Kinaforum

fredag 4. september 2026

Asia looks to store oil, gas closer to home after Strait of Hormuz crisis

Asia suffered some of the worst economic fallout when the United States and Israel went to war with Iran six months ago.

The region is heavily reliant on Gulf oil and gas that normally flows through the Strait of Hormuz, where shipping has been reduced to a trickle by Iranian attacks and a US naval blockade.Asian countries quickly imposed fuel conservation measures as oil and gas prices surged, ranging from price caps to alternate driving days and work-from-home mandates for civil servants.

In the months since, Asia has begun seeking a more permanent solution to the biggest energy disruption in history – keeping the oil and gas it needs much closer to home.

China’s support for Iran shows its limits as US ramps up pressure on Tehran

China has long been a rare partner to Iran, with the economic heft to blunt the United States’ efforts to strangle the Iranian economy.

Yet even as China opposes US President Donald Trump’s latest pressure campaign, few observers expect it to go much further than the modest economic links it has thus far forged with Iran to shield it.While China opposes the Trump administration’s military attacks and sanctions against Iran, Beijing’s relationship with Tehran is just one consideration in a foreign policy that seeks to balance relations with numerous countries, including the US and the Gulf states, limiting its appetite to prop up the Iranian leadership at any cost, analysts say.

“China, with broader global interests, can only actively promote de-escalation of the US-Iran conflict, and cannot and will not engage in fierce confrontation with the US for Iran’s sake,” said Hongda Fan, director of the China-Middle East Center at Shaoxing University in China.

With multilateralism in decline, what's next for the world?

Donald Trump's visit to UN headquarters in New York in September 2025 was rife with symbolism.

As the US president stepped onto the escalator in the lobby ahead of his address, it stopped working. Then, the teleprompter failed during his speech, prompting the former TV star to tell the assembled heads of state and government, half-jokingly: "These are the two things I got from the United Nations: A bad escalator and a bad teleprompter."

The United Nations is the central institution of the post-World War II order, shaped in part by the United States and based on multilateralism and the balancing of interests. When the UN was founded in 1945, its goal was to prevent wars. Its mandate later expanded to include countless other areas, such as global health, development and climate protection.

Today, more than 80 years later, the UN's institutions, above all the Security Council, are widely considered to be in need of an overhaul, much like the UN headquarters itself.

How China buried Tibet flood images after Nepal disaster

When a catastrophic flash flood swept through the rugged China-Nepal border on August 26, the physical devastation was immediate. In Nepal, a black torrent of mud and rock tore through communities, leaving hundreds dead and thousands more missing along the borderlands. But across the frontier in Tibet, an autonomous region of China, the physical disaster was almost instantly followed by a digital one: the rapid, high-tech erasure of the catastrophe's visual evidence.

As survivors tried to upload raw footage of the deluge, China's state-backed information control apparatus swung into action, executing a sophisticated, precision operation to shape the public narrative and bury inconvenient truths.

Himalaya: Can communities be proteced from melting glaciers?

Rising temperatures are increasing the risk of floods and avalanches in mountain regions. The disaster in Nepal and Tibet shows the urgent need for solutions, and the tools that could help save lives.

High mountain glaciers formed in the ice age are retreating and becoming unstable as the burning of fossil fuels heats the climate and leads to a decline in snowfall. The instability creates the conditions for large glacial sections to collapse, triggering ice and rock avalanches that can dam river valleys before tidal waves of water are released.

Following the glacier collapse that triggered what is known as a mountain tsunami in Nepal and Tibet on August 26, thousands are still missing and feared dead. Unlike the 2025 glacier avalanche that destroyed the town of Blatten in Switzerland — where nearly all inhabitants were evacuated — a lack of early warning systems in the Himalayas left locals and tourists at the mercy of flash floods.

India rejects Hague ruling on Indus waters: What's next?

The Indus Waters Treaty is facing a fresh dispute after India rejected a Hague-based Court of Arbitration ruling that the 1960 agreement remains in force. Pakistan has welcomed the decision and said India remains bound by the treaty.

India's Ministry of External Affairs described the tribunal as a "so-called Court of Arbitration" that was "illegally constituted." It said the body had been established by the World Bank in breach of the treaty and that India "categorically rejects its so-called award, just as it has firmly rejected all prior pronouncements by this illegally constituted body."

