La…

Chinese scientists claimed to have solved a critical flaw in the futuristic vision of ultra-high speed ground travel, potentially salvaging vacuum-tube maglev technology and casting new light on the challenges faced by Elon Musk’s Hyperloop concept. Advertisement A study published by China’s peer-reviewed Journal of Railway Science and Engineering on May 16 showed that even minor imperfections – such as uneven coils or bridge deformations – would turn a journey into an ordeal, even in near-airless tunnels. But the engineers – who are working at the world’s first full-scale test…

They dance, they run, they punch – but they never break a sweat or flinch in pain. Advertisement China’s humanoid robots are increasingly entering human arenas, participating in real-world sports competitions that expose them to unpredictable, complex environments – and, as analysts note, generate valuable data to advance their development. On Sunday, the world’s first kickboxing contest featuring humanoid robots kicked off in the eastern city of Hangzhou. Four Unitree G1 robots – donning helmets and boxing gloves to resemble human fighters – unleashed a volley of blows with speed…

America’s top diplomat Marco Rubio has made clear that he does not trust Beijing’s English translations of Chinese officials’ words – he says they are “never right”. Advertisement The China hawk has instead urged his colleagues to go back to the original Chinese version of statements put out by Beijing to get a more accurate understanding of what is going on. Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, appears to be the most powerful diplomat under President Donald Trump. He is the first person since Henry Kissinger to hold the national…

Decades of dispute over the Chagos Archipelago in the Indian Ocean, rooted in colonial history and international legal challenges, have been addressed after the United Kingdom agreed to transfer sovereignty of the islands to Mauritius. Under the May 22 deal, the UK retains a 99-year lease on the UK-US military base on Diego Garcia, the largest of the islands. Advertisement Under British colonial rule, the island chain was separated from Mauritius in 1965, three years before Mauritius was granted independence. Around 2,000 Chagos residents were forcibly removed to make way…