Kinaforum

mandag 5. oktober 2026

New eastern Tibet discovery bolsters China’s lithium reserves by over one million tonnes

China has greatly increased the amount of lithium deposit present in an already super-large reserve located in the eastern Tibetan city of Barkham (Chinese: Maerkang), in Amdo Ngaba, which is currently part of Sichuan province. The new discovery is expected to help China reduce its dependence on foreign sources for this vital mineral as it pushes to lead the world in the development, use, and export of modern high-tech products.

China has announced the expansion of the resource base for a major lithium deposit in Sichuan province by about 70%, strengthening the country’s potential long-term supply for the metal – an essential component in the production of batteries for electric vehicles (EVs) and energy storage, reported scmp.com Oct 3, citing state news agency XinhuaOct 1.

The report said that after recent detection efforts, the Jiada Lithium Mine had registered about 1.05 million tonnes of lithium carbonate equivalent in the deposit, bringing its total resources to 2.53 million tonnes. The increase has reinforces the mine’s status as a major hard-rock lithium deposit.

America wants to wean itself off Chinese technology. Will the pain pay off?

Seven years after founding a robotics startup in San Francisco, Rajat Bhageria is confronting a daunting new task: building robots without any help from China.

Like most US-based robotics firms, Chef Robotics has come to rely heavily on Chinese components to make the robot arms it sells to food manufacturers to automate the assembly of ready-made meals. China’s ability to churn out cheap parts at incomparable volumes has made it an integral source of competitive tech products around the world.

But as China has begun to dominate advanced industries from electric vehicles to automated factories, an increasingly protectionist US under President Donald Trump has ratcheted up restrictions on domestic use of Chinese technology, including drones, mobile robots and other critical electronics.

California woman arrested for spying for China and surveilling Taiwanese president’s son, officials say

The FBI on Sunday arrested a 34-year-old California woman who has been charged with acting as an unregistered agent for China and allegedly surveilled the Taiwanese president’s son and his family, federal officials said.

Wanying “Heather” Zhang, of Irvine, allegedly surveilled a close relative of a Taiwanese government official after traveling to Seattle in 2025, according to a federal complaint. The complaint signed on Saturday alleged Zhang was directed by Chinese officials to gather information about and take photos of the relative, who was not named in the complaint. The FBI said in a social media post that Zhang had been surveilling the son of Taiwan president Lai Ching-te and his family.

The China factor behind the Iran war

The war between the United States and Iran is no longer just a confrontation between Washington and Tehran. A second contest is taking shape alongside and behind it. China is not fighting the United States directly, but its economic, technological and diplomatic links to Iran are complicating Washington’s strategy and ability to win the conflict.This raises a larger, crucial question: Is the Iran war becoming another indirect front in the wider US-China rivalry?

Nothing in the evidence suggests that Washington is at war with Beijing. Indeed, the two powers professed their fondness for each other at the recent Trump-Xi gala summit in Washington. But the Iran conflict is putting the two powers in direct competition over energy, sanctions, technology, maritime security and, perhaps most crucially, the future balance of power in the Middle East.

New F-16s buy Taiwan time and space against China’s air coercion

Taiwan’s new American-made F-16V Block 70 jets deliver much-needed breathing room against daily Chinese gray-zone coercion, yet surging Chinese stealth numbers and cratered runway risks mean their wartime utility would be sharply contested.

Taiwan received its first two new-build Lockheed Martin F-16V Block 70 fighter jets, touching down on October 2 at Taitung’s Chihhang Air Base after a trans-Pacific ferry flight via Hawaii and Guam, multiple media outlets reported.The single-seat aircraft mark the initial delivery of a US$8 billion, 66-jet procurement approved by the US in 2019 to modernize the Republic of China Air Force (ROCAF) and reinforce deterrence against escalating military pressure from China.

The handover ends years of delays stemming from production-line relocations, supply-chain bottlenecks and electronic warfare software integration issues with the AN/ALQ-254(V)1 Viper Shield suite.

Trump announces $200bn in energy investments from South Korea

United States President Donald Trump has announced $200bn in investments from South Korea, $54bn of which is slated to go to a liquefied natural gas (LNG) project in Alaska. The announcement was made at the White House on Wednesday and comes as Trump seeks to defend the Republican Party’s economic record during a heated midterm election season. “We’re thrilled to announce one of the largest energy infrastructure investments in American history,” Trump said.

The president highlighted the involvement of Senator Dan Sullivan of Alaska, referencing the challenges the Republican incumbent faces defending his Senate seat in the November 3 race.