"The Court of Arbitration has no jurisdiction whatsoever to pronounce on India's sovereign decisions," the ministry said.

India offers help to end war in Ukraine

India is ready to help end the war in Ukraine, Indian Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar said as he arrived in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, on Thursday.

"If India can be of any help, in any manner, we are there," Jaishankar said as he addressed the media alongside Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha. Sybiha welcomed Jaishankar for what he described as the "first-ever dedicated bilateral visit" of an Indian foreign minister to Ukraine.

"India is a global power and we welcome Prime Minister Modi's call to move from an endless war towards an end to the war. Ukraine stands ready for diplomacy," Sybiha wrote on X, referring to comments the Indian leader made during a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the SCO summit in Kyrgyzstan earlier in the week.

India’s power demand is surging, but some solar energy is going to waste

When India’s power demand surged at the height of summer, the country struggled to meet evening needs as air conditioners ran longer amid hotter nights. Despite this demand, some renewable energy providers were told to limit their output because the country had more clean electricity available than its grid could safely handle.

In the last 15 months, India curtailed nearly 11 terawatt-hours of solar generation — enough electricity to power about 10 million homes, according to government data and research by energy think tank Ember. That solar power went unused even as extreme heat and poor monsoon rains drove up demand for power in India for cooling and pumping groundwater for agriculture.

India, the world’s most populous country and one of the largest emitters of climate-polluting gases, is rapidly adding clean energy, especially solar, to its power mix. However, it can’t use all the clean power it could generate because of insufficient transmission and storage capacity and the technical difficulty of shifting between fossil power and renewables.

Pacific island nations seek to turn geopolitics into funding to offset climate change harm

When stormy seas batter Melekeok state on Palau’s biggest island, the Pacific Ocean floods right into people’s homes.

“We keep telling the legislature we need to move inward,” said Bol Sebalt, 43, who was born and raised on the low-lying beachfront. “But because of a shortage of funding we cannot.”

The fate of Melekeok, a chiefdom of 300 people, is echoed by stories from many island nations in remote parts of the vast Pacific Ocean. Their leaders, gathered for a summit in Palau this week, are wrestling once more with the question of how tiny countries with little global power can use major polluters’ geopolitical interest in their region to secure a chance of survival.

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Pacific leaders at summit fail to reach unanimous condemnation of China’s ballistic missile launch

Leaders of Pacific nations agreed at their summit to register collective “concern” about China’s launch of a ballistic missile into their waters, but they said Thursday their statement wasn’t unanimous and stopped short of a sterner rebuke of Beijing’s actions.

The willingness of the Pacific Island Forum’s member countries and territories to agree during this event to a joint reproach of China for the missile launch in July was seen by some as a litmus test for how much the geopolitical jostling in the region among major powers had destabilized relations among the group of mainly small island states. The test-launch came after China conducted a missile test in the Pacific two years ago, firing an intercontinental ballistic missile with a dummy warhead, the first since 1980.

Pacific leaders announcing decisions the group made during a private retreat day at their annual summit, held this year in Palau, said the island nation of Nauru — which has had warmer ties to China in recent years — dissented from the statement of concern.

Trump’s trade wars are making China’s Global South pitch easier

The latest US trade fight with Canada should matter far beyond North America.

After negotiations collapsed in August, President Donald Trump imposed 50% tariffs on about $20 billion of Canadian goods. Ottawa answered with tariffs on roughly the same value of US imports. Trump then threatened 50% duties on Canadian cars, trucks and parts from January. Canada is one of America’s closest allies and remains deeply tied to the US economy, which still takes nearly 70%of its exports. Yet the relationship has reached the point where Prime Minister Mark Carney describes the dispute as a trade war.

Canada is not part of the Global South, but its treatment carries a clear lesson for governments that have far less political protection in Washington. If a treaty ally and major trading partner can face sudden tariff escalation, demands touching its future trade agreements and pressure over domestic policy, other states have good reason to reduce their exposure.

China’s Xi keeps Iranian president at arm’s length weeks ahead of Trump summit

China’s President Xi Jinping gave his Iranian counterpart Masoud Pezeshkian a brief, low-profile audience at a regional security summit, signaling Beijing’s calibrated approach toward Tehran just weeks ahead of Xi’s planned trip to Washington.

