Kinaforum

søndag 19. juli 2026

Whither ASEAN? A decade of silence on the South China Sea

July 12 marked the 10th anniversary of the arbitral tribunal ruling in favor of the Philippines on its South China Sea submission — a ruling China ignored, and one that has become a footnote in the gradual degradation of the rules-based order.

Ten years on, we live in a very different world: one in which Russia has invaded and occupied parts of a major European nation, and one in which China has built a string of heavily militarized islets, bristling with weapons, across one of the world’s most consequential maritime corridors — a corridor that carries roughly one-third of all global shipping.

The rules-based order is increasingly fractured, and as the July 12 joint statement from 14 nations showed, its defense is piecemeal by “coalitions of the willing.” But the statement’s signatory list is the more telling story here: of the 14 governments that commemorated the ruling, only one—the Philippines—is actually an ASEAN member state—something that Chinese trolls trumpeted on social media.

China hits out at British Steel nationalisation

China has hit out at the nationalisation of British Steel, saying it "firmly opposes and is strongly dissatisfied with the British government's decision". On Thursday, the UK government said that taking the loss-making firm into public hands would protect jobs and safeguard a "vital national capability".

The UK took control of British Steel's operations in Scunthorpe last year, though it was still owned by China's Jingye Group, limiting the government's ability to steer its future. China's commerce ministry said on Friday that the moves "seriously infringed upon Jingye's legitimate rights and interests and severely undermined the confidence of Chinese companies investing in the UK".

More than 500 Rohingya vanished at sea - what happened?

Two boats carrying an estimated 530 Rohingya asylum seekers left Myanmar's Rakhine state on 29 June, and have not been heard from since. The equivalent of a jumbo jet full of people has vanished. It is very likely that they both capsized. The monsoon has started, the seas are rough, and the boats - usually old fishing trawlers converted to carry as many people as possible - are barely sea-worthy with unreliable engines.

It is also very likely that there were few, or no survivors. Half of them may have been women and children.

But we will never know for certain. Rakhine has been in a state of war for many years, with the insurgent Arakan Army driving the Myanmar military out of most of it and besieging its last stronghold in the state capital Sittwe, which is now accessible only by air and sea. Almost all telecommunications have been cut by the military.

Japan relaxes royal succession rules - but ban on female emperors remains

The Japanese parliament has approved a bill to relax imperial succession rules, amid concerns over the dwindling size of the imperial family. The bill, passed by the upper house on Friday, allows the imperial family to adopt distant male relatives over the age of 15 and lets women keep their royal status after marrying outside the family.

But it does not change the law barring women from ascending the throne despite wide public support for a female emperor, meaning Princess Aiko, the only child of the current emperor, is still not eligible to succeed the throne. The bill cleared the lower house last week, and will move through the final legal procedures before the changes take effect.

Kim Jong Un was meant to be their only idol - then North Koreans discovered K-pop

On a sunny Saturday in June, Lee Yeon-su took the day off from work and hopped on a train from Seoul to Busan for yet another concert by pop supergroup BTS. It was her third time in as many months. She had been in the crowds that poured into central Seoul in March, when the septet launched their comeback - but the stage was too far away. In April, on the first day of their world tour, the rain poured down, drowning out the singers' voices. But this time in Busan, it was "incredible".

"Every time I come to a BTS concert, I realise how happy I am that I can like and support someone of my own free will," Yeon-su, which is not her real name, says. "That would have been unimaginable in North Korea."

That's where she was born, in the so-called Hermit Kingdom, just north of the heavily fortified border with South Korea. The outside world was out of reach, cut off by a regime built on fear, surveillance and loyalty.

The Life Project: Documenting the Chinese Woman Who Gave Birth at 60

In 2009, Sheng Hailin, a 59-year-old retired doctor living in Hefei, capital of eastern China’s Anhui province, lost her only daughter to carbon monoxide poisoning. In an instant, she became one of China’s “shidu” parents.

In China, “shidu” — literally “loss of only” — describes parents whose sole child has died. Beyond grief, the bereaved also face the collapse of the traditional family structure that promised emotional and financial support in old age. Many are past childbearing age and unable to have another child.

When photographer Wu Fang first began documenting shidu families, estimates from the 2010 China Health Statistics Yearbook, released by the former Ministry of Health, suggested there were 841,000 nationwide, with the number growing by roughly 76,000 each year. Some media reports, citing the same yearbook, placed the figure at more than 1 million.

