Kinaforum

onsdag 15. juli 2026

Loga Rangzen: The Spirit Lives On

Those who dedicated their lives in exile to the cause of Tibetan independence as their ultimate purpose endured countless obstacles. There were moments when they felt completely lost and wondered how much more they could bear. At times, it seemed as though the darkness would never lift. Yet, in those moments of despair, many found strength in a simple but profound Buddhist teaching: everything is impermanent. No pain, no hardship, and no suffering lasts forever.

Whenever they felt overwhelmed, they reminded themselves that time is always changing. Just as joy is impermanent, so too is sorrow. Rather than allowing themselves to be consumed by grief, they accepted their struggles as part of the long journey toward freedom, trusting that even the most difficult setbacks would eventually pass. This belief became their source of hope, giving them the courage to continue, one day at a time, with faith that brighter days lay beyond the pain.

Loga Rangzen will be deeply missed, but his spirit will never be forgotten.

The Next Dalai Lama: Faith, Power and the Contest for Legitimacy

Every time the Dalai Lama appears in public these days, there’s this quiet question hanging in the air. You hear it in monasteries, in conversations among Tibetans and in diplomatic backrooms across Asia: what happens when he’s gone?

His 91st birthday celebrations in Leh this July felt both joyful and heavy. Thousands came for the prayers, the traditional dances, the long-life ceremonies. There was real warmth in the air, but underneath it all was the awareness that the institution he’s carried for over six decades is heading toward a crossroads. The question of the 15th Dalai Lama isn’t just a religious matter anymore. It’s become one of the bigger geopolitical issues in Asia, tangled up with legitimacy, cultural survival, sovereignty and the future direction of Tibetan Buddhism.

The Dalai Lama: A Journey Through Tibet, Exile, and Global Peace Advocacy

China’s Ethnic Unity Law extends legal reach to Taiwan, diaspora

Taiwan’s government and overseas ethnic groups have raised concerns after China implemented the Law on Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress this month, warning it forces Taiwanese people to accept Beijing’s political framework and threatens minority communities well beyond China’s borders.

Passed by the National People’s Congress on March 12, the law took effect on July 1. On July 2, Cho Jung-tai, premier of Taiwan’s Executive Yuan, warned that Beijing has built an expanding network of laws with extraterritorial reach, including the Anti-Secession Law, the Counter-Espionage Law, and the Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law, aimed at forcing Taiwanese people to accept Beijing’s political framework.

Cho said the Ethnic Unity Law extends that network farther. He announced the Executive Yuan would set up a cross-agency platform to counter transnational repression while expanding cooperation with allied democracies.

US-China moon race could turn into a lunar land grab

Sixty years ago, the United States and the Soviet Union were embroiled in a race to the moon, which the US won. The 21st-century lunar contest, with China stepping in for the Soviet Union, has many similarities but also key differences.

The Apollo astronauts planted the stars and stripes in lunar soil, bounced – and drove – around, set up experiments and collected scientifically valuable rock samples. Ultimately, however, there was no real plan to stay.The new moon race is different: space agencies are targeting the south pole of the moon due to its deposits of water ice. This water can be used for life support on a lunar base. It can also be turned into rocket fuel, splitting it into the hydrogen and oxygen used by space vehicles, making it a valuable resource.

But ice deposits are not evenly distributed and suitable spots for establishing human outposts are finite. This could spark competition to bag the best spots. So will the US-China lunar contest turn into a land grab?

China expels Politburo member Ma Xingrui in Xi’s anti-corruption campaign

A senior official has been expelled from China’s ruling Communist Party, state media said Tuesday, the latest to fall in Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s long-running anti-corruption campaign. Ma Xingrui is one of three members of the current Politburo, the 24-member body made up of top party leaders, to be purged in the campaign. The other two are military generals. Analysts see the campaign as an important tool to enforce loyalty to Xi as well as root out corruption.

“Xi’s ability to expel a sitting Politburo member underscores his continued dominance ahead of next year’s 21st Party Congress” said Neil Thomas, an expert on Chinese politics at the Asia Society Policy Institute.

