Kinaforum

lørdag 10. oktober 2026

Chinese court sentenced former mayor of Wuhan city to 14 years in prison for bribery

A former mayor of a Chinese city hit by the coronavirus outbreak more than six years ago was sentenced Saturday to 14 years in prison after being convicted of bribery.

While Zhou Xianwang has drawn criticism for his handling of the early stages of the outbreak in Wuhan, a city in central China, the court statement did not mention that, but focused on him receiving bribes. The court also fined him 5 million yuan ($747,000).

The Shangqiu Intermediate People’s Court said Zhou used his various positions to assist others on matters such as business operations and administrative approvals between 2003 and 2025. He accepted money and valuables totaling more than 60.5 million yuan ($9 million), it said, adding the amount was exceptionally large.

A DAMOCLES SWORD OVER THE DEEP VALLEYS OF THE ROOF OF THE WORLD

Nearly four weeks after a devastating flood of water, ice, rock and sediment swept down the valley at Kyirong on the border of Tibet and Nepal, a catastrophic loss of life has been compounded by a climate of fear as Chinese authorities threaten reprisals for anyone expressing views that may differ from those of the Party state. One netizen was penalised after they gave a higher figure for those missing than the official line and said that the disaster was “heartbreaking”.

The image that will outlast the Kyirong catastrophe is of the port’s immigration building being swept away in seconds as people fled on the morning of 26 August. Border ports are routinely described as places of transit and bridges between nations. For Tibetans this one was neither: a crossing effectively closed to them in both directions, sealing a frontier that for centuries was no barrier at all.

India’s ‘Cockroach’ movement founder and hundreds of others detained in crackdown on Delhi protest

Indian police detained the founder of a surging youth-led political movement and hundreds of other in a crackdown that stifled a major protest in the capital New Delhi.

Abhijeet Dipke was detained along with other leaders of the Cockroach Janta Party as their plane landed in New Delhi, according to the group. Footage shows Dipke shouting “go ahead and arrest us! Victory to Mother India! Long live the revolution!” His party vowed to continue the protest but with thousands of security personnel out on the streets and central Delhi sealed numbers turning out were small.

The CJP started out in May as a Gen-Z internet joke that went viral. In July, it forced the resignation of the education minister, the biggest government climbdown in years.

India calls JD Vance’s comments about immigrants ‘deeply offensive’

India called comments by U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance about immigrants from the country “deeply offensive” in an official government statement published on Friday.

Vance said on Thursday that the Trump administration wants foreign and local companies to “employ American workers,” and that they “cannot lay off American workers and then replace them with foreign indentured servants.” He was speaking as the U.S. Department of Labor announced it would suspend Microsoft, Adobe and several major Indian information technology companies from its Permanent Labor Certification program, meaning they cannot apply for permanent residency for their employees on H-1 B visas.

Around 70% of H-1B beneficiaries in 2025 were born in India, per official data.

Afghan road to China tests Pakistan’s power and leverage

China is increasingly trying to diversify its connections to the region as Pakistan’s actions in Afghanistan create new security and strategic problems for Beijing. The opening of a road through the Wakhan Corridor is an important step in that effort.

Afghanistan has formally inaugurated a 121-kilometer road through the corridor, running from Broghil to the Chinese border in Badakhshan Province. The road cost about 365 million afghani, roughly US$5.5 million, and was built by Afghan engineers without foreign engineers or advisers. It gives Afghanistan a physical link to China and gives Beijing a possible alternative route into Afghanistan and the wider region.

European Parliament condemns forced assimilation drive in Tibet

The European Parliament has on Oct 7 adopted a set of policy recommendations on EU-China political relations drafted by its Committee on Foreign Affairs which among numerous other things strongly condemns China’s intensifying campaign of mandatory “Sinicisation” and forced assimilation in Tibet. China’s official media on Oct 8 severely condemned the report and warned of dire consequences, but with focus on the report’s labelling of the country’s industrial policy as an “existential threat” to the EU’s industrial base and as a “decisive enabler” of Russia in its Ukraine war.

The European Parliament report – which is a set of Recommendation for the European Council, the Commission and the Vice-President of the Commission / High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy on EU-China political relations – demands a stronger and principled EU-China policy that combines dialogue with more protection of European interests.

Taiwan president says defence spending boost aims to ‘deter war’

Taiwan President William Lai Ching-te says the island “cherishes peace” and will “not give up our freedom” in a National Day speech outside the Presidential Office in Taipei.

