Day: May 30, 2025

In Inner Mongolia, a convoy of haul trucks rumbles across the dusty, jagged terrain of the Yimin open-pit coal mine. It is a familiar scene in this part of northern China, home to some of the country’s biggest mineral deposits, but a closer look reveals a futuristic twist to this age-old trade: the vehicles operate without drivers. Advertisement Yimin is one of the five largest open-cast coal mines in China. During peak season, it used to require about 300 trucks, operated by around 1,200 drivers working shifts around the clock,…

US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth told Indo-Pacific defence chiefs that China wanted to “fundamentally alter the region’s status quo”, and that American allies must step up defence investments. Advertisement Speaking on Saturday in Singapore at the Shangri-La Dialogue, Asia’s premier defence conference, Hegseth said that the threat posed by China was “real and could be imminent”. He said this included Beijing’s efforts to build the capacity to take over Taiwan by force by 2027. “President Trump has also said that Communist China will not invade Taiwan on his watch,” he…

China has completed its first overseas new-generation radio telescope in northern Thailand, bolstering a global scientific network that monitors deep space signals and tracks subtle shifts in the Earth’s rotation and tectonic plates. Advertisement The 13-metre (43-foot) radio antenna, jointly developed by the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory and the National Astronomical Research Institute of Thailand, was officially inaugurated in Chiang Mai on May 16, according to the observatory’s WeChat account. Together with a second telescope under construction in Songkhla, southern Thailand, the station will enhance deep-space tracking and high-precision Earth monitoring,…

Each night in the darkest hours, a fleet of drones patrols the eastern Chinese city of Nanjing, watching over potentially dodgy areas such as underground station exits and the riverside to deter any would-be criminals. Advertisement The nightly routine has been operating since last year, according to a report published in April by the city’s police bureau, which detailed its use of artificial intelligence to plan patrol routes. According to the report, the AI puts a laser focus on patrolling Nanjing’s blind spots – the areas generally ignored by human…