• China boosts science, tech outreach to Global South as its US collaboration dips: analysts
• Why the US could be China’s biggest ally in holding back Asia’s nuclear ambitions
• China’s Xi Jinping puts domestic market at forefront in high-profile meeting
• Philippines eyes multirole fighter jets for ‘credible deterrence’ against China
• China edges closer to Airbus mega-deal, leaving Boeing out in the cold: analysts
• Trump’s Golden Dome and China, Xi calls for more public oversight: SCMP daily highlights
• Pentagon reliant on Chinese suppliers and ‘not prepared’ for war, report warns
• Family of China-born neuroscientist Jane Wu files death-related civil complaint
• US Senate, passing Trump bill, bars clean energy tax credits for firms with ties to China
• China’s Tianwen-2 returns Earth, moon images as land team simulates lunar lava cave probe
• China rolls out tax incentives to win back foreign investors amid EU, US trade tensions
• Chinese passengers describe Japan Airlines flight’s violent plunge before emergency landing
• China’s ethnic affairs chief to take Communist Party helm in Xinjiang
• China offers tax refund to French cognac makers amid EU brandy anti-dumping probe: source
• Chinese man, 102, known for musical talent, creates sweet bond with grandma in nursing home
• Chinese President Xi Jinping calls to regulate exercise of power to fight corruption
• Chinese scientists uncover coal power’s dirty secret in satellite data study
• Certain ferry services in Hong Kong to be suspended during Chinese naval fleet visit
• Why China’s yuan is forecast to extend gains against the US dollar through 2025
• China-funded smelter fires up Indonesian defence concerns
• China sanctions key Marcos ally Francis Tolentino
• Trump’s Golden Dome: will the numbers add up to deter China in the Indo-Pacific?
• China’s coffee lovers skip urban grind for a rural buzz, but is cafe craze sustainable?
• TOEIC fraud: Chinese student in Japan charged with cheating on English exams multiple times
• How does long-term exercise slow ageing? Chinese scientists have an answer
• China ‘folded boy’ stands up straight for first time after surgeries to break, reset bones

China boosts science, tech outreach to Global South as its US collaboration dips: analysts

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3316563/china-boosts-science-tech-outreach-global-south-its-us-collaboration-dips-analysts?utm_source=rss_feed

China is ramping up its science and technology outreach to the Global South while its collaboration with the US on the same front is receding, analysts said on Tuesday at an event hosted by the Institute for China-America Studies, a Washington think tank.

“China is very heavily engaging with those countries,” said Caroline Wagner of the Ohio State University, noting Beijing has signed science and technology agreements with “dozens and dozens of countries”.

That development marks a “critical departure” from earlier years when China was primarily focused on the US, added Wagner, who formerly advised the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy as a researcher at Rand, a public policy group.

She called for greater bilateral dialogue to preserve areas of scientific cooperation beneficial to the US.

Wagner’s comments came as the US State Department is reportedly shutting down its Office of Science and Technology Cooperation, which is responsible for negotiating and overseeing bilateral science and technology agreements.

The closure was slated for July 1, though the entity overseeing the office – the Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs – did not immediately respond to a request for confirmation.

It also came as the US-China Science and Technology Agreement was “dormant and languishing”, according to Denis Simon of Tsinghua University’s Schwarzman College.

Beijing and Washington, after several rounds of delays, renewed the agreement in December during the final weeks of the Joe Biden administration.

Since then, however, there have been few signs of activity under the decades-old pact that was first signed by the two countries in 1979.

Simon, also speaking on Tuesday, pointed to a recent science and technology forum that China held with Belt and Road Initiative countries as an example of the Asian economic giant’s expanding outreach beyond the US.

“That was a massive event. In fact, they reverberated for almost two weeks after with major articles in the Chinese media about it,” said Simon.

He warned that the reported closure of the Office of Science and Technology Cooperation would cause the US to miss out on “big” opportunities for international collaboration.

Held in mid-June in Chengdu, the forum saw the announcement of a new “double thousand” plan to “deepen collaboration with BRI countries in areas such as joint research, technology transfer and scientific and cultural exchanges”.

That plan, according to the Sichuan provincial government, envisions “1,000 cooperation projects” and exchange activities involving “1,000 young scientists”.

According to the State Department’s website, the US now maintains “nearly 60” bilateral science and technology agreements and more than 2,000 sub-agreements.

China, according to its State Council’s website, has scientific agreements with more than 80 governments.

Meanwhile, US-China science and technology cooperation has become a political flashpoint in Washington in recent years.

Earlier this year, some Republicans in the House of Representatives called for a repeal of the then-newly renewed science and technology agreement.

“Still no protection for US innovators and still a mistranslation that could let Beijing claim jointly developed IP [intellectual property],” the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party said in a social media post in April.

Why the US could be China’s biggest ally in holding back Asia’s nuclear ambitions

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/3316540/why-us-could-be-chinas-biggest-ally-holding-back-asias-nuclear-ambitions?utm_source=rss_feed

Iran’s crushing defeat in its brief but devastating war with Israel has sent shock waves far beyond the Middle East, casting fresh doubts on the viability of nuclear non-proliferation and raising fears of a renewed global push to acquire nuclear weapons.

Without a credible nuclear deterrent, Tehran proved unable to effectively defend or retaliate against Israel’s pre-emptive strikes on key personnel and nuclear facilities, despite its much-touted strategic alignment with China and Russia.

While many believe Israel’s strikes, enabled by the United States, achieved only limited success in delaying rather than destroying Iran’s nuclear programme, they have nonetheless exposed Iran’s vulnerabilities and the limits of its strategic partnerships.

Both China and Russia issued strong statements condemning Israel and the US but showed little inclination to intervene or offer tangible support when it mattered most. This left Tehran effectively isolated, despite its joint maritime drill with Beijing and Moscow in March – an exercise that now seems just a symbolic show of unity.

Preoccupied with Russia’s war in Ukraine and Western sanctions, President Vladimir Putin later clarified that Moscow’s alliance with Tehran lacked joint defence commitments – serving to highlight Moscow’s intent to avoid being dragged into direct conflict with Israel or the US.

In recent years, China has sought to project itself as a responsible global power – mediating between Iran and Saudi Arabia, proposing peace plans for Gaza and Ukraine, and advancing its vaguely defined Global Security Initiative and “new Asian security concept”. But the Iran-Israel war laid bare the gap between China’s great-power ambitions and its actual reach in the volatile region.

For China, Iran’s quick defeat served as a sobering reminder of a bleak reality: despite its deepening economic and security cooperation with Tehran, Beijing still lacks the will and the hard military power to intervene meaningfully in an era of rising conflicts.

Its carefully cultivated posture as a neutral peace broker, along with its proposals for dialogue and de-escalation, proved inadequate to shape outcomes in conflicts where even its closest partners were directly involved.

Iran’s defeat, alongside Pakistan’s growing asymmetrical disadvantage against India, and Russia’s failure to conquer Ukraine despite Washington’s policy shifts under President Donald Trump, has underscored the weakness of Beijing’s preferred partners and the limits of their emerging coalition to challenge US dominance.

While Tehran is a key energy provider and a cornerstone of Beijing’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative, China has remained cautious about deepening ties with Iran, largely due to concerns about escalating tensions with the US-led West, according to Chinese analysts.

A recent report by the New York-based Soufan Centre, a security think tank, claimed China’s military cooperation with Iran remained “limited and largely symbolic”, despite their joint naval drills since 2019 and a 25-year economic and security cooperation agreement signed in 2021.

“Beijing’s approach to the war has exposed a central tension in its foreign policy: the ambition to present itself as a counterweight to US global dominance, while avoiding costly entanglements that could provoke direct confrontation,” it said in an intel brief on June 19.

