Kinaforum

søndag 14. desember 2025

Jimmy Lai, former pro-democracy newspaper founder, to hear verdict in national security case

A Hong Kong court will deliver its verdict on Monday in the trial of former pro-democracy media mogul Jimmy Lai, who’s charged with conspiracies to commit sedition and collusion with foreign forces in a case that marks how much the semi-autonomous Chinese city has changed since Beijing began a wide-ranging crackdown on dissent five years ago.

Lai, 78, was arrested in 2020 under a national security law imposed by Chinese authorities to quell the massive anti-government protests that rocked the city in 2019.

Lai’s 156-day trial is being closely watched by foreign governments and political observers as a test of the judicial independence and media freedom in the former British colony, which was promised it could maintain its Western-style civil liberties for 50 years after returning to Chinese rule in 1997.

‘We Can’t Even Afford to Have Sex’: China’s New Condom Tax Draws Ire

The Chinese government is testing out a new solution to falling birth rates: making sex more expensive.

Consumers will pay a 13% value-added tax on contraceptive drugs and products, including condoms, beginning Jan. 1, as part of China’s newly revised Value-Added Tax Law. Those products have been exempted from tax since 1993 as part of China’s one-child policy, which heavily penalized families for having more than one child from 1980 to 2015. As the country’s birth rate has fallen in recent years, the government has turned to seeking to boost birth rates with a range of incentives and subsidies.

Officially, the latest move has been framed as a “technical adjustment within a broader tax-system reform,” says Yuan Mei, assistant professor in the School of Economics at Singapore Management University. The focus has been about “administrative consistency rather than demographic goals.”

As China has shifted from fearing that rapid population growth in the 1970s would strain resources and hamper economic development to wanting to reverse falling birth rates, some experts say it is reasonable that the government’s policies reflect that change.

Gordon G. Chang: Trump’s National Security Strategy Sugarcoats China Threat | Opinion

At a time when the Chinese regime is assaulting the U.S. at home and abroad, President Donald Trump’s national security strategy does not label China as a threat. The document, released December 4, states that America seeks “a genuinely mutually advantageous economic relationship with Beijing.”

The Wall Street Journal reported that the Biden administration outlined China as “the U.S.’s primary foreign-policy challenge” in its national security strategy.That’s no longer the case. As the paper pointed out, “The White House’s new national-security strategy signals a softer approach to competition with Beijing, playing down ideological differences between the two superpowers and marking a break from years in which China was singled out as posing the U.S.’s greatest challenge.”

Thailand declares curfew along coast as Cambodia border fighting spreads

Thailand announced a curfew in its southeastern Trat province on Sunday as fighting with Cambodia spread to coastal areas of a disputed border region, two days after US President and would-be peacemaker Donald Trump said the sides had agreed to stop.

The Southeast Asian neighbours have resorted to arms several times this year since a Cambodian soldier was killed in a May skirmish, reigniting a conflict that has displaced hundreds of thousands of people on both sides of the border.

“Overall, there have been clashes continuously” since Cambodia again reiterated its openness to a ceasefire on Saturday, Thai Defence Ministry spokesman Rear Admiral Surasant Kongsiri told a press conference in Bangkok after announcing the curfew.

Philippines says China Coast Guard damages fishing vessels

Authorities say three Filipino fishermen were injured when the Chinese Coast Guard fired water cannon at their boats. The incident comes amid rising confrontations in the South China Sea. Three Filipino fishermen were injured and two fishing boats suffered "significant damage" after Chinese Coast Guard vessels fired water cannon at them and cut anchor lines, Philippine authorities said Saturday.

The incident, which involved some 20 Philippine fishing boats, occurred on Friday near the Sabina Shoal, a fish-rich area in the South China Sea. Beijing claims the South China Sea almost in its entirety in the face of an international ruling that the assertion is legally unfounded. The fishermen "were targeted with water cannon and dangerous blocking maneuvers," a Philippine Coast Guard spokesman said in a statement Saturday.

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A velvet reset: Trump’s new strategy hands China breathing space

For years, Washington framed China as the defining adversary of the American century. The National Security Strategy released on December 4 has quietly abandoned that posture. At just 33 pages, the document mentions China sparingly and never as an existential threat. Instead, it treats Beijing as a major power with which the United States must reach “reciprocity and fairness” in trade.

The shift is deliberate and, from a Chinese perspective, long overdue. After a decade of being cast as the villain in successive Pentagon papers and Biden-era strategies that labelled China a “pacing challenge” and “systemic rival,” Beijing now finds itself described in language that prioritizes economic rebalancing over ideological confrontation.

This is not weakness on Washington’s part; it is realism born of exhaustion with endless confrontation and recognition that tariffs and technology bans have hurt American farmers, manufacturers and consumers as much as Chinese exporters. Beijing would be wise to pocket the concession and widen the opening before domestic politics in either capital reverses course.

