Kinaforum

onsdag 22. juli 2026

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.

How Australia resisted PRC economic coercion: lessons for others

The People’s Republic of China has used its statecraft to weaponize its trade with other countries on several occasions in recent years. Such behavior usually arises when the PRC interprets another country’s actions as hostile to its political interests and resorts to nonofficial sanctions, tariffs, regulations, and consumer boycotts that damage a host nation’s economy.

These actions don’t follow market sentiments and can be revoked without a change in any underlying economic concerns the PRC initially used to justify its imposition. Many targeted countries use terms such as economic coercion to refer to trade decisions intended to alter a nation’s policies, behaviors or decisions.

Trump administration opens review of Harvard-China cooperation

The Justice Department is investigating whether Harvard University is allowing Chinese donors to create scholarships that exclude American students, adding to the barrage of federal inquiries the Trump administration has opened in its battle against the Ivy League school.

Justice Department officials announced the new review Monday, saying Harvard’s foreign funding disclosures “raised concerns” about possible discrimination against U.S. students. The agency did not specify which scholarship programs are being targeted and emphasized it “has not reached any conclusions.”

The investigation is aimed at Harvard’s “China-based financial aid programs,” the Justice Department said. The agency said Chinese donors have given money to Harvard to support financial aid programs limited to students from certain countries. That restriction could amount to illegal discrimination based on country of origin, the department said.

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As heatwaves strike, Europeans turn to Chinese air-conditioner

Steven Scholtysek, 36, is no stranger to Europe's heatwaves. The German engineer has lived through sweltering summers since his childhood.

But this year the heat has been especially unbearable. Western Europe has experienced its hottest June on record, and cities across Germany saw temperatures rise above 40C (104F). The region is bracing for more heatwaves before the summer ends. To make things worse, a few months ago Scholtysek moved into an attic apartment - the kind that's notorious for overheating.

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Why political fury is boiling over on the streets of India’s capital

For days the streets and parks in the center of India’scapital have seethed with the biggest demonstrations it has seen in years as young protesters demand change to a national exam system they say cheats millions of them out of a fair chance.

Earlier this week, as the mostly Gen-Z protesters tried the bring their demands to the parliament building at the heart of the world’s biggest democracy, they were met with tear gas and police violence, struck with the bamboo sticks officers carry in lieu of batons.

The protesters are refusing to back down, setting up a continued confrontation with Narendra Modi’s Hindu-nationalist government, one critics say has overseen a relentless crushing of dissent during its more than a decade in power.

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China doesn’t need the World Cup. It has the ‘Village Super League’

Soccer players in red jerseys jump up and down, spraying their cheering teammates with champagne, as confetti and streamers cascade around them and crowds capture the jubilation on their phones.

This isn’t Spain’s World Cup victory, clinched Sunday in New Jersey, but a win celebrated a day earlier, some 6,000 miles away, in Fuping county, a mountainous and rural part of northern China’s Hebei province, at a stadium lined with Communist Party slogans.

This game is one of many taking place across the country, as teams battle for a place in the national “Village Super League” finals. The amateur tournament has become a phenomenon in China, attracting millions of spectators across the country – and making for a colorful alternative to the World Cup that hasn’t seen a Chinese men’s national team compete for more than two decades.

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tirsdag 21. juli 2026

Why Europe’s China Anxiety Is About More Than China

When EU Trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič met Chinese Commerce Minister Wang Wentao in Brussels on June 29, the encounter could easily be read as another episode in Europe’s growing anxiety over Chinese economic pressure. In 2025, China’s goods trade surplus with the EU reached roughly 360 billion euros, and by early 2026 the imbalance was still widening. Šefčovič himself warned after the Brussels talks that rising Chinese exports to Europe, combined with shrinking European market share in China, were “not sustainable.”

Yet the meeting also revealed why Europe’s China debate is about more than trade. The new EU-China consultation mechanism was not limited to market access or the bilateral trade deficit. According to the European Commission, both sides also discussed export controls, intellectual property rights, and WTO reform. The disagreement, then, is not only technical trade issues, but about who gets to define the rules under which interdependence operates.

