Day: July 4, 2026

The world has yet to truly understand how to deal with a rapidly rising China. Even within China, some of the most learned minds are surprised at how quickly the country has taken the global lead in new economic areas, such as electric vehicles. Global warming is no longer abstract; ask around in Europe this summer and people will tell you it has been unbearably hot. Electric vehicles have a future, if they are not the future. Prudent Chinese literati do not lightly discuss how China should act in public.…

China and the United States may have agreed to establish a “constructive” relationship characterised by “strategic stability” but deep-seated differences have left the future shape of the relationship looking uncertain, a forum in Beijing heard on Saturday. Looking ahead to President Xi Jinping’s possible US visit later this year, Sun Yun, director of the China programme at US think tank the Stimson Centre, said such trips typically required a list of deliverables, “but to my knowledge, both the two sides have not reached any consensus on what that deliverable package…

China plans to export powerful robots capable of locating marine cables buried under the seabed to regions including “Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Europe”, according to the Science and Technology Daily. China aimed to secure its position in the marine equipment sector by introducing this technology to potential clients in these regions, the official newspaper reported last Monday. “By deepening cooperation in [these] offshore engineering markets, we will integrate Chinese intelligent cable detection solutions into the global ecosystem and bolster the international competitiveness of domestic marine equipment,” the report…

As the United States marks the 250th anniversary of its founding, it confronts a new world order dominated by its relationship with China. In this wide-ranging series, we examine the pressure points and possibilities in those ties, from hard tech to soft power. Here, Lucy Quaggin looks at how Gen Z Chinese-Americans are navigating identity amid shifting US-China tensions. As a high school student on New York City’s Upper East Side, Chinese-American Hannah Liu would take the subway downtown on Sundays to volunteer and visit Chinatown. Those weekly trips became…

Omar Yaghi, the winner of last year’s Nobel Prize for chemistry, has left the United States to lead a new AI-driven research centre at China’s Tsinghua University. The 61-year-old materials scientist will head a team working on ways artificial intelligence (AI) can transform the design and synthesis of new materials and shorten their development cycle “by orders of magnitude”, Tsinghua said on Friday. Speaking at his appointment ceremony, Yaghi said he hoped to develop materials to tackle major environmental challenges such as water shortages, carbon neutrality and sustainable development. He…

Beijing on Saturday rotated a new coastguard task force into waters east of Taiwan. The move also comes close on the heels of high-level talks with the Philippines, where Beijing pressed Manila to match words with deeds and stabilise bilateral relations amid persistent South China Sea tensions. The Chinese coastguard said on Saturday that its Xiushan ship formation had replaced the Daishan group to continue “routine law enforcement patrols” east of Taiwan. China Coast Guard (CCG) spokesman Jiang Lue said the patrols, which began in June, involved inspection operations, fisheries…

Celebrated neurobiologist Chih-Ying Su, who specialises in research on the sense of smell using fruit flies and mosquitoes, has left her position as faculty vice-chair at the University of California San Diego to join the Shenzhen Academy of Medical Sciences (SMART). Professor Su’s lab focuses on how olfactory receptor neurons (ORNs) process odour information, as these neurons are the primary source of sensory input. Her research findings have been published in leading journals in international neuroscience and biology, including Nature, Neuron, Nature Communications and PNAS. “I decided to join SMART…

Chinese scientists say they have developed a tiny computer chip capable of modelling complex brain structures in real time. According to its developers, this chip could not only transform diagnostics and treatment for conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease, but also boost the performance of brain-machine interfaces and assist surgeons. Researchers from Peking University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences reported the breakthrough in a peer-reviewed study published in Science on Thursday, detailing a 40-nanometre memory chip with an integrated artificial neural network. The device overcomes long-standing computational limits, enabling it…

Middle powers would be better off hedging their bets rather than picking sides between countries such as the United States or China, a forum in Beijing heard on Friday. Speakers at Tsinghua University’s World Peace Forum agreed that these nations should band together to seek more diversified partnerships. “So during the period of bipolarisation, with China and the US now engaged in some kind of strategic competition, probably it is wise for middle powers not to take sides,” Jia Qingguo, a professor of international studies at Peking University, said during…