The Iran-Israel war has once again raised uncomfortable questions about whether nuclear deterrence remains the ultimate assurance against existential threats, particularly for non-nuclear nations in an increasingly unstable and leaderless world.

At a United Nations Security Council meeting last month, Rafael Mariano Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, warned that the escalating conflict posed a grave threat to the global non-proliferation regime, while reiterating that nuclear facilities must never be attacked.

China, long a champion of non-proliferation and restrained nuclear policy, sees the strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites as a dangerous precedent. As preventive military strikes become normalised, Beijing may find itself with few choices but to accelerate its nuclear and military modernisation amid tensions in the South China Sea and around Taiwan.

More broadly, Iran’s defeat has further eroded confidence in the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, especially among non-nuclear states aspiring to develop the weapons.

Libya’s 2011 collapse after abandoning its nuclear programme, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine less than three decades after Kyiv relinquished its nuclear arsenal, contrast sharply with North Korea’s continued survival, reinforcing the view that nuclear weapons deter aggression and incentivise proliferation.

In Japan and South Korea, where anxieties about a nuclear-armed Pyongyang, a shifting US security commitment, and China’s growing regional influence are intensifying, the Iran-Israel war may further bolster public support for nuclear deterrence.

Once a taboo topic for both US treaty allies in the aftermath of World War II, the nuclear question has reentered mainstream conversation, with public opinion in both countries shifting markedly in recent years towards developing independent nuclear capabilities.

Beijing has good reason to feel concerned, as a nuclear-powered Seoul and Tokyo, on top of their deepening military alliance with Washington, could heighten regional tensions and increase the risk of nuclear escalation and armed conflict in East Asia.

Ironically, China may have to rely on the US, a staunch opponent of nuclear proliferation, including among its allies, to curb Japan and South Korea’s nuclear ambitions.

China’s Xi Jinping puts domestic market at forefront in high-profile meeting

https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3316535/chinas-xi-jinping-puts-domestic-market-forefront-high-profile-meeting?utm_source=rss_feed

President Xi Jinping reiterated the need for China to develop a “unified national market” at a high-profile economic meeting on Tuesday, a task which has taken on greater urgency as the country prioritises domestic demand amid a more uncertain external landscape.

Greater efforts are needed to address a variety of issues facing the world’s second-largest economy, the Central Financial and Economic Affairs Commission said in a readout from their sixth meeting, explicitly calling for a crackdown on the cutthroat competition between firms that has lowered prices, a phasing out of obsolete industrial capacity and an improvement to the business environment.

The commission – a body of the ruling Communist Party which supervises economic matters – also stressed the need to “better integrate domestic and foreign trade, facilitate the transition of export-oriented goods to the domestic market, and foster a group of high-performing firms engaged in both,” according to the readout, cited by state news agency Xinhua.

Authorities will also continue targeted enforcement campaigns to standardise how regulations are implemented for businesses.

“Building a unified national market is a requirement for high-quality development, and the country should strengthen coordination and cooperation to form a concerted effort,” Xi was quoted as saying.

Four of the seven members of the party’s powerful Politburo Standing Committee – Xi, Premier Li Qiang, head of the party’s general office Cai Qi and Vice-Premier Ding Xuexiang – attended the meeting.

The commission is continuing to emphasise the importance of keeping the economy open, said Zhang Zhiwei, president and chief economist at Pinpoint Asset Management.

“The top priority seems to be preventing over-competition. As China’s economy faces deflation pressures and a weak labour market, the government aims to address these challenges from the supply side,” Zhang said.

“I expect specific measures to be announced in the next few months.”

Chinese authorities released a blueprint for a unified national market – a less regionalised state of affairs for the exchange of goods and services – in April 2022, as part of an overall effort to boost economic activity within the country’s borders.

However, there are still many barriers to this goal. Cutthroat competition has driven down prices dramatically in many industries, and the consumer price index, a major gauge of inflation, has fallen for four straight months this year.

The meeting was held as concerns mount over China’s weak domestic demand and the country’s exporters come under pressure as external demand dips, driven by a number of trade barriers, most notably a prolonged stand-off with the United States over tariffs.

While Beijing has attempted to help these exporters sell their products domestically, it has been difficult to fully compensate for the shortfall.

The private sector has long complained about China’s fierce business environment, with the unpredictability of regulatory changes often mentioned in surveys of executive and investor sentiment. This has prompted the government to make structural reforms, such as a first-ever law on the protection of the private economy, passed earlier this year.

These efforts could be bearing fruit. Retail sales, a barometer for consumption, are showing an upward trend with a rise of 6.4 per cent in May after a 5.1 per cent increase in April, the quickest monthly growth rate reported since December 2023.

China’s export growth is also expected to improve in June after slowing the previous month, as a 90-day tariff truce agreed to on May 12 appears likely to boost orders, if only on a temporary basis.

According to customs data, in May exports went up by 4.8 per cent, year on year, to US$316.1 billion, according to customs data. While still a positive figure, this fell short of the metric recorded in April as well as market expectations.

Philippines eyes multirole fighter jets for ‘credible deterrence’ against China

https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/3316547/philippines-eyes-multirole-fighter-jets-credible-deterrence-against-china?utm_source=rss_feed

The Philippines must acquire more advanced fighter jets – and soon – to build a “niche air force” capable of credible deterrence against Chinese intrusions, its air force chief has said, as Manila weighs whether to pursue US-made F-16s or Sweden’s Gripen.

Manila last month signed a US$700 million deal to acquire 12 additional FA-50 light combat aircraft from South Korea, expanding the Philippine Air Force (PAF)’s fleet to 24 by the end of the decade. These upgraded models will come with enhanced range and weapons capacity, but remain limited compared with full-fledged multirole fighters (MRF).

Lieutenant General Arthur Cordura said he welcomed the additional FA-50s but stressed that more advanced platforms were needed to meet the country’s defence goals. He said acquiring true MRFs would allow the PAF to project credible strength across the Philippine archipelago and its maritime zones.

“We cannot be at par with China even 10 to 20 years from now. That’s the reality here,” Cordura said during a media briefing on June 24, ahead of the PAF’s 78th founding anniversary. “But we can project what we call credible deterrence. They will think twice if they will intrude into the country.”

Cordura confirmed that the air force had submitted its preferred choice of MRF to the Department of National Defence (DND), although he declined to name the specific model.

“It is already awaiting a decision from the department and it will be very soon,” he said.

“We are not a big air force. We are a small air force. We are not even small. We are what we call a niche air force,” he said, adding that the country could not afford a fully integrated air defence system and must instead “ask for what is practical”.

At the moment, the two known potential MRF choices are the F-16 fighters made by US manufacturer Lockheed Martin and the JAS 39 Gripen by Swedish aerospace and defence company Saab AB.

In April, the US State Department had announced the approval of the Philippine government’s request to buy a complete package of 20 F-16s.

Defence chief Gilberto Teodoro admitted at the end of May, however, that his ministry had yet to formally receive the US proposed package of US$5.58 billion that would include 16 F-16C Block 70/72 aircraft and four F-16D Block 70/72 aircraft, all equipped with guided missile launchers, anti-aircraft guns, radars, radio systems navigational devices, bombs and missiles.

No military official approached by This Week in Asia would confirm whether the PAF had earlier recommended buying the Gripen, a light single-engine supersonic MRF that could land on non-military grade runways and has even been tested to land on an ordinary highway.

They all suggested that inquiries be directed to the DND.

However, Max Montero, a Filipino-Australian defence and security analyst who writes the popular blog Max Defense, posted on X his “fearless forecast” on June 28.

