Kinaforum

tirsdag 27. januar 2026

Xi has absolute control over China’s military. Now he wants more

Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s decision to place the country’s top-ranking general under investigation is a stunning move that leaves Xi virtually alone at the top of the military hierarchy – raising deep questions about the implications for the world’s largest armed forces, as well as Beijing’s ambitions to take control of Taiwan.

But the purge also makes one thing clear: Xi sees no target as too big to be taken down as he remakes the military according to his vision – and prioritizes loyalty over all else.

The investigations into Zhang Youxia, a battle-tested, seasoned military commander and longtime Xi ally, and Liu Zhenli, who heads People’s Liberation Army (PLA) joint operations, were announced Saturday in a terse 30-second video released by the defense ministry.

Questions Swirl Over Xi’s ‘Coup’ Against Top General

For Chinese Writers, a Room of Their Own on Fifth Avenue

Accent Sisters is a New York publisher, bookstore, event space, and online network dedicated to fostering Chinese and Asian diaspora creative writing and culture. It is a strong facilitator and participant in the Chinese cultural scene organically growing throughout cities around the world that is changing the meaning of being “Chinese.”

Founder Li Jiaoyang, a poet and visual artist, told me that she and her co-founders “wanted to build a community space to help writers like us, because we found what we like to write is not always what Westerners want to see.” She was a creative writing student at NYU, and “feeling very lonely” as the only Chinese student in her program when she met a friend in a similar position at the New School. Together they launched an interview series featuring Chinese writers who work in their second language. They called it Accent Sisters.

UK’s Starmer heads to China seeking a thaw in relations but risking a rift with Trump

U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer is heading to China, seeking a thaw in relations with Beijing at a time of strained ties with the United States. He’s hoping for an economic boost to Britain, but risks the wrath of China hawks at home — and of U.S. President Donald Trump, who’s already heaping tariffs and criticism on America’s closest allies.

Starmer is due to meet China’s President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Qiang during the visit to Beijing and Shanghai that starts Wednesday, the first by a U.K. leader since 2018. He is expected to be accompanied by Business Secretary Peter Kyle and dozens of corporate chiefs as Britain seeks Chinese technology and investment, alongside greater access to the world’s second-largest economy for U.K. financial services, cars and Scotch whisky.

“China is no longer just the world’s factory; it is also becoming a global market,” said Zhao Minghao, a professor in the Institute of International Studies at Shanghai’s Fudan University.

North Korea launches ballistic missiles into sea between Korean Peninsula and Japan

North Korea launched short-range ballistic missiles toward its eastern waters on Tuesday, according to its neighbors, as the North heightens animosities with rival South Korea ahead of a major political meeting.

South Korea’s military said it detected liftoffs of several ballistic missiles from an area north of the North Korean capital Pyongyang before the missiles each flew about 350 kilometers (217 miles). Japan’s Defense Ministry said two ballistic missiles launched from North Korea and landed off the eastern coast of the Korean Peninsula. The ministry condemned the launches as a threat to the peace of Japan, the region and the international community.

South Korea’s military said it maintains a firm readiness to repel any provocations by North Korea.

India and EU clinch the ‘mother of all deals’ in a historic free trade agreement

After nearly two decades of negotiations, India and the European Union announced Tuesday they have reached a free trade agreement to deepen economic and strategic ties. The accord, which the EU chief described as the “mother of all deals,” could affect as many as 2 billion people.

The deal between two of the world’s biggest markets comes as Washington targets both India and the EU with steep import tariffs, disrupting established trade flows and pushing major economies to seek alternate partnerships. “This agreement will bring major opportunities for the people of India and Europe,” India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in a virtual address to an energy conference. “It represents 25% of the global GDP and one-third of global trade.”

A New Global Scene for Independent Chinese Film

This November, two unrelated festivals of independent Chinese-language films are taking place outside of China. The CiLENS Berlin Indie Chinese Cinema Week, which runs from November 1 to 9, is now in its fourth year. In New York, the inaugural IndieChina Film Festival is on from November 8 to 15.

It’s a surprisingly positive development. “Many of us attending a conference on Chinese independent cinema in Newcastle in 2023 wondered if we were in some sense officiating over a funeral for that movement,” cinema curator Shelly Kraicer told me when I reached out to see if he felt the same, but these two festivals “suggest we may have been a bit premature.”

There had been a brief flourishing of independent Chinese film festivals and screenings inside China during the early 2000s, which accelerated as cheap, high-quality digital cameras and pirate DVDs of global documentaries and art films became widely available in China. That era ended with the harsher cultural restrictions of the Xi Jinping era: The 11th and final Beijing Independent Film Festival was shut down on its opening day in 2014. There have not been any independent film festivals of any size or international repute in China since then.

