Day: August 29, 2026

Friction between humans and wild animals at China’s Giant Panda National Park intensified significantly over the past decade as conservation efforts expanded, a new study has found. Farmers reported increasing losses between 2015 and 2024 stemming from damage to property and crops as well as attacks on humans and livestock. The team behind the study said the issue had become the most prominent challenge facing the park’s administrators. The Giant Panda National Park covers 22,000 sq km (8,500 sq miles), two and a half times the size of Yellowstone in…

As conflicts around the world highlight the vulnerability of global shipping lanes, China and Russia are reportedly weighing the possibility of turning a vast river into an inland cargo route to the rest of the world. At the heart of this ambition is the 4,248km (2,640-mile) Irtysh River, which originates in China’s western Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region and runs through Kazakhstan before flowing into Russia’s Ob River and ending in the Arctic Ocean. More importantly, unlike traditional maritime chokepoints like the Malacca and Bering straits, the route could avoid Western…

A Chinese coastguard ship is shielding a cluster of fishing boats when several small, fast vessels begin circling – sometimes darting closer, sometimes backing off. Are they just curious fishermen? Or are they probing for a weak spot, trying to lure the patrol ship into a trap? In the real world, a split-second decision could escalate a tense maritime stand-off into something far more dangerous. This is exactly the kind of nerve‑wracking scenario Chinese coastguard researchers have been running inside a computer war game. Their findings, published this month, revealed…

Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian leader Vladimir Putin are expected to discuss the Power of Siberia 2 project in a meeting in Bishkek on Monday, according to the Kremlin. The meeting in Kyrgyzstan’s capital will be their second face-to-face talks this year, following Putin’s trip to Beijing shortly after a visit there by US President Donald Trump. “The issue will be discussed bilaterally,” Russian presidential aide Yury Ushakov was quoted as saying on Friday by Russian news agency Interfax. “It will be discussed not only at the level of…

Japan plans to deploy fighter jets in India for the first time next month, a decision experts say reflects Tokyo’s desire to strengthen security cooperation with “like-minded” countries in the Indo-Pacific region as it ramps up defence spending in response to China’s growing military power. According to a Japan Air Self-Defence Force announcement on Tuesday, Tokyo will conduct a joint training exercise, Veer Guardian 26, with the Indian Air Force between September 9 and 21 in Rajasthan in western India. As part of the joint training, Tokyo said it would…

The war has forced Gulf leaders to face the reality that neither the United States nor China is able to protect them from attacks by Iran. On Wednesday, the Iranian army warned that any “possible future war” with the United States could spread across the region and target energy and communications infrastructure. In the face of such threats, Gulf states have been seeking new defensive partners. On Thursday, Kuwait signed a military cooperation agreement with Pakistan, which promised to provide training and boost the city state’s defensive capacity. South China…

Video footage taken moments before a catastrophic mudslide hit a border post in Tibet shows how one police officer stationed there tried to guide civilians to safety. The clip, which shows the officer trying to direct people away from the police station at Gyirong Port, went viral online in China over the weekend. State broadcaster CCTV said the officer, whom it named as Huang Peng, also rushed into a nearby tourist service centre to tell those inside to evacuate. The 34-year-old, who had served at the border station for 13…

Speak a few sentences of your hometown dialect into a microphone at a museum in central China, and a machine will pinpoint exactly where you are from. The interactive voice-recognition booth is among star attractions at a new language resources hall that opened on Monday at the Hunan Museum in Changsha. The hall showcases recordings and other language materials from Chinese dialects, minority languages and oral culture collected over the past decade. The compilation from more than 1,800 field survey sites nationwide reflects Beijing’s broader initiative to turn the vast…