Month: August 2026

An executive at a Chinese military trading company has been arrested for leaking sensitive defence information to intelligence agencies from two countries, Beijing’s top spy and anti-espionage agency revealed on Monday. The Ministry of State Security (MSS) regularly publicises espionage cases to raise public awareness, but the vast majority of these disclosures focus on individuals targeted by a single foreign intelligence service. Public disclosures involving a Chinese national recruited simultaneously by multiple separate foreign intelligence agencies are extremely rare. The MSS outlined the suspect’s case, identified only by his surname…

Rescuers from China and Nepal continued searching landslide- and flood-affected areas on Monday while efforts to reopen roads to the heart of the disaster-hit area at Gyirong Port entered a “critical stage”. The death toll in Nepal had risen to 903 as of 9am on Monday, with 4,247 people still missing, according to data released by the country’s National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority, Chinese state broadcaster CCTV reported. Chinese authorities on Sunday said the death toll on their side of the border had risen to 16, with 546…

Chen Ye, a semiconductor quality control expert with more than 16 years of industry experience in the United States, has been appointed as a Qiushi Distinguished Professor at Zhejiang University’s College of Integrated Circuits, the university has announced. The university, based in Hangzhou, overtook Harvard University to become the world’s top academic institution in the 2026 Nature Index, ending its 11-year grip on the title which it had held since 2015. Chen most recently served as chief scientist at Semitronix Corporation in Hangzhou, China, a role he took on in…

As Washington’s strategic focus shifts and energy and grain supply disruptions continue to unsettle the Middle East, Beijing’s expanding presence across Central Asia is expected to be in focus as Kyrgyzstan hosts the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit this week. Chinese President Xi Jinping’s presence in Bishkek is expected to put the spotlight on whether the increasingly diverse grouping can move beyond diplomatic signalling, according to analysts. The SCO’s 25th anniversary summit was also expected to offer crucial clues to Beijing’s ambitions for a more multipolar Eurasia at a time…

China has mapped the seabed of its claimed waters including the South China Sea, with twice the resolution and up to five times the accuracy of methods used by other countries after more than two decades of effort, according to scientists involved in the project. The importance of such work was underscored in October 2021, when the US Navy’s Seawolf-class nuclear submarine USS Connecticut struck an uncharted seamount while submerged in the South China Sea. The collision grounded the vessel and injured 11 crew members. A subsequent investigation blamed poor…

Trita Parsi is co-founder and executive vice-president of the Quincy Institute, a Washington-based think tank. He is an expert on US-Iranian relations, Iranian foreign policy and the geopolitics of the Middle East. He has written four books on US foreign policy in the Middle East, with a particular focus on Iran and Israel. Born in Iran, Parsi moved to Sweden with his family as a child and then to the United States as an adult. This interview first appeared in SCMP Plus. For other interviews in the Open Questions series,…