Month: August 2026

When Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif signed the Mecca defence agreement, they executed a structural overhaul of the Middle East’s security architecture. The pact codifies a defence commitment, where an armed attack on one is treated as an assault on all. Building upon September’s Saudi-Pakistan defence agreement, this tripartite arrangement bridges the financial capital of the Gulf, the industrial-military muscle of a Nato member and the operational capacity of a South Asian nuclear-armed state. For Ankara, it is…

When heat-seeking missiles lock onto aircraft, fighters release flares to confuse infrared sensors and break missile tracking. But the infrared signals produced by fighters, including heat from engine exhaust and air friction over the fuselage, are different from those generated by flares. These heat signatures could provide valuable infrared information for target detection and recognition in future air combat, while making flares useless. Chinese researchers have created a lightweight artificial intelligence (AI) system that could help heat-seeking air-to-air missiles identify advanced fighter jets, and they demonstrated its high accuracy in…

China appears to be adding capacity to the vertical launch system (VLS) of its most advanced guided-missile frigate Type 054B under construction in Shanghai, satellite images show, allowing it to have a larger missile reserve and stronger anti-air defence capabilities. According to satellite images taken by US intelligence company Vantor on June 28, the VLS at the bow of a Type 054B vessel had a different shape compared to the first two Type 054B vessels that have already entered service. China calls nuclear submarine missile test ‘routine’ as Australia, Japan…

Tributes have been flooding in for former Chinese premier Zhu Rongji, the reformist statesman who played a leading role in integrating China’s economy into the global system and charmed neighbouring countries with his candid diplomacy. In a deeply personal tribute posted on social media, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim described Zhu, who died on Wednesday at the age of 97, as “a good friend”. The pair worked together to strengthen economic ties between the two countries, building a foundation Anwar said “still underpins our relationship today”. But he also discussed…

The Trump administration on Thursday released a sharply worded report accusing Chinese exporters of orchestrating a system of “illegal transshipment” through more than 40 third countries to dodge US tariffs, branding the practice “The Great Transshipment Scam.” The 25-page document claims Chinese firms have systematically diverted goods through lower-tariff jurisdictions since the US kicked off its trade war with China in 2018. It alleges that exporters use limited assembly, relabelling, repackaging, re-invoicing and false country-of-origin declarations to disguise Chinese-origin products and secure more favourable tariff treatment on entry into the…

The security pact signed on Friday by three of the world’s most powerful Muslim nations with a vow to enhance collective deterrence remains far from what many are calling an Islamic Nato, according to experts. The Mecca Joint Defence Agreement between Saudi Arabia, the Persian Gulf’s top oil exporter, Nato member Turkey and Pakistan, a nuclear-armed South Asian state, would be challenged by diverging strategic interests and weak mutual defence capacity, they said. The Mecca pact’s statement that an armed attack on any of the three would be viewed as…

Known for his sharp intellect, no-nonsense demeanour and relentless drive for reform, China’s former premier Zhu Rongji was the primary architect of the country’s transition from an isolated, rigidly planned economy to a market-driven titan connected to the rest of the world. During his tenure from 1998 to 2003, he engineered an economic “soft landing”, steered the nation through the Asian Financial Crisis and secured entry into the WTO, laying the groundwork for the country’s historic transformation. Here is a look back at his key contributions, remembered through his most…