Month: August 2026

Southeast Asian leaders have long insisted they will not be forced to pick sides in the great-power rivalry between the US and China. But their posture is about to be further tested. This time, the battleground is AI. While Washington wants the region locked into Pax Silica – its bid to build a China-free artificial intelligence supply chain – Beijing wants its neighbours to join China’s own World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organisation (Waico). Sources told the South China Morning Post that both powers had in recent months piled pressure on…

Midway through a three-month negotiating period with Beijing, new data show the trade balances of 24 European Union member states are still moving in what Brussels considers to be the wrong direction. China extended its trade surplus over all but three EU members in July compared to a year earlier, calculations based on new Chinese customs figures showed. In some instances, the monthly swing was dramatic. China’s surplus with Sweden quadrupled, while for Malta it rose by 166.6 per cent. For Romania it expanded 94.4 per cent, and for Finland…

A pair of landmark rocket recoveries in recent weeks has brought China a step closer to mastering reusable launch technology – a breakthrough analysts said could give the People’s Liberation Army an advantage in combat by increasing the resilience of its satellite-supported “kill chain”, the process of identifying, tracking and engaging a target. In a first for China, commercial rocket company LandSpace recovered a stainless-steel booster using deployable legs after an orbital flight earlier this week. This followed a successful launch last month by state-owned China Aerospace Science and Technology…

The centenary of Jiang Zemin’s birth, marked on August 17 with a memorial in Beijing attended and addressed by President Xi Jinping, was more than an occasion to commemorate a former Chinese leader. It was also an exercise in political history: a moment to locate Jiang, the era he led and the reform legacy associated with him within the broader story of the Communist Party of China’s evolution and China’s modernisation. That is what makes the event politically significant. The question is not simply why China is commemorating Jiang so…

Last Wednesday’s drill – which one observer said may “lower the political threshold” for neighbouring countries – was followed by a meeting of the two countries’ foreign and defence ministers on Friday, where they discussed further military cooperation and a range of other topics, such as food security. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Indonesia was a priority for China’s foreign policy in Southeast Asia and both countries needed to strengthen strategic communication and co-ordination. The so-called 2+2 mechanism with Indonesia was set up in 2023 and has served as…

On August 11, a tiny line buried in a lengthy press release from French company Mistral AI spoke volumes about the strategic and technological dilemmas facing the European Union, as the bloc prepares to navigate an autumn period full of geopolitical and trade upheaval. In a bid to roll out “European infrastructure for sovereign AI”, Mistral – Europe’s great hope in the global artificial intelligence race – said it would begin offering other companies’ models, while keeping the service itself under European control. Mistral’s model of choice is GLM-5.2, an…

Even when fully mobilised, China’s industrial system would only be able to meet 60 per cent of the country’s military demand for drones in a conflict, according to a rare study looking into the expected effects of a sudden war. The estimates were produced by an artificial intelligence model that covered a multilevel supply chain linking drone assembly plants with subsystem and component suppliers. The study also accounted for inventories, production capacity, order backlogs, budgets and civilian factory conversion. The paper was published online in the Journal of System Simulation…