A Surrogacy Silk Road: Chinese Parents Head West for Babies

On the popular Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu, also known as RedNote, an account called “Georgia Notes” offers tips and advice to Chinese nationals planning a trip to the Republic of Georgia. In one post, it warns “ordinary tourists traveling back to China” that their five-hour-long return flight from Tbilisi to Ürümchi, in Xinjiang, is likely to be crowded with crying newborn babies. An unpleasant surprise, assures the author of the post, who counted 20 infants aboard his own flight: “I felt something was wrong from the moment I checked in. A group of middle-aged men were checking in with newborn babies.”

Georgia has become an increasingly popular destination for Chinese visitors. The number of visits nearly tripled between 2023 and 2024, with more than 88,500 visits last year. Yet leisure tourism does not account for the infant-filled flights back to China. Rather, it seems more likely the tiny passengers were the reason many Chinese visitors had traveled to Georgia in the first place.

Mark Tully, BBC correspondent known as the ‘voice of India,’ dies at 90

Mark Tully, a longtime BBC correspondent who was widely known as the “voice of India” for his reporting on the South Asian nation, has died, the broadcaster said. He was 90. Tully died Sunday at a New Delhi hospital after a brief illness.

Born in India’s Kolkata city in 1935, Tully joined the BBC in 1965 and was appointed its New Delhi correspondent in 1971. He later served for more than two decades as the BBC’s bureau chief for South Asia. Tully reported on some of India’s most consequential events, including the 1971 India-Pakistan war that led to the creation of Bangladesh, the siege of the Golden Temple in 1984, the 1991 assassination of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and the 1992 demolition of the Babri mosque, which triggered nationwide riots. Tully also reported from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi described Tully as “a towering voice of journalism.”

Trump administration invests in another US rare earth miner to loosen China’s grip on supply

The U.S. is taking a minority stake in an Oklahoma rare earth miner, the latest government investment in the sector as it seeks to minimize its reliance on imports of a material used prevalently in smartphones, robotics, electric vehicles and many other high tech products.

China processes more than 90% of the world’s critical minerals and has used its dominance in the market to gain leverage in the trade war with Washington. USA Rare Earth said Monday that the U.S. Commerce Department is investing $1.6 billion in the company to advance work on a mine in Texas and to build a magnet manufacturing facility in Oklahoma.

Shares of USA Rare Earth jumped more than 13% before U.S. markets opened.

Germany weighs boon and bane of China's industrial expansion

Inside a hall stretching more than 100 meters (about 330 feet), countless robots hum as lights blink and warning signals chirp. Currently, only about a dozen people are working on the floor, with the remaining work being handled by high-performance machines.

Journalists are rarely allowed inside this high-tech factory from China, and when they are, the rules are strict: no photos, smartphone cameras are taped over, and even short audio recordings require approval from a press spokesperson.

The plant shrouded in secrecy is not located somewhere in China, but in Arnstadt, a small town in the eastern German state of Thuringia. It belongs to Contemporary Amperex Technology (CATL), the Chinese global market leader in electric vehicle batteries. The factory produces 14 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of battery capacity a year — enough for at least 200,000 electric cars — supplying, among others, European automakers.

Japan returns last 2 pandas to China amid strained ties

The twin pandas Xiao Xiao and Lei Lei received visits from hordes of fans at their zoo home in Tokyo on Sunday ahead of their return to China at the end of the month, which comes as strained Japanese-Chinese ties make it unlikely that they will be replaced any time soon.

Their departure will leave Japan without the cuddly black-and-white animals for the first time since 1972, when China presented the country with two pandas, Kang Kang and Lan Lan, as a gift intended to mark the normalization of bilateral diplomatic ties.

China is known for sending pandas to other countries as a sign of good will. However, Chinese-Japanese ties have deteriorated greatly over the past few months, particularly since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said in November that a potential Chinese attack on Taiwan, the self-governing democratic island Beijing claims as its own, could bring about a Japanese military response.

China didn’t grab many headlines at Davos, but it’s the elephant in the room

While high-profile world leaders in Davos last week opined on U.S. claims to Greenland, China’s envoy reiterated calls for cooperation. Businesses and analysts in China said the developments highlighted an opportunity for Beijing to expand its influence globally as tensions between the U.S. and its allies grow.

This year’s Davos is a “watershed” moment, said Hai Zhao, a director of international political studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a state-affiliated think tank. He said countries are likely to shift toward regional trade, rather than a global economy centered on the U.S.

The world’s second-largest economy sent He Lifeng, one of its four vice premiers, to Davos, where he promoted business opportunities in China and called for the fair treatment of Chinese companies. In his speech Tuesday, He cited U.S.-China trade talks as an example of cooperation, with no specific discussion of other countries.

