Day: May 19, 2026

This live article is freely available to our registered users. Please log in or create an account below. After arriving in Beijing on Tuesday evening, Russian President Vladimir Putin is set to hold talks with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping on Wednesday. Putin is visiting the Chinese capital just days after the landmark summit between Xi and US President Donald Trump, which marked a reset in bilateral ties and a new diplomatic framework called “constructive strategic stability”. This year also marks the 30th anniversary of a comprehensive strategic partnership between…

The end of the Cold War was supposed to deliver a long peace. For a while, that was working, until it wasn’t. We might now be entering another period when the breakdown of a world order leads to war. It was no accident that President Xi Jinping cited the “Thucydides Trap” during his summit in Beijing with his US counterpart Donald Trump, putting it forward as something for both superpowers to avoid. The theory, popularised by Harvard political scientist Graham Allison, digs deep into an episode… South China Morning Post

China has rolled out the red carpet for Russian President Vladimir Putin for his 25th visit to the country, underscoring a frequency of head-of-state diplomacy that far outpaces Beijing’s engagement with Washington. Putin arrived in Beijing on Tuesday night for a two-day state visit, less than a week after US President Donald Trump wrapped up his own closely watched trip to China. This marks the first time China has hosted the leaders of Russia and the US in the same month outside a multilateral setting. Advertisement Yet, the rapid succession…

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Brian Mast warned that allowing American tech firms to chase business in China could make the US the ultimate “loser”, in remarks that followed US President Donald Trump’s return from Beijing, where artificial intelligence (AI) was discussed. “There’s a reason that we don’t sell Lockheed F-35s [or] F-22s to China and beyond that, to Russia, Iran and North Korea,” Mast told a discussion in Washington on Tuesday, referring to the American fighter jets. “The… South China Morning Post

US President Donald Trump’s visit to Beijing, at a time of rising tensions over Iran, sanctions, tariffs and Taiwan, shows how far the Hormuz crisis has travelled beyond the battlefield. What began as a regional war is now touching energy markets, currency politics and the balance of influence between Washington and Beijing. The US is trying to keep Gulf and Asian partners anchored to the US dollar system, while China continues to push for wider use of the renminbi in trade transactions. Whether… South China Morning Post

The United States is expected to unseal criminal charges against former Cuban leader Raul Castro on Wednesday in a move that could further deepen tensions between Washington and Havana and inject new strain into an already volatile regional relationship. Multiple US media outlets, citing US Justice Department sources, have reported that federal prosecutors in Miami are preparing an indictment tied to Cuba’s 1996 shooting down of two civilian aircraft operated by the Miami-based exile group… South China Morning Post