Lai made the remarks on Saturday in front of thousands of people, including foreign guests and diplomats. Fighter jets and two Chinook helicopters carrying giant Taiwan flags flew over Taipei before his speech.“We are open to exchanges but will not accept subordination,” he said. “Our aim by increasing investment in national defence is not to provoke; rather, it is to deter war.”

China’s Taiwan Affairs Office condemned Lai’s speech, saying it “disregards facts, ⁠distorts the truth, misleads the public, and reveals ulterior motives”. It said ‌Lai “stubbornly clung to ‘Taiwan independence’ separatist thinking” and exaggerated the “threat from the mainland”.

Satire silenced: Indian artists face censorship as anti-Modi protests grow

Stand-up comic Brijesh Jha posted a parody video on Instagram last week to protest the removal of his name, along with his father’s and sister’s, from a voter list in the eastern Indian state of West Bengal.

The video, which alleged that India’s Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar had disenfranchised millions of voters at the behest of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), garnered 1.7 million views after it was posted on September 29. Two days later, Meta, the United States-based company that owns Instagram, took the video down, citing “local laws” without giving further explanation.

“I felt very helpless that day. I have only one thing in this country – that I can vote. If you take that away from me, then I have nothing left. So I didn’t know what to do. As an artist, I can just make art, or I can protest,” the Mumbai-based artist told Al Jazeera.

India’s ‘Cockroach’ leaders detained; New Delhi in lockdown

Police in India’s capital New Delhi have detained more than 1,000 protesters, opposition politicians, journalists, student union leaders, lawyers and the founders of the “Cockroach” youth movement in an effort to quash their demonstration demanding the resignation of the election chief.

The satirical Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) and other youth groups had announced a protest in the subcontinent’s capital for Saturday, aimed at Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar over a revision of India’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR).

The protesters accuse the governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of using the SIR to sway election results, ‌in collusion with its appointees in the election commission, including Kumar.

Bit by bit, the Taliban is losing control of Afghanistan

Five years after seizing Kabul, the Taliban’s strongest argument for international acceptance rests on control.

The Taliban governs every provincial capital and faces no conventional army capable of marching on Kabul. It repeatedly cites improved security as proof that Afghanistan’s post-2021 order is settled.But armed resistance is becoming more geographically dispersed, more organizationally diverse and harder to dismiss as a residual and largely spent northern rebellion. The Taliban may have won Afghanistan’s last war while creating the conditions for its next one.

In the first years after the takeover, the National Resistance Front and the Afghanistan Freedom Front dominated anti-Taliban armed activity, concentrating their operations in Panjshir, Badakhshan, Takhar, Baghlan and other northern and northeastern provinces.

Japan’s Okinawa calls for review of US forces pact after killing

The prefectural assembly of Okinawa has called for a review of an agreement overseeing the stationing of United States military forces on the Japanese island.

The assembly adopted the resolution on Friday. The vote came after a US Marine was accused of robbing and killing a local woman. The call to adapt the Japan-US Status of Forces Agreement to urge the US military to prevent such incidents will be sent to the US embassy. The assembly also passed a statement to the same effect addressed to the Japanese government.

Ryotaro Odo, who heads the assembly’s special committee on US military bases, said the US military was “not functioning as an organisation”, pointing to failures in training and discipline.

Malaysia shuts schools as haze from Indonesian fires chokes Southeast Asia

Malaysia has closed schools in its capital and several states as smoke from Indonesian forest fires pushes air pollution to unhealthy levels. Schools were ordered to close on Friday across Kuala Lumpur, the administrative capital Putrajaya and in the states of Johor, Malacca, Negeri Sembilan, Pahang and Selangor. The move, which affected roughly two million students, came as Kuala Lumpur recorded an Air Pollutant Index (API) reading of about 170. The API is a government-run measure of air quality.

Singapore, at the southern end of the Malay Peninsula, saw its air quality fall into the “very unhealthy” range, according to IQAir.

“The haze issue is indeed at a worrying level,” said Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim. He added that he had spoken to Indonesia’s President Prabowo Subianto, who had agreed to take “the necessary steps”. However, he offered no details on what that might entail.

