Month: July 2025

China’s Type 815A spy ships have become pivotal to People’s Liberation Army naval operations and intelligence gathering, with recent incidents underscoring the vessels’ crucial role in Beijing’s maritime surveillance and power projection. On July 12, the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) reported the interception of the Type 815A electronic surveillance ship Tianwangxing (hull number 793) operating about 69 nautical miles (128km) off the western Philippines, within Manila’s exclusive economic… South China Morning Post

The China-EU summit on July 24 confirmed what Beijing and Washington have long surmised: Europe has sidelined itself from great-power competition. After five decades of diplomacy, Brussels and Beijing have never been further apart, exactly as Trump’s wedge intended. Yet the bridge to China wasn’t demolished from abroad. Europe dismantled it, piece by piece, through its own incoherence. Brussels’ only meaningful gain was a marginal agreement on rare earths. The European Union’s other concerns,… South China Morning Post

China’s richest man, Zhong Shanshan, has come under scrutiny in the small northeastern US state of New Hampshire, home to just over 1 million residents, over a plan to develop an industrial site in the state’s second-largest city, Nashua. Advertisement The controversy began in May when it emerged that a US subsidiary of Zhong’s firm, Nongfu Spring, NF North America, had quietly acquired a single-storey building on a 9.3-hectare (23-acre) industrial site in Nashua in January. The site had been abandoned for nearly 11 years, and the company planned to…

Panama’s chief prosecutor said on Tuesday that more than 160 actions have been taken so far in a high-profile investigation into alleged wrongdoing by Panama Ports Company, the unit of Hong Kong’s CK Hutchison Holdings that operates two Panama Canal ports, as the country finds itself in the crosshairs of a deepening power struggle between the US and China. Advertisement Attorney General Luis Carlos Gomez said that prosecutors are conducting interviews, issuing special requests and deploying investigative commissions as part of the inquiry, which is being handled by the anti-corruption…