Month: April 2026

China criticised Japan for sending a warship through the Taiwan Strait on Friday, just days after Tokyo announced its troops would join a major US-Philippine military drill for the first time. Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun said the entry of a Japanese Self-Defence Force vessel into the strait was a “deliberate provocation.” He added that Beijing had lodged a “strong protest” with Tokyo. “The Chinese military has dealt with this incident in accordance with regulations,” Guo said, without offering further details. Advertisement “[The incident] once again exposes the dangerous plot…

To sharpen its competitive edge in the world’s next-generation vehicle market, China has pledged to fast track automotive technical standards to build its status as a global rule-setter. The carmaking powerhouse would drive high-quality development of the auto sector through the formulation and enhancement of core standards during the next five years, officials from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) told state broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV) in Beijing on Thursday. The move aligns with the national five-year plan released last month, with the development blueprint explicitly calling…

The three astronauts stationed on China’s Tiangong space station will extend their stay by around a month, state broadcaster CCTV said on Friday. The crew lifted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre on October 31 on board the Shenzhou-21 vessel and were expected to return to Earth at the end of this month after a standard six-month mission. In November, a crack was discovered in a window of the Shenzhou-20 spacecraft, forcing the space station’s previous crew to extend their stay for a further nine days before using their…

Property tycoon Pan Shiyi issued a rare critique of China’s real estate sector, describing its development model as a “Ponzi scheme” and urging the industry to restore integrity and better protect homebuyers, just days after a fraud trial saw a guilty plea from the founder of China Evergrande – the US$300 billion debt juggernaut whose 2021 collapse triggered a systemic property meltdown. Writing from the United States on Thursday via his personal WeChat account, Pan reflected on the trajectory of China’s property market over the past three decades, saying the…

The China-US trade war bubbled away this week, even as the Strait of Hormuz shutdown dominated global headlines. The US is finalising a multinational agreement on trade and critical minerals to break China’s grip on vital resources, US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer told lawmakers on Thursday. He also sought a higher budget to support more trade investigations, and suggested potential action to pare US farmers’ reliance on Chinese orders. “We’re not just going to lay down and let the… South China Morning Post

South Korea’s combat-proven, interoperable and geopolitically accessible surface-to-air missiles could hinder China’s efforts to sell its own defence systems to the Middle East, analysts have suggested. The US-Israel war on Iran has been marked by tit-for-tat missile and drone attacks across the Persian Gulf states, driving a surge in demand for surface-to-air missiles to defend against incoming Iranian aerial threats. According to a study by the Foreign Policy Research Institute, a… South China Morning Post

Vietnamese budget carrier VietJet Air has agreed to lease as many as 10 Chinese-made C909 regional passenger jets, giving a lift to their manufacturer’s goal of vying with Airbus and Boeing in overseas civil aviation. VietJet said in a statement on Thursday night it had agreed with SPDB Financial Leasing, a subsidiary of Shanghai Pudong Development Bank in China, to finance the aircraft through operating leases. Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (Comac) makes the jets that are the subject of the deal, which followed talks between the Chinese and Vietnamese…

An oil tanker sailing under the flag of Hong Kong has passed through the Strait of Hormuz and entered the Gulf of Oman in what appears to be a test of the US blockade targeting vessels entering or leaving Iranian ports, according to a maritime data firm. The tanker, AVA 6, departed from a port in the United Arab Emirates on Wednesday, Beijing time. It passed through the Strait of Hormuz sometime between 4am and 2pm on Thursday, according to data from Mingkun Technology, a Chinese maritime information provider based…

South China Morning Post