“Saab JAS-39E/F Gripen as Multirole Fighter (Phase 1) Notice of Award on or before October 2025,” Montero said, but added a caveat the forecast “does not represent” the DND and armed forces’ actual plans.

Montero did not reply to further inquiries from This Week in Asia about his post.

To exhibit credible defence across the Philippine archipelago and within 200 nautical miles of its exclusive economic zone, Cordura said the air force needed “a platform that has a longer endurance, a greater payload that can carry ammunition, [that has] asymmetric capabilities that can land on shorter runways because our future operating bases will be on the periphery of the archipelago already”.

He added that the platform chosen should be “highly integrable and interoperable with our allies in the region. It is important for us to discuss our benefits with our treaty allies and our state partners in the region”.

The MRF was superior to the FA-50 “in terms of performance, in terms of projecting the force that we require because it can carry a variety of air munitions that the FA-50 cannot”, Cordura said.

In a “conflict scenario”, the MRF would be able to communicate with the radar and intercept multirole fighters intruding the country, he added.

However, he also welcomed the acquisition of new FA-50 platforms from Korea Aerospace Industries to help train the pilots in jet operations and prepare them for handling the MRF later.

Manuel Mogato, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who has covered defence and security for decades, told This Week in Asia that under the Armed Forces of the Philippines’ modernisation programme, 1.2 billion pesos (US$21.3 million) had already been allotted for the acquisition of MRFs.

“The air force wants the Gripen,” he said, because it was not only affordable, it could land on “non-military-grade runways”, unlike the F-16s.

He also pointed out that unless the US government helped offset the cost of the F-16s, Manila would not be able to afford them.

In an earlier interview in April after the US State Department announced the approval of the Philippine government’s request to buy 20 fully equipped F-16s, Mogato recalled the US government had offered to sell then president Rodrigo Duterte 12 F-16s in a complete package costing US$2.4 billion. But both the military and the government balked because it could only raise half that amount.

China edges closer to Airbus mega-deal, leaving Boeing out in the cold: analysts

https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3316476/china-edges-closer-airbus-mega-deal-leaving-boeing-out-cold-analysts?utm_source=rss_feed

China may be on the verge of placing another lucrative order with European aerospace giant Airbus, potentially for at least 100 to 200 new aircraft – even as some Chinese airlines remain heavily reliant on US rival Boeing’s jets.

Europe has emerged as China’s go-to source for overseas commercial aircraft in recent years. Boeing, once a major supplier, has not secured a major order from China since 2017 – casting a shadow over its future in the world’s second-largest economy amid turbulent trade ties between Beijing and Washington.

In that time, the company has also suffered reputational setbacks marked by worker strikes, financial losses and crashes – including the recent Air India disaster that killed at least 270 people aboard a Boeing 787 Dreamliner.

Now, as Beijing’s geopolitical and aviation safety concerns push Chinese buyers towards Airbus and even the home-grown Comac C919 passenger plane, analysts warn Boeing’s absence from China’s recent plane-buying spree could leave some airlines in the lurch.

“Buying from Airbus makes a lot of sense now, both commercially and diplomatically … But carriers with Boeing-only fleets are caught on the back foot,” said Brian Yang Bo, an aviation industry veteran and independent consultant.

Beijing could reportedly sign the deal with Airbus this month, when European leaders travel to China for a summit. If it goes ahead, it would come hot on the heels of a US$20 billion deal for 160 jets signed just two years ago during French President Emmanuel Macron’s visit to China – pushing Boeing even further out in the cold.

“The new deal could be among the biggest in decades, filling the void left by Boeing. The wind in China is blowing in the direction of Airbus and there’s a clear mandate of support for the C919,” Yang said.

China’s big three airlines have also committed to buying at least 100 C919s. They last ordered from Boeing eight years ago.

Chinese carriers place overseas orders through China Aviation Supplies, with analysts noting their decisions are often influenced by Beijing’s broader diplomatic ties with the West.

Citing sources, the Post reported earlier that China’s rumoured Airbus order may be used to gain diplomatic goodwill from the EU and accelerate regulatory approval for the C919.

According to an Airbus forecast, China will procure 9,520 new aircraft over the next 20 years. But the years-long hiatus in new deals with Boeing, compounded by delivery delays, poses a challenge for some carriers, analysts said.

“The freeze on deals and delivery issues means some airlines are having a hard time replacing old Boeing jets in their fleets at a pace that suits their operational needs,” said Jason Zheng, an analyst with Airwefly, a Shanghai-based aviation news portal and consultancy.

China has several operators with Boeing-only fleets, according to data from the Civil Aviation Administration of China and individual airlines. Shandong Airlines operates 131 Boeing 737s, with an average age of over 11 years. Shanghai Airlines has 83 Boeing planes in service, including eight 787 Dreamliners, while China United Airlines has 59 737s. Both 9 Air and Donghai Airlines have more than 20.

“Boeing-only carriers will grapple more with aircraft ageing, skyrocketing maintenance costs and capacity constraints if the lull in new Boeing deals continues despite the easing of trade tensions between China and the US,” Zheng said.

Switching from Boeing to Airbus or the C919 would take time, said Yang, the independent aviation consultant. “The transition would be costly, complex,” he warned.

Still, he was upbeat that the much-anticipated call between President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump in early June could finally mark a turnaround.

In their call, Xi and Trump invited each other to visit their respective countries, though no dates have been fixed.

“If Trump visits China, I would be surprised if Beijing does not announce purchases from Boeing to sweeten trade ties … Of course, Boeing has to put an end to its string of safety issues first and convince Chinese regulators,” Yang said.

Chinese civil aviation authorities could be tallying demand for new Boeing jets and a deal could be in the works, he added.

“Whether and when it comes to fruition may still be determined by the state of Beijing-Washington ties and the geopolitics in play. But I’m optimistic that the next deal won’t be far away.”

Trump’s Golden Dome and China, Xi calls for more public oversight: SCMP daily highlights

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Catch up on some of SCMP’s biggest China stories of the day. If you would like to see more of our reporting, please consider .

The planned defence system could make it harder for the PLA to strike US bases like those in Guam and Okinawa, or warships trying to defend Taiwan.

China has sanctioned the former Senate majority leader of the Philippines Francis Tolentino, a key ally of the Southeast Asian country’s President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr on South China Sea issues.

Beijing has extended an olive branch to French cognac producers by promising a “significant” tax refund if they cooperate with its anti-dumping investigation into European Union brandy sold in China, according to an industry source with knowledge of the matter.

China’s space agency on Tuesday released images of the Earth and moon captured by its asteroid-sampling Tianwen-2 spacecraft, while confirming that the probe was in good condition after more than a month in orbit.

When Beijing stages a grand military parade this autumn, observers will be watching for signals being sent towards Taiwan, with both military hardware and historical connections sending both public and political messages.

China must allow for more public and media oversight of the government and the Communist Party to ensure accountability and to uncover abuses of power, according to President Xi Jinping.

A senior Chinese official with a background in water resources and ethnic affairs has been named as the new Communist Party boss of Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region.

Pentagon reliant on Chinese suppliers and ‘not prepared’ for war, report warns

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/military/article/3316475/pentagon-reliant-chinese-suppliers-and-not-prepared-war-report-warns?utm_source=rss_feed

The US defence industrial base remains dependent on Chinese suppliers despite efforts to decouple – and that raises concerns over war readiness, according to a report by data analytics firm Govini.

Chinese firms still made up 9.3 per cent of the primary contractors, or Tier 1 suppliers, involved in major US defence programmes across nine critical sectors in 2024, Govini said in its annual National Security Scorecard.

