Day: September 1, 2025

Chinese President Xi Jinping is meeting Russian President Vladimir Putin in Beijing, state media said, in the latest display of solidarity amid growing pressure from the US and its allies. Advertisement Putin, accompanied by a delegation of Russian officials and business figures, is in Beijing for what Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov described as an “absolutely unprecedented” trip in China. Beijing is the second stop for the Russian leader during his four-day visit to China. He arrived in the northeastern city of Tianjin on Sunday for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation…

Astronauts have to get used to many things in space, including that they cannot wash their dirty clothes. Advertisement But researchers in Beijing have proposed a solution: a compact, detergent-free washing machine that cleans clothes with mist and ozone using almost no water – a limited resource in space. The cube-shaped device is a bit larger than a carry-on suitcase and weighs 12kg (26lbs), according to the team that developed it from the China Astronaut Research and Training Centre. They said it used only 400ml (13 fluid ounces) of water…

State broadcaster CCTV has hinted that the Victory Day parade in Beijing this week could feature improved versions of two of its hypersonic missiles, the YJ-21 and DF-17, both with enhanced penetration capabilities. Advertisement One anticipated highlight is the air-launched variant of the YJ-21, originally a sea-based hypersonic missile. In a programme on Saturday, military commentator Wei Dongxu told CCTV it could be launched from bombers “outside enemy air defence zones, penetrate interceptors and destroy targets before quickly returning to base”. “Hypersonic missiles will adapt according to mission and platform,…

Long after the Tiananmen Square incident in 1989, Westerners and, secretly, even some within China, were thinking that if the communist country was going to follow the decline and fall of the Soviet Union, the crackdown would have been the trigger. Advertisement But history is full of surprises. Nowadays, some prominent intellectuals in the Anglo-American world are fretting over whether their own countries are looking a lot like the late Soviets. The historical parallels they have drawn are plausible. Even some mainstream newspaper op-eds have been borrowing from the analogy.…