Author: Media Library

Senior US and Chinese defence officials met in Washington this week in the latest sign of renewed military-to-military communication as the two countries seek to stabilise ties. Alvaro Smith, a deputy assistant secretary of defence for China, Taiwan and Mongolia at the Pentagon, met with China’s Major General Ye Jiang, Deputy Director of the Central Military Commission Office for International Military Cooperation, for the 19th annual US-China Defence Policy Coordination Talks from December 15 to 16, the Pentagon said on Tuesday. Advertisement That was the first face-to-face meeting between the…

It has been a turbulent year for the fraught US-China relationship. In the second story in this new series, we look back at the events of 2025, examining how the trade war tested policymakers and firms, forcing a rethink in business, strategy and supply chains. In April, when US President Donald Trump upended global trade by announcing “reciprocal tariffs” on almost all the country’s trading partners, officials in eastern China’s Ningbo – a national export hub – went on a wartime footing. Across the Pacific, a rare earth importer in…

Chile’s election of an ultraconservative leader has created another vocal ally for US President Donald Trump in a lithium-rich region where China has emerged as the dominant economic partner, positioning the South American country at the centre of an intensifying superpower rivalry. In what was probably Chile’s sharpest rightward shift since the end of its military dictatorship in 1990, José Antonio Kast, a right-wing former lawmaker who campaigned on Trump-style hardline positions on crime and immigration, won Sunday’s presidential run-off election, defeating the government-backed communist candidate Jeannette Jara. While Kast’s…

Catch up on some of SCMP’s biggest China stories of the day. If you would like to see more of our reporting, please consider subscribing. 1. ‘Testing the waters’? US reported to have seized Chinese cargo bound for Iran The reported US seizure of a ship allegedly carrying Chinese-made dual-use components to Iran might signal Washington was “testing the waters” on reviving an old tactic to pressure Beijing’s ties with its adversaries, but such moves risked breaching international law, analysts said. 2. Why ‘relative stability’ in US-China ties is unlikely…

Mainland Chinese state media has called for the demolition of a wartime monument in Japan, rekindling a long-standing source of bilateral tension as Beijing and Tokyo remain locked in a diplomatic row over Taiwan. Yuyuan Tantian, a social media account run by Chinese state broadcaster CCTV, said on Saturday that Japan seized more than 370 stones from the countries it invaded during the second world war – mostly from China – and used them to build Hakko Ichiu Tower, which the account described as “a tower of sin” promoting militarist…

China has accused Japan of attempting to “mislead the public and hope that somehow the issue would resolve itself” after its foreign minister selectively quoted its position on Taiwan from a joint communique that was the foundation of establishing their diplomatic ties in 1972. During a parliamentary session on Monday, Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi repeated Tokyo’s position on Taiwan as stated in the document that established and normalised ties with Beijing, although he did not read out parts of that document and others that reflected China’s stance on the Taiwan…