“The United States is not prepared for the war that we may have to enter if China said, ‘today is the day’,” said Tara Dougherty, chief executive of the Washington-based defence acquisition information firm.

Its researchers analysed US Department of Defence spending data in nine key areas – aviation, maritime, C4I (command, control, communications, computers and intelligence), mission support, nuclear, missiles and munitions, ground, missile defence and space.

They concluded that US supply chains were “incredibly brittle” and that China, categorised as an “adversarial” nation, was home to the most Tier 1 suppliers.

According to the report, the missile defence sector had the most significant reliance on Chinese suppliers, who had a share of 11.1 per cent.

The nuclear sector had the lowest reliance at 7.8 per cent, with 45 per cent of suppliers to that sector based in the United States.

But among foreign suppliers to the nuclear sector, China had the most at 534, compared to US allies Canada and Britain at 405 and 366, respectively.

Meanwhile, the number of Chinese suppliers to the sector was found to have gone up by 45.5 per cent from the previous year.

The report also noted that many weapon systems – from hundreds of them in the aviation and maritime sectors to a handful in nuclear – depend on critical minerals, whose production is dominated by China.

“China’s recent ban on the export of critical minerals underscores this vulnerability,” the report said, referring to Beijing’s retaliatory moves to impose export controls on rare earth elements and other critical materials amid its tech and trade war with Washington.

In an April report, Govini said 80,000 weapon parts in the US were made using antimony, gallium, germanium, tungsten or tellurium. With global supply of these five critical minerals dominated by China, nearly 78 per cent of all US weapon systems could be affected by the export curbs, the report found.

The latest report also compared the numbers of patents granted in each sector in recent years, finding that China had outpaced the US in most of them.

While the report highlighted the vulnerabilities in America’s military supply chain, Dougherty said that completely eliminating Chinese suppliers might not be feasible.

“I’m not even sure that eradicating China from the supply chain is the right goal,” she said, suggesting instead that it would be better to identify and strengthen the most critical components.

“I think it’s about dissecting these platforms into what’s critical and what’s not,” she added.

The report also pointed to other risk factors such as an overreliance on the top prime contractors, and small suppliers that were operating with obsolete technology, ageing workforces and slim profit margins.

“Roughly half the [spare] parts have at least one major risk factor,” Dougherty said.

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Family of China-born neuroscientist Jane Wu files death-related civil complaint

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3316534/family-china-born-neuroscientist-jane-wu-files-death-related-civil-complaint?utm_source=rss_feed

The family of late neurology professor Jane Wu has filed a civil complaint against a US university, saying the university’s actions became “a decisive factor in her decision to end her life”.

In a civil complaint filed last week in Cook County Circuit Court, Wu’s family – acting through her legal estate – accused Northwestern University of discrimination and isolation.

Wu took her own life in July 2024 after years of China-related investigations in the US.

According to the filing, the university partially shut down Wu’s laboratory, dismantled her research team and reassigned her grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to white male colleagues.

These actions were taken while Wu, a chair professor at Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine, was under administrative investigation by the NIH between 2019 and 2023, it said.

The investigation concluded with no findings of misconduct, but Northwestern did not restore Wu’s lab or funding. Instead, it cut her salary, imposed new restrictions, and refused to return a still-active NIH grant – steps her family said effectively blocked Wu from rebuilding her career.

According to the filing, on May 23, 2024 – just weeks before her death – campus and city police handcuffed Wu, removed her from her office, and took her to Northwestern Memorial’s psychiatric hospital without notifying her family.

“The physical assault directed by Northwestern and the forced hospitalisation sent Dr Wu into a severe state of shock,” the complaint reads.

“After obtaining her release from Northwestern Hospital two weeks later, and with her career, her professional reputation, and her personal sense of safety shattered, Dr Wu took her own life on July 10, 2024.”

The South China Morning Post has contacted Northwestern University and the NIH for comment.

Northwestern did not respond to the South China Morning Post’s inquiries last year after Wu’s death. It swiftly removed web pages related to her, including her faculty profile and publication and grant listings on the Northwestern Scholars portal.

Multiple Chinese-American researchers told the Post at the time that this behaviour was highly unusual. Typically, the university would publish an obituary and keep a deceased professor’s faculty page online for years, they said.

Northwestern officials named in the complaint include Eric Neilson, dean of the Feinberg School of Medicine, who is alleged to have cut Wu’s salary and refused to return a major grant after she was cleared by the NIH in December 2023.

Dimitri Krainc, chair of the neurology department and Wu’s direct supervisor, also played a central role in reassigning her team, initiating the lab closure, and later visiting her at the psychiatric hospital, according to the filing.

Wu was born in 1963 in Hefei, in Anhui province, central China, and graduated from Shanghai Medical University in 1986.

She went on to earn her doctorate in cancer biology from Stanford University, conducted postdoctoral research at Harvard, and spent a decade at Washington University in St Louis before joining Northwestern in 2005.

As an internationally recognised expert in neurology, molecular biology, and genetics, Wu brought in exceptionally strong funding for her research. At the time of the investigation, she held six concurrent NIH grants, compared to one or two for most faculty.

Gisela Perez Kusakawa, executive director of the Asian-American Scholar Forum, a non-profit organisation that supports Asian-American scholars and advocates for civil rights in academia, said that universities must be places of “community, support and fairness, not fear and coercion”.

“We urge institutions of higher education to adopt meaningful safeguards, to prioritise mental health, and to reaffirm their commitments to non-discrimination, justice, and fairness,” she said.

“Dr Wu’s story shows us how the effect of unjust investigations into Chinese-American scholars does not just end careers, it can end lives. We stand with Dr Wu’s family and all those demanding justice and systemic change.”

If you have suicidal thoughts or know someone who is experiencing them, help is available. In Hong Kong, you can dial 18111 for the government-run Mental Health Support Hotline. You can also call +852 2896 0000 for The Samaritans or +852 2382 0000 for Suicide Prevention Services. In the US, call or text 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org for the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. For a list of other nations’ helplines, .

US Senate, passing Trump bill, bars clean energy tax credits for firms with ties to China

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/3316559/us-senate-passing-trump-bill-bars-clean-energy-tax-credits-firms-ties-china?utm_source=rss_feed

The US Congress is poised to bar companies with ties to China from gaining clean energy tax credits – a move that critics warn could jeopardise dozens of planned projects and freeze investment in a sector already struggling to decouple from the country.

After an overnight series of amendment votes, the Senate on Tuesday passed its version of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act – which would also remove the decades-old “de minimis” trade rule that allows low-value packages to avoid duties and rigorous screening – by a vote of 51-50, with Vice-President J.D. Vance providing the tiebreaker.

The House of Representatives passed its version in May but would need to vote on the Senate’s changes before the bill could be sent to US President Donald Trump to sign into law. Republicans, who control both chambers, have set a deadline to finish a version for the president by Friday.

Trump’s signature budget legislation, which spans about 900 pages, includes strict foreign ownership rules that would disqualify clean energy companies from receiving tax credits. Among the many disqualifying relationships: cases in which a Chinese entity owns as little as 25 per cent of the company.

The bill also sets new “material assistance” thresholds that disqualify projects from receiving tax credits if too much of their content is sourced from China, Iran, North Korea or Russia, with the allowable share declining over time. For example, starting next year, a solar farm would be ineligible if more than 60 per cent of its materials by value came from China.

The bill additionally targets US-China licensing deals focused on transferring technology and processes, potentially imperiling high-profile deals like the one between Ford and the Chinese battery maker CATL.

Restrictions on foreign clean energy components, tech transfers and ownership – meant to reduce reliance on Chinese dominance in the sector – are not new. They were also in the Inflation Reduction Act, former president Joe Biden’s signature climate legislation that established many of the tax credits.

