Category: Pl

Beijing has confirmed that a 23-year-old paratrooper died in a training accident in northwestern China, a revelation that follows recent reports of several accidents and deaths in its military. State media said on Sunday that Xia Shiyuan, of Huaiyuan county in Anhui province, was involved in an incident shortly after leaving an airborne aircraft during a scheduled training exercise in Golmud, Qinghai province, on the morning of May 27. Xinhua said Xia fell to the ground and was taken to hospital, where he died at 12.32pm. In June, Xia –…

Chinese police have dismantled more than 1,000 gangs and detained about 8,200 suspects, just 10 days after the country’s top security official announced a year-long campaign against organised crime. The Ministry of Public Security said on Monday that the crackdown focused on crimes that had evolved into “more covert” forms and spread rapidly online. “New types of crimes such as online predatory lending, soft-violence debt collection … coerced consumption and online harassment have become major forms of organised crime,” the ministry said on social media. “They gravely disrupt the normal…

Zhu Senlin, a former Guangdong governor widely regarded as a key enforcer of the province’s economic transformation in China’s critical period of opening up in the 1990s, died on Monday aged 95, according to official media. Nanfang Daily, the mouthpiece of the Guangdong party committee, confirmed on Tuesday that Zhu had died due to illness. Shanghai-born Zhu spent more than five decades in the southern province that neighbours Hong Kong. Former Guangdong governor Zhu Senlin instituted China’s first “honorary citizen” award in Guangzhou in 1986 in a bid to recognise…

A Republican-led congressional committee focused on US competition with China has issued a public call for American academics to come forward if they think they missed out on jobs in favour of “applicants from China”. “Are you an American student, postdoctoral researcher, or academic who believes you were denied a research position, laboratory opportunity, or postdoctoral appointment because preference was given to applicants from China?” the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party posted on X, formerly Twitter, on Monday. The…

Chinese scientists have created a diamond with no Achilles’ heel – one that cannot be broken, even by a hard knock with a hammer – according to a paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Synthesis. While a diamond is the hardest natural material on Earth, it has a major weakness. It is brittle, like glass, and a sharp blow can shatter it. For years, scientists have tried to make diamonds tougher without losing their legendary hardness. Typically, increasing one characteristic has meant sacrificing the other – seen as a…

US Undersecretary of Defence for Policy Elbridge Colby avoided naming Beijing or addressing escalating tensions in the South China Sea during a speech in Manila on Monday, adopting a measured tone weeks before an expected meeting between US President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping. Despite speaking in the capital of Washington’s oldest treaty ally in Asia, Colby made no direct reference to recent confrontations between Chinese and Philippine forces near the disputed Scarborough Shoal. Instead, he sought to reassure regional allies that the United States was “definitely not…

China’s rapidly expanding aircraft carrier fleet may be vulnerable to attack from submarines – an area where its defensive capacity lags behind that of the United States – according to a new report. A recent report from the Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies outlined a “cost-imposition” strategy that could help the US and its allies threaten China’s carriers. It included the use of land-based strike networks, long-range air strikes supported by satellites, cyber and electromagnetic attacks, and drone swarms. However, the fifth element of this strategy – submarine…