Kinaforum

fredag 7. august 2026

Taiwan military exercises indicates closer ties with the US

Through this year’s military drills, Taiwan has chosen to emphasize its army’s and society’s flexibility and resilience as opposed to primarily putting advanced weapons on display. Experts say the exercises’ structure indicates closer ties with the U.S. military in the face of China’s ongoing military threat.

The annual Huang Kuang drills kicked off on Wednesday and are set to extend through Aug. 14 in various locations around the island. The live-fire exercises will test the Taiwanese army’s ability to sustain 24-hour defense operations as well as counter China’s “gray-zone tactics,” which stop just short of open warfare. China claims the self-ruled democracy as its own territory, and has not renounced the use of force to bring it under its control. Taiwan dismisses China’s claims and insists it is a sovereign state.

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A rare glimpse into Tibet, where some hope to preserve language and customs despite China’s new law

Kalsang Lhamo traces a series of vertical strokes, slow but firm, practicing Tibetan calligraphy. A 73-year-old retired nurse, she has spoken Tibetan all her life but never learned to write it. Now, in classes at a center for older adults, she immerses herself in the script.

Lhamo also speaks and writes Chinese, which China mandated as its primary language for schools and government agencies in a sweeping new “ethnic unity” law implemented July 1. Under the new regulations, acts deemed to incite division among China’s 56 ethnic groups are prohibited, and schools, families and other institutions are expected to foster patriotism, national unity and a strong sense of community for the Chinese nation.

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Indian intelligence flags China’s moves to assimilate, militarise Tibet

China is pursuing a two-pronged strategy in Tibet—systematically erasing the region’s Tibetan Buddhist identity while simultaneously building dual-use infrastructure that could strengthen its People’s Liberation Army (PLA) operational capabilities along the Line of Actual Control (LAC), reported news18.com Aug 6, citing top Indian intelligence sources.

The assessment was stated to be based on fresh evidence, including satellite imagery, eyewitness accounts and Chinese state media reports.

Actions like the demolition carried out few years ago of a landmark 99-foot Buddha statue in Sengdeng village in the Tibetan county of Draggo (Chinese: Luhuo) in Sichuan province to transform the site into a racecourse named the “Drago County Red Army Cavalry Division Racecourse” have been likened by local Tibetans to a “second Cultural Revolution”, the report said, citing a report by a group called Tibet Watch.

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Ahead of President Xi’s arrival, India and China agree to maintain border peace to boost ties

Ahead of President Xi Jinping’s expected visit to India in September for the BRICS summit, India and China have held their 36th meeting of the Working Mechanism for Consultation and Coordination (WMCC) on India‑China Border Affairs in New Delhi on Aug 6. And they have underlined that maintaining peace and tranquillity along their ⁠disputed Tibet frontier is essential for overall development of relations between them.

India’s Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said in a statement Aug 7 that the two sides exchanged views on boundary delimitation, border management, mechanism-building, and trans-border cooperation.

“The two sides engaged in frank discussions and reviewed the situation along the Line of Actual Control (LAC). Further, it was underlined that maintaining peace and tranquillity in the border areas is essential for the overall development of bilateral relations,” the MEA said.

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With America deranged, President Xi summons overseas Chinese

President Xi Jinping of China has summoned overseas Chinese to pool strengths and contribute to the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. This is not new. The People’s Republic of China has frequently called on the 60 million-strong Chinese diaspora to help the motherland, with periodic pronouncements seeking cultural ties, technical expertise and commercial opportunities all couched in aiding the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.

Most famously, 600,000 overseas Chinese heeded the call and returned from Southeast Asia after the People’s Republic was established in 1949. The grandfather of yours truly was among them, founding schools in Fujian province.

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As US and China throw up tit-for-tat sanctions, is Trump’s Xi meeting at risk?

The road to Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s expected visit to the United States next month is shaping up to be rockier than Beijing would have hoped.

Weeks ahead of the state visit, the world’s two largest economies have revived a tit-for-tat exchange of sanctions, with Beijing unveiling multiple measures against US firms or interests in what it said was retaliation for “erroneous” American moves. The US has banned imports of new humanoid robots (largely produced in China); sanctioned Chinese shipping operators alleged to be handling Iranian fuel; placed more than 40 Chinese firms on an entity list for alleged human rights violations; and added two top civilian universities to a Pentagon blacklist. It’s also threatened to sanction Chinese AI firms.

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China hits US with sanctions, drone export curbs ahead of Xi visit

torsdag 6. august 2026

China is claiming the right to punish its critics anywhere on Earth

On July 1, China brought into force its Law on Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress, converting a decade of Xi Jinping’s doctrine of “forging a strong sense of community for the Chinese nation” into binding law.

