Author: Media Library

Having marked its 99th anniversary on August 1, the People’s Liberation Army is now just a year away from its centenary goals, with its evolution highlighting the past, present and future of China’s military strategy. In the fourth part of a series, Amber Wang looks at the PLA’s pursuit of emerging technologies. In an influential book published nearly three decades ago, a PLA military strategist argued that China should not try to match the US weapon for weapon but instead develop asymmetric advantages against its stronger rival. Qiao Liang drew…

Latin American countries should resist pressure to choose between the United States and China and use their vast reserves of lithium, copper and other strategic resources to strengthen their negotiating power, according to a high-level commission co-chaired by former Chilean president Michelle Bachelet and former Colombian president Ivan Duque. But the commission acknowledges that the region’s room for manoeuvre is sharply constrained in security, technology and critical infrastructure, areas in which Washington remains dominant and has sought to curb Beijing’s growing influence. The report, released on Tuesday by the UN…

US senators voted along party lines on Tuesday to advance US President Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer as attorney general after he formally scrapped a controversial US$1.8 billion fund created through the administration’s settlement of a lawsuit brought by the president. Todd Blanche, who became deputy attorney general after Trump took office, has been serving as acting attorney general since his predecessor, Pam Bondi, resigned in April. The closely scrutinised Senate Judiciary Committee vote followed two hours of debate about Blanche’s relationship with Trump and the unusual settlement that almost…

More American titans of artificial intelligence are describing Chinese open-weight models as better for AI safety and security than closed-source models, challenging the long-standing claim by US closed-source AI model developers such as Anthropic that open-source models present a threat to society. “From what I’m seeing, I think open-weight models seem safer to me than closed-weight models,” AI pioneer Andrew Ng, the former head of Google Brain and former chief scientist at Baidu, said at the Agentic AI Summit in Berkeley, California, on Saturday. Ng said that he and a…

A Chinese speaker today might describe their day at work as first making a “PPT” (a PowerPoint presentation) and then having to “PS tu” (Photoshop an image). After clocking off, they might “chang K” (sing karaoke) with friends before taking the “C wei” (centre spot) in a group photo. These novel phrases spring from the widespread habit of adopting English abbreviations directly into daily speech, usually pronounced letter by letter. While this is the organic result of cultural exchange, the phenomenon has sparked concern in some quarters that the Chinese…

Taiwan will begin its annual war games on Wednesday, testing for the first time its ability to counter a People’s Liberation Army (PLA) maritime blockade in the western Pacific during the 10-day exercise. The 42nd edition of the Han Kuang exercise, the island’s largest annual military drill, will incorporate US military planning practices to improve coordination and mission command. It will also test the wartime relocation of weapons production lines to safer locations as Taiwan seeks to strengthen its ability to sustain military operations under attack, according to the island’s…

We have selected seven of the most interesting and important news stories covering Latin American relations from the past few weeks. If you would like to see more of our reporting, please consider subscribing. 1. Chile’s Kast courts China day after US hits exports with forced labour tariff Chilean President Jose Antonio Kast received China’s ambassador to Santiago, Niu Qingbao, at the La Moneda Palace, in an encounter that lasted more than an hour and marked the first meeting between the two… South China Morning Post