Kinaforum

mandag 9. mars 2026

Does Iran war make a China attack on Taiwan more likely?

It’s too soon to tell, as the fight with Iran started less than a week ago. But at least in the near-term, China will likely hold its fire on Taiwan. However, if the Iran conflict continues for an extended period, lasting months rather than weeks, while casualties mount and the US appears bogged down, Chinese President Xi Jinping might be tempted to finally make good on his threat to move against Taiwan, a “reunification” he recently characterized as “unstoppable.”

China might assess that its military overmatch around Taiwan is such that the US can’t amass enough force to forestall or respond to a Chinese assault without suffering heavy losses.

And if the Americans don’t take the lead, no other regional nation will, not even nearby Japan. Despite impressive niche capabilities, the Japan Self Defense Force can’t fight a major war on its own.

China quietly eclipsing a weakened Russia in Central Asia

For much of the post–Cold War period, Central Asia operated as a “managed condominium”—a geopolitical arrangement where Russia supplied the hard-security umbrella and China functioned as the dominant economic partner.

The war in Ukraine has not broken this Sino-Russian partnership, but it has fundamentally altered its internal balance. The condominium has evolved into an asymmetric interdependence, where China’s economic networks dictate the terms of regional order and Russia’s ability to exercise a regional veto has rapidly diminished.China is not muscling its way into Eurasia — it is wiring it. By controlling key network nodes across logistics, energy, finance and digital governance, Beijing is engaging in a form of “weaponized interdependence.” China is shaping the very infrastructure and rules within which smaller states operate, expanding its freedom of action as Russia’s relative power declines.

Why Iran depends on exports to China

While Iranian threats have brought maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz largely to a halt, experts doubt Iran will risk a long-term blockade of the shipping lane in retaliation for US-Israeli attacks.

"Around 70 percent of Iran's non-oil trade passes through ports that depend on access via the Strait of Hormuz," says gas and economic analyst Dalga Khatinoglu of Iran International, a London-based news outlet.

Blockading the strait long-term would hurt Iran itself.

"It doesn't feel rational for Iran to close the street of Hormuz, because they have the imports of the crucial goods like crucial food for example, but also the majority of their exports go to China and India, so that would turn against the country," energy expert Sara Vakhshouri of SVB Energy International told Bloomberg TV.

China Could Dominate the Physical AI Future

On Feb. 16, hundreds of millions of households watched as humanoid robots from four different Chinese companies danced, acted in a comedy skit, did parkour, and performed martial arts onstage at the Spring Festival Gala, China’s most-watched television broadcast. Across the country, drone shows lit up the night skies as China celebrated Lunar New Year, the synchronization of tens of thousands of drones coordinated by artificial intelligence.

The physical AI fervor has traveled across the Pacific. At the glitzy Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas earlier this year, Chinese startups dominated the convention with AI-enabled hardware from smart home appliances and wearables to all kinds of robots.

While American frontier labs are battling each other across large language model leaderboards, China’s AI capabilities are showing up in physical ways—leaving screens and entering our daily lives. We’ve lived through over a decade of, in the words of venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, “software eating the world.” Now, metal and mathematics have converged and hardware is eating the world.

China hopes 2026 will be a ‘landmark year’ for relationship with US

China said it hopes this year will be a “landmark year” for its relationship with its biggest competitor, the U.S., striking a largely positive tone ahead of an expected summit between the leaders of the two countries later this month.

China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi, speaking Sunday at a press briefing on the sidelines of an annual meeting of China’s ceremonial legislature, said that it was a “big year” for the relationship between the two world powers. He said that while there are many differences, “the two heads of state have personally maintained good exchanges at the highest level,” providing a level of “strategic guarantee” for the bilateral relationship.

U.S. President Donald Trump is due to visit Beijing for a summit with China’s President Xi Jinping at the end of March. While Wang did not confirm the visit, he signaled that Beijing is looking for a less fraught relationship.

What China’s latest economic plans say about its tech ambitions and rivalry with the US

Two major economic plans unveiled at the annual meeting of China’s legislature outline top priorities that have different ramifications for the global economy.

