Day: September 13, 2026

China could improve its image in the United States by highlighting areas such as tourism and technology and positioning itself as a responsible major power, a survey has concluded. Researchers from Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou said that although concepts such as “decoupling” and “de-risking” had been increasingly prominent in media coverage of China, this had not entirely wiped away positive impressions of the country. When evaluating China’s strengths on a scale of 1 to 5, the respondents placed global influence at the top with a score of 4.38, followed…

This year marks the opening year of the national 15th five-year plan. Faced with accelerating change globally and significant opportunities brought by national development, Hong Kong must better integrate into and serve the overall national development, enabling our economic progress to reach new heights while enhancing people’s livelihood and well-being. This February, I announced that the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government would formulate the city’s first five-year plan. I led the compilation work, with the Secretary for Constitutional and Mainland Affairs taking primary responsibility for implementation, and all principal…

China’s top intelligence official has warned of rising national security risks posed by artificial intelligence (AI), calling for robust risk prevention frameworks and stronger global governance of the emerging technology. The call from Chen Yixin, China’s state security minister, comes as Beijing seeks to play a leading role in global AI governance while criticising US restrictions. At the Brics summit in India over the weekend, Chinese President Xi Jinping proposed an AI-powered initiative to drive new industrialisation and deepen supply chain cooperation in the emerging economies bloc. Chen underscored Beijing’s…

US President Donald Trump on Sunday played down the need for his administration to check the development of artificial intelligence, saying he worried about ceding America’s edge over China in a global competition and that winning would help address the risks from the advancing technology. While acknowledging the need for some regulation, Trump provided no specifics about potential rules and attributed warnings about the technology moving too quickly and with little oversight to “negative forces” he did not identify, though industry pioneers have raised such concerns. “We can put guard…

Last month, the People’s Liberation Army released footage showing its H-6N bomber flying with a nuclear-capable Jing Lei-1 (JL-1) air-launched ballistic missile (ALBM), offering a rare look at China’s airborne nuclear strike capability. The unveiling comes as China expands the scope of its H-6 bombers’ activities beyond its nearby airspace. In July 2024, two H-6s were spotted conducting joint patrol near Alaska for the first time with their Russian counterpart, the Tu-95, prompting the US-Canadian North American Aerospace Defence Command to scramble their fighter jets. For the past six decades,…

A leading South China Sea analyst has urged Chinese think tanks to recruit AI talent for the “public opinion war” over the disputed waters. Wu Shicun, the founding president of China’s National Institute for South China Sea Studies, said Chinese humanities and social science research had traditionally operated in a “lone-wolf” fashion and lacked interdisciplinary diversity. He added that physical maritime power alone would not offset losing the narrative battle. Once an adversary managed to frame an incident as “a big power bullying a smaller neighbour”, a delayed counter-response made…

China’s FAST telescope has compiled the world’s largest catalogue of neutral hydrogen beyond the Milky Way, replacing a long-dominant US survey as the main reference for mapping the gas that fuels the formation of stars and galaxies. The FAST All-Sky H I Survey (FASHI), conducted with the 500-metre (1,640-foot) radio dish in southwest China’s Guizhou province, released its second batch of data this week. It contains 156,411 extragalactic sources – nearly five times the number detected by the now-defunct Arecibo Telescope in Puerto Rico. The publicly available data gives astronomers…

Japanese fashion brand WEGO has scrapped a plan to launch a new range in collaboration with the hit anime and manga franchise My Hero Academia after it triggered an angry backlash from Chinese consumers. The Tokyo-based company triggered an outcry on Chinese social media after announcing it would release an exclusive range of My Hero Academia-themed clothing. The character’s name, Maruta Shiga, added fuel to the fire, because maruta (or log) was a derisive name given to the subjects of the unit’s human experiments. Some social media users also suggested…