US delivers F-16V fighter jets to Taiwan as island eyes threat from China

The United States has delivered two F-16V ⁠Block 70 fighter jets to Taiwan as the island seeks to build its defence capabilities to deter a feared attack by China.

The aircraft, built by US defence contractor Lockheed Martin, are part of an $8bn deal for 66 F-16Vs approved during President Donald. The jets, which flew via Hawaii and Guam, touched down at noon (04:00 GMT) local time. They arrived a week after Trump met Chinese President Xi Jinping in Washington.

Taiwan is eyeing a rising military threat from Beijing, ⁠which claims the democratically governed island as its own territory. first term. They landed on Friday following months of delay due to repeated requests from Beijing to the US to stop arming Taiwan.

Latin America sees China as more positive global influence than US: Poll

China is perceived more positively as a global influence than the United States in Latin America, according to a new regional survey, in a first since the poll began in 1995. The 2026 Latinobarometro survey published on Friday found that 65 percent of respondents in 17 countries saw China as a positive influence. That was compared with 57 percent who said the same of the US.S upport for China has risen sharply since 2020, when 48 percent of respondents viewed its influence positively. The figure for the US has fallen from 60 percent over the same period.

Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic were the only countries surveyed where respondents viewed US influence more positively than China’s.

A rickety Europe tries to stand up to China

The European Union is embarking on diplomatic hand-to-hand combat with China in an effort to rework its trade with Beijing and show it is not a geopolitical weakling.

Using unusually direct terms, the EU has given China a mid-October deadline to provide ways it will reduce its massive trade advantage over Europe. If not, the EU Commission will make unilateral moves to limit imports of Chinese goods, imposing specific limits on electric vehicle imports and putting tariffs on other industrial goods.n an early September speech, EU Commission President Ursula van der Leyen laid out the stakes as she sees them. “Our companies do not compete on a level playing field,” she said.” “It leads to deindustrialisation in the industrial heartlands of Europe. This is unsustainable.”

China countered this expression of exasperation with its own harsh language. “Voluntary export restraint is one of the egregious misnomers of modern trade policy, wrote China Daily, an English-language government newspaper. “There is nothing voluntary about a choice made under the threat of punitive tariffs.”

U.S. Department of State: China is one of the world's most closed economies

China remained one of the world’s most closed major economies and the 17th most restrictive country out of 104 surveyed by the OECD in 2024 (the latest year for which data are available) despite decades of rhetorical commitments by the Chinese government to open its economy to foreign investment. China’s 15th Five-Year Plan for 2026-2030 marked the end of the “Reform and Opening” period begun under Deng Xiaoping and a transition to General Secretary Xi Jinping’s ambitious, ideologically-driven “Chinese Modernization” policy.

Chinese modernization brings an intensification of China’s focus on indigenization and technology self-reliance, and “autonomous opening-up,” which CCP media describe as China’s selective alignment with international standards and practices only where there are clear benefits for China’s economy and industry.

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Report: China’s energy transition and climate status report 2026

China’s GDP growth remained stable at 5.0%, unchanged from 2024 and well above the 2.3% pandemic-era level in 2020, despite continued property sector challenges and weak domestic demand. China’s dependence on net oil imports rose to 72.7%, slightly above both 2024 and 2020 levels, underscoring persistent energy security concerns as well as stockpiling building efforts.

Coal’s share in China’s energy mix fell further to 51.4% in 2025, down from 56.7% in 2020 and 53.2% in 2024, indicating continued progress in energy transition despite heightened energy security concerns.

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‘They are crying’: Refugees in Malaysia in fear amid Myanmar deportation

The phone hasn’t stopped ringing in recent days. Raf, a leader of refugees from Myanmar who are living in Malaysia, receives more than 100 calls a day, and they follow a common pattern.

The Malaysian government on Tuesday deported nearly 1,500 refugees, part of its stated plan to send back at least 5,000 refugees as part of a deal with the military government of Myanmar. That move, from a country that had long taken in the refugees, has sparked fear among the tens of thousands of other refugees from Myanmar in the country, who have one question at the top of their minds: Who might be next?

The deportation was carried out during escalating raids on refugee communities by immigration officials, which have led to the detention of more than 50,000 refugees this year alone. Those working with refugees in Malaysia said the frequency of the raids has increased since June when Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim announced the repatriation agreement with Myanmar.They are crying, asking me to do something,” Raf told Al Jazeera.