Deliver Rider Wins China’s Top Literary Prize for Poetry

Food delivery rider and poet Wang Jibing has won one of China’s highest literary honors, the Lu Xun Literary Prize, for his poetry collection “Low Flight.” The prize, announced July 15 and in its ninth edition, honored 35 works across seven categories. The award was established in 1996 in memory of the renowned Chinese writer Lu Xun and is given every four years.

Wang, a 57-year-old from the eastern Jiangsu province, is known as “a delivery rider by day and a poet by night.” Since becoming a food delivery rider in 2019 in the province’s Kunshan city, he has logged over 150,000 kilometers on the road and written more than 6,000 poems inspired by his deliveries and life.

China’s AI Summer Camps Tap Into Parents’ Worries

An increasing number of Chinese summer camps promising parents that their children can master AI and become “venture capitalists” within a week, and charging thousands of yuan to do so, have appeared in recent months.

As parents’ fears about their children being left behind in the AI era grow, companies are capitalizing on their anxieties, claiming they can teach kids how to use AI for business and finance in weeklong “study tours” or camps. But these summer programs often offer little more than unqualified instructors and a photo opportunity at a tech company, according to a recent report by domestic media outlet China Newsweek.

The rise of AI camps comes amid a national push to merge AI with education. Released in June, China’s national education plan integrates AI across all educational levels.

Video apparently depicting Filipinos as monkeys on China media draws Manila’s protest

The Philippine government strongly protested to China what it said was the depiction of Filipinos as monkeys in an editorial video publicized by a Chinese state-owned media outlet, and demanded it be taken down.

The Department of Foreign Affairs in Manila said Friday that the series of opinion and editorial videos and cartoons, particularly an animated video posted by the China Daily on its Facebook page on July 10, centered on Beijing’s rejection of a 2016 arbitration ruling that invalidated China’s expansive claims in the disputed South China Sea.

The Philippines initiated the arbitration in 2013, after China seized a shoal west of the Philippines following a tense standoff. China questioned the jurisdiction of the tribunal in The Hague, refused to take part in the proceedings and rejected its ruling as a sham.

Chinese AI model takes US tech industry by surprise with abilities rivaling Claude and ChatGPT

Another powerful new artificial intelligence model from China took the U.S. tech industry by surprise Friday, the latest sign that Chinese startups that publicly release their “open-source” AI technology are making the California titans of AI sweat.

The newest Kimi K3 model from Beijing-based startup Moonshot, run by a Pink Floyd-loving entrepreneur who earned his doctorate in Pittsburgh, appears to be catching up to the best versions of Anthropic’s Claude and OpenAI’s ChatGPT. “This may be the single biggest release of the year,” and marks a moment when open-source Chinese models are surpassing closed U.S. models, said Anastasios Angelopoulos, co-founder and CEO of Arena, a platform for evaluating AI systems.

China’s Xi calls for more global efforts to guide AI, chides US for its curbs on tech sharing

Trump says these documents prove his false claims of election fraud. Here’s what they really say

President Donald Trump released a trove of documents during a primetime address to the nation that allies had hyped as a smoking gun that would prove his long-debunked allegations of mass voter fraud.

Speaking from the White House on Thursday night, he described shocking revelations, like Chinese meddling to undermine his failed candidacy in 2020 and a cover-up by the “deep state.” He claimed, “Americans were blatantly lied to about the security of our election infrastructure.”

But a review by The Associated Press found no such confirmation in the collection of newly declassified reports, investigation files, intelligence analysis and assorted correspondence. Many pages are so heavily redacted that their findings are unclear. Others outline vulnerabilities and assessments that have been well-documented for years. There’s no evidence that China or any other foreign entity manipulated the vote in 2020 or any other year.

China completes building a fifth new border defence village few km from Arunachal border

China said Jul 16 that it had recently completed the building of the last of five new national border defence villages in Tibet’s Metog country, located just a few kilometres from the Line of Actual Control (LAC) with the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh.

The Guoxing settlement, in Tibet’s Metog county, is the last of five resettlement projects designed to improve livelihoods in the geographically isolated region. Situated just a few kilometres from the LAC in the Tibet-India border area, the village represents the dual strategy of poverty alleviation and border reinforcement through civilian development, reported China’s official chinadaily.com.cn Jul 16.

