Torbjørn Færøvik: Midnight in the Kremlin - The Speech That Shattered the Stalin Cult (1956)

Something extraordinary happened in Moscow late in the evening of February 25, 1956. The delegates to the 20th Congress of the Communist Party were preparing to go to bed when they were suddenly ordered back to the assembly hall. “Quick! Hurry!”

St. George’s Hall in the Kremlin was at that time the Soviet Union’s most important political meeting chamber. There the party’s First Secretary, Nikita Khrushchev, was waiting for them. The doors were closed, and before he mounted the podium, the delegates were strictly instructed not to take notes of the speech.

“Comrades,” Khrushchev said, surveying the hall. Over the next four hours he would shake the party, the Soviet Union, and the world. It did not take long before he began to lash out at his predecessor, Joseph Stalin. Stalin! The greatest man under heaven, Lenin’s faithful disciple, the Marxist-Leninist genius, the father of nations, and much more.

Torbjørn Færøvik: Da Khrusjtsjov hudflettet Stalin

Noe underlig skjedde i Moskva sent på kvelden den 25. februar 1956. Delegatene til kommunistpartiets 20. kongress var i ferd med å gå til sengs da de plutselig ble beordret tilbake til møtesalen. «Fort! Skynd dere!»

St. Georgsalen i Kreml var på den tiden den viktigste politiske møtesalen i Sovjetunionen. Der ventet partiets generalsekretær, Nikita Khrusjtsjov, på dem. Dørene ble lukket, og før han gikk på talerstolen, fikk delegatene streng beskjed om ikke å ta notater av talen.

«Kamerater», sa Khrusjtsjov og så ut over salen. De neste fire timene skulle han ryste partiet, Sovjetunionen og verden. Det varte ikke lenge før han begynte å hudflette sin forgjenger, Josef Stalin. Stalin! Det største menneske under himmelen, Lenins trofaste disippel, det marxist-leninistiske geni, nasjonenes far og mye mer.

India kicks off AI Impact Summit amid rising safety concerns

New Delhi is set to host a five-day global artificial intelligence summit starting Monday to discuss the challenges and opportunities associated with the technology, amid rising concerns of job security and child safety. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is hosting the summit that kicks off on Monday afternoon.

The annual summit will be the fourth of its kind, with previous meetings being held in France, South Korea and the UK. This is the first time it is being hosted by a developing country. India has quickly climbed the ranks of AI competitiveness as calculated by Stanford University researchers, landing in the third place last year behind the US and China.

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Lunar New Year gives luxury brands a chance to win back big spenders in China

Luxury brands from Harry Winston to Loewe are going all in on Lunar New Year collections in a bid to attract Chinese customers.

Ahead of the Year of the Horse, which starts on Tuesday, Harry Winston unveiled a limited-edition, $81,500 rose gold watch with diamond bezels and a red lacquer horse. High-end fashion brand Chloé released a capsule collection, ranging from $250 silk scarves to a $5,300 snakeskin and leather shoulder bag with a horse head and tail linked by a horsebit chain. A slew of other brands, including Loewe, Gucci and Loro Piana, have introduced new bag charms with horse motifs.

The Year of the Horse arrives at a time of cautious optimism for designer brands and could mark the start of a China’s luxury market comeback.

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US, China embracing risk in Pakistan’s violent mineral frontier

For much of Pakistan’s modern history, Balochistan has been described in terms of risk and security, political grievances and stalled development. Its immense mineral wealth, long noted in geological surveys and policy debates, has yet to translate into sustained, meaningful international investment. The result has been a persistent gap between promise and reality, shaping global perceptions of the province as a frontier of dangerous uncertainty rather than a destination for long-term economic commitment.That narrative, however, is beginning to change. 

Renewed waves of Chinese and Pakistani investment, focused on the long-delayed Reko Diq project, suggest that major investors are reassessing both the scale of Balochistan’s buried mineral treasures and the strategic logic of remaining engaged despite chronic instability and insurgent threat.

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China’s Nuclear Acceleration Revealed in Satellite Images

China is building out and redesigning sites connected to its nuclear weapons program, according to a new report, as the lapse of the world's last treaty limiting nuclear weapons has fueled fears of a new nuclear arms race.

Several facilities linked to China's nuclear weapons in country's southwest Sichuan province have been refurbished or expanded in the past seven years, The New York Times reported on Sunday.

The only remaining agreement on long-range, highly-destructive nuclear weapons expired earlier this month. New START had put caps on how many strategic nuclear weapons both the U.S. and Russia could have and no fresh deal has replaced it.