US bans Chinese data center gear as Beijing grounds its AI talent

The artificial intelligence (AI) race between the United States and China has accelerated in model protection, supply chains and talent controls, even as the two nations’ leaders agreed last week to open a new dialogue on AI safety.

A string of moves announced or uncovered this week shows that both sides are now guarding their models, hardware and engineers more tightly than ever. The rivalry has spread from chips to the data center equipment and the people behind the technology.

OpenAI said Wednesday that it had disrupted a coordinated campaign of adversarial distillation, the unauthorized use of one model’s outputs to train another. It attributed a core cluster of the activity to individuals associated with Moonshot AI, the Beijing-based developer of the Kimi K3 chatbot, and said it had shut down related activity across more than 15,000 users by July 28.

As India and China repair ties, a Tibet film tells the story of a forgotten resistance

In the mountains of Nepal’s Mustang region, just hours from the homeland he had never seen, Tenzin Rigzin Phurpatsang struggled to breathe the air his Tibetan ancestors had adapted to over generations. The thin air felt heavy.

The 37-year-old, first-time actor was in Mustang to film “Four Rivers Six Ranges,” a historical drama about resistance fighters who helped the Dalai Lama escape Tibet in 1959. A year later, Phurpatsang’s own grandfather, Yeshi Wangyal, had returned to Tibet after CIA training to lead a separate guerrilla mission. He was killed fighting Chinese forces.

Born in exile in India, Phurpatsang is now a New York model. As he filmed firefight scenes in the mountains, a world away from his life, he thought of his family’s past.

“Wow, is that what my grandfather went through?” he asked himself.

Restaurant named after Xi Jinping attacked by Chinese nationals in South Korea

A restaurant in South Korea named after Chinese leader Xi Jinping has been vandalised by a group of Chinese nationals who fled home right after the attack, police say. Surveillance footage from the restaurant in Seongnam, a city south of Seoul, shows four masked men storming the premises in the early hours of 24 September, smashing furniture and spraying lacquer.

The restaurant's owner told local media he picked the name Xi Jinping because he "wanted it to be the best Chinese restaurant [in South Korea]". He added that "There was no political intent". The restaurant has been running for eight years but only began getting demands for a name change over the past year, The Chosun Daily reported.

China has cracked down on AI relationships. Is it ahead of the game?

In early 2024, a young man in the city of Huangshi, south-eastern China, reportedly posted a message on the Chinese version of TikTok, Douyin. The caption read: "Farewell to this world." Within minutes, the suicide prevention team at Douyin kicked into gear. The team, which is staffed 24 hours a day, shared the man's posts with five police stations in Huangshi.

After geolocating one of his videos to a local park, police found him in emotional distress and intervened before he was able to take his own life. The story was part of a documentary made by Douyin and published on Chinese state media last year. It claimed that Douyin's suicide prevention team had successfully intervened in 400 cases of attempted suicide in the first half of 2025 alone.

Japan raises permanent residency fee by 20 times

Japan has raised fees for foreigners seeking permanent residency in the country by 20 times to 200,000 yen ($1,270; £955). Those seeking permanent residency must now also meet new income, pension and Japanese-language requirements.

Long lines formed outside immigration offices earlier this week as applicants sought to beat the fee hikes, with Tokyo's main immigration bureau reporting wait times of over seven hours. The fee increases are part of a series of changes to Japan's immigration policy under Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, which aim to manage its rapidly growing foreign population.

In July, Japan implemented a five-fold increase in visa fees for all foreigners – its first visa fee hike in 50 years. Authorities said this was meant to "reflect inflation and exchange rate fluctuations".

Spain and China are cosying up - to the anger of many in the EU

On the streets of Barcelona, fiery red and gold Chinese dragons (presumably with very sweaty people inside the costumes) danced among delighted crowds, while Chinese acrobats elicited gasps of amazement as they rolled, tossed and threw spherical lanterns in the air, keeping - as if by magic - the candle inside them upright at all times.

Shanghai made history this week: the first Asian metropolis to be invited as the city of honour to Barcelona's famously rambunctious cultural festival, La Merce. Vast street processions here are overwhelmingly aimed at celebrating centuries-old Catalan traditions. So it was quite something to witness velvet-clad Catalan pipers, sashaying down Barcelona's main boulevards, their medieval tunes intermingling with lilting music that accompanied flocks of brightly dressed Chinese performers.

Shanghai Vice Mayor Lu Shan flew to Barcelona to speak at La Merce's opening ceremony. Chinese and Catalan cultural traditions differ in form, he remarked, but they share "a common spirit".