In the government plan for 2026, the No. 1 task is “building a robust domestic market.” Then comes accelerating technological progress. But longer-term, a plan for the next five years gives more prominence to achieving advances in tech.The subtle difference highlights the government’s balancing act. Its overarching goal is to transform from a low-cost manufacturing to a tech-driven economy.

But a more immediate concern is dealing with a prolonged period of sluggishness that has depressed consumer and business confidence. China is such a large exporter that the choices it makes affect countries and jobs around the world.

China’s missile reach forces Japan back to Iwo Jima

Japan is considering a significant expansion of its military presence on remote Iwo Jima as growing Chinese naval activity beyond the First Island Chain raises concerns about the vulnerability of Pacific bases such as Okinawa.

Japan’s Defense Ministry plans to study upgrades to the island’s air and port infrastructure in the coming fiscal year, including extending the runway, strengthening port facilities and installing a floating pier capable of accommodating large vessels delivering construction materials and equipment.

Officials are also weighing the permanent deployment of Japan Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) fighter jets to enable rapid responses to foreign aircraft and warships operating near Japan’s eastern approaches. The move would complement Japan’s broader defense buildup across Okinawa and Kyushu and close what officials describe as a “surveillance gap” on the Pacific side of the archipelago.

Taiwan’s ‘Social Shield’: The Democratic Stakes Beyond Semiconductors

The strategic case for Taiwan’s survival has been made in the language of semiconductors and military deterrence – the so-called Silicon Shield. It has rarely been made in the language of gender equality. It should be. Taiwan has built something that no other society in the Asia-Pacific has managed: a model of female political and civic power that is simultaneously democratic, culturally rooted, and structurally durable.

Over 42 percent of Taiwan’s legislators are women – one of the highest rates in the world, exceeding the United States Congress at 28 percent and the European Union average of 33 percent.

China is about to show the world its plan to win the future

China spent the last five years cultivating innovation and new technology at home. The next half decade will be dedicated to deploying the fruits of its labor to transform its economy – and its place in the world.

That’s set to be an overarching message as thousands of delegates from across China gather in the nation’s capital for the “Two Sessions” – a carefully choreographed annual meeting where the country’s leadership signals its priorities for the year ahead, and its rubber-stamp legislature approves them.

The pomp and ceremony of the gathering has long stood as a symbol of China’s tightly controlled political process, and Beijing’s authoritarian leaders are well aware of the juxtaposition that creates as the US, the world’s most powerful democracy, is riven with partisan infighting and engaged in another spiraling conflict in the Middle East.

Facing ‘grave and complex landscape,’ China sets lowest economic growth target in decades

China set its lowest economic growth target in decades on Thursday, announcing it would aim for 4.5-5% expansion in 2026 as the world’s second-largest economy grapples with weak domestic demand and an uncertain global outlook.

The moderate projection follows three consecutive years of aiming for “around 5%” growth from 2023 to 2025, which the country achieved despite a slow recovery from stringent Covid-19 controls and US President Donald Trump’s tariff offensive last year. Still, China’s broader growth trajectory has flattened, weighed down by a prolonged property crisis, declined investment, tepid consumption and deflation.

After Iran and Venezuela, Kim Jong Un must decide how to handle Trump

Last weekend, North Korean state media condemned the United States and Israel for launching a “war of aggression” against Iran, but did not report the death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, along with dozens of members of Iran’s top leadership.

That omission was not accidental. North Korea’s political system is built around the near-mythic authority and invulnerability of its leader. Publicly broadcasting the violent removal of another supreme leader would introduce a dangerous precedent. It would remind North Korean citizens that even the most powerful figure in a tightly controlled state can be tracked, targeted and eliminated. That is not a narrative Pyongyang has any incentive to circulate at home.

Indeed, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un may be asking himself if the time has come to pick up the phone and call US President Donald Trump.

China warns ‘flames of war’ spreading and calls on US to help manage differences ahead of Xi-Trump meeting

China’s top diplomat cast his country as a defender of peace and stability as war in Iran rages, while striking a conciliatory tone towards the United States ahead of a highly anticipated summit between the two nation’s leaders. “This was a war that should never have happened, and a war that benefited no one,” Wang Yi, China’s foreign minister, said at a Sunday news briefing on the sidelines of the annual assembly of China’s rubber-stamp legislature.