Carney says Canada not pursuing free trade deal with China as Trump threatens 100% tariffs

Canada has “no intention” of pursuing a free trade deal with China, Prime Minister Mark Carney said, after U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to slap punitive tariffs on Ottawa. Speaking to reporters on Sunday, Carney said that the country respects its obligations under the Canada-U.S.-Mexico trade agreement, known as CUSMA in Canada and the USMCA in the U.S., and will not pursue a free trade agreement without notifying the other two parties.

Carney’s remarks come after Trump threatened to put a 100% tariff on Canadian exports if Ottawa “makes a deal” with Beijing. “If Governor Carney thinks he is going to make Canada a ‘Drop Off Port’ for China to send goods and products into the United States, he is sorely mistaken,” Trump posted on Truth Social Saturday.

Russia looks to India to fill labor shortage

At least 40,000 Indian citizens are expected to come to Russia as workers in 2026.

This was recently announced by Boris Titov, Russia's special representative for relations with international organizations in the field of sustainable development, to the Russian news agency RIA Novosti. Vinay Kumar, the Indian ambassador in Moscow who also spoke with the agency, said between 70,000 and 80,000 Indian citizens were already working in Russia at the end of 2025.

This movement from India to Russia has its origins in an agreement on labor mobility signed in December 2025 at a meeting in New Delhi between Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Russian President Vladimir Putin. The document plans for a quota of over 70,000 Indian citizens for 2026.

Nvidia’s Huang to visit China as AI chip sales stall

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang plans to visit China in the coming days ahead of the mid-February Lunar New Year, two people familiar with the matter told CNBC. The trip comes as questions persist over the U.S. chip giant’s ability to sell in the Chinese market, which once accounted for at least one-fifth of revenuefrom Nvidia’s data center business.

U.S. export restrictions have prevented Nvidia from selling its most advanced chips to China as Washington seeks to maintain an edge over Beijing in chips used to develop cutting-edge artificial intelligence. Huang is expected to attend an Nvidia company party in Beijing on Monday, said one of the sources, who requested anonymity to speak about the trip.

He is also set to meet with potential buyers in China and discuss recent logistical challenges in supplying U.S.-approved Nvidia chips into the market, according to a person with direct knowledge of the travel plans.

Where is the US-China AI 'race' heading in 2026?

One year ago this week, Silicon Valley and Wall Street were shocked by the release of China's DeepSeek mobile app, which rivaled US-based large language models like ChatGPT by showing comparable performance on key benchmarks at a fraction of the cost while using less-advanced chips.

DeepSeek opened a new chapter in the US-China rivalry, with the world recognizing the competitiveness of Chinese AI models, and Beijing pouring more resources into developing its own AI ecosystem.

In its AI action plan released several months after DeepSeek's emergence, President Donald Trump's administration laid out the stakes in stark terms: "The United States is in a race to achieve global dominance in artificial intelligence (AI)." The plan, titled "Winning the Race: America's AI Action Plan," called for rolling back regulatory barriers that allegedly hinder innovation and leveraging the dominance of US tech around the world.

EU, India set for historic trade deal amid US tariffs

At a high stakes summit in New Delhi this week, the EU and India are expected to finalize a free trade agreement and sign a new security and defense partnership, the third such agreement between the EU and an Asian country after Japan and South Korea.

"Despite longstanding arguments in favor of a closer partnership, including shared competition with China and trade incentives for both parties, it was Russia's invasion of Ukraine and Trump's punitive tariffs that have brought momentum to the relationship," said Praveen Donthi, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group based in Delhi.

Before the summit, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa will be the chief guests at India's Republic Day celebrations on Monday, when diverse floats from all over country will be on display alongside parading tanks and soldiers. They are the first top EU officials to be invited to take part in the event.

Pentagon to reduce its role in deterrence of North Korea

The Pentagon foresees a “more limited” role in deterring North Korea, with South Korea taking primary responsibility for the task, a Pentagon policy document released on Friday said, in a move likely to raise concern in Seoul.

South Korea hosts about 28,500 US troops in combined defence against North Korea’s military threat and Seoul has raised its defence budget by 7.5% for this year. “South Korea is capable of taking primary responsibility for deterring North Korea with critical but more limited US support,” said the National Defense Strategy, a document that guides the Pentagon’s policies.

“This shift in the balance of responsibility is consistent with America’s interest in updating US force posture on the Korean Peninsula,” the document added. In recent years, some US officials have signalled a desire to make US forces in South Korea more flexible to operate outside the Korean peninsula in response to a broader range of threats, such as defending Taiwan and checking China’s growing military reach.