State media referred to Ma, who was named to the Politburo in 2022, as a former member of the body in their latest reports.

Family says US seismologist has been detained in China for nearly 2 years with no trial

A China-born American seismologist has been detained in China without trial for nearly two years, an advocacy group advising the family said Tuesday, a revelation that came a couple of months before Chinese President Xi Jinping is expected to visit the U.S.

The relatives of Youlin Chen of Boston broke their silence this week, apparently after they saw no sign from the Chinese government that it was planning to release Chen — even after President Donald Trump brought up the case when meeting Xi in Beijing in May, according to Global Reach, a Washington-based nonprofit organization dedicated to bringing home Americans wrongly detained abroad.

China grew at its slowest pace in more than 3 years last quarter

China’s economy slowed sharply to a 4.3% annualized pace of growth in the April-June quarter, the government said Wednesday, the weakest in over three years. The official data fell short of forecasts and was far below the economy’s strong 5%pace of growth in January-March, despite a surge in exports driven partly by the boom in artificial intelligence, and by robust global demand for Chinese electric vehicles.

China has largely shrugged off wider economic impacts from the Iran war as soaring energy prices pushed up global inflation. Exports rose 17.6% in the first half of the year from a year earlier, and 27% in June, according to customs data.

But domestic spending and investment have lagged, limiting the boost from export manufacturing for an economy that has struggled to regain momentum since parts of China were locked down during the COVID-19 pandemic.

China continuing to thwart Nepali border residents’ traditional trade, grazing, pilgrimage access to Tibet

Pro-China elements among Nepal’s political leaders have shown an alacrity to jump at any opportunity to defend perceived damage to Beijing’s interest in the country. However, they seem to show little or no interest on longstanding allegations of Chinese transgressions on Nepali interests, whether it is border incursions or ill-treatment of the country’s citizens living close to occupied Tibet’s border.

An eight-day patrol to the Nepal-Tibet border found growing dissatisfaction among border residents over Chinese restrictions on grazing, cross-border trade and pilgrimages to Lake Mansarovar, reported kathmandupost.com Jul 11.

US weapons depletion in Iran war may invite tougher Chinese pressure on Taiwan

As the US keeps fighting in Iran, China is watching not only what the US can destroy, but how quickly it can replace what it fires. Yet depleted US stockpiles do not make an invasion of Taiwan any less perilous for China.

Multiple media outlets reported that the US launched multiple waves of airstrikes targeting over 140 military sites inside Iran on Sunday, triggering a sweeping drone and missile retaliation by Iran against US bases and Gulf Arab allies that has pushed a fragile interim ceasefire to the brink of collapse. The heavy exchange of fire followed an Iranian attack on a Cyprus-flagged container ship in the strategic Strait of Hormuz on Saturday, which Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) subsequently declared closed until further notice.

Under orders from US President Donald Trump to preserve freedom of navigation and lower global energy prices, US Central Command struck Iranian drone launchers, missile networks, and naval assets, notably on Qeshm Island and in Bandar Abbas.

China’s Fujian carrier racing to kill America’s torpedo threat

China trashes international law as 14 countries plus EU reject its expansive South China Sea claims

Fourteen countries, led by the United States, have on Jul 12 reaffirmed that China’s expansive claims in the South China Sea have no legal basis under international law, marking the 10th anniversary of a landmark arbitration ruling that Beijing continues to reject.

A joint statement issued by the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, Australia, the Philippines, Canada, Germany, Italy, New Zealand, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania and Slovenia said the Jul 12, 2016 ruling by an arbitral tribunal constituted under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) remains “final, legally binding and definitive”.

The 27-member European Union has issued a separate statement describing the decision as a “landmark” ruling in the peaceful settlement of maritime disputes.

China May Restrict Access to Its Most Powerful AI Models

Chinese AI companies have made inroads globally by giving their models away for free. Now Beijing is weighing whether to stop them. Chinese authorities have held talks with Alibaba, ByteDance, and Z.ai about whether to restrict foreign access to their most advanced models, including ones not yet released, Reuters reportedtoday, citing three people familiar with the discussions.