Most attention has gone to its domestic machinery: entrenching Mandarin over minority languages, issuing unified state textbooks and creating “inter-embedded” neighborhoods engineered to dilute concentrations of Uyghurs and Tibetans among the Han majority. In other words, this is an assimilationist project that’s already far advanced.

The provision that matters most to the world outside China is buried near the end. Article 63 declares that organizations and individuals outside Chinese territory who “undermine ethnic unity” or “create ethnic division” shall be pursued for legal liability.

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The Chinese Tea That Became a British Joke — and Those That Didn’t

China is the origin of tea, and its global vocabulary remains deeply rooted in Chinese. The English word “tea” derives from the Minnan (Hokkien) dialect, reflecting maritime trade routes that carried the leaf from the coastal ports of China’s eastern Fujian province to Europe. Meanwhile, “char” (or “cha”), originating from Mandarin or Cantonese, persists in British slang as a colloquial term for a cup of tea.

More recently, the Indian-derived “chai” — a popular blend of black tea, milk, sugar or honey, and spices — has gained traction in Western coffee shops. Yet the foundational lexicon of tea in English remains unmistakably Chinese.

While China produces a wide array of premium teas, English dictionaries have historically been highly selective in what they adopt. Among the commonly accepted lists of China’s most celebrated teas, only Wuyi rock tea (Bohea) and Keemun black tea (Keemun) traditionally made the cut, both transliterated from regional names. However, a closer reading of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) reveals a more expansive linguistic landscape: nearly 30 Chinese tea terms have been formally incorporated into English.

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Do the Math: Why China’s First Fields Medals Are Just the Beginning

When Wang Hong and Deng Yu became the first Chinese nationals to receive the Fields Medal — the so-called “Nobel Prize for mathematics” — on July 23, few people were as pleased as Shing-Tung Yau.
“For China’s math community, this is something we’ve hoped to see for decades,” Yau, a Chinese American mathematician who was awarded the Fields Medal in 1982, tells The Paper.“It gives us new hope. We can now envision the day when decisive breakthroughs are made by scholars trained entirely in China and are carried out on Chinese soil.”

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tirsdag 4. august 2026

Coming Together Against Silence: Reflections on the 3rd International Uyghur Forum, Ten Years After the Camps

Ten years have passed since the Chinese government launched one of the most extensive campaigns of mass repression in the twenty-first century. At the beginning in 2016, millions of Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples in East Turkistan were arbitrarily detained in a vast network of internment camps. While some of these facilities have since been closed or rebranded, the policies that gave rise to them have not disappeared. Instead, they have evolved into a more sophisticated system of surveillance, forced labor, family separation, cultural destruction, and forced assimilation.

Despite the gravity of these crimes, the Uyghur genocide is gradually fading from the international spotlight. The world’s attention has shifted to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, escalating conflicts across the Middle East. Although these crises rightfully demand urgent attention, the suffering of the Uyghur people has not ended simply because global headlines have moved elsewhere.

Against this backdrop, the 3rd International Uyghur Forum was convened in Berlin from June 11 to 13, 2026.

'I've finally spoken to my mum after seven years'

Millions of tourists just visited China's stunning Xinjiang region. There's a side they didn't see

What’s China’s new ethnic unity law, and what does it mean for minorities?

US companies are stepping up to cut reliance on China for critical minerals used in key weapons

Tucked inside a New Hampshire office park, a small refinery zaps mining waste with electricity to tease out critical minerals needed for key U.S. weapons systems, including missiles used in the Iran war.

It can play a part in helping America break the chokehold China has on processing critical minerals, but it will take up to a year and a half to build a new factory as the Trump administration pushes to expand domestic production. The company, Phoenix Tailings, recently got a $500 million loan from the Pentagon to ramp up its work, after starting out eight years ago as a backyard lab seeking a cleaner metal-refining method. It’s just the latest critical minerals company the government has backed.

The task that workers carry out in heat-resistant suits and sealed face masks has become more urgent as the Iran conflict draws down key munitions such as Tomahawk cruise missiles and THAAD interceptors.

Japan says combat drones key to adapting to new warfare as tension rises in the region

Japan needs to adapt to the new methods of warfare like drones and artificial intelligence used in Ukraine and the Middle East and strengthen its defense industry, the government said Tuesday.

Japan has bolstered its military capability and spending in recent years and has started deploying long-range cruise missiles as a deterrence to China’s military activity. The 598-page defense paper adopted by the Cabinet on Tuesday reiterated that China is Japan’s biggest strategic challenge. Japan is alarmed by the growing presence and frequency of Chinese warships in the Pacific Ocean.

The annual white paper outlines Japan’s military activity and priorities and analysis of military trends in specific countries. As Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s government needs public support for further military buildup and spending and to attract service members, the report has features to appeal to readers including a cartoon on the cover and links to video clips in Japanese, English and Chinese.

