Day: September 19, 2026

Zhang Dongdong has been fielding ever more requests for legal advice from jittery entrepreneurs, nervous government officials or their desperate relatives. They usually do not tell him the whole story, and sometimes say it happened “to a friend”, but most want to know the same thing: what to do when they are targeted by China’s corruption busters. “Some had received a tip-off that they were being investigated, some got a call from disciplinary inspectors asking them to cooperate, but in most of the cases, the suspects had already been held…

When the presidents of the United States and China meet in Washington, the world will be watching to see whether their two countries can make good on their agreement to work towards “constructive strategic stability”. In the second part of a series, Fan Chen looks at Beijing’s stronger position going into the high-stakes visit. Beijing is poised to begin this week’s summit with Washington from a position of strength, bolstered by a flurry of recent diplomatic outreach. Chinese confidence could be further reinforced by the United States’ latest push to…

On September 12, Chinese President Xi Jinping met Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the sidelines of the Brics summit in New Delhi. In their talks, Xi said China approached the relationship “from a strategic and long-term perspective”. He called for an objective and rational “strategic” perception. That means the two sides should treat each other as partners rather than rivals, and as opportunities rather than threats. In Chinese official and diplomatic language, the term “strategic” is routinely used to denote matters of high importance, long-term significance and central weight…

An airport is an unlikely place to search for national origins but researchers say they have uncovered the tomb of the woman behind the man who unified China – next to a major city runway. The researchers said the tomb was believed to belong to Empress Dowager Huayang, the adoptive grandmother of Qin Shi Huang, who unified the warring states more than 2,200 years ago. “I believe the most likely identity of the tomb owner is Empress Dowager Huayang,” Zhao Hanqing, from the Shaanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology, said in…

For more than a decade, China has deployed warships to the Gulf of Aden and the waters off Somalia. For much of that time, piracy in the region has been in sharp decline. Now, however, with attacks at their highest reported level since 2013 and other naval forces engaged in crises elsewhere, Beijing’s long-running escort mission is being tested. The renewed attacks and hijacking for ransom come as the US Navy focuses on operations connected to the war on Iran, and India sends ships towards the Strait of Hormuz to…

The US deployment of space weapons has shattered a long-held taboo and risks igniting a fresh arms race, with the world at a “breaking point in history”, speakers at a major security conference in Beijing have warned. Experts at the Xiangshan Forum this week also called for US-China dialogue on space security, just days before Chinese President Xi Jinping makes his first state visit to the US in more than a decade. US Air Force Secretary Troy Meink – the civilian head of the department that oversees both the US…

Fragments of a long-disappeared ancient giant land mass have been discovered buried deep beneath parts of the modern continents that once formed it, according to an international team led by Chinese scientists. Published this month in the peer-reviewed journal Science Advances, the discovery reveals that Gondwana – a land mass that dominated Earth some 500 million years ago – was much larger than previously believed. Crucially, the findings show how geological activity related to Gondwana created favourable conditions for the Cambrian explosion. The study was jointly conducted by researchers from…

For years, the race to build ever more powerful artificial intelligence followed a well-worn Silicon ⁠Valley principle: move fast and break things. But in a series of cascading events over a 10-day stretch, the largest ⁠AI labs found themselves reeling as their own creations threatened to break humanity itself. An Anthropic researcher quit the firm, warning that the pace of AI development poses an existential threat, possibly within a decade. Another researcher at the firm said the odds of human extinction exceeded 10 per cent. Reports emerged of swarms of…

However, they warned of a potential negative impact on the high-stakes talks, citing broader risks to major-power trust and peaceful Arctic development. In a social media post on Friday, Trump said: “I am pleased to announce that the United States of America has entered into an Agreement with The Kingdom of Denmark, and Greenland, that gives the United States permanent control over security, and all other needs, in Greenland, completely addressing ALL of our many U.S. concerns.” It was an “Infinite Life” agreement without end, he noted. South China Morning…