Author: Media Library

Beijing has imposed sanctions on Shigeru Iwasaki, former chief of the Joint Staff of the Japan Self-Defence Forces, saying he had “colluded with separatist forces” in Taiwan, the Chinese foreign ministry said on Monday. It comes after Beijing lodged a protest with Tokyo in March over the appointment of Iwasaki as an honorary adviser to the Executive Yuan, the Taiwanese government’s highest administrative body. The “countermeasures” include freezing Iwasaki’s movable and immovable assets and other types of property within China, the foreign ministry statement said. Advertisement It said organisations and…

China faces mounting pressure to ramp up stimulus as new data shows its growth engines sputtering, with retail sales growth slowing for six straight months and investment showing renewed signs of strain in November despite recent policy support. The deceleration in consumption growth and the deepening property slump underscore the challenges Beijing faces in revitalising the economy heading into 2026. Retail sales, a key gauge of consumer spending, grew in November by just 1.3 per cent, year on year, according to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS)…

The world has not slid into a simple US–China bipolar order but has become “two superpowers and many strong powers”, veteran Peking University scholar Wang Jisi has warned, pointing to a relationship plagued by structural confrontation, deep misunderstandings and rising risks of conflict. In a wide-ranging virtual conversation on Friday at the University of Hong Kong’s Centre on Contemporary China and the World (CCCW), Wang voiced concerns about America’s inward turn under US President Donald Trump, Washington’s pursuit of containment in both geopolitical and geoeconomic terms, and mounting cross-strait tensions.…

Liu Cixin is the most influential contemporary science fiction writer in China. He is best known for his trilogy that starts with The Three-Body Problem, for which he won a Hugo Award for best novel in 2015. The trilogy earned international acclaim and has been adapted for television in both Chinese and English. Born in 1963 and raised in Shanxi, Liu started his working life as a computer engineer at a power plant in the central province. Inspired by British sci-fi author Arthur C. Clarke, Liu began writing in the…

The odds seemed impossible: a shoestring Chinese start-up founded in 2023 with just 1 million yuan (US$142,000) taking on Elon Musk – tech legend, disrupter in space and CEO of Tesla – who is valued at half a trillion dollars. But in less than two years, EngineAI Robotics, led by CEO Zhao Tongyang, created the T800 – a robot that delivers Bruce Lee-style roundhouse kicks with the force of a small car – and, under the instruction of smiling engineers and scientists, tried it first on the boss himself. That…