Author: Media Library

China has issued a penalty to a foreign vessel for illegally using Starlink – SpaceX’s satellite-based internet service – within Chinese waters in the first case of its kind, according to local media. The vessel, which was not identified, was found with a “micro rectangular antenna” installed on its top deck during a routine inspection by maritime law enforcement officers at Ningbo port in Zhejiang province, state-run Ningbo Daily reported on Wednesday. The Ningbo Maritime Safety Administration said the antenna was “significantly different from standard maritime safety communication equipment”, according…

The Arctic shipping route is essential to safeguard China’s development over the next decade, a senior Chinese official said in Beijing, calling for greater efforts to expand its practical use. With proposals for the next five-year plan incorporating security and development, China must ensure its international transport channels remain unimpeded, Ma Jiantang, deputy director of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference’s economic committee, said. China’s traditional trade lanes pass through the Strait of Malacca, the Red Sea and the Suez Canal, but “in the event of a major international crisis,…

Northwestern Polytechnical University has conducted what could be China’s first openly reported autonomous aerial refuelling flight test, according to scientists involved in the project. Two unidentified unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) were used in the refuelling tests. One served as the tanker with a refuelling pod and the other as the receiver. In high-speed formation flights, the receiver autonomously located, tracked and docked with the tanker under extreme conditions using a highly robust vision-based navigation system. Advertisement The development is particularly significant because of the institutional link between the university and…

Taiwan’s main opposition party, the Kuomintang (KMT), and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) announced on Friday they would try to impeach the island’s leader, William Lai Ching-te, according to reports from Taiwanese media. Fu Kun-chi, the convenor of the KMT caucus in Taiwan’s parliament, accused Lai of undermining constitutional norms and behaving in an authoritarian manner. “Lai must step down and Taiwan must not allow the emergence of figures like Yuan Shikai or Cao Kun,” Fu said, according to Taiwanese newspaper China Times. Advertisement Yuan was a dominant military figure…

According to a set of “professional ethics” released on Friday, the Central Military Commission’s (CMC) Equipment Development Department should foster “professional values in the new era”, with quality the top priority in equipment procurement. The department should serve the People’s Liberation Army with “integrity and clean practice”, the official PLA Daily quoted the CMC as saying, without giving details about the equipment department ethics. Advertisement The new rules dictate that procurement should be based on battle needs, and that troops should receive weapons and equipment that are combat-oriented, high quality…

This week, exactly six years ago, as we were gliding cheerfully into the 2019 festive Christmas season, the Covid-19 virus was spreading in Wuhan, China. I was preparing for an important meeting in Australia in February (the last overseas trip I would make for three years), oblivious to the looming pandemic. The world in general had no inkling of the terrible three years that would follow, with death estimates ranging from 7 million to 36 million, over 700 million infections reported, an economic cost put at US$12.5 trillion and more…

China is no longer using American software to run its power grid. The Southern Regional Electricity Market (SREM) – the largest unified power market on Earth – has switched fully to Tianquan, a home-grown solver developed by Chinese engineers with speeds 14 per cent faster than American products, according to a recent report by official newspaper Science and Technology Daily. This follows recent reports that the State Grid, Huawei and many other leading Chinese companies have abandoned US solvers. If China no longer needs US code to run its critical…

China is still trying to recruit US-based researchers despite years of heightened scrutiny, members of Congress were told on Thursday at a hearing where multiple science agencies warned that tighter security measures must go hand in hand with efforts to retain foreign talent. “Just in the past week, I have received three emails that were forwarded to me from researchers in the community who had been approached for recruitment by Chinese malign foreign talent recruitment programmes,” said Rebecca Keiser, acting chief of staff of the National Science Foundation (NSF). “The…