‘Escaping Beijing’: Why some young Chinese are quitting the capital

For centuries, Beijing has represented the pinnacle of ambition in China. From imperial capital to the political heart of modern China, the city has long attracted those hoping to build a better life.

In medieval times, scholars travelled here to sit the imperial examinations. In more recent decades, graduates, entrepreneurs and migrant workers have flocked to the capital in search of opportunity as China’s economy boomed. Wang Lei, 29, was one of them. Born in neighbouring Hebei province, he vividly remembers his first visit to the capital as a child. “When we arrived at Beijing Railway Station, my friend and I spotted a towering skyscraper for the first time,” Wang recalled. “I told him when I grew up, I would stand on top of it.”

He moved to the city in 2020 and found work in the real estate industry, then still one of China’s most lucrative sectors. Like millions before him, Wang arrived with the hope his hard work would be rewarded.

China’s Xi Jinping launches new AI alliance: What is it?

It was an artificial intelligence summit with very real-world geopolitical messaging. Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday urged countries to cooperate on artificial intelligence and ensure no country dominates the technology – in an apparent jab at the United States. Xi spoke at a major tech conference in Shanghai on Friday, where China showcased cutting-edge technology that rivals the prowess of the US.

Both countries are locked in a battle for tech and AI dominance and view each other’s advancements in these areas as deliberate attempts to stymie the other. As Chinese AI models gain ground globally, Beijing appears to be casting itself as a leader of the new global AI order, challenging the US’s influence in the development and regulation of the fast-evolving technology.

Opinion: Trump Is Good for China. But Is He Good for America?

After a rocky period at the outset of President Trump’s second term, the U.S.-China relationship has found its groove. So said several Chinese government officials and academics with whom I formally met during a recent trip to Beijing.

A China-focused researcher, I lived in Beijing before the pandemic, and I returned after over six years as part of a delegation of China hands. While the city had not changed all that much, save for several new subway lines, I was struck by the whiff of triumphalism that permeated the Chinese policy community. Whereas the Biden administration’s approach to China was marked by “zero-sum ideological and technological competition,” Trump’s more transactional nature, some academics and think tankers argued, had produced a reset in relations that would benefit both sides.

Inside the ‘Cockroach’ Protests Challenging India’s Modi

"If standing against a broken system makes me a cockroach, then I accept being called a cockroach," Beauty Giri, 25, told Newsweek among thousands of protesters at New Delhi's Jantar Mantar, a historic protest ground.

The Cockroach Janata Party (CJP) was only launched online in May as a satirical movement reflecting anger among youth over unemployment and political neglect, but its protests now draw thousands of people and have broadened. Police used teargas and batons on New Delhi's streets to stop their unauthorized march to parliament on Monday.

The group has become an outlet for frustration over education reform, unemployment, alleged corruption and institutional accountability in a growing challenge to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party after 12 years of his power.

Chinese geologists warn of active fault line dangers from world’s largest hydropower project in Tibet

It is not just Tibetans and India but also China’s own scientists that are seriously concerned about the world’s largest hydropower dam that is being built, reportedly at a speeded up pace in recent times, towards the end of the run of the Yarlung Tsangpo river in Tibet’s Metog County, just 50km before it enters India. Chinese geologists have determined that an active fault line directly beneath the project poses a threat to the mega-dam, reported scmp.com Jul 9, citing a paper published last month in the Chinese-language journal Sedimentary Geology and Tethyan Geology.

The scientists have not called for the project to be scrapped, although this would be the best sensible recommendation, as this was obviously beyond their term of reference. They have, instead, called for strengthened safeguard measures to hopefully minimise the risks.

Can AI Preserve a Homeland in Exile? Tibetan Memory in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

In the Sonamling Tibetan Settlement outside Leh in Ladakh, I found that the most venerable memories were not to be had in any museum or archive. They were to be found in conversation. My fieldwork there put me in the company of elderly Tibetan refugees who would talk of the monasteries from their youth, the villages they put behind them and the Himalayan crossings that altered the course of their lives. Younger members of the family would be seated about them, keenly listening. Now and then, one might subtly raise a mobile phone to put the exchange on record. An unremarkable thing to do, perhaps, but with no small import. In a sense, these were more than family tales, they were pieces of a homeland being put aside for the keeping of those who have never set eyes on it.