Nothing has been decided yet, and the ministries involved have made no official comment, but officials have gone as far as sketching options—including a bar on public release or a limit to domestic use only.

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China Is Already Trying to Control Who the Next Dalai Lama Will Be

In early June, Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, was wheeled into an operating room at Apollo Hospital in New Delhi. Spiritually, His Holiness is an emanation, or tulku, of the bodhisattva Chenrezig, who renounced nirvana to help mankind. But his corporeal manifestation, which just turned 91 on July 6, requires maintenance; this time, it was a left-knee replacement. While he is recovering well, that physical frailty is an alarm bell for the Tibetan diaspora. The vessel is aging, and the war for what happens the moment he leaves it has already begun.

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Vietnam too slow, too timid to defuse its demographic time bomb

Vietnam is one of the most rapidly graying countries in the world, aging at a stage of development that leaves it far less room to adapt than many of its regional peers.

Vietnam’s total fertility rate (TFR) fell from 2.11 children per woman in 2021 to 1.91 in 2024, the third consecutive year below the replacement level of 2.1. Significantly, the decline is sharpest where economic activity is highest. Ho Chi Minh City recorded a rate of between 1.32 and 1.39 in 2024, depending on the source.

The United Nations Population Fund projects that by 2036, Vietnam will have transitioned from an “aging” to an “aged” society, a shift that took roughly 25 years, comparable to Japan and far faster than the 115 years France required.

China’s often flawed arms still buy lasting influence

China’s weapons may face mounting questions over quality, reliability and after-sales support, but its arms trade still serves a larger strategic purpose: locking vulnerable states into long-term military, economic and political dependence.

That paradox is at the center of a June 2026 report by The Takshashila Institution, which argues that China’s rise as a major global arms exporter has outpaced its ability to guarantee battlefield performance and life-cycle support.

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Major German carmakers saw sharp sales declines in China for the April-June quarter

Major German carmakers saw sharp quarterly sales declines in China as domestic demand weakened and competition heated up in the world’s biggest auto market.

At Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Porsche, China sales for the April-June quarter plummeted between 30% and 41% compared with the same period a year ago, according to company data released over the past week.

For the first half of this year, they all reported a more than 20% year-on-year drop in China. The falling China sales have squeezed their overall profits and in some cases offset gains from other regions.

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China’s claims in the South China Sea are illegal, says the United States and a dozen other countries

The United States, the United Kingdom and a dozen other Western and Asian countries reasserted on Sunday that China’s expansive claims in the South China Sea are illegal based on a 2016 arbitration ruling.

A joint statement issued by the 14 nations said they rejected “destabilizing” actions in the disputed waters that threaten regional stability. The 27-nation European Union released a separate statement, reaffirming the ruling as a “landmark decision in the peaceful settlement of disputes.”

The statements commemorated a July 12, 2016, arbitration ruling by a tribunal established in The Hague under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, saying the landmark decision is “is final and legally binding.”

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China’s war against deserts isn’t over

For half a century, millions of workers have repeated a task across the deserts in northern China: inserting forearm-length sticks into shifting sand, first in a row, then in an intersecting line, gradually forming a grid. Then saplings are planted at the center of each small square.

The technique, known as “straw checkerboards,” is a simple yet widely used method to stabilize sand dunes against the wind and help plants take root by using water supplied through an irrigation system.

Trump resort rises on Vietnam graveyard as US links grow

Vietnam is digging up a graveyard so a sprawling Trump International golf resort with plush residences can be built along the Red River, while “the highest Starbucks coffeehouse in Asia” has opened on Vietnam’s tallest mountain peak near Sapa.

Trillionaire Elon Musk, meanwhile, received a Starlink satellite operating license in February to expand Vietnam’s highly censored internet. And Apple CEO Tim Cook told CNBC last year that for US sales of “Mac and iPad and AirPods and the (Apple) watch, almost all of the country of origin is Vietnam.”

Hanoi’s eager embrace of American capitalism spotlights how vastly US-Vietnam relations have changed since their grueling war ended with a communist victory in 1975. Hanoi favors close ties with Washington to balance its economic vulnerability with China, its giant trading partner across Vietnam’s northern frontier.