Month: August 2026

A Chinese national was charged in the United States on Wednesday with committing voter fraud during the 2024 presidential election for allegedly impersonating a fellow countryman and later submitting anonymous tips about him to immigration authorities. Yupeng Sun, a Massachusetts resident, was arrested this week for allegedly submitting a fraudulent voter registration and ballot under the name of another Chinese national in the 2024 election that returned US President Donald Trump to the White House. Sun and the other Chinese national’s family, whom he’d lived with, had a history of…

Just weeks before Chinese leader Xi Jinping is due to visit the White House, tensions have flared between Washington and its allies after one of the administration’s sharpest rebukes yet. Speaking in Manila on August 10, Elbridge Colby, undersecretary of defence for policy, pressed regional partners to increase defence spending and align more closely with American priorities. He said Washington sought “partners, not protectorates” and cautioned against “the delusion of fashionable but superficial ideas like middle-power alliances designed to exclude America”. The remarks reinforced the message Colby laid out in…

US President Donald Trump’s ambitious plan to build a national missile defence system, dubbed the “Golden Dome”, may not be able to fully protect America but could accelerate the global arms race involving China, Russia and North Korea, according to experts. “If we expand these missile defences further, we can expect additional responses,” said Steve Fetter, a professor at the University of Maryland. Speaking during a discussion at the Brookings Institution on Wednesday, Fetter noted that the current expansion of China’s nuclear arsenal, including the estimated construction of 350 new…

A survey from Stop AAPI Hate, a self-reporting platform formed during the pandemic, paints an even more worrying picture, with almost half of individuals indicating they have been targeted but many decline to report it to authorities for fear of repercussions. According to FBI data released in mid-August, reported anti-Asian hate crime incidents fell 10 per cent nationwide, from 379 in 2024 to 339 in 2025. While that is a positive sign, advocates caution that the figure remains far above pre-pandemic norms. South China Morning Post

Large language models are expert in intelligence work, able to quickly mine key data and analyse weapons performance – tasks that once took analysts huge amounts of time and effort. But engineers at China’s AVIC Chengdu Aircraft Research and Design Institute, developer of the People’s Liberation Army’s backbone J-20 and next generation J-36 stealth fighters, have urged caution. In a paper published on June 20, engineer Zhang Xianzhe said that “AI models can invent aircraft specifications – length, payload, weapons, speed, combat radius – and get radar scan ranges and…

Beijing has banned Chinese entities from assisting with a European Union investigation into e-commerce giant JD.com under the bloc’s foreign subsidies regulation (FSR). A statement from China’s Ministry of Justice on Wednesday condemned the probe as “undue extraterritorial jurisdiction measures”, ordering that “no organisation or individual may execute or assist in the execution”. In May, the European Commission opened an in-depth investigation to assess whether JD.com’s proposed takeover of German retailer Ceconomy would “distort the EU internal market” because of the Chinese company’s alleged receipt of state subsidies. It marked…

Taiwan’s first test of a locally developed satellite launch vehicle failed on Wednesday after the rocket veered off course, terrifying nearby villagers who mistook it for an incoming missile. The rocket was launched at around 6am local time from the Jiupeng missile testing base in southern Pingtung county. Witnesses said the projectile climbed briefly before suddenly changing direction away from the sea and towards the mountains. “Something’s gone wrong! Oh no! The village!” locals could be heard shouting in video footage circulating online. The rocket finally crashed in an uninhabited…