Taiwan's Lai: Status quo is key to secure tech supply chains

Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te opened the COMPUTEX technology trade fair in Taipei on Tuesday, saying that maintaining the political status quo is the most responsible approach the island can take to secure global supply chains.

As the home for the world's largest contract chipmaker, TSMC, Taiwan is a key equipment supplier for companies including Nvidia and Apple.

But its political status is a constant source of friction, given that China asserts the island should be part of its territory. For decades an uneasy stalemate has endured whereby Beijing does not give up its claims to Taiwan, or allow others to recognize the island nation diplomatically, but also does not act on its threats of trying to seize the territory.

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In a California Chinese enclave, a mayor’s guilty plea stokes fears of Beijing’s influence

In 2024, voters in the Southern California city of Arcadia elected the first all-Asian city council in the city’s history.

Now, one of those politicians has pleaded guilty to being an illegal agent of the Chinese government. Former Arcadia Mayor Eileen Wang’s plea, entered in federal court Friday,continues a saga that some residents of the area worry could bring unfair scrutiny on the broader Chinese and Asian American community.

Arcadia has gone under rapid demographic change in the last two decades as immigrants from China, Taiwan and Hong Kong flocked to the San Gabriel Valley east of Los Angeles. After Wang’s case was made public May 11, the news made national headlines and filled the unassuming suburban city with anger, disappointment and murmurs of quiet concern. On social media, fears about spies and Chinese Communist Party influence abounded.

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A Hong Kong artist tries to mark the Tiananmen crackdown. Police quickly stopped him

A performance artist in Hong Kong tried on Wednesday to honor the victims of Beijing’s 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown but was quickly stopped by police, the latest sign of the city’s shrinking freedom of expression.  Sanmu Chen tried to tie a symbolic red thread to a street signpost in Causeway Bay, a busy shopping district close to a park that had for decades hosted an annual candlelight vigil on June 4 to commemorate those who died in the crackdown that ended student-led protests in Beijing in 1989.

Hong Kong was for decades the only place in China where a large-scale public commemoration of the crackdown was held. The massive annual vigils were banned in 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, and public acts to mark the Tiananmen Square killings have become increasingly sensitive in the city in recent years.

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Xi’s new US-China formula signals a self-confident shift in terms

One of the most notable outcomes of last month’s Xi-Trump summit in Beijing was not tangible. Rather, it was Xi Jinping’s introduction of a new authoritative formulation, or tífǎ, for US-China relations. Such authoritative concepts have long been an important means for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to convey the top leader’s or collective leadership’s priorities, strategic assessments, historical judgments and policy programs at a given point in time.

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Tibet: Why I Oppose the Independence Route

For a long time, there have been two divergent lines within the Tibetan exile community. One is the “Middle Way Approach” represented by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, which advocates for genuine autonomy within the framework of China. The other is the “radical independence” line upheld by some individuals, demanding complete separation from China and the restoration of former sovereignty. 

On May 26, radical elements concluded a four-day, 8th International Rangzen Conference in Australia. As a Tibetan in exile who cares deeply about Tibet’s future, I must express my views on why I oppose the independence route. It is not because I lack love for Tibetan culture, religion, and identity. On the contrary, it is precisely because of this profound love that I choose a more pragmatic, responsible path—one that is more likely to protect the future of the Tibetan people.

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China exporting its surveillance state to others to help entrench their power

China, which tracks its citizens with surveillance cameras and also ranks them according to a set of political and social criteria set by the Communist Party, has become the world’s superpower of surveillance, much of it augmented by artificial intelligence. Calling it a Mao-era policing on steroids, a New York Times report May 31 says that model of policing is now being exported to authoritarian states and weak democracies across the world.

Thanks to the effectiveness of its surveillance measures, China casts itself as a model of policing, pointing to its low rate of violent crime. But the same apparatus that keeps citizens safe is also routinely used to crush dissent.

Movement is monitored by a network of surveillance cameras, many equipped with AI software that recognises faces and the way a person walks.

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Chinese company developing AI-powered technology to predict potential dissidents

The Communist Party of China (CPC) wants to be the country’s sole governing power forever and a Chinese company has been trying to develop artificial intelligence-powered technology that would enable it and other authoritarian governments to not just monitor existing dissidents but also predict citizens who could become ones in the future, reported the nytimes.com Jun 1.