The settlement was stated to have transitioned hundreds of residents from hazardous, landslide-prone mountain villages into a modern, tourism-focused hub.

Trump Has Lower Global Trust Than Xi—and Biden

China is now viewed more favorably than the United States, according to a new Pew Research poll of more than 30 countries, with President Donald Trump also lagging Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping in global opinion.

The annual survey examines how the world's leading two powers are viewed around the globe, including their leaders and foreign policies. While U.S. popularity had already worsened in the 2025 edition of the survey released last spring, shortly after Trump began his second term, the country's standing has since fallen even more sharply. The findings mark a recent shift across many of the places surveyed, and the change is driven by both worsening views of the United States and improving perceptions of China, Pew said.

Chinese Carmaker XPENG ‘Would Love to Come to the US’

XPENG views the United States as a possible market for expansion; however, escalating trade barriers, high tariffs, and national security concerns have effectively blocked the company from entering the world's second-largest automotive market.

The company develops and sells various types of artificial intelligence-enhanced consumer electronics, including robots, flying cars and roadworthy passenger cars. A spokesperson for the Chinese technology company confirmed the company’s stance on possible entry into the U.S. market on Wednesday, telling Newsweek, “We would love to come to the U.S.”

US Universities Got Over $300M From Sanctioned China Entities

Spooked by a decades-long outflow of top Amerian science and technology to adversaries, the Department of Education has disclosed new data on donations to American universities by foreign companies and universities that today are sanctioned by the U.S., including 527 donations from Chinese entities.

A spreadsheet of 697 donations in total, obtained by Newsweek, is titled "Counterparties of Concern" and includes 156 donations to U.S. universities from Chinese technology giant Huawei and its U.S. subsidary FutureWei, totaling $42 million. Also prominent among donors was the Beijing Institute of Technology (BIT), one China's "Seven Sons of National Defense" military-affiliated universities, which donated more than $49 million.

Torbjørn Færøvik: Legendary Xanadu - Unearthing the Emperor's Summer Capital

Sunshine and summer, and gentle breezes sweep across the green plains of Inner Mongolia. Also in Xanadu, once the capital of the world. Here a travel-weary Marco Polo arrived in 1275, where he was granted the honor of kneeling before the Emperor himself, the incomparable Kublai Khan.

“You are most welcome,” Kublai said to the small Italian party, which, in addition to the twenty-year-old Marco, consisted of his father and uncle.

Years later, the Venetian recorded that Kublai Khan was “of a good stature, neither too tall nor too short, but of a middle height.” He had “a fresh complexion, with black and handsome eyes, and a well-shaped nose, properly situated in his face.”

Xanadu, or Shangdu, was the summer capital of the Mongol Empire. Today, almost nothing remains, yet patient archaeologists continue to dig in the vast solitude with trowel and spade day in and day out, for as long as the weather permits.

As Trump accuses China of stealing voter data, Xi pitches China as a responsible tech leader

As US President Donald Trump accused Beijing of exploiting US election data in a televised speech in Washington, halfway across the world in China, Xi Jinping was sending a very different message.

Beijing is a responsible global leader bent on shaping the future of technology for good, Xi intoned to hundreds of tech executives, researchers and industry figures gathering in Shanghai Friday for the opening of China’s flagship artificial intelligence summit.

“With AI advancing at a staggering speed, we must ensure its development is for positive, for good, and for humanity,” Xi said in an opening address to the conference. “We must make its oversight and governance precise and effective and constantly refine measures to forestall loss of control.”

Trump doubles down on 2020 election claims in national address, alleging China meddling

President Donald Trump in a national address Thursday night sowed doubts about the security of U.S. election systems and voter information, alleging widespread meddling by China in the 2020 cycle among numerous other claims that were quickly challenged by fact checkers.

Trump, who has falsely claimed for years that his loss to former President Joe Biden in the 2020 race was “rigged” due to widespread fraud, claimed in the primetime speech that newly declassified intelligence reveals “shocking vulnerabilities in our election infrastructure.”

The roughly 25-minute primetime speech came as the president and his allies work to impose major changes in U.S. elections ahead of the November midterms via redistricting, adding procedural steps for Americans to vote and casting doubt on the validity of the country’s electoral systems. Polls show Democrats are favored to retake the U.S. House amid Trump’s slumping popularity, and Trump has expressed concerns about investigations he could face if Democrats control one or both chambers of Congress.