Kinaforum

torsdag 15. oktober 2026

What's the impact of China's influence on the gaming industry?

In a dark underground hideout, dim light spills from a handful of oil lamps. A comrade fiddles with a rifle. A red flag hangs on one of the roughly hewn stone walls, bearing a hammer and sickle on a white star — the symbol of the ChineseWorkers' and Peasants' Red Army. Weapons are scattered on the ground. One is picked up, and soon the action moves into the snowy forest, where gunfire erupts among the trees.

Such a scene could fit in a new installment of "Call of Duty," the popular first person shooter game that transports players to battlefields past, present and future. But it is actually from "The Defiant." The game is currently being developed by the Chinese studio Hoothanes Technology in Hangzhou. It tells the story of Chinese forces fending off the Japanese army in the 1930s and 1940s.

Developer Connor Xu tells DW the weapons featured in the game are unique. They were used only in Asia and are therefore unfamiliar to many Western players, he says. The same goes for the story, which Xu says has never before been told in a video game.

No, China is not filling the Western aid gap in Southeast Asia

When Australia’s Lowy Institute think tank released the 2025 edition of its Southeast Asia Aid Map in July last year, it projected that Western aid cuts would shift the region’s development finance toward Asian partners. Specifically, the report expected the center of gravity to “drift East, notably to Beijing but also Tokyo and Seoul.”

Lowy’s 2026 edition, released on October 11, now includes 2024 data and preliminary 2025 estimates. They do not show that shift. Aid and other official development finance to the region fell to US$26.1 billion in 2024, its lowest level since 2015. China and Japan both reduced their spending, and South Korea’s cuts begin in 2025.

Wolf Warriors in Sheep’s Clothing: China’s New Subnational Diplomacy in Australia

For the government of China, diplomacy is more than simply a means of cultivating international relationships and advancing national interests. It is also an instrument of regime maintenance. In this capacity it can take the form of coercive interventions in the domestic affairs of other states with the aim of suppressing conduct or critique considered hostile to the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Deploying diplomatic agents to secure compliance with CCP objectives is in fact a significant feature of China’s subnational relations with local governments and communities in Australia.

During Xi Jinping’s first decade as CCP general secretary and chairman of state, Beijing’s approach to Australia grew increasingly blunt and confrontational, a style known as “wolf warrior diplomacy.” More recently, Chinese diplomats have shifted to a quieter, more self-assured form of subnational diplomacy.

India and China aren't friends - but Nepal wants to unite them against climate threats

Nepal's Prime Minister Balendra Shah used much of his speech at the recent UN General Assembly to warn of the growing threat of climate-related disasters in the Himalayas, recalling the devastating debris floodsthat struck his country in August. But it was his ambitious proposal to bring together regional rivals India and China, alongside Nepal, to tackle these shared threats that drew particular attention.

Shah called for the creation of a Himalayan Climate Resilience Mechanism to strengthen cross-border disaster response and the sharing of scientific data and expertise in one of the world's most environmentally fragile and geopolitically sensitive regions.

Why Chinese culture lands so fluently and freely in Vietnam

A recent ISEAS Fulcrum commentary by Hoang Thi Ha and Pham Thi Phuong Thao offers a useful mapping of how Chinese culture and economic opportunity are drawing in young Vietnamese.

The authors are right that this bottom-up attraction is unfolding alongside renewed official promotion of people-to-people ties, and that long-standing sensitivities about China have not disappeared. The current wave of Chinese cultural and consumer influence, from hit dramas, trendy brands to a surge in Mandarin study and growing student flows to Chinese universities, however, is better understood as an intensification of a much older pattern than as a new phenomenon. And the reasons should shape how we read both its reach and limits.

Vietnam is arguably the most deeply Sinospheric society outside China itself. It experienced over a millennium of direct Chinese rule. Literary Chinese remained the principal official script for centuries, even after chu Nom emerged as a vernacular script by the 13th century.

India reiterates border stability condition for normal ties as China rejects its Ladakh map assertions

India’s external affairs minister S Jaishankar has on Oct 13 made an emphatic reiteration of New Delhi’s position that if China wanted a normal bilateral relationship, the border between the two countries had to be stable. His remark came on the day China said it strongly opposed India’s recent move to assign standardised names to 28 strategic locations and geographical features in Ladakh in its official map and India responded within hours by reiterating its position regarding the territorial ambit of the Union territory.

