Month: June 2025

Israel’s sweeping intelligence operations against Iran have jolted Taiwan’s security community, raising concerns that Beijing could adopt similar tactics to cripple the island’s leadership or critical infrastructure. Advertisement As assassinations and sabotage rattle Tehran, analysts in Taipei warn that Beijing’s infiltration of Taiwan is no longer a purely political threat, and it might be laying the groundwork for high-stakes covert warfare. In recent months, Taiwan has seen a surge in espionage cases implicating not only retired and active-duty military personnel, but also aides to senior government officials and lawmakers from…

A county in southwestern China is bracing for another deluge just days after record floods killed at least six people. Advertisement Authorities in Rongjiang county in Guizhou province ordered the evacuation of half a dozen areas on Saturday as heavy rain was again forecast for the region. “Exceptionally large floods” began sweeping through the county on Tuesday, setting new benchmarks for both rainfall and water levels, state broadcaster CCTV reported on Thursday without saying what those levels were. The water inundated low-lying areas and inflicted severe damage on some infrastructure,…

Yajiang-1, a cutting-edge computing centre perched in the cradle of Tibetan civilisation along the Yarlung Tsangpo River, is up and running as part of China’s plan to transform the so-called roof of the world into a strategic frontier for sustainable supercomputing. Advertisement The facility, the first major hub of the “Eastern Data, Western Computing” project on the Tibetan Plateau, takes advantage of the region’s extreme environment to make massive artificial intelligence (AI) training tasks – amounting to millions of processing hours a year – radically more energy efficient. China plans…

China already has de facto stablecoins in the form of WeChat Pay and Alipay, a top economist at the country’s leading investment bank has argued – amid growing calls for Beijing to quickly adapt to the global rise of digital assets. Advertisement “From an economic perspective, money based on third-party payment platforms functions much like stablecoins – and China holds a comparative advantage in this area, having already built a relatively mature regulatory framework,” said Peng Wensheng, chief economist at China International Capital Corporation, in a research note published on…

A team led by China’s Nankai University has completed what it calls the world’s first human trial of a brain-computer interface (BCI) implanted via blood vessels, helping a paralysed patient regain limb movement. Advertisement Unlike the open-skull approach of Elon Musk’s US-based neurotechnology company Neuralink, the Nankai University method reportedly reduces risk and shortens recovery time. This research was led by Professor Duan Feng, vice dean of the university’s medical college, and the interventional surgery was performed at the Fujian Sanbo Funeng Brain Hospital, according to a university statement. A…

A Shandong Airlines flight from Qingdao to Shanghai was forced to make an emergency landing in Nanjing on Friday, with passengers saying they smelled a burning odour. Advertisement According to a social media post by the airline on Friday, flight SC4667 experienced an “aircraft malfunction” and the crew diverted to an airport in Nanjing after handling the situation in accordance with procedures to ensure passenger safety. “All affected passengers have been properly accommodated, and another aircraft has been dispatched to operate subsequent flights,” the post said. A user claiming to…

As Israeli jets and American bombers streaked across Iranian skies earlier this month, the world watched a familiar game plan unfold – one that had its origins in secret meetings, veiled ambitions and the relentless logic of regional dominance that has haunted the Middle East for generations. Advertisement The process began decades earlier, in the smoke of American air strikes on Iraq and the calculations of US policymakers determined to keep Israel unrivalled. It was the late 1990s when a small, bipartisan delegation of senior US senators touched down in…

The rain and gloomy skies during the SNEC PV Conference – the biggest in China’s solar-panel manufacturing industry – summed up the mood in the market, whose major players congregated in Shanghai earlier this month for the four-day annual event. Advertisement The scale was noticeably smaller this year. Several leading companies opted out for a variety of reasons, including tight budgets. More tellingly, CEOs from major producers Longi Green Technology and Tongwei – keynote speakers last year – gave it a miss. The weariness is not surprising. The industry, billed…

For the first time in four years, the leaders of South Korea and Japan were nowhere to be seen at the annual Nato summit. Advertisement The four countries are not Nato members, but the security bloc has identified Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand – also known as the Indo-Pacific Four (IP4) – as key partners in the alliance’s engagement with the Indo-Pacific region. Leaders of all four countries had attended annual Nato summits since 2022, at the invitation of the alliance, but this year, Japan, South Korea and…

Watching as missile bombardments threaten key shipping routes and blow up some of their trade deals in the Middle East, with Iran at the centre of the firestorm, Chinese exporters are feeling the heat. Advertisement After finalising a deal with an Iranian buyer she met at China’s Canton Fair in April, Miya Yu, a trader of light industrial goods – valves, toys, aluminium containers, etc – collected the necessary materials to begin production and fill the order. Production never began. The contracted client vanished without a word as his country…