Month: April 2026

Washington’s reported plan to have embassies team up with the American military’s “psyops” department to boost the US’ image could backfire and actually damage the country’s credibility, according to analysts. The strategy amounts to using “propaganda to fight the truth”, according to Tad Stoermer, a historian and former lecturer at Johns Hopkins University. Amid slipping global approval, the US is looking to employ shadowy tactics that it previously condemned. Advertisement US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told embassies and consulates to launch coordinated campaigns to boost the country’s image and…

China has named the two Pakistani astronauts selected to train for a mission to its space station this year. After undergoing assessments, one of the men would serve as a payload specialist on a space mission alongside the Chinese crew to become the first foreign astronaut to enter the Tiangong space station, state news agency Xinhua reported on Wednesday. Muhammad Zeeshan Ali and Khurram Daud will soon arrive in China for their training, according to the China Manned Space Agency. Advertisement “The selection and training of astronauts for Pakistan is…

The Iran crisis loomed large in discussions when Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the crown prince of Abu ‌Dhabi, and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez met President Xi Jinping on separate visits to Beijing last week. Both meetings focused on the need for a comprehensive and sustainable security architecture for the Middle East. This week, on a phone call with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Xi reiterated China’s support for an immediate and comprehensive ceasefire and for any disputes to be resolved through diplomacy. China, a…

PLA warships transited sensitive international waterways off southwestern Japan twice this week, a rare move seen as a clear warning to Tokyo over its recent actions relating to Taiwan. The transits marked the start and end of exercises in the western Pacific, outbound through the Yokoate Channel on Sunday and back via the Yonaguni-Iriomote Waterway on Wednesday. In a statement on Wednesday, the Eastern Theatre Command of the People’s Liberation Army said: “[We] have organised the 133rd Fleet to complete training exercises in the western Pacific, returning via the Yonaguni-Iriomote…

But Lai’s office announced late on Tuesday that the visit would be postponed after Seychelles, Mauritius and Madagascar cancelled previously approved overflight permissions without notice. Advertisement Taipei accused Beijing of pressuring the three African nations to withdraw clearance for Lai’s aircraft. With re-routing proving complex, Lai’s office said safety concerns left no choice but to delay the trip and instead send a special envoy. In Beijing, the State Council’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) thanked the three African countries for their decision “to adhere to the one-China principle”. Advertisement However, TAO…

China is embarking on a sweeping overhaul of its industrial architecture, aiming to fuse software and steel as part of a 100-trillion-yuan (US$14.7 trillion) undertaking to modernise its service sector while pushing manufacturing into the future. The State Council’s blueprint, unveiled on Tuesday, said the valuation target for the service sector was achievable by 2030 as advanced manufacturing increasingly becomes fused with specialised technical support. Advertisement Analysts say Beijing’s plan will help cultivate world-class Chinese brands while shoring up the nation’s industrial backbone against the risk of premature deindustrialisation. The…

China has launched what it calls the world’s first “panoramic” carbon accounting system, a model that revises down the country’s emissions compared to other estimates and raises them for the United States. Unlike other models that assign responsibility for emissions based on total carbon output from facilities such as power plants and factories, the new model gives greater weight to the consumers of products. Developed by the Shanghai Advanced Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), the model calculated China’s 2022 greenhouse gas emissions as 17.7 per cent…

South China Morning Post

Flights between China and Japan faced even more cancellations in March – with further cuts expected during the coming Labour Day holiday – as political tensions between the Asian neighbours continue to simmer. A total of 2,691 China-Japan flights were scrapped last month, according to figures from the data platform DAST cited by Chinese media outlet Yicai. That brought the cancellation rate to nearly 50 per cent, 1.1 percentage points higher than February. Advertisement Only 2,711 flights between the two countries took place last month, down from 5,512 in March…

China is backing Namibia’s bid to move beyond raw material exports by supporting the domestic processing of critical minerals and uranium. In a joint communique issued on Friday following bilateral talks in Beijing between Foreign Minister Wang Yi and his counterpart Selma Ashipala-Musavyi, China pledged to help transform Namibia’s natural resources into higher-value products through domestic processing and downstream cooperation. Namibia, which has exported unprocessed minerals for decades, is seeking Chinese investment to process lithium, cobalt and uranium, a key fuel for nuclear energy reactors. 16:09 How China is reshaping…