Month: May 2025

A China Southern Airlines flight from Hangzhou to Shenzhen was forced to return to the airport 15 minutes after take-off on Saturday after the crew found smoke coming from a passenger’s camera battery and power bank. Advertisement According to a social media post by the airline, the camera batteries and power bank of a passenger on board flight CZ6850 started to produce smoke soon after taking off. “The crew handled it properly and quickly eliminated the safety risk. To ensure safety, the flight immediately returned to the airport, and landed…

China’s embassy in Nepal has once again warned Chinese citizens in the Himalayan country not to visit the Nepal-India border region, after two Chinese nationals were arrested by Indian police for allegedly taking photos and videos in the area. Advertisement The reminder, posted on Friday via the embassy’s official social media account, was the third such reminder in the past month. It said that despite repeated warnings for Chinese nationals travelling in Nepal to avoid the India border area, some chose to ignore these cautions and insisted on visiting the…

The Chinese authorities have vowed to crack down heavily on scammers targeting the national college entrance examination, especially those who claim that artificial intelligence can be used to predict the real questions. Advertisement The Chinese Ministry of Education, the Cyberspace Administration of China and the Ministry of Public Security jointly announced a campaign to investigate and clean up “illegal and harmful information” relating to the exams on Friday. Known as the gaokao, the exam, which runs from June 7 to June 10 this year, can make or break a young…

The Chinese military and coastguard on Saturday launched a sea and air combat readiness patrol around Scarborough Shoal, known as Huangyan Island in China, to “further strengthen its control and defend its sovereignty”, according to an official statement. Advertisement The show of force came a day after China’s state broadcaster aired rare footage of Chinese military drills in contested waters near the Spratly Islands, known as the Nansha Islands in China, highlighting Beijing’s ability to take military action in the event of “sudden military threats.” The Southern Theatre Command of…

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,…