Andrew Korybko: Russia-US détente can revolutionize global economic architecture

I have explained in a separate analysis that joint strategic resource investments after the end of the Ukrainian Conflict, particularly in energy and critical minerals, can assist the US in economically competing with China.

This vision aligns with the focus of the new National Security Strategy on securing critical resource supply chains, and it can prospectively be expanded to aid the United States’ allies, further advancing US goals.After all, the bulk of the strategy documents Asian section isn’t about the US military competition with China (though a subsection details efforts to deter it in Taiwan and the South China Sea). It’s more about their economic competition and the ways in which America’s allies can help the West keep pace with the People’s Republic.

It even proposes joint cooperation “with regard to critical minerals in Africa” for gradually reducing and ultimately eliminating collective dependence on China’s associated supply chains.

Chinese Electric Buses Are Thriving in Europe – Despite Security and Forced Labor Concerns

As Chinese electric buses have made inroads into European cities, potential security issues have been raised by the media. Recently, both the Danish and Norwegian public broadcasters reported on the risks of operating buses that can be “switched off remotely” from China. Such concerns feed into a broader debate about China’s growing dominance in the green tech sector – a debate that recently prompted EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to stress that “we should learn our lesson.”

Yet these security and dependency concerns have so far done little to deter European transport companies from operating Chinese buses. In Denmark, where Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has repeatedly warned against excessive reliance on Chinese suppliers, no less than 68 percent of Copenhagen’s city buses are currently “made by China,” a figure set to rise to 80 percent by 2027.

A Chinese official exposed his boss. Now in Texas, he’s hunted by Beijing - with help from US tech

Retired Chinese official Li Chuanliang was recuperating from cancer on a Korean resort island when he got an urgent call: Don’t return to China, a friend warned. You’re now a fugitive.

Days later, a stranger snapped a photo of Li in a cafe. Terrified South Korea would send him back, Li fled, flew to the U.S. on a tourist visa and applied for asylum. But even there — in New York, in California, deep in the Texas desert — the Chinese government continued to hunt him down with the help of surveillance technology.

Li’s communications were monitored, his assets seized and his movements followed in police databases. More than 40 friends, relatives, and associates — including his pregnant daughter — were identified and detained, even by tracking down their cab drivers through facial recognition software. Three former associates died in detention, and for months shadowy men Li believed to be Chinese operatives stalked him across continents, interviews and documents seen by The Associated Press show.

How Trump’s tariffs forced China to pivot – and export more

Just a year ago, Chinese manufacturers, fearing a new trade war, rushed to push out exports following the election victory of US President Donald Trump, who had pledged to slap punishing tariffs on imports from China over America’s widening trade deficit. A year later, Trump has delivered on his promise. But China has pivoted – and exported more.

In a striking display of resilience, the world’s second-largest economy notched a record trade surplus of $1 trillion in just the first 11 months of the year – a milestone no other nation has achieved.

The stunning outcome – underscoring that the American market is not entirely irreplaceable – has bolstered Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s confidence in taking a hardball approach with Trump throughout this year’s protracted trade war. While the two countries have dialed back tensions and returned to a fragile trade truce after Trump and Xi’s meeting in October, a final agreement remains nowhere in sight.

Thailand vows to keep fighting Cambodia, hours after Trump’s ceasefire call

Thailand’s leader vowed on Saturday to keep fighting on the disputed border with Cambodia as fighter jets struck targets, hours after US President Donald Trump said he had brokered a new ceasefire. Caretaker Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul said the Southeast Asian nation would “continue to perform military actions until we feel no more harm and threats to our land and people.”

Trump, who brokered a ceasefire in the long-running border dispute in October, spoke to Anutin and Cambodian premier Hun Manet on Friday, and said they had agreed to “cease all shooting.” Neither of them mentioned any agreement in statements after their calls with Trump, and Anutin said there was no ceasefire.

North Korea’s Kim Jong Un hails troops returning from Russia

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un attended a welcoming ceremony for an army engineering unit that had returned home after carrying out duties in Russia, the North’s KCNA news agency reported on Saturday.

In a speech carried by KCNA, Kim praised officers and soldiers of the 528th Regiment of Engineers of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) for “heroic” conduct and “mass heroism” in fulfilling orders issued by the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea during a 120-day overseas deployment. Video footage released by North Korea showed uniformed soldiers disembarking from an aircraft, Kim hugging a soldier seated in a wheelchair, and soldiers and officials gathered to welcome the troops.

KCNA said the unit had been dispatched in early August and carried out combat and engineering tasks in the Kursk region of Russia during Moscow’s war with Ukraine.

Congress would target China with new restrictions in massive defense bill

The Trump administration may have softened its language on China to maintain a fragile truce in their trade war, but Congress is charging ahead with more restrictions in a defense authorization bill that would deny Beijing investments in highly sensitive sectors and reduce U.S. reliance on Chinese biotechnology companies.