But that legislation, which became law in 2022, only had restrictions on one consumer credit for electric vehicles. The current Senate bill would vastly expand that to tax credits applicable to a wide range of energy production or manufacturing projects.

The consequences could be huge for the clean energy sector.

Forcing companies to prove the absence of Chinese entanglements is “an all but impossible task, particularly given the untested set of new rules”, said Jake Higdon and Avi Zevin, both former Energy Department staffers, in an analysis published on Monday.

Large portions of the supply chain have run through China for decades, they noted, and while US companies are already working to reduce their reliance on Chinese expertise and components, “the complex, commingled nature of global supply chains and corporate business structures make it infeasible to flip the switch overnight”.

Over the past few years, Chinese and American companies alike have invested billions of dollars in US factories on the back of Biden’s IRA.

A March analysis by research firm BloombergNEF showed that 22 firms “headquartered in China with Chinese parent companies or majority-Chinese shareholders” were behind more than 100 existing or planned battery and solar factories in the US.

The difficulty of decoupling from China in the clean energy sector was not lost on lawmakers.

In a last-minute change following opposition from several Republican lawmakers, the Senate voted on Tuesday to remove a provision that would have imposed a penalty on wind and solar companies for using Chinese components even if they don’t use any tax credits.

Meanwhile, Tuesday’s version of the bill maintained a provision to eliminate the “de minimis” threshold of a 1930s trade law, which has allowed packages under a certain value – currently US$800 – to bypass stringent customs screening and duties.

Efforts to change that picked up in recent years, amid an increase in cheap shipments from China, including from e-commerce companies like Shein and Temu.

China’s Tianwen-2 returns Earth, moon images as land team simulates lunar lava cave probe

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3316528/chinas-tianwen-2-returns-earth-moon-images-land-team-simulates-lunar-lava-cave-probe?utm_source=rss_feed

China’s space agency on Tuesday released images of the Earth and moon captured by its asteroid-sampling Tianwen-2 spacecraft, while confirming that the probe was in good condition after more than a month in orbit.

The images were taken by the Tianwen-2 spacecraft’s narrow field-of-view navigation sensor on May 30, according to the China National Space Administration (CNSA), which released them after image processing on the ground.

This comes days after state media reported that researchers in northeastern China were testing autonomous robots in underground lava caves to simulate the terrain these may explore during future lunar missions.

The Tianwen-2 spacecraft has been in orbit since it was launched from the Xichang Satellite Launch Centre in southwestern China on May 29.

The probe was orbiting at a distance of more than 12 million kilometres (7.5 million miles) from Earth and was in “good working condition”, CNSA said in a news release on its website on Tuesday.

The first image of the Earth was taken when the spacecraft was 590,000km from the planet, and the image of the moon was taken several hours later at a similar distance from the lunar surface.

These were transmitted back to Earth, where scientists carried out image alignment, radiation correction and colour synthesis to obtain the final full-colour images, CNSA said.

The Tianwen-2, which lifted off via a Long March 3B rocket, is en route to the asteroid 469219 Kamo‘oalewa or 2016 HO3 – a quasi-satellite of Earth that could be a fragment of the moon. It will collect samples from the asteroid’s fast-spinning surface before returning them to Earth in 2027 using a re-entry capsule.

The sample return mission aims to shed light on the formation and evolution of asteroids and the early solar system, state news agency Xinhua said in reporting on the images on Tuesday.

If its mission is successful, the Tianwen-2 would make China the third country, after Japan and the United States, to return samples from an asteroid.

After completing the sample return, the spacecraft will use the Earth’s gravity for a catapult manoeuvre to begin a seven-year journey to the active asteroid 311P/PANSTARRS, which has comet-like tails and is located in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. The aim will be to study its orbit, rotation, shape, surface composition and dust activity.

China has planned a series of space missions to explore the moon and beyond, including building a permanent, nuclear-powered lunar research base near the south pole of the moon in collaboration with Russia.

According to a report by state broadcaster CCTV on June 26, eight universities have jointly set up China’s first lunar-like underground teaching and practice base in Heilongjiang province to conduct tests simulating the Moon’s surface conditions.

Deep space exploration robots developed by Peking University and the Harbin Institute of Technology had been tested at the base located in lava caves beneath Jingpo Lake, the report said.

These underground caves formed by flowing lava have a composition that closely mirrors those on the moon. Lunar lava tubes are seen as ideal natural shelters, shielding from radiation and meteors and suitable for building extraterrestrial bases.

Zhang Shanghang, a researcher at Peking University, told CCTV that the two flexible robots they tested were capable of autonomous exploration in complex environments, and could be used for exploration and transport on the moon.

“We believe that robots should not only increase the efficiency of our production and life on Earth, but also face the stars and the sea,” she said.

The other universities taking part in the cave project are Zhejiang University, Jilin University, Sun Yat-sen University, the Macau University of Science and Technology, the Southern University of Science and Technology, and the University of Science and Technology of China.

China aims to land its first astronauts on the moon by 2030, becoming only the second country to do so after the United States.

The crewed landing is expected to set the stage for the International Lunar Research Station – jointly developed by CNSA and the Russian space agency Roscosmos – to be functional by the second half of the 2030s.

Tianwen-2 is the second mission in China’s Tianwen, or “Questions to Heaven”, interplanetary exploration programme focusing on the solar system. The Tianwen-1 entered the orbit of Mars and landed a rover on its surface in 2021.

The next mission, Tianwen-3, aims to bring back the first Martian rock samples by 2031, while Tianwen-4 is scheduled to launch around 2030 to explore the Jupiter system and conduct a fly-by of Uranus.

China rolls out tax incentives to win back foreign investors amid EU, US trade tensions

https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3316512/china-rolls-out-tax-incentives-win-back-foreign-investors-amid-eu-us-trade-tensions?utm_source=rss_feed

China has stepped up efforts to attract foreign investors, as policymakers look to bolster the domestic economy and safeguard its position in global supply chains amid negotiations with major trade partners.

New tax breaks unveiled this week aim to encourage foreign firms to reinvest profits locally – part of a broader effort to restore confidence and signal openness as challenging trade talks continue with the European Union and United States.

The Ministry of Commerce, the Ministry of Finance and the State Taxation Administration jointly announced the new incentives in a statement on Monday.

Foreign companies that choose to reinvest profits earned in China back into local operations will be able to deduct their onshore tax by an amount equivalent to 10 per cent of the reinvested sum. Any unused credits can also be carried forward until the end of 2028.

Eligible reinvestments include capital injections into domestic firms, such as establishing new entities or acquiring equity from non-affiliated parties – though purchases of publicly listed shares are excluded.

Foreign investors can also apply retroactively for qualifying reinvestments made since January 1, 2025.

“It’s a clear contrast – while the US is threatening trading partners with tariffs, China is offering tax relief to attract foreign investment,” said Sun Lijian, a finance professor at Fudan University in Shanghai.

“A range of opening-up policies that China has adopted in recent years, including visa-free travel arrangements, aim to encourage more foreign investors and businesses to integrate into China’s economic system,” he added.

Remitting profits made in China back to home countries requires approval by the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) and is also subject to taxation.

Foreign firms have long reinvested profits to expand their operations in the country, but geopolitical tensions have dampened sentiment in recent years. China experienced a net capital outflow of US$168 billion in 2024 – the highest since records began in 1990, according to calculations by Bloomberg.

As uncertainty rises, global investors are holding onto their cash in a climate where a better business environment matters more than ever, Sun said.

The new tax incentives came at a delicate time for China as it negotiates trade terms with the European Union – its second-largest export destination – and the United States, its third-largest.

