Category: Latest

Why Is China Proposing Reciprocal Nuclear Laboratory Visits?

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On October 6, CNN reported that the United States and China are engaged in informal, preliminary discussion on reciprocal visits to nuclear facilities. According to the report, the idea was first raised by the Chinese side in meetings with U.S. officials this year, during which the two sides discussed U.S. Department of Energy national laboratories and their Chinese counterparts. The same source also indicated that the U.S. side is willing to discuss visits to nuclear test sites.  At the China-U.S. leaders’ summit held in September, the two sides agreed to…

One Year On, China’s K Visa Remains an Opaque Promise

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In September 2026, a British physicist posted an update to a months-long Reddit thread, writing that he finally had a K visa and that the visa “does exist.” The process had taken roughly five months from application to passport collection, although he acknowledged that part of the delay was his own doing, since one of his degree certificates had to be reissued and an embassy email sat unnoticed in his spam folder.  The application itself, as he described it, was simple; there was no interview, no invitation letter, and no…

America’s Naval Power Is Waning. That Could Change.

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The United States might be losing another war — one that could define the country’s security into the next century. Military and commercial power are intertwined. Maritime power, in particular, has always played a crucial part in establishing and maintaining commercial power. America is learning this lesson the hard way. For hundreds of years, the countries that have ruled the waves have ruled the world, as the 19th-century American naval strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan put it. In an age of drones, we can be forgiven for thinking this time has…

China’s ‘Self-Reliance’ Drive Is Upending Trade With Europe

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To understand Europe’s growing alarm over its trade deficit with China, consider a striking statistic: China now sends six containers of goods to Europe for every one it gets back. That ratio has more than doubled in China’s favor over the last five years as Beijing’s drive for greater economic self-reliance has expanded the range of goods China produces at home instead of buying from abroad. Jens Eskelund, president of the European Chamber of Commerce in China, cited those figures last month and provided a simple explanation for why. “China…

China’s High-Tech Ambitions Have a Blue-Collar Status Problem

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As China celebrated its dominance at the Asian Games that concluded days ago in Nagoya, Japan, its achievement at another global sporting festival in Shanghai has been largely overlooked. In the 2026 edition of WorldSkills, what the organizers call an Olympics for vocational skills, the Chinese team topped the medal table with 41 gold, 11 silver, and 4 bronze medals. In fact, the Chinese team has topped the medal table five straight times in the biennial competition, a phenomenon that has been attributed to the country’s unparalleled investments in providing…