During a conversation at the Bloomberg New Economy Forum in New Delhi, Jaishankar has said that India and China do not have an agreed border. He has pointed out that despite the issue having persisted for decades, and border fatalities in 1975, India-China relations did grow.

Bhutan’s ‘Mindfulness City’ Hides a Dark Reality

On September 22, Prime Minister Tshering Tobgay of Bhutan stood at the podium at the United Nations General Assembly and made a direct sales pitch to foreign investors. “I stand before you today not as a prime minister, but as a salesman,” he told world leaders, openly seekingforeign investments to advance the concept of the Gelephu Mindfulness City (GMC).

For Chet Nath Timsina, Tobgay’s speech was deeply personal. Timsina was 20 when he and his family were evicted from southern Bhutan in the early 1990s after being coerced into signing a “voluntary migration form.” He resettled in New York in 2009 and has called the state home ever since.

Vietnam Set to Sign Free Trade Pact With European Bloc This Week

Vietnam is set to sign a European ‌Free Trade Association (EFTA) this week, as Hanoi closes in on a final trade agreement with the United States. Reuters reported yesterday that the agreement with the EFTA bloc, which consists of Switzerland, Norway, Iceland, and Liechtenstein, will be signed in Hanoi on Sunday in the presence of Swiss Economy Minister Guy Parmelin, who is currently on a trip to Asia.

The talks between Vietnam and the ETFA began in 2012 and have proceeded at a steady pace since. The two sides officially concluded the negotiations in July, following a ministerial meeting in Reykjavik that involved “intensive technical talks.”

New report: How China took control over the air of Tibet

Policing the skies on the roof of the world: how China took control of the air over Tibet

Tibet Watch is publishing the first detailed report on China’s use of drones in Tibet. Using the Chinese state’s own documents, it shows police buying drones for the places where Tibetans have protested, gathered to pray and tried to escape persecution, while the state closes the sky to almost everyone else. Much of the equipment is made by DJI, which made most of the drones UK police forces disclosed in 2023.

In Eyes Above the Plateau: Drones, DJI, and the Aerial Architecture of Control in Tibet, published on 30 September with research support from US non-profit C4ADS, Tibet Watch traces China’s build-out of aerial surveillance in Tibet through the Chinese state’s own paperwork published since 2017 including tenders, contract awards, police bulletins, flight bans and training reports.

China’s exports and imports surge past expectations in September

China’s exports grew by 36.3% in September from a year ago, their fastest pace since February, according to official data released Wednesday. Imports climbed by 31%, the fastest increase since June, the data showed, picking up from 28.2% in August.

Both exports and imports exceeded estimates from a Reuters poll, of 25.5% and 24.5%, respectively. China’s exports to the U.S. grew by nearly 39.6% in September, outpacing the growth of overall exports and sending the monthly trade surplus to the highest since January 2025, according to customs data accessed via Wind Information.

The value of China’s integrated circuit board exports globally surged by 136% in September from a year ago — but the number of units exported only rose by 1%, according to CNBC calculations of official figures.

A new bridge linking China and North Korea will open more than a decade late

A new bridge linking China and North Korea is set to open Thursday after more than a decade of delay in the latest sign of closer ties between the two countries. The official Chinese news agency Xinhua reported Wednesday that both sides will hold a ceremony for the launch of the New Yalu River Bridge. The four-lane, 3-kilometer (1.8-mile) bridge will connect the northeastern Chinese city of Dandong to the North Korean city of Sinuiju.

The bridge initially was expected to enter use in 2014 after China apparently completed construction of access roads, customs facilities and other related infrastructure on its side. But the date passed with no sign of an opening and without North Korea doing corresponding works on its side.

'I'd talk to the TV': The paid companions bringing warmth to China's lonely

"The biggest difficulty really was the loneliness. Sometimes, if I wanted to talk to someone I'd talk to the TV."

Yang, 91, lives on the outskirts of China's bustling capital Beijing. Following the death of her husband, she was so lonely that she says she even considered the possibility of voluntary euthanasia. "I asked my son about it but he told me it was banned. I told him that if it ever becomes legal I want to do it - I didn't want to live any longer."

Suffering glaucoma, with failing eyesight, she was unable to even do basic things like adjust the controls on her air conditioner. Cases such as Yang's have become increasingly common in Chinese cities which Associate Professor Teresa Kuan, from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, says is "exacerbated by the structure of society and the modes by which people interact".

