Kinaforum

tirsdag 21. april 2026

Torbjørn Færøvik: Bayon - Angkors gylne tårn

I årenes løp har jeg besøkt Angkor så mange ganger at jeg har mistet oversikten. Byen var hovedstad i khmerriket, et imperium som varte i mer enn 600 år – fra 802 til 1431. Synet av de store steintemplene, som Angkor Wat og Bayon, brenner seg fast i minnet til enhver besøkende.

Her ser du et KI-generert bilde av Bayon, statstempelet i byens midte. Herfra skuet mer enn to hundre steinansikter i alle retninger – og de gjør det fremdeles. På sitt største omfattet riket både Kambodsja, mesteparten av Thailand og deler av Laos, Burma og Vietnam. Men var Bayon forgylt?

Da den kinesiske utsendingen Zhou Daguan ankom Angkor i 1276, hadde byen og imperiet allerede passert senit. Det han fikk se, var likevel mer enn nok til å overvelde ham. I boken har senere skrev, forteller han om templer, ritualer og dagligliv – og om et «gyllent tårn» som lyste i alle retninger. Forskere tror at tårnet må ha vært Bayon. I dag har det sluttet å skinne; likevel vekker det både undring og beundring.

Art on trial - a sculptor's arrest highlights new extremes for censorship in China

Jesus Christ stands at gunpoint, palms upturned, seven figures in a firing squad around him. The bronze riflemen are unmistakable in their likeness. They are Mao Zedong, the long-deceased dictator who founded the People's Republic of China, and presided over some of the most traumatic chapters in China's recent history.

For decades, Chinese brothers Gao Zhen and Gao Qiang have made a name for themselves with sculptures like this: irreverent contemporary artworks that skewer the authoritarian past, and present, of their native homeland. The "Execution of Christ" was exhibited in 2009. So too was "Mao's Guilt": a life-sized replica of the so-called supreme leader kneeling in a pose of solemn contrition.

But it was only 15 years later that such works, satirising one of China's most contentious idols, cost Gao Zhen his freedom.

Next, an Iran nuclear deal with Chinese characteristics

Pope Leo XIV and Giorgia Meloni should take comfort from the fact that the main thrust of Donald Trump’s attack on them contains a clue as to how peace can be restored between Iran and the United States. By alleging that their opposition to his war means that the Pope and Meloni must be happy for Iran to possess a nuclear weapon (and even to attack Italy with one) Trump has shown that he is now reframing the war’s purpose as being chiefly about nukes rather than regime change or anything else.

Moreover, this retrospective reframing, made at the risk of alienating many of America’s estimated 53 million Catholic voters, indicates that he hopes that Iran can now be forced to agree to constraints on its nuclear program, allowing him to declare a sort of victory.

This outcome is possible, but to achieve it he will probably have to get help from China. And his negotiators will have to borrow from the work of some of the people he hates most: Barack Obama and the governments of Germany, France and the United Kingdom.

Gulf poised to move closer to China after the war

The Iran war has delivered a profound and systemic shock to the Gulf, fundamentally challenging two assumptions that have underpinned regional stability for the better part of a century.

For decades, the Gulf’s economic model thrived on a perception of stability, reinforced by push factors like tax exemptions, flexible regulatory regimes and a dynamic, diversified start-up ecosystem. Simultaneously, the region’s security architecture rested on a traditional oil-for-security arrangement, maintained by a dense network of American military bases and hardware.

Yet, both pillars have been materially weakened by nearly two months of war, during which missile and drone strikes have targeted all Gulf states. This reality has ushered in a painful phase of strategic reassessment of Washington’s reliability as a security guarantor, forcing regional capitals to look toward the East with newfound urgency.

Japan opens door to global arms market with biggest export rule change in decades

Japan on Tuesday unveiled its biggest overhaul of defense export rules in decades, scrapping restrictions on overseas arms sales and opening the way for exports of warships, missiles and other weapons. The move aimed at strengthening Japan’s defense industrial base marks another step away from pacifist restraints that have shaped its postwar security policy.

Wars in Ukraine and the Middle East are also straining US weapons production, expanding opportunities for Japan. At the same time, US allies in Europe and Asia are looking to diversify supply as Washington’s long-held security commitments look less certain under President Donald Trump.

China’s energy fortress was built to withstand just this type of oil shock

For more than a decade, leader Xi Jinping has overseen a transformation within the Chinese economy with one aim: making it energy-secure.

Under that vision, China has unleashed a renewable energy revolution of wind, solar and hydropower, drilled ever deeper into oilfields offshore and on, and forged pacts with partners for more supply – all in a bid to cut the country’s reliance on imported fuel and insulate it against “external shocks.” Now, the historic oil crisis triggered by the United States and Israel’s war on Iran is posing the sternest test to date of China’s Promethean effort toward energy self-sufficiency. It’s a test that China appears to be passing.