The two leaders met for several minutes on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Kyrgyzstan on Tuesday, according to Iranian state media. The gathering brought together leaders of the 10-member bloc, including Russian President Vladimir Putin and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.The semi-official Mehr News Agency said that the Xi-Pezeshkian meeting focused on “bilateral ties in line with strengthening relations between Tehran and Beijing,” without offering further detail.

That contrasted with Beijing’s approach of keeping the meeting out of public view.

They were building infrastructure in Nepal. Their families in China want to know what happened to them

She kept calling and calling – countless times – but her husband never picked up. The woman, who CNN has given the pseudonym Lili, said her husband had spoken with a friend at 8:27am on Wednesday. That was roughly 10 minutes before an enormous landslide careened down a mountain in Nepal, generating an explosive flood wave that ripped through a border area with China and continued into Nepal.

Lili hasn’t heard from her husband, who was working on a Chinese construction project in the South Asian country, since.

Hers is one of many families across China desperate for information about loved ones who were in the area when disaster struck, including dozens of Chinese nationals who are believed to have been working across the border in Nepal.

Aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln arrives in Thailand after months of combat in Middle East

The aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln arrived in Thailand on Wednesday, its first port call in more than eight months, ending a marathon stint at sea in the Middle East that raised concerns about the welfare of its crew.

The Lincoln, the length of its hull stained by rust from the extended time at sea, pulled into the port of Laem Chabang, not far from the city of Pattaya, a prime destination for US military rest-and-relaxation visits since the Vietnam War. The 100,000-ton ship departed San Diego last November, and when it returns to Southern California later this year it will have completed one of the longest deployments in US Navy history.

China warns of ‘consequences’ for Taiwan after Taipei envoys attend Pacific leaders summit

China warned of “consequences” for Taiwan after officials from Beijing and Taipei attended a ceremonial event at a Pacific leaders summit, where major powers already had been urged to restrain from turning a meeting of mostly small island countries into a geopolitical sideshow.

The 18 member states and territories of the Pacific Islands Forum, which opened its annual summit in Palau’s largest city Koror on Monday, do not include China, the United States or Taiwan. However, battles for influence over the lucrative oceans and strategically important locations of the forum’s members this week threatened, as they have before, to overshadow its summit.

Some theater was expected at this year’s event because the host country, a western Pacific island nation next to the Philippines that has close ties to the U.S., is among the 11 countries and the Vatican that recognize Taiwan, which Beijing says is a part of China.

Bessent says 19 finance ministers agreed ‘cheap exports’ are unsustainable, but China dissented

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Tuesday that 19 of the members of the G20 had agreed to address streams of “cheap exports” that cause global economic imbalances, but said China had dissented. Bessent made his comments at the end of a two-day meeting with finance ministers and central bankers where he tried to focus on growth, telling reporters he had urged some of his G20 counterparts to take a page from the Trump administration’s playbook of using tariffs and other measures to crack down on trade imbalances.

“We believe that non-market-based economies pushing out a never-ending stream of cheap exports is not sustainable,” Bessent told reporters. describing the sentiment that all but one G20 member had agreed to.“It is clear that the country with the world’s largest and unsustainable current account surplus, the People’s Republic of China, was the dissenter,” Bessent said.

Xi visits Egypt as China seeks deeper influence across the Mideast

On the surface, Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Egypt this week is a run-of-the-mill opportunity for two countries to strengthen economic and diplomatic ties. But there is deep subtext to the meeting between Xi and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi: China, the United States’ top global rival, is cultivating an extensive relationship with one of America’s key allies in the Middle East as it moves to expand its influence in the rapidly changing region.

Xi aims to present China as a stabilizer in the region and contrast it with the United States, which for decades has been militarily entangled there — its six-month war with Iran being just the latest example.

Prominent Hong Kong activist Joshua Wong pleads guilty in second national security case

Prominent Hong Kong pro-democracy activist Joshua Wong pleaded guilty Wednesday to conspiracy to collude with foreign forces to endanger national security under a Beijing-imposed law that has effectively stifled the city’s once-thriving pro-democracy movement.

It was the second prosecution of Wong, a former student leader in the pro-democracy movement and one of its most recognizable faces, under the national security law introduced in Hong Kong in 2020 to quell massive anti-government protests that rocked the city the year before. Wong, 29, who wore a blue shirt, appeared thinner as he entered his plea. After hearing his lawyer’s arguments for a lesser prison term, Judge William Tam said a sentence would be delivered as soon as possible, without specifying a date.