Year: 2025

President Donald Trump’s reluctance to authorise direct military intervention in Venezuela underscored the US dilemma of how to reassert dominance in its traditional sphere while managing escalation risks in multipolar rivalry with China and Russia, observers said. But they cautioned against seeing US hesitation as weakness, noting intensified sanctions, naval blockades and diplomatic pressure from Washington, alongside a recalibrated strategy to sustain influence without overcommitment against China’s growing economic footprint in Latin America. The Trump administration has pursued a “maximum pressure” campaign against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro under “Operation Southern…

China has launched a national fund designed to channel state-backed money into early-stage bets on tech, a move officials said could ultimately steer trillions of yuan into preferred avenues of investment. Beijing’s National Venture Capital Guidance Fund was unveiled on Friday, at a ceremony which also introduced three investment vehicles covering major cross-regional agglomerations: the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei cluster, the Yangtze River Delta and the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area. At the ceremony, an official from the Ministry of Finance said the new fund differs from earlier programmes in three ways: more…

Images of a cargo ship in Shanghai carrying containerised vertical launchers, sensors and self-defence systems have spread online and prompted discussion for apparently showing China’s capacity to convert civilian cargo vessels to military purposes. The circulated images show vertical launch systems, rotary phased-array radars, over-the-horizon radars, close-in weapon systems and decoy launchers mounted atop containers on a cargo vessel. This configuration appears to be a temporary installation, seemingly aimed at converting the merchant vessel into a heavily armed surface combatant. 01:29 China’s first 076 ‘drone carrier’ amphibious assault ship begins…

Catch up on some of SCMP’s biggest China science stories of the year. If you would like to see more of our reporting, please consider subscribing. 1. China unveils a powerful deep-sea cable cutter that could reset the world order A compact, deep-sea, cable-cutting device, capable of severing the world’s most fortified underwater communication or power lines, has been unveiled by China – and it could shake up global maritime power dynamics. 2. China tests non-nuclear hydrogen bomb, science paper shows Chinese researchers have successfully detonated a hydrogen-based explosive device…

Taiwan’s legislature passed a motion on Friday to start impeachment proceedings against the island’s leader, William Lai Ching-te. The Legislative Yuan voted 60 to 51 in favour of the motion that argued that the leader undermined the self-ruled island’s constitutional order and democracy. Lawmakers are expected to vote on impeachment on May 19, according to the legislature’s procedures. Advertisement The impeachment motion came after Lai’s administration failed to enact an amendment passed by the opposition-controlled legislature that would have given local government a larger share of public revenue. It was…

The fascination with cryptocurrencies shows no sign of fading. With the passage of the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins (Genius) Act in July, US lawmakers added to the sense that crypto is here to stay. But an uncomfortable issue remains unresolved: are cryptocurrencies a genuine innovation capable of serving the common good, or a speculative threat to financial and social stability? Not all cryptocurrencies are alike. Unbacked ones, such as bitcoin or Ethereum, have no underlying assets. Backed cryptocurrencies, including stablecoins, attempt to anchor their value through…

The 22.13km (13.75-mile) Tianshan Shengli Tunnel, the centrepiece of the Urumqi-Yuli Expressway, officially opened on Friday, creating a 20-minute drive through the Tianshan Mountains that divide northern and southern Xinjiang. The tunnel halves the travel time between the regional capital Urumqi and the city of Korla from over seven hours to around 3½ hours, according to state media. Advertisement Song Hailiang, chairman of China Communications Construction Company (CCCC), told state broadcaster CCTV that the tunnel “set two world records”. “It is the longest expressway tunnel in the world and has…

The 22.13km (13.75-mile) Tianshan Shengli Tunnel, the centrepiece of the Urumqi-Yuli Expressway, officially opened on Friday, creating a 20-minute drive through the Tianshan Mountains that divide northern and southern Xinjiang. The tunnel halves the travel time between the regional capital Urumqi and the city of Korla from over seven hours to around 3½ hours, according to state media. Advertisement Song Hailiang, chairman of China Communications Construction Company (CCCC), told state broadcaster CCTV that the tunnel “set two world records”. “It is the longest expressway tunnel in the world and has…

China’s biggest tech groups and a clutch of fast-rising consumer electronics brands are battling for coveted sponsorship slots at the Spring Festival Gala, as intensifying competition in artificial intelligence turns the country’s most watched television broadcast into a rare nationwide marketing battleground. Major players including ByteDance, Tencent Holdings and Alibaba Group Holding had all held discussions with state broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV) over high-stakes partnership packages, according to people familiar with the matter. ByteDance’s cloud computing arm, Volcano Engine, had previously been reported as the gala’s exclusive AI cloud…

China has opened a new shopping centre on Woody Island in the disputed Paracel Islands, bolstering its civilian presence on the strategically vital South China Sea outpost. The Sansha City Commercial Centre opened to business on Thursday, according to the local government. The over 6,000 square metre (64,600 sq ft) complex is the latest addition to China’s civilian infrastructure on what it calls Yongxing Island, following its first hardware store last year and a hotpot restaurant in 2023. Woody Island lies within the Paracel Islands – an archipelago known as…