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China Dreams of Challenging US Dollar Supremacy

President Xi Jinping has set his sights on a "powerful" currency befitting China's growing stature on the world stage, one that could challenge if not erode the U.S. dollar's decades-long dominance in financial markets.

But the Chinese yuan, or renminbi, is unlikely to become a key player in foreign exchange reserves without sweeping structural reforms that Beijing has been hesitant to make, analysts say.Despite lackluster consumer demand and a five-year housing slump, China still is by many measures in an enviable position. It is the world’s second-largest economy by nominal gross domestic product—and the largest in purchasing power parity terms—and it drove 30 percent of global economic growth last year, Chinese officials say.

China also boasts the largest banking system by assets, enabling it to fund large-scale infrastructure projects at home and abroad. It also has the world’s largest stockpile of foreign exchange reserves—a substantial buffer against financial shocks.

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China’s Xi Celebrates Recent Military Purges

Chinese leader Xi Jinping has appeared to celebrate a series of political purges that he ordered that have roiled the People's Liberation Army, as China's military media heaped him with high accolades in messages marking the imminent start of China's new year.

Speaking via video link from military headquarters in a building in the heart of Beijing this week, Xi sent his greetings to troops around the country for the new year that begins next week, calling the past year "very unusual, very extraordinary" and saying it was a year marked by "political rectification," a Communist Party term for enforcing ideological discipline and for purges.

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Xi Jinping Is Losing Control of China’s Military

India, China and the regret of Gyalo Thondup

Gyalo Thondup, who died on February 8, 2026, at 97 at the Indian hill station Kalimpong, carried with him secrets of a vanished era — and a warning for the present one. As the elder brother of the 14th Dalai Lama and a principal architect of the Tibetan resistance, Thondup stood at the intersection of Tibet’s tragedy and Asia’s great-power rivalries.

His memoir, The Noodle Maker of Kalimpong, pulls back the curtain on a shadow war that entangled Tibet, India, China and the United States. It also offers a sobering lesson for New Delhi today.Thondup’s greatest regret, he wrote, was trusting the CIA.

He wrote, “in all my life, I have only one regret: my involvement with the CIA. Initially, I genuinely believed that the Americans wanted to help us fight for our independence. Eventually, I realized that was not true. It was misguided and wishful thinking on my part. The CIA’s goal was never independence for Tibet. In fact, I do not think that the Americans ever really even wanted to help. They just wanted to stir up trouble, using the Tibetans to create misunderstandings and discord between China and India. Eventually they were successful in that. The 1962 Sino-Indian border war was one tragic result.”

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his holiday is the world’s biggest homecoming. But how do you celebrate in the midst of grief?

Every morning, 68-year-old Yip Ka-kui sends his wife a voice note that will never be heard. Sometimes he tells her about things he’s seen, or something that would make her laugh. Recently he shared that their granddaughter scored the second-highest grade in her class on end-of-year exams.

This would typically be a cause for celebration for the tight-knit family. But last November, Yip’s wife Pak Shui-lin was among the 168 people killed in a fire that tore through seven high-rise residential blocks in Hong Kong’s Tai Po district.

Now more than two months on, the city is preparing to ring in the Lunar New Year, which begins on Tuesday. It’s the most important festival on the Chinese calendar – a time for families to reunite. Known as the world’s largest annual homecoming, each year hundreds of millions of people across China return home to visit loved ones. Most apartments in Hong Kong are already festooned with red lanterns and banners inviting happiness and good fortune.

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China has another solution to its shrinking population: robots

China’s birth rate has hit a historic low – deepening fears of a major economic shock in the decades to come as the country’s massive labor force dwindles and its population of pension-drawing retirees swells. A flurry of policies from Chinese authorities to spur procreation – from cash handouts and tax breaks to new rules making marriage easier – has so far failed to stop the downward slide, data released last month shows.

But the country is also eyeing another potential fix: robots and automation.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping has for years overseen a push to upgrade and automate the country’s manufacturing sector, part of Beijing’s goal to transform China into a self-sufficient high-tech powerhouse.

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China’s demographic crisis has moved from theory to fact

China’s demographic crisis is no longer a distant projection buried in academic journals or UN forecasts. It has become an observable fact, confirmed by official statistics and increasingly felt across Chinese society.

In January 2026, China’s National Bureau of Statistics reported that the country recorded its lowest birth rate since 1949. Fewer than eight million babies were born in 2025, a figure once unimaginable for a nation long associated with demographic abundance.The decline is not marginal. With roughly 5.6 births per 1,000 people, China now ranks among the world’s lowest-fertility societies, closer to aging European economies than to the image of a rising Asian power.