Despite a diplomatic clash, the US is investing in an experimental South African rare earths project

Two enormous sandlike dunes at an old chemical processing plant in South Africa are at the center of an exploratory U.S.-backed project to extract highly sought-after rare earth elements from industrial mining waste.

The Phalaborwa Rare Earths Project has U.S. support through a $50 million equity investment by the government’s International Development Finance Corporation and is part of accelerated U.S. efforts to reduce reliance on economic rival China for the minerals crucial for making electronic devices, robotics, defense systems, electric vehicles and other high-tech products.

Countries have identified dozens of minerals, including copper, cobalt, lithium and nickel, as critical because they are essential for new technologies. The 17 rare earth elements are a subset of them.

President Donald Trump has made expanding U.S. access to critical minerals, including rare earth elements, a central policy to counter China. The Trump administration said this year it will deploy nearly $12 billion to create its own strategic reserve.

The ‘becoming Chinese’ meme shows China’s soft power moment is here

Have you “become Chinese”?

In recent months, 20-somethings around the world have taken over social media with posts enthusing about how they’re embracing Chinese ways of life. Videos proclaiming users are “Chinamaxxing,” or “in a very Chinese time of their lives” — namely by drinking hot water with boiled goji berries, eating dumplings or wearing slippers in the house, or flying to China and gushing about its modern infrastructure — are racking up millions of views.

Along with its economic and geopolitical rise, China’s government has tried for years to push its soft power on the global stage. But those official efforts never came close to the success the “becoming Chinese” meme is enjoying now.

Even senior Chinese diplomats have noted the trend. Xie Feng, the Chinese ambassador to the U.S., referenced the internet craze recently as he promoted a new visa-free transit policy and urged more Americans to “experience for yourselves a real, dynamic and panoramic China.”

Mandarin learning law already being actively implemented in Tibet’s monasteries

Following China’s adoption last month of its law on so-called promoting ethnic unity and progress, mandating the predominance of Mandarin learning and use across the PRC, monks in Tibet are now required to take time off their traditional Tibetan grammar and scripture learning to study the language of their rulers.

As in many cases under Chinese rule in Tibet, where measures have already been under implementation for years before the laws on them are actually adopted, monks in Tibet have already been learning Mandarin (or Putonghua) for years. As a result, many have already gained efficiency in the language.

For example, monks at Dordong Monastery, located in Bome County of Nyingtri City, Tibet autonomous Region, have actively studied the standard spoken and written Chinese language and acquired knowledge relevant to modern society.

China takes a potshot at exile Tibetan election exercise

Anyone who is not a “useful idiot” of China knows that Beijing’s so-called “whole process people’s democracy” to describe the country’s government system in glowing terms lacks any substance, and is, in fact, nothing but a euphemism for justifying its brutal authoritarian rule. But that has not prevented China from taking a potshot at the exile Tibetans’ elections for choosing their leaders, with its official globaltimes.cn Apr 7 calling it an “election without a land” and “an institutional illusion created by separatist groups in exile”.

Employing an occupying power’s yardstick for determining the legitimacy of the exile Tibetan setup, the unusually lengthy report cited Chinese Foreign Ministry spokespersons as having repeatedly stressed that “the so-called Tibetan government-in-exile is entirely an organized separatist political group with a political platform and an agenda for ‘Tibet independence’.”

It is an illicit organization that violates China’s Constitution and laws. No country in the world recognizes it, the report maintained.

New textbooks introduced to inculcate Chinese students with party-state ideology

In China, the party is the state and the state the party. In order to drive this message home, the party-state has introduced new school textbooks even as existing teaching materials are already heavily saturated with political indoctrination materials that scuttle independent thinking and discussion.

Students in China are now required to learn to be loyal to the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) right from elementary school, and all the way till high school, with the introduction of national security text books rolled out recently. The four-volume series, titled “National Security Education Readers for Primary and Secondary Students,” has been rolled out nationwide and is intended for use from elementary through high school, the report said, citing Chin’s state media Xinhua New Agency Apr 15.

China Shock 2.0 jolts global economy as Trump does Xi’s work

On top of the tariffs, wars and inflation upending the global economy, US chieftains are grappling with a new question: which tech companies might get “BYD-ed” next? The reference here is to the Chinese electric-vehicle juggernaut that’s zoomed past Elon Musk’s Tesla and its peers to become No. 1 globally.

The idea that the Shenzhen EV company was an aberration has since been dispelled by the “DeepSeek shock,” which disrupted the artificial intelligence realm, and by a number of other startup successes, from Horizon Robotics to autonomous vehicle shop Qcraft.But as 2026 unfolds, and US President Donald Trump prioritizes trade wars over investing in raising America’s tech game, China is not so quietly grabbing market share around the globe despite Trump’s tariffs and trade curbs.