Foreign investment remains vital to China, providing jobs, technology and management expertise, and is essential to the country’s broader ties with major trading nations

Speaking at the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting of the New Champions in Tianjin last week, China’s Premier Li Qiang pledged to “open the door wider to the world.”

“We will further integrate and connect with the global market, step up industrial collaboration with other countries and actively share the fruits of our development to deliver greater benefits to the world,” he told hundreds of executives.

China remains the world’s second-largest recipient of foreign investment, but the amount has fallen as competition with the US intensifies. Washington has imposed tech curbs and higher tariffs on Chinese products, and rolled out tax incentives to lure American firms – particularly manufacturers – back to the United States.

From January to May, foreign investment fell by 13.2 per cent year on year to about 358.2 billion yuan, government data showed.

The world’s second-largest economy has also opened up outbound portfolio investment through government-designated channels, such as the Qualified Domestic Institutional Investor (QDII) program.

On Monday, China’s forex regulator announced that it had recently allocated a total of US$3.08 billion in investment quotas to eligible QDIIs, to meet growing demand for overseas asset allocation.

The move aims to further support outbound investments in compliance with regulations, it said.

The QDII program plays an important role in China’s financial market opening, allowing eligible domestic financial institutions to invest overseas by remitting both yuan and foreign currencies within approved limits.

Chinese passengers describe Japan Airlines flight’s violent plunge before emergency landing

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/3316523/chinese-passengers-describe-aircrafts-violent-plunge-emergency-landing?utm_source=rss_feed

Japan Airlines flight JL8696 from Shanghai to Tokyo was forced to make an emergency landing at Kansai Airport on Monday evening after what passengers described as a sudden descent in the aircraft.

The aircraft was on a code-share service operated by budget carrier Spring Airlines Japan as IJ004 from Pudong to Narita when it diverted to the airport in Osaka for an emergency landing at around 8.50pm local time.

None of the 191 passengers and crew on board the Boeing 737-800 was injured. According to the Japanese government, the pilots contacted air traffic controllers when the aircraft triggered an alert about an irregularity in the pressurisation system that maintains cabin air pressure.

Passengers began posting on social media not long after landing, with one reporting that oxygen masks dropped as the plane plunged from a height of more than 10,000 metres (32,800 feet), describing it as a life-threatening experience.

“My body is still here, but my soul hasn’t caught up. My legs are still shaking. When you face life or death, everything else feels trivial,” the passenger wrote.

A comment added by a fellow passenger described the descent as abrupt and extreme. “The plane started plummeting violently at around 7pm and dropped to 3,000 metres in just 20 minutes.”

Others said on social media that passengers were kept on board the plane for more than an hour after landing, with Spring Airlines Japan agreeing to pay each person 15,000 yen (US$104) following complaints. However, they would have to contact the airline rather than receiving the compensation automatically, according to the posts.

Spring Airlines Japan was established in September 2012 through joint investment by Shanghai-based Spring Airlines and Japan Airlines. JAL became the holding company of Spring Airlines Japan in June 2021, with its Chinese partner retaining a 33 per cent stake.

The Chinese airline released a statement clarifying that the incident related to a separate company. “Spring Airlines flight numbers begin with 9C and all flights are operating as scheduled,” it said.

Last year, a JAL Airbus A350-900 collided with a Japanese coastguard aircraft that was conducting disaster relief on the same runway at Haneda Airport. Both planes caught fire, killing five people.

The Boeing 737 series involved in Monday’s emergency landing has faced numerous global safety incidents, including at least 12 fatal crashes since 2000.

In late 2024, a Jeju Air Boeing 737-800 crashed while landing at Muan International Airport in South Jeolla province, South Korea. A total of 179 people died while only two crew members survived.

The same Boeing model was also involved in China’s deadliest air crash this century – the China Eastern Airlines flight MU5735 disaster in March 2022 which killed all 132 people on board.

Other Boeing models like the 737 Max series have been involved in air disasters that shook the world and raised global safety concerns.

China’s ethnic affairs chief to take Communist Party helm in Xinjiang

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3316502/chinas-ethnic-affairs-chief-communist-party-helm-xinjiang?utm_source=rss_feed

A senior Chinese official with a background in water resources and ethnic affairs has been named as the new Communist Party boss of Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region.

In a one-paragraph announcement on Tuesday, state news agency Xinhua said the party’s Central Committee “recently decided” that Chen Xiaojiang would serve as party secretary of Xinjiang.

The move might clear the path for Chen, one of the 300 or so members of the Central Committee, to be promoted within the party’s hierarchy, given that the Xinjiang party chief traditionally has a seat on the now 24-strong Politburo.

Beijing regards the stability of the region – which covers one-sixth of China and is a vital road link to Central Asia and the Middle East – as critical for its international infrastructure push, the Belt and Road Initiative.

Chen’s predecessor, Ma Xingrui, “will be appointed to another position”, according to the announcement.

Chen, 63, heads to Xinjiang after a stint as the executive deputy minister of the United Front Work Department.

The department is the party organ responsible for relations with non-party groups and individuals inside and outside mainland China, a brief that includes oversight of ethnic affairs and religious organisations within the country.

In December 2020, Chen became the first ethnic Han official appointed director of the National Ethnic Affairs Commission, breaking a six-decade tradition of putting an official from an ethnic minority group in charge of the area.

As the commission’s director, Chen replaced Bagatur, an ethnic Mongolian cadre, just months after protests erupted in Inner Mongolia over Beijing’s decision to increase the share of the school curriculum taught in Mandarin.

The appointment was widely regarded as part of President Xi Jinping’s push to integrate ethnic minorities in the country.

Chen was born in eastern Zhejiang province and worked in the Ministry of Water Resources for most of his career.

In an unusual move, Chen was transferred in 2015 to the propaganda department of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), China’s top political disciplinary and anticorruption body spearheading Xi’s sweeping anti-corruption drive.

From there he was sent to the northeastern province of Liaoning to serve as its disciplinary head in the aftermath of a major election scandal in 2016. After a year, he was rotated back to the CCDI to become its deputy party secretary.

Beijing has remained tight-lipped about Ma’s next position. Before taking up the Xinjiang post in 2021, he was general manager of China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, party secretary of Shenzhen, and governor of Guangdong province.

Ma replaced Chen Quanguo, who was put on a US sanctions list over accusations of human rights violations.

In a separate announcement, Wei Tao, party secretary of Taiyuan, the capital of Shanxi province, has been appointed deputy party secretary of Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region and party chief of the regional government party group, clearing his way to take over the region’s government chairman role. The appointment will have to be formally approved by Guangxi’s people’s congress.

China offers tax refund to French cognac makers amid EU brandy anti-dumping probe: source

https://www.scmp.com/economy/global-economy/article/3316474/china-offers-tax-refund-french-cognac-makers-amid-eu-brandy-anti-dumping-probe-source?utm_source=rss_feed

Beijing has extended an olive branch to French cognac producers by promising a “significant” tax refund if they cooperate with its anti-dumping investigation into European Union brandy sold in China, according to an industry source with knowledge of the matter.

Major brands Hennessy, Martell and Rémy Martin have been offered the terms, said the person, who spoke anonymously due to the sensitivity of the issue.

To qualify, producers must agree to Beijing’s demands, commit to a minimum selling price and refrain from dumping practices, the person said, adding that negotiations were ongoing but the refunded amount should be “pretty significant”.

Last October, Beijing imposed temporary anti-dumping duties on brandy and cognac imported from the EU in retaliation for the bloc’s tariffs on made-in-China electric vehicles.

The investigation into European cognac, mainly produced in France, will conclude on July 5. If no agreement is reached by then, the temporary tariffs of up to 39 per cent could become permanent.