Why India’s Cockroach Movement Might Not Collapse Like the Others

When Indian Supreme Court Justice Surya Kant compared certain unemployed youth and activists to cockroaches and parasites in May, he gave a generation searching for a shared identity the charge required to build one. Within days that slur became a rallying cry. Millions of young Indians declared “Main Bhi Cockroach” (‘I too am a cockroach’), turned the insult into memes, and launched a political party in the same breath.

Some framed this as Prime Minister Narendra Modi misreading the political environment – after all, his own government gave India’s marginalized and unemployed youth the spark they needed to organize. But that top-down classic political framing overlooks emerging leadership theories, the mechanics of peer-to-peer digital communication, and global trends already underway. Gen Z uprisings had toppled or shaken governments in Nepal, Bangladesh, Kenya, and Madagascar over the previous two years. And each one built from the same digital scaffolding comprised of user digital trace creation, reproduction, and platform scalability.

In Mexico City, Young Chinese Women Are Becoming Their Own Bosses

At around noon, as she wraps up a meeting over the phone, Jiale Zhao steps out of an Uber onto Avenida Presidente Masaryk, sometimes called Mexico City’s Fifth Avenue, a high-end shopping area located in the Polanco district with numerous fine dining restaurants and flagships of luxury brands such as Hermès and Cartier. With long, wavy black hair and wearing a sleeveless light beige blouse, Zhao squeezes through a backdoor into a storefront under renovation, a chain-strap bag with a faint silver sheen hanging from her shoulder. Inside, rows of wires, metal pipes, and bags of construction materials line the floor. Five workers in neon orange vests and helmets are working. A speaker on the ground is playing salsa.

It’s a crisp day. Zhao’s mission in Mexico City is to launch the first and flagship restaurant in the country for a global Chinese chain of hot pot restaurants.

What Are Elon Musk’s Business Interests in China?

Tesla's operations in China are back in the spotlight after CEO Elon Musk dismissed a report the company may end operations in the country ahead of a possible merger with Musk's other flagship company, SpaceX. In an X post, Musk called The Wall Street Journal article "absurdly fake news" and said the departure of Tesla—the only one of his companies with a presence in China—had "not even come up in a discussion ever."

Any sale, closure, separation or spinoff of its China business, which The Wall Street Journal said Tesla advisers were weighing, would have major implications for both the company and one of its most important markets. The world's second-largest economy is also Tesla's second-largest market, despite fierce competition from Chinese electric vehicle makers such as BYD and XPeng, which have rapidly expanded by offering lower-priced models and introducing new features at a faster pace.

Japan outlines its military build-up plan, citing threats from China, Russia and North Korea

Japan’s government is portraying its accelerating military buildup not only as a way to protect the country but as a route to greater prosperity, arguing in ‌its latest defence white paper that arms production can support economic growth.

The annual assessment of threats posed by neighbouring China, Russia and North Korea calls for Japan, constrained for decades by postwar restrictions on military activity, to harness technology, to fund startups and use more commercial components in weapons production.

The white paper “stresses that investment in defence benefits the wider economy and people’s lives,” according to a Defence Ministry presentation document. That message aligns ⁠with Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s broader use of strategic state spending in an effort to drive economic growth.

Extreme heat costs poorest workers their health and wages

Brijpal Singh spends long hours working construction under the blazing sun in Noida, a sprawling industrial satellite city in India's National Capital Region. Even as temperatures soar past 45 degrees Celsius (113 Fahrenheit), work on the building site rarely stops.

By the end of each shift, the 51-year-old says his heart is pounding, and he's usually dizzy, dehydrated and physically drained from hours in the heat. Yet taking a day off is a luxury he cannot afford. Missing work would mean losing his daily wage of 500 to 600 rupees ($6 to $7, €5.20 to €6.10). The money supports his wife and three children living in a village in Uttar Pradesh, a two-day journey away .

"There are days when I don't feel like working," said Singh. "But if I miss a day, who will take care of my children and pay for their expenses?"

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company and the Global Chip Supply Chain

The modern digital economy runs on semiconductors, but few consumers realize how dependent it is on a single company. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), headquartered in Hsinchu, Taiwan, has become the cornerstone of the global semiconductor industry. Its manufacturing facilities produce many of the world’s most advanced logic chips, powering everything from artificial intelligence systems and smartphones to fighter aircraft, cloud computing infrastructure, medical devices, and autonomous vehicles.

Unlike consumer technology companies whose products are visible to the public, TSMC operates largely behind the scenes. It does not sell smartphones, laptops, or graphics cards under its own brand. Instead, it manufactures chips designed by hundreds of customers around the world, making it the world’s largest dedicated semiconductor foundry. This business model has transformed the technology industry and elevated Taiwan into one of the most strategically significant economies in the world.