For Tibetans in exile, memory is never just an act of recollection, it is how culture endures. Before such things ever made it into an institution’s files, they made their way through the home and the prayer hall, in song and in the ordinary course of talk, conveying language and faith and an abiding connection to Tibet over the years.

“China launches new demolitions at Larung Gar Buddhist centre as its ‘ethnic unity’ law came into force”

Apparently in order to implement its post-Ethnic Unity Law order, which officially came into force on Jul 1, China is reported to have launched a new round of demolitions at what was until not long ago one of the world’s largest centre for Buddhist learning, located in eastern Tibet’s Kardze Prefecture, Sichuan Province. The centre already stands greatly diminished due to several rounds of expulsions of large numbers of its monk, nun, and lay-students, and the demolition of their residences, carried out since 2001.

A new round of demolitions that will impact at least 1,060 residences of monks and nuns has begun at Serthar Larung Five Sciences Buddhist Academy, popularly known as Larung Gar, in eastern Tibet in Serthar (Chinese: Seda) County, said Washington-based International Campaign for Tibet (ICT) Jul 17, citing a source with knowledge of the matter.

Iran war, Myanmar crisis and South China Sea rifts under the spotlight in ASEAN ministerial talks

Southeast Asia’s top diplomats will express alarm over renewed hostilities in the Middle East when they gather in the Philippine capital Tuesday for talks to be joined by Western and Asian counterparts, including from the United States, China, Russia and the European Union.

Some of the world’s most intractable conflicts, including the latest fighting in Iran, will be high in the agenda of the annual talks held by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. The Philippines holds the 11-nation regional bloc’s chairmanship this year and is hosting the three-day talks in Manila.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov are among the attendees. Ukraine’s top diplomat, Andrii Sybiha, has been invited to attend a Friday ceremony commemorating a 1976 nonaggression treaty of ASEAN but is not a participant in the ASEAN meetings Lavrov and Rubio will attend.

Chinese company demands compensation from the UK over British Steel nationalization

The Chinese company that formerly owned British Steel demanded Sunday compensation from the U.K. government for investment losses following the nationalization of the manufacturer last week. The British government took operational control of the company last year after Jingye Group said that it was considering closing the blast furnaces at its Scunthorpe plant in northern England, the last in the United Kingdom to make “virgin steel” from raw materials.

Jingye Group said in a WeChat statement that the nationalization move tarnished the credibility of the British government, spooked international investors and caused great losses to the company’s operation and British taxpayers’ funds. It also demanded that the U.K. government stop “trampling on international investment rules.”

India’s Cockroach movement supporters gather to attempt a march to Parliament

Thousands of supporters of the youth-led Cockroach movementgathered Monday to march to India’s Parliament, demanding the resignation of the education minister despite police denying permission for the protest, as the government appeared to open its first talks with movement leaders.

Scores of police surrounded the barricaded protest site in the heart of New Delhi, raising the prospect of a confrontation if demonstrators pressed ahead with the march. Television footage showed police striking some protesters with batons after they tried to breach security barricades.

The crowd at Jantar Mantar, a designated site for protests just a few kilometers from Parliament, included students, professionals, and families with young children. Many carried backpacks with water and food, expecting a long day, while others waved Indian flags. Police urged protesters to disperse over loudspeakers, as the crowd chanted slogans against the education minister and Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Indonesia’s telling empty chair on the South China Sea

The most significant development at this week’s Conference Commemorating the Tenth Anniversary of the South China Sea Arbitration Award in Jakarta was not what was discussed. It was who failed to appear.

Every Indonesian government representative scheduled to participate reportedly withdrew before the conference began on July 13. According to the organizers, the event had secured commitments from senior government officials, including a director general from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and officers from the Indonesian National Armed Forces.Several had agreed to deliver keynote addresses or participate as panelists. Yet, shortly before the conference opened, organizers were informed that approval for their participation had been withdrawn. The conference ultimately proceeded without a single representative from the Indonesian government.