The Bureau National Interprofessionnel du Cognac (BNIC) – France’s leading representative for the cognac industry – said both sides had negotiated a preliminary agreement to establish a minimum import price, pending approval from Chinese authorities.

“Everything is in the hands of the Chinese authorities. We will continue to support the industry and achieve the best possible situation between now and July 5,” a French Commerce Ministry spokesperson told the Post on Monday.

Producers were cautiously optimistic that Beijing would approve the deal before the deadline, though broader trade disputes between China and the EU – in areas such as electric vehicles – have added to the uncertainty, the industry source said.

“There’s a lot of hope, [but] we also need to be cautious about the negotiations, because there’s a political dimension and politics is always a bit, well, it’s never definitive,” the person added.

In a statement published last week, the BNIC said national cognac exports to China had fallen by nearly 40 per cent so far this year due to the temporary tariffs.

Marc-Antoine Jamet, secretary general of French luxury goods giant LVMH, which owns Hennessy, criticised Beijing for linking the cognac negotiations to broader China-EU trade disputes.

Speaking at a China Europe International Business School (CEIBS) forum in Paris on Monday, he said the cognac-producing region does not wield much influence in Brussels.

“Most cognac producers are small owners who sell to traders … running fragile, difficult and small family farms and are totally being strangled by this struggle that is out of their hands,” Jamet said.

Small producers stand to lose the most if China and France cannot reach an agreement before July 5.

While major cognac producers such as Hennessy, Martell and Rémy Martin have all agreed to comply with China’s investigation and pay the legal fees required to benefit from the tax refund, most small producers have not, according to the source.

This makes them more vulnerable in the worst-case scenario, the person added.

Hennessy, Martell and Rémy Martin did not respond immediately to the Post’s request for comment.

“We’re one of the rare small businesses to have agreed to pay and to have agreed to collaborate,” the source said.

Most of the roughly 4,000 producers and traders in the cognac region declined to pay the fees and could face the full punitive tariffs if a deal is not reached, according to the source.

The whole procedure cost them between €15,000 (US$17,675) and €20,000 (US$23,567) in legal fees, the source said, with the major cognac producers paying much more.

“We gave up all our confidential information, our customers, our processes and all that to collaborate and get a tax refund. So normally, we should benefit from it,” the person said.

“The least we ask is that this be respected, that the promise be kept.”

Chinese man, 102, known for musical talent, creates sweet bond with grandma in nursing home

https://www.scmp.com/news/people-culture/article/3315758/chinese-man-102-known-musical-talent-creates-sweet-bond-grandma-nursing-home?utm_source=rss_feed

A 102-year-old man in central China has formed a sweet bond with an 85-year-old woman at a nursing home by charming her with his artistic talent, winning the admiration of many online.

Centenarian Jiang Weidi has lived at Enjoy Ages Nursing Home in Wuhan for over three years, according to Hubei Daily.

His room is filled with books, calligraphy, and paintings.

He also plays the hulusi, a traditional Chinese cucurbit flute, and taught himself to play the piano.

Carers at the home say Jiang is lively, curious and has the spirit of a playful child.

In April last year, he starred in a short video made by the nursing home, playing a bugler in a tunnel warfare scene. The clip went viral on a major social media platform, racking up more than 16 million views.

During filming, Jiang showed clear thinking, steady movement and actively engaged with others. After hours of shooting, he showed no signs of fatigue.

Jiang told Jiupai News that his secret to staying healthy is keeping a positive mindset, not smoking or drinking alcohol, and following a routine.

A schedule hanging in his room outlines 13 daily activities, including exercises, afternoon tea and music practice.

Earlier this year, Jiang met 85-year-old grandmother Zhang during daily activities at the home.

She has a talent for craftwork and specialises in making silk mesh flowers and other woven creations.

They bonded over their talents and eventually fell in love.

Jiang admired Zhang’s warmth and kindness, while she was touched by his gentle and youthful spirit.

Both families fully support their relationship.

Jiang said, “Meeting Zhang was fate. We look after each other and never feel lonely.”

Zhang’s son expressed his admiration for Jiang and said he was happy for them both: “The happiness of our elders is what matters most,” he said.

The pair often hold hands during nursing home activities. Zhang helps tidy up his clothes and Jiang adds inscriptions to her handmade pieces.

The couple sometimes breaks into impromptu Huangmei opera performances, bringing joy to those around them.

Carers said that Jiang’s mental state has improved since being with Zhang.

Their love story has gone viral on mainland social media, with their videos attracting more than 400,000 likes.

One online observer said: “Their time together may be limited, but their love is sincere and real.”

“Grandpa Jiang looks like he is only in his 80s. Staying happy really does help you live longer,” said another.

A third person said: “I hope Grandpa Jiang can teach me, a guy in his 20s, how to win a girl’s heart.”

Chinese President Xi Jinping calls to regulate exercise of power to fight corruption

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3316478/chinese-president-xi-jinping-calls-regulate-exercise-power-fight-corruption?utm_source=rss_feed

President Xi Jinping has called for a “clear, transparent and traceable” mechanism to regulate the exercise of power in China’s anti-corruption drive and boost supervision by the people and the media to better rein in disciplinary and legal violations.

Xi made the remarks while presiding over a group study session of the 24-seat decision-making Politburo in Beijing on Monday, a day before the 104th anniversary of the party’s founding, according to Xinhua.

Xi spoke on enforcing party discipline with his eight-point austerity rules and more comprehensive supervision over the exercise of power.

“To fight against corruption, [we must] regulate the exercise of power,” Xi said, according to the state news agency.

“[We must] improve the institutional mechanism to unify the authorisation, exercise and control of power, and make it clear, transparent and traceable. [We should] focus on finding loopholes in the exercise of power and address the system’s shortcomings,” he added, urging party members and cadres to always bear in mind that “all power is granted by the people”, and to respect the people, the party, the law and discipline.

The remarks from China’s leader came as the Communist Party gave a fresh push to its decade-long austerity campaign to curb excessive spending on official events and abuse of public funds for recreational purposes such as dining.

This year, millions of Chinese officials are attending an education campaign focused on implementing Xi’s eight-point austerity rules to improve the party’s conduct, an issue Beijing believes is key to its public image and legitimacy to rule.

Xi also called for efforts to combine “supervision from the party and people”.

“[We should] let the supervision of the masses and public opinion [serve] as our ‘outpost’, and better coordinate various types of supervision,” he added.

The president emphasised that advancing Chinese modernisation was a formidable task, and that the party faced “an exceptionally complex governance environment”, which he said made it all the more necessary to maintain a heightened sense of self-reform.

Xi said the eight-point rules were the party’s landmark measure for self-governance, and ordered leading officials, especially senior cadres, to lead the effort, resolutely curb various “unhealthy tendencies” and improve mechanisms to maintain sound party conduct for the long term.

Party conduct and discipline must be turned from strict requirements into concrete actions, allowing ironclad rules to show their “iron teeth”, thus sending a clear signal to the entire party of unwavering stringency and zero tolerance for a strong deterrent effect, he said.

China’s top disciplinary body detained 32 “tigers”, or senior officials, in the first six months of the year, just four fewer than the same period last year, indicating the sweeping anti-corruption crackdown remains intense, according to a tally by the South China Morning Post.

The latest “tiger” detained on Saturday by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) – China’s top political disciplinary and anti-corruption body – was Liu Shaoyong, chairman of China Eastern Airlines.

Among senior officials netted by the CCDI, five had held ministerial rank: former Tibet government chairman Che Dalha, former Hubei party chief Jiang Chaoliang, Shanxi governor Jin Xiangjun, Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region government chairman Lan Tianli and former party secretary of the State Administration for Market Regulation Bi Jingquan.