Who's to blame for the toxic haze choking South East Asia?

As Indonesia battles its worst wildfire season in a decade, a toxic smog is choking millions of residents in the region. The air on the islands of Kalimantan and Sumatra has turned an ominous amber, with air quality recorded at hazardous levels. The smog - or haze - has drifted beyond Indonesia's borders to neighbouring countries, raising public health concerns. It has obscured Singapore's skyline and forced some schools to close in Malaysia.

Now, anger is mounting at the companies accused of burning farmland, as well as the authorities who have struggled to stop them. The annual dry season wildfires have been especially intense this year because of an unusually strong El Niño: a natural climate phenomenon which changes weather patterns around the world.

India's 'cockroach' leaders jailed after holding protest

Two top leaders of India's Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) have been sent to jail for five days after being arrested for allegedly trespassing at a protest site in Delhi. Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka appeared before a magistrate on Wednesday after being detained at Jantar Mantar, a longstanding venue for demonstrations that police recently removed from the city's list of authorised protest sites.

The two were among a group who climbed a locked gate and crossed barricades to enter the site on Tuesday. The GenZ-led movement has been protesting for days seeking electoral reforms and the resignation of India's top election official over allegations of vote fraud - charges the poll panel denies.

China sanctions officials in Paraguay and Belize over their countries’ ties with Taiwan

China sanctioned Paraguay’s communications minister and Belize’s foreign minister on Monday over ties with Taiwan, the island democracy Beijing claims as its own. The sanctions against Gustavo Villate of Paraguay and Francis Fonseca of Belize serve to safeguard China’s “national sovereignty, security, and development interests, and to oppose separatist acts seeking ‘Taiwan independence,’” the Chinese Foreign Ministry said on its website.

“Certain politicians in Paraguay and Belize have willingly served as pawns of the Taiwan authorities in their attempts to seek Taiwan independence by soliciting external forces,” said Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning.

European Parliament’s China-policy report condemns forced assimilation drive in Tibet

The European Parliament has on Oct 7 adopted a set of policy recommendations on EU-China political relations drafted by its Committee on Foreign Affairs which among numerous other things strongly condemns China’s intensifying campaign of mandatory “Sinicisation” and forced assimilation in Tibet. China’s official media on Oct 8 severely condemned the report and warned of dire consequences, but with focus on the report’s labelling of the country’s industrial policy as an “existential threat” to the EU’s industrial base and as a “decisive enabler” of Russia in its Ukraine war.

The European Parliament report – which is a set of Recommendation for the European Council, the Commission and the Vice-President of the Commission / High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy on EU-China political relations – demands a stronger and principled EU-China policy that combines dialogue with more protection of European interests.

China harnessing AI microdramas in ‘mobile-first strategy’ to counter Tibet critics, others

The rapid boom in AI microdramas has prompted the government of China to adopt it and the technology underlying it to modernise its propaganda messaging, including on the issue of Tibet. AI microdramas are serialized, vertical video stories—typically lasting 1 to 2 minutes per episode—produced largely or entirely using generative artificial intelligence tools for writing, voice, music, and video

The Ideal of a Tree, a series set in the Tibet autonomous region and released on Sep 30, follows a young musician travelling there to find inspiration and connect with her grandmother’s past. In the process, the musician witnesses Tibet’s progress in modernisation and ecological conservation, said a scmp.com report Oct 12. Modernisation and ecological conservation are clarion propaganda calls of President Xi Jinping for the development of Tibet, although in reality environmental devastation remains an ever-growing problem there in the face of China’s relentlessly massive infrastructure, mining and militarisation drives there.

China sentences three people to death for running Myanmar scam centres

A court in eastern China has sentenced three members of a criminal gang to death for operating a network of scam centres in Myanmar.

In a statement released on Tuesday, Quanzhou Intermediate People’s Court, a high court in southeastern Fujian province, said it had sentenced Wei Huairen, Chen Dawei and Liao Jingfang for their involvement in the “Wei family criminal gang”. The syndicate was involved in crimes including drug trafficking, organised prostitution, illegal casino operations, telecommunications fraud and the murder of at least two Chinese nationals. The court said Wei was one of the group’s leaders and was found guilty of several crimes, including murder.