Day: October 7, 2026

Could ‘Apron Dad’ on North Korean TV pave the way for Kim Jong Un’s daughter to rule?

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Read a version of this story in Korean In a scene from a North Korean TV show, a man wears a floral apron and serves a meal to his family. Analysts told Radio Free Asia that this striking reversal in gender roles could be a propaganda effort to get the people to accept North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s daughter Ju Ae as his successor. But the analysts noted that North Korea is still a society with rigid gender roles and warned against interpreting the scene in a way that…

From a cardboard box to an iron cage: a father’s fight for his daughter’s freedom

Chin@Strategy

Read a version of this story in Uyghur In 1986, a Uyghur kebab vendor found a Chinese baby in a cardboard box on his way home from work. Now Abdulla Tomur is willing to do anything to get Zohregul – the abandoned girl he raised as his daughter – released from a Chinese prison. Abdulla hasn’t been back to the Uyghur region since a year before Chinese authorities began their large-scale “anti-terrorism” Uyghur internment campaign in 2017, during which Zohregul was arrested. From Istanbul, Turkey, where he currently resides, Abdulla…

America’s Naval Power Is Waning. That Could Change.

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The United States might be losing another war — one that could define the country’s security into the next century. Military and commercial power are intertwined. Maritime power, in particular, has always played a crucial part in establishing and maintaining commercial power. America is learning this lesson the hard way. For hundreds of years, the countries that have ruled the waves have ruled the world, as the 19th-century American naval strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan put it. In an age of drones, we can be forgiven for thinking this time has…

China’s succession crisis: a generation of entrepreneurs is retiring, but are their children ready to take over?

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Growing up, Ayu would watch his parents put together hand made leather shoes on the ground floor of their three storey home in the Chinese city of Wenzhou. Their relatives in Europe would send photographs of designer products from Italy for the workers to base their designs on, and in the decades that followed, the tiny family-run workshop transformed into a 700 person factory. “The factory and the home were the same place. I watched them make shoes by hand, piece by piece, using small machines,” Ayu recalls of watching…

China’s ‘Self-Reliance’ Drive Is Upending Trade With Europe

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To understand Europe’s growing alarm over its trade deficit with China, consider a striking statistic: China now sends six containers of goods to Europe for every one it gets back. That ratio has more than doubled in China’s favor over the last five years as Beijing’s drive for greater economic self-reliance has expanded the range of goods China produces at home instead of buying from abroad. Jens Eskelund, president of the European Chamber of Commerce in China, cited those figures last month and provided a simple explanation for why. “China…

Satellite images show attack jets at Chinese military facility in Laos

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Satellite images show attack jets stationed at a new Chinese military facility in Laos, which opened last week and gives Beijing’s air force its first foothold in mainland south-east Asia. Images provided by the commercial satellite provider Vantor show eight light attack aircraft positioned at Ban Keun airport alongside what appear to be more than a dozen military vehicles lined up in rows. The planes’ shape matches that of the Chinese-made Hongdu JL-8 jet, a two-seat trainer that can be deployed in combat to carry bombs. Laos is reported to…

Last chance saloon: EU presses China for a sign to prove trade talks can work

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The European Union’s top trade mandarins depart for Beijing on Wednesday for two days of intensive negotiations but expectations in Brussels are measured as to what the talks will deliver. Maros Sefcovic, the EU’s trade chief, will meet his Chinese counterpart Wang Wentao on Thursday and Friday – three months after their last encounter in Brussels, when the Europeans set an October deadline for signs of a rebalancing in the trading relationship. Non-stop working-level talks have proven… South China Morning Post

EU negotiators head to China hoping to curb cheap imports of hybrid electric cars

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Mood in trade talks said to have changed as EU member states harden demands for protection against Chinese imports EU trade negotiators are heading to China for two days of crunch talks aimed at sealing a breakthrough deal tackling Beijing’s record £1bn-a-day trade surplus by curbing its exports of cheap hybrid electric cars into Europe. Trade commissioner Maroš Šefčovič and his team fly out on Wednesday and will be negotiating up to the wire in talks scheduled to start the following day and continue late into Friday. Continue reading… The…

Climate change and farming gave rise to ‘genetically distinct’ Beijing swan goose: study

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Climate change and agricultural development have brought a new goose population to China with unique migratory patterns, a study has found. In an article on the Chinese Academy of Sciences website, researchers from the CAS Institute of Zoology said they had discovered a “genetically distinct” population of swan geese that emerged in Beijing over the past century. They said the timing of their arrival coincided with environmental shifts in the region during the early 20th century – namely climate… South China Morning Post