The work, which appears to be in the research stage, is ripped out of dystopian science fiction, offering a glimpse of a world in which an authoritarian state is able to move against its citizens before they begin any public dissent, the report said.

The company, Geedge Networks, is stated to already sell a commercial version of the Great Firewall, the surveillance and censorship software that China uses to control online activity. Those tools allow governments to monitor internet traffic and flag when someone tries to get around traditional internet censorship.

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Penpa Tsering sworn in for a second term to lead Tibet’s government-in-exile

Penpa Tsering was sworn in Wednesday for a second consecutive term as the president of Tibet’s government-in-exile following his reelection earlier this year. Tsering, 58, has led the exile government based in Dharamshala, India, since 2021. He secured another five-year term in elections held in February among Tibetans living in India and overseas. Tsering was first elected to the Tibetan Parliament-in-Exile in 1996 and served as speaker from 2008 until he rose to the top executive post.

Formed in 1959, Tibet’s government-in-exile, now called the Central Tibetan Administration, has executive, judicial and legislative branches.

Tsering said Wednesday that the Central Tibetan Administration “remains firmly committed to the ‘Middle Way Policy’ envisioned by His Holiness the Dalai Lama,” adding that the policy seeks resolution through nonviolence, dialogue and lasting mutual benefit.

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US and China trade journalist expulsions in tit-for-tat moves

The Trump administration has revoked the visa of a Chinese national working for the state news agency Xinhua in the United States, in an apparent reciprocal act to Beijing’s decision to expel a New York Times reporter. A person familiar with the matter confirmed the visa had been revoked. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because the matter involves visa privacy. A State Department official confirmed there was a plan to revoke the visa.

The tit-for-tat move by the Trump administration has followed the expulsion by Beijing of Vivian Wang, a China correspondent for The New York Times, apparently over the appearance of the Taiwanese leader in a DealBook event in which Wang had no role. It was a rare occasion of the U.S. government directly retaliating against Beijing’s expulsion of American journalists.

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In a California Chinese enclave, a mayor’s guilty plea stokes fears of Beijing’s influence

In 2024, voters in the Southern California city of Arcadia elected the first all-Asian city council in the city’s history. Now, one of those politicians has pleaded guilty to being an illegal agent of the Chinese government. Former Arcadia Mayor Eileen Wang’s plea, entered in federal court Friday,continues a saga that some residents of the area worry could bring unfair scrutiny on the broader Chinese and Asian American community.

Arcadia has gone under rapid demographic change in the last two decades as immigrants from China, Taiwan and Hong Kong flocked to the San Gabriel Valley east of Los Angeles. After Wang’s case was made public May 11, the news made national headlines and filled the unassuming suburban city with anger, disappointment and murmurs of quiet concern. On social media, fears about spies and Chinese Communist Party influence abounded.

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Hegseth tones down China warning at defense forum

US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth yesterday at a defense conference assured Pacific allies that Washington remained committed to the region, but toned down previous comments calling China a threat.

Speaking to a group of world leaders, diplomats and top security officials at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, Hegseth said the region “has profound implications for US security and prosperity,” and that Washington’s priority was to “achieve a lasting and favorable balance of power in the Pacific.” The meeting comes about two weeks after US President Donald Trump visited Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing.

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The War Trump Can’t End: Washington needs a deal, but Tehran needs an enemy.

For nearly five decades, the Islamic Republic of Iran has been preparing for a war that Donald Trump expected would take days.

As virtually every American president since World War II has learned, a monopoly on focus can outlast a monopoly on power. America under Trump is the attention-deficit superpower, pinballing from isolationism to interventionism in Venezuela, Iran, and Cuba, having hollowed out the State Department. The Islamic Republic is an obsessive-compulsive revolutionary state—a regime with a half-century fixation on resisting America, rather than advancing the welfare of its own people. Fighting America is not the regime’s policy; it’s the regime’s identity.

The deadlock is both ideological and structural. To justify the immense costs of conflict to American taxpayers, Trump must demand far more from Tehran in any deal than he would have before the war began. Conversely, having lost hundreds of billions of dollars and its top leadership, Iran’s theocracy must demand far more—and concede far less—than it ever would have previously.