Nepal ends search and rescue after the Aug 26 Tibet-Nepal flash floods catastrophe, 5,285 still missing

Nepal has brought to an end on Oct 5 its search and rescue operation for those still missing after the devastating flash floods of Aug 26 that killed at least 1,455 people as of Oct 3, switching the main focus on rehabilitating the survivors while continuing only essential search operations. Operations are also stated to be continuing in key locations, including tunnels.

Apart from the above figure of confirmed deaths, a total of 5,285 remain missing, including 636 foreigners.

On the Tibet side, China has stuck to its bald claim of just 43 deaths, with 519 people missing, including 261 foreigners.

Critics, Western agencies, and Tibetan advocacy groups have raised sharp questions over the wide discrepancy between the low number of reported casualties in Tibet compared to the devastating toll in downstream Nepal from the flash floods.

Seminar discusses upgrading China’s first Tibetan-language AI model to promote ‘ethnic integration’

China held a seminar on Sep 5 in Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, to discuss issues such as improving Tibetan artificial intelligence (AI) technologies and expanding the application of its Tibetan large language model (LLM) into multilingual simultaneous interpretation. And the creators of China’s first Tibetan-language AI mode, DeepZang, have pledged to speed up upgrades aimed at promoting ethnic integration, reported the scmp.com Oct 7, citing the state-run portal Chinanews.com.

Tenzin Norbu, founder of CHOKNOR, which developed DeepZang, has said his research team will continue to upgrade Tibetan-language AI and expand its applications, using technology to support interethnic exchanges and promote digital and intelligent development in ethnic minority regions.

DeepZang was launched in March, roughly three years after the unveiling of Monlam AI, a Tibetan-language LLM developed by Monlam Tibetan IT Research Centre, a non-profit organisation based in Dharamsala – the Indian hillside town that has hosted the 14th Dalai Lama and the Tibetan administration-in-exile since 1960.

China and EU trade envoys seek ways to ease tensions over growing imbalances

The top trade envoys for China and the European Union were wrapping up two days of talks Friday aimed at calming escalating tensions over growing imbalances between the two giant economies. EU trade chief Maros Sefcovic traveled to Beijing saying it was crucial that the negotiations deliver “tangible outcomes” in rebalancing trade between China and the 27-nation bloc.

It was unclear, however, if the two sides would find the will to resolve key factors behind China’s growing trade surplus, which hit 360 billion euros ($410 billion) last year. China is pushing for the EU to stop blocking its imports of advanced computer chipmaking machines, restrictions imposed on national security grounds at Washington’s behest.

EU weighs safeguard tariffs as China refuses hybrid car limits

Beijing has rebuffed a European Union request to voluntarily cap hybrid car exports to the bloc, raising the prospect of new, steep EU tariffs on Chinese hybrids, which have so far escaped the duties on pure electric vehicles.

China has refused to set quotas on its exports of hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) to the EU, the Financial Times reported. Brussels had proposed that Chinese brands limit their share of the bloc’s hybrid market to about 15%, down from more than one-third now. After Beijing refused, the European Commission is weighing temporary safeguard tariffs that do not require proof of unfair trade practices, the newspaper said, citing two diplomats. Under the plan, a set quota of Chinese hybrids would enter the EU on standard terms, while shipments above that ceiling would face steep extra duties.

Bloomberg reported on Wednesday that Brussels sees the hybrid curbs as a test case that could later be extended to other sectors with large trade imbalances.

This old CIA airfield is now a Chinese base

China’s military has opened a new outpost on a site in northwestern Laos which was once a Vietnam-era CIA airfield. The base, about 40 miles north of the capital Vientiane and just 25 miles from the nearest border with Thailand, comprises the China-Laos Joint Support and Training Center at Ban Keun Airport, and the China-Laos Friendship Aviation Academy. It began operations on September 29, according to an announcement from China’s Defense Ministry.

Photos obtained by CNN from satellite imagery and intelligence platform Vantor show a 6,500-foot-long (2,000-meter-long) runway, taxiway and parking apron for 22 aircraft have been completed at the base since December.

South Korea’s hypersonic leap runs into North Korea’s nuclear wall

South Korea’s maiden flight test of a domestic hypersonic glide vehicle highlights an accelerating bid to field counterstrike assets capable of bolstering autonomous deterrence against North Korea’s expanding nuclear threat.

This month, multiple media outlets reported that South Korean President Lee Jae-myung oversaw the country’s first test launch of a domestically developed hypersonic glide vehicle, accelerating its drive to field high-speed conventional strike assets that can penetrate regional missile shields.