Wang, touting China as “the world’s most important force of peace, stability and justice,” reiterated Beijing’s call for an immediate ceasefire to “prevent the situation from escalating and avoid the spillover and spread of the flames of war.”

US Ally Suspects Spy Was Behind Chinese Blockades

A suspected spy likely provided China with the intelligence it needed to anticipate and obstruct Philippine efforts to resupply a military outpost at Second Thomas Shoal in the South China Sea, Philippine Coast Guard spokesperson Jay Tarriela said Friday.

The Spratly Islands' Second Thomas Shoal, known as Ayungin Shoal in the Philippines and Ren’ai Reef in China, is uninhabited save for the rusting World War II–era warship BRP Sierra Madre, grounded on the feature in 1999 to stake the country’s claim.

China claims most of the South China Sea as its territory, including Scarborough Shoal, and between 2023 and mid-2024, Chinese maritime forces repeatedly intercepted Philippine supply missions, leading to sometimes dramatic clashes that left several Philippine injuries and raised concerns that a miscalculation could trigger the Philippines’ Mutual Defense Treaty with the United States.

China’s Xi calls for political loyalty in the military as anti-corruption purge widens

China’s President Xi Jinping on Saturday said political loyalty in the military must be ensured and called for resolutely pushing forward the fight against corruption as a military purge widened.

“There must be no one in the military who harbors disloyalty to the (ruling Communist) Party,” Xi said in remarks published by the official Xinhua News Agency.

China Announces Big Changes To Improve Marriage, Birth Rates

China’s leadership has pledged to roll out new policies to encourage "positive attitudes toward marriage and childbearing" amid mounting concern over the country’s rapidly aging population. The plan will include a slate of measures to expand child care support, promote employment, and address the growing needs of the country’s "silver economy."

An estimated two-thirds of the world’s population now lives in countries with fertility rates below the level needed to sustain population growth. China has one of the world’s lowest, with a total fertility rate of around 1.0, and births fell by 17 percent in 2025. Authorities introduced a raft of new measures last year, but many analysts say deeper reforms will be needed.

Adding to the demographic challenge, a shrinking workforce has to support record numbers of retirees, adding pressure on China’s modest social safety nets.

Taliban allows men to beat their wives as long as they don’t break bones or leave open wounds

Taliban authorities in Afghanistan have issued a draconian decree that makes sodomy punishable by death and allows men to beat their wives so long as they don’t break bones or leave visible, lasting wounds. Human rights campaigners have decried the move as “devastating” and warned that women’s recourse to justice would be further curtailed.

“The men have the right to rule completely the women,” rights activist Mahbouba Seraj told CNN from Kabul. “His word is the word of law – that’s it.”

The decree was issued last month but has only recently come to international attention after it was leaked to the Afghan rights group Rawadari, which published it in the original Pashto. The Afghanistan Analysts Network then translated the document into English.

The US just took out two China-friendly leaders in two months. Why has Beijing done very little about it?

In quick succession, US President Donald Trump has taken out two of Beijing’s closest allies: Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. The former is now in shackles in a New York detention facility after being snatched from Caracas by US special forces in an extraordinary overnight raid. The latter was killed in a daring daylight bomb drop in the center of Tehran in a joint US mission with Israel.

In the aftermath, China has responded with anger – condemning the capture or killing of a sovereign leader and the apparent US attempt at regime change while reaching out to Iran to express its friendship. But Beijing has done little more than look on as its geopolitical rival shakes up the rules of engagement.

Trump takes forceful steps to pressure Latin American leaders to reduce China ties

The U.S. imposed travel bans on three Chilean officials over the possible construction of a submarine fiber optic cable with China, while warning Peru against ceding control over a Chinese-built mega port.

Under pressure from President Donald Trump, who had threatened to take the Panama Canal back under U.S. control, the Panamanian government seized two ports at either end of the canal that had been run by a Hong Kong company. And when the U.S. captured Venezuela’s then-President Nicolás Maduro in January, China saw its extensive interests in the oil-rich country suddenly vulnerable.

The Trump administration in recent weeks has taken forceful steps in one Latin American country after another aimed at curbing the influence and economic dominance of China. As part of his quest to restore U.S. preeminence in the Western Hemisphere, the president is hosting Latin American leaders at his golf resort near Miami this weekend for a summit dubbed the “Shield of Americas.”