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How do US arms sales to Taiwan work and why are they such a sore point for China?

After US President Donald Trump’s summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping earlier this month, much focus has been put on Washington’s support for Taiwan and US arms sales to its government. On the first day of those talks Xi delivered a stark warning to his US counterpart – that Taiwan, the most important outstanding issue between the US and China, could become a “very dangerous situation” if mishandled.

Trump has delayed signing a $14 billion arms deal for Taiwan that was recently approved by Congress, calling it a “very good negotiating chip” in his dealings with Xi.

Meanwhile, acting US Navy Secretary Hung Cao said the deal was being delayed as the Pentagon made sure it has enough weapons for the war with Iran.

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Some of the world’s last Maoist rebels are in India. Their decades-long rebellion is in its death throes

Outgunned, outnumbered and on borrowed time, Papa Rao emerged from the jungle of central India wearing a faded checkered shirt, dusty trousers and scuffed sports shoes. He had a rifle slung over his shoulder and a $26,000 bounty on his head.

Behind him, in single file, trailed a troop of men and women carrying decades-old L1A1 and Lee-Enfield rifles. In sandals, and carrying Puma-branded sports backpacks, this group were some of the world’s last Maoist rebels, heirs to a global revolutionary movement that fought capitalism for control of the 20th century. They were on their way to surrender.

Fired by the teachings of China’s Mao Zedong, they had spent decades battling to overthrow the Indian state, and install in its stead a classless utopia.

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China is ‘losing a chance’ by not being at the Shangri-La Dialogue

China is losing a chance at dialogue by not having a ministerial-level delegation at an annual defense forum in Singapore, Germany’s chief of defense General Carsten Breuer said on Saturday. Speaking at a media roundtable on the sidelines of the IISS Shangri-La Dialogue, Breuer said that China is losing this chance at a time when the world is “contested.” This was “dangerous,” he said, warning that, “in my 42 years as a soldier, I’ve never experienced such dangerous times like we are living in the world as today.”

Breuer’s comments came after China’s defense minister Dong Jun skipped the conference for a second straight year, with Beijing sending a lower-level delegation led by Major General Meng Xiangqing from the People’s Liberation Army National Defence University.

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Belgrade bets on Beijing as Budapest pivots to Brussels

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic’s state visit to China on May 25, 2026, sent a major geopolitical and geoeconomic signal at a moment when the international system is becoming increasingly fragmented between competing power blocs.

The visit, marked by meetings with Xi Jinping and the signing of more than 20 bilateral agreements covering infrastructure, artificial intelligence, green technology, trade, education and digital connectivity, demonstrated Belgrade’s deepening strategic relationship with Beijing even as it formally pursues membership in the European Union.

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Taiwan’s more relaxed than most of us about Trumpian deal-making

The most common worry expressed around the world concerning the summit meeting in Beijing on May 14-15 was the fear that the future of Taiwan and its 23 million residents might be traded off in a deal between the men leading the world’s two true superpowers, Xi Jinping and Donald Trump.

The American president might soften his country’s support for Taiwan in return for Chinese help in ending the war in Iran. He might get such spectacular promises from Xi of Chinese purchases of soybeans or Boeing aircraft that he would agree to reduce US sales of weapons to Taiwan.

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Torbjørn Færøvik: China Celebrates Tibet's Defeat 75 Years Ago

Slogans have echoed loudly across Tibet in recent days. “Long live Tibet’s peaceful liberation!” has crackled from loudspeakers and megaphones. “Let us build the Chinese national community!” and “Long live the great, glorious, and correct Chinese Communist Party!”

Seventy-five years have passed since Chinese and Tibetan representatives signed an agreement that paved the way for the People’s Republic of China’s takeover of Tibet. The event took place in Beijing, where the Tibetan delegation was isolated and placed under intense pressure by the hosts. The outcome was inevitable.

In Tibet’s capital, Lhasa, the Chinese authorities have marked the anniversary with singing, dancing, and lengthy speeches. A local leader, Sun Xianzhong, said in his speech that the people of “Xizang” had created a “human miracle” by leaping over several thousand years in just a few decades. In recent years, the Chinese authorities have been eager to replace Tibetan place names with Chinese ones. Xizang is therefore Beijing’s preferred name.