More striking still, this marked the fourth consecutive year in which China’s total population shrank. What was once framed as a looming challenge has solidified into a structural reality.

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Lyle Goldstein: China is the bright spot in Trump’s foreign policy

After one year in office, the Trump administration’s foreign policy has drawn mostly negative reviews.

Major efforts to bring peace to both Eastern Europe and the Middle East—both admittedly tall orders—have resulted in meager progress. That is to say nothing of the intense nervousness neighbors and allies feel over Washington’s unique new vision for hemispheric defense.Amid that bleak overall picture, China stands out as a possible bright spot. While many pundits have forecast an intensifying great-power rivalry in the Asia-Pacific, it has not yet meaningfully materialized.

The second Trump administration has rejected the ideologically charged anti-China position that hawkish figures like Mike Pompeo and John Bolton brought to Trump’s first term. Trump’s new approach in the Asia-Pacific considers deterring China as a secondary priority to the primary objective of securing the homeland.

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Torbjørn Færøvik: China’s New Year of Reunion and Separation

China’s annual great migration is underway. Millions of people are on their way home to celebrate the transition to a new year. When the country enters the Year of the Horse on the night of February 17, glasses will be raised in villages and cities alike, and the celebrations will last until dawn.

For most, the journey home is a welcome occasion. Yet it also has a darker side, marked by sorrow, longing, and tears. Migrant workers are about to reunite with their own children—children they have not seen for a long time. Newspapers refer to them as “left-behind.” In the parents’ absence, grandparents or others have taken care of them.

Xi Jinping Is Losing Control of China’s Military

“The fact that Xi Jinping has been able to cashier so many [People's Liberation Army] elites since he assumed power...is a clear sign his position in the regime is unassailable,” James Char of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore told CNN last month, just after Xi’s removal of two senior generals from important command posts. The news outlet summarized the almost unanimous view of analysts: “Xi Has Absolute Control Over China’s Military.”

But the narrative that Xi controls the military is almost certainly wrong. The purges, taken by almost all as proof of Xi’s power, in fact show the opposite. On the 24th of last month, China’s Ministry of National Defense, in a 30-second video, announced that two generals sitting on the Communist Party's Central Military Commission, Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli, were placed under investigation.

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China’s Xi Celebrates Recent Military Purges

China's Xi Jinping makes rare reference to recent military purge

Chinese President Xi Jinping has made a rare public reference to a recent crackdown which saw the country's top military general removed.

General Zhang Youxia, who was widely seen as Xi's closest military ally, was removed from his post in January. He was accused of "serious violations of discipline and law" - typically a euphemism for corruption. Speaking in a virtual address on Tuesday, Xi said the past year had been "unusual and extraordinary", adding that the army had "undergone revolutionary tempering in the fight against corruption".

In his remarks on Tuesday, Xi also added that the People's Liberation Army (PLA) had effectively addressed "various risks and challenges", adding that many in the army had gone through "in-depth political rectification". He also said that PLA troops had been "loyal to the Party... and proven themselves capable and dependable".Since coming to power, President Xi has launched waves of anti-corruption drives, which critics say have also been used as a tool to purge political rivals.

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Japan says it seized Chinese vessel amid tensions with Beijing

Japanese authorities say they have seized a Chinese fishing vessel that tried to flee when ordered to stop for an inspection, in a move that may further fuel tensions with Beijing. The boat was in Japan's exclusive economic zone off Nagasaki Prefecture in the south-west when it was intercepted and its captain arrested on Thursday, according to the country's fisheries agency. "The vessel's captain was ordered to stop for an inspection by a fisheries inspector, but the vessel failed to comply and fled," the fisheries agency said.

The seizure is the first time since 2022 that the agency has seized a Chinese fishing boat. China has yet to react to Japan's statement.

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Spy agency says Kim Jong Un’s daughter is close to being designated North Korea’s future leader

South Korea’s spy agency told lawmakers on Thursday that it believes the teenage daughter of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is close to being designated as the country’s future leader as he moves to extend the family dynasty to a fourth generation.

The assessment by the National Intelligence Service comes as North Korea is preparing to hold its biggest political conference later this month, where Kim is expected to outline his major policy goals for the next five years and take steps to tighten his authoritarian grip.

In a closed-door briefing, NIS officials said they are closely monitoring whether Kim’s daughter — believed to be named Kim Ju Ae and around 13 years old — appears with him before thousands of delegates at the upcoming Workers’ Party Congress, said lawmaker Lee Seong Kweun, who attended the meeting.

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Could this teenage girl be North Korea’s next leader?