And thanks to the “Made in China 2025” program Xi Jinping launched in 2015, this isn’t spin but economic reality. And this latest “China shock”, increasingly known as “China shock 2.0”, is becoming the talk of corporate boardrooms everywhere.

Hormuz standoff sets a tense tone for Trump-Xi meet

The Trump administration’s decision to carry out a naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz has raised tensions in the Persian Gulf to new and more perilous levels.

The move was announced by the US president, Donald Trump, after negotiations over a ceasefire with Iran broke down on April 11, partly due to Iran wanting to retain control of the vital Strait of Hormuz, through which one-fifth of the world’s oil transits.The blockade is designed to neutralize Iran’s efforts to close the strait to shipping it deems unfriendly to Tehran and implement a toll system for other vessels transiting the strait.

The US blockade can be seen as the latest attempt by the Trump administration to project strength. But it also throws down a challenge to Beijing. China has been the main purchaser of Iranian oil in recent years and is one of the few nations whose shipping can enter the strait unchallenged.

Record number of Rohingya refugees died at sea last year, UNHCR says

The United Nations refugee agency has revealed that nearly 900 Rohingya refugees were reported dead or missing in the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea in 2025.

This was the deadliest year on record for maritime movements in South and South East Asia, and thousands of people continue to make the dangerous journeys in 2026, the UN said on Friday. Speaking to reporters in Geneva, the UNHCR’s spokesperson, Babar Baloch, described the area as an “unmarked graveyard for thousands of desperate Rohingya refugees”, noting that some 5,000 are thought to have drowned at sea over the last decade.

Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees began fleeing Myanmar in 2017 amid an ethnic cleansing campaign. They largely settled in refugee camps in Bangladesh, which continues to give refuge to those fleeing today.

These North Korean brothers spent 10 years planning their escape. Months after reaching freedom, everything changed

Two brothers spent a decade plotting their escape from North Korea – an audacious plan conceived by their late father, whose ashes they carried as they crept toward a boat moored in the shadows. There were guards nearby, and no second chances.

It was May 6, 2023. A three-day spring storm churned over the Yellow Sea, cloaking their movements. Kim Il-hyeok and Kim Yi-hyeok gathered their seven relatives – including women who just tiptoed through a minefield – as they traced their route one last time. Among the passengers were Kim Yi-hyeok’s two children, ages 4 and 6, hidden in burlap sacks. Kim Il-hyeok’s wife, five months pregnant, reluctantly agreed to join.

“My wife did not want to defect,” Kim Il-hyeok told CNN. “She was especially worried about doing it while pregnant.”

Viktor Orbán built a ‘propaganda machine.’ Hungary’s next leader must dismantle it

As thousands swarmed the streets of Budapest last weekend to celebrate the defeat of Viktor Orbán, Balasz said he could not help thinking of his great-grandmother – now in her 80s, living in a rural town in Hungary’s deprived east. For her, having consumed little but state media for the past decade, the victory of Péter Magyar was not cause for joy, but for crippling fear.

Throughout Orbán’s re-election campaign, the media controlled by his governing Fidesz party depicted Magyar as a reckless enemy of peace, bent on dragging Hungary into the war in neighboring Ukraine. Balasz, a 42-year-old financial analyst who only gave his first name, said he was shocked by the extremity of the “lies” his great-grandmother was told each day – how, if Magyar won, Hungarian men would be conscripted, the economy would collapse, and a third world war would surely follow.

North Korea fires ballistic missiles again, flexing muscle amid Iran war

North Korea fired ballistic missiles into the sea on Sunday, accelerating its missile launches amid Iran war tensions and talk of possible meetings with the U.S. and South Korea. Pyongyang’s intense missile activity - this was the fourth such launch this month and the seventh of the year - is meant to display its self-defence capabilities while gaining international leverage, some experts said.

“The missile launches may be a way of showing that - unlike Iran - we have self-defence capabilities,” said South Korean former presidential security adviser Kim Ki-jung.

Kazakhstan sentences 19 for protest against repression in China’s Xinjiang region

A court in Kazakhstan convicted 19 activists after a protest against Beijing’s crackdown in China’s far-western Xinjiang region last year, in what experts and advocates said was the largest move yet by the Kazakh government to silence criticism at Beijing’s behest.

The activists, all of whom were Kazakh nationals, protested near the border with China in November, burning Chinese flags and portraits of Chinese leader Xi Jinping and calling for the release of a Kazakh citizen detained in Xinjiang last year.

Eleven activists were sentenced to five years in prison for “inciting discord,” while the other eight were given restrictions on their movement. Shinquat Baizhan, a lawyer representing the activists, confirmed the sentences, which were also reported in local media.