Included in the 3,000-page bill approved Wednesday by the House is a provision to scrutinize American investments in China that could help develop technologies to boost Chinese military power. The bill, which next heads to the Senate, also would prohibit government money to be used for equipment and services from blacklisted Chinese biotechnology companies.

In addition, the National Defense Authorization Act would boost U.S. support for the self-governing island of Taiwan that Beijing claims as its own and says it will take by force if necessary.

China’s new ‘condom tax’ draws skepticism and worries over health risks

China will soon start collecting a value-added tax on contraceptive drugs and products for the first time in over three decades, a move aligned with Beijing’s effort to get families to have more children after decades of limiting most to one child.

“Contraceptive drugs and products” will not be tax-exempt as of Jan. 1, according to the country’s newest value-added tax law. Products such as condoms will be subject to the usual 13% value-added tax imposed on most products.

While state-run news outlets have not widely highlighted the change, it has been trending on Chinese social media, drawing ridicule among people who joked they’d have to be fools not to know that raising a child is more expensive than using condoms, even if they are taxed.

More seriously, experts are raising concerns over potential increases in unplanned pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases due to higher costs for contraceptives. The ruling Communist Party’s past “one-child” policy was enforced from about 1980 until 2015 with huge fines and other penalties and sometimes with forced abortions. In some cases, children born over the limit were deprived of an identification number, effectively making them non-citizens.

China Is Set To Lose a Population the Size of California in 10 Years

China’s population is projected to fall by more than California’s current population in the next 10 years—and that is only the start. U.N. estimates show the country could be down about 140 million by 2050, and roughly 760 million by 2100.

A falling birth rate means a shrinking, aging population. This results in fewer workers supporting more retirees—which drags on growth, strains pensions and health care, and hampers long-term innovation and fiscal stability. China's population decline is precipitous, as U.N. data shows.

For decades, China’s population story was one of rapid expansion. Even into the 2000s, the country was still adding millions of people a year—a demographic tail wind that helped power breakneck economic growth.

Josh Hammer: Don’t Go Wobbly on China

As the sun rises on a new Trump-era geopolitical chapter, Washington confronts a defining choice: Will America view the People's Republic of China and its regnant Communist Party through the rose-colored lens of transaction and diplomacy, or will it soberly recognize Beijing as America's foremost geopolitical adversary in a multigenerational cold war?

The stakes could not be higher, and the answer ought to be simple. We should stop treating China with kid gloves—as a spirited economic or diplomatic competitor—and start treating it as the existential challenge to the American republic and the American way of life that it demonstrably is.

In June, federal prosecutors in Michigan charged multiple Chinese nationals with conspiring to smuggle dangerous biological pathogens into the United States for use in American university research laboratories. The case centered on Fusarium graminearum, a fungus widely classified as a "potential agroterrorism weapon" because of its ability to ravage crops and cause serious harm to humans and livestock. Prosecutors alleged that the defendants received funding from the Chinese government and brought the pathogen into the U.S. for ostensible "lab work" at the University of Michigan. As if the University of Michigan needed to use smugglers to acquire research materials.

Trump’s security strategy is making a hard pivot on China. Why now?

When the Trump administration unveiled its new national security strategy (NSS) last week, many experts noticed one major shift: how it talks – or more importantly, doesn’t talk – about China.

Gone are the sweeping declarations about China being “America’s most consequential geopolitical challenge,” as articulated by the Biden administration. Nor does it include much of the stronger language in the NSS of President Donald Trump’s first term, describing China in 2017 as challenging “American power, influence and interests.”

Instead, this latest document, one that every president submits to Congress outlining their foreign policy vision, emphasized the US-China economic rivalry above all – barely mentioning the concerns of authoritarianism or human rights abuses that had consistently peppered previous administrations’ reports.

China builds an electromagnetic kill zone in the South China Sea

With a surge of hidden electronic warfare upgrades, China is reshaping the South China Sea into an electronic battlespace tilted decisively in its favor.

This month, the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative (AMTI) reported that China has quietly expanded its electronic warfare and surveillance infrastructure across its artificial island bases in the disputed Spratly Islands. The upgrades, implemented between 2023 and 2025, bolster China’s ability to monitor and contest activity in the South China Sea, a strategic waterway claimed by multiple nations.

Satellite imagery shows new antenna arrays and mobile electronic warfare vehicles deployed on Fiery Cross, Mischief and Subi reefs. At least six paved sites with monopole antennas were installed, each oriented toward the sea. The facilities appear linked to vehicle-mounted jamming systems designed to target specific electromagnetic bands. At Subi Reef, a roofed shelter was built in 2025 to house the units, while Mischief Reef hosts five vehicles connected to fixed arrays.