Chinese scientists uncover coal power’s dirty secret in satellite data study

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3316469/chinese-scientists-uncover-coal-powers-dirty-secret-satellite-data-study?utm_source=rss_feed

In the first high-precision satellite mapping of carbon dioxide emissions from large international coal power plants, Chinese scientists have found that existing databases are underestimating discharges from facilities across the globe.

They include China’s Tuoketuo – the largest coal-fired power station in the world – and Alabama’s James H. Miller Jnr facility, the most polluting plant in the United States, according to a paper published on June 9 by the peer-reviewed Journal of Cleaner Production.

The optimised model for observing emissions through satellite data could offer a standardised way to monitor carbon emissions from power plants, which is currently lacking in global carbon accounting, the paper said.

The team, from the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Aerospace Information Research Institute, said the study results indicated “significant potential” for the use of satellite remote sensing technology in estimating carbon dioxide emissions.

“This framework provides a high-precision methodology for global carbon inventory, enabling retrospective analysis of historical data to detect anomalous emission events,” the researchers said.

According to the paper, the satellite-based method could also have a role to play in the monitoring of emissions from other sources, such as oil and gas fields or steel plants.

The ability to accurately estimate emissions is vital for setting carbon reduction measures and policies, as well as in carbon trading, but traditional methods have relied on the data reported by power plants.

This information could be influenced by a range of factors, such as operational conditions, combustion efficiency, and what type of coal was being used, as some varieties produce more emissions, the team said.

Coal-fired power plants are among the largest producers of carbon dioxide – accounting for 30 to 40 per cent of global emissions – but quantifying them accurately has been limited by outdated inventories and a lack of standardised monitoring methods.

Corresponding author Shi Yusheng, a researcher at the CAS institute, said emissions were underestimated because “input parameters are not uniform around the world and there is no uniform statistical standard”.

Satellite monitoring is a globally recognised tool for estimating carbon emissions, because of its more objective results, Shi told the South China Morning Post.

While previous studies have achieved satellite-based carbon emission quantification, they had limited precision because the technology still has issues – like background interference – that can lead to accounting errors, according to the research team.

The researchers said they were able to improve the accuracy of their study with the help of a model optimisation algorithm that could deal with the issues of background determination, wind direction and inaccurate carbon plume modelling.

The study was based on satellite data from the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-3 (OCO-3) on board the International Space Station, an instrument that measures carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere and can detect plumes from individual power plants.

The researchers used OCO-3 data from January 2021 to November 2023 alongside their improved Gaussian plume model – a widely used method of estimating the concentration of pollutants in the air – to examine the carbon emissions of 14 large coal-fired power plants – in China, the US, South Africa, Indonesia, and Poland.

“The selected power plants cover regions such as Asia, Europe, North America, and Africa to ensure the global applicability of the research results,” the team said.

According to the paper, the results were verified with existing emission inventories, which showed there was a high level of consistency. However, underestimation was observed in some data sets due to inconsistent emission factors and outdated data.

For example, the researchers found the installed capacity of the Tuoketuo power station listed as 5,400 megawatts in the Carbon Monitoring for Action (Carma) database developed by the Global Development Centre.

While this was accurate in 2012 when the database was last updated, the power plant – in China’s Inner Mongolia autonomous region – has since expanded its capacity by 1,320MW, the scientists noted.

This discrepancy meant that Carma’s estimate for the Tuoketuo plant’s emissions reached only 58.34 per cent of the estimate produced in the team’s study, using the high-precision satellite mapping data.

While the study indicated a “global relevance” for the team’s method, the findings showed that there were still limits – such as a limitation in the OCO-3 satellite’s coverage of high-latitude power plants in countries like Russia and Canada.

According to Shi, satellite coverage in high-latitude regions had been difficult because of poor data quality and large deviation errors, though improvements in satellite technology have improved observations in these areas.

“Future satellites will definitely adapt to power plants in high-latitude areas such as Russia and Canada,” Shi said.

Despite the current limitations, the researchers said that their results showed that satellite-based methods have “significant potential” for the estimation of carbon emissions.

“This finding provides a universal framework for high-precision remote sensing inversion of carbon emissions, revealing the applicability of the improved model under different geographical environments and climatic conditions,” they said.

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Certain ferry services in Hong Kong to be suspended during Chinese naval fleet visit

https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/politics/article/3316470/certain-ferry-services-hong-kong-be-suspended-during-chinese-naval-fleet-visit?utm_source=rss_feed

Hongkongers will have to make changes to their transport plans during the visit of a naval fleet led by the Chinese aircraft carrier Shandong from Thursday as certain ferry services will be temporarily suspended, with authorities also implementing restrictions in some flying zones.

The Transport Department on Monday evening announced the adjustments, with nine outlying island licensed ferry service routes operating on the western fairway to be suspended gradually between about 7.20am and 9.50am on Thursday, and about 10am and 12pm on July 7.

The affected routes include those between Central and Cheung Chau, Mui Wo, Peng Chau, Yung Shue Wan, Sok Kwu Wan, Discovery Bay. The routes of Aberdeen-Pak Kok Tsuen- Yung Shue Wan, Aberdeen-Sok Kwu Wan via Mo Tat, as well as Ma Wan-Central, will also be affected.

To help residents with the adjustments to services, commuters will be offered free alternative ferry services.

The department said temporary service adjustments for franchised and licensed ferry routes transiting through Victoria Harbour on the morning of July 7 might also be needed.

“The Transport Department and ferry operators will closely monitor the actual situation at sea, and will resume normal ferry services as soon as possible. The ferry and road transport services will be enhanced as needed to ease passenger flow,” it said.

“Ferry passengers, especially residents of outlying islands, are advised to plan their trips in advance, allow sufficient travelling time, and pay attention to the latest updates regarding ferry services.”

The fleet led by the Shandong will conduct a five-day visit to Hong Kong from Thursday to July 7.

The visit of the fleet, which also includes the Yan’an and Zhanjiang missile destroyers, as well as the Yuncheng missile frigate, is part of the city’s celebrations for the 28th anniversary of its return to Chinese rule.

Open tours and cultural exchanges are among the events to be held during the visit to improve residents’ understanding of the development of national defence.

The department said the ferry operators would strengthen services before 7.30am on Thursday for individual routes to ease the passenger flow during peak hours.

Transport authorities would also be coordinating with operators to provide special free-of-charge ferry service routes, including seven round trips, during the morning peak hours on Thursday to Tsuen Wan West and Discovery Bay, respectively, to provide additional travel options for passengers in need.

Passengers could transfer to the MTR Tuen Ma Line or other road transport options at Tsuen Wan West Station, or transfer to Residents’ Services at Discovery Bay to Tung Chung and Sunny Bay, and other destinations.

The Civil Aviation Department also announced on Monday the establishment of temporary restricted flying zones in the areas around East Lamma Channel, Western Anchorage, Victoria Harbour and Tathong Channel from July 3 to 7.

All aircraft, including planes, helicopters and small unmanned aircraft, will be restricted from entering the areas, while other flying activities will also be restricted within the zones.

“No aircraft will be permitted to enter the zones, except for Government Flying Service flights,” a spokesman for the department said.

“Other flying activities, such as the flying of model aircraft, kites and captive balloons, and mass release of small balloons, will also be restricted within the temporary restricted flying zones.”

The Shandong, launched in 2017 and officially in service since December 2019, is China’s first domestically built and outfitted conventionally powered aircraft carrier.

The fleet’s port call marks the first time a People’s Liberation Army Navy aircraft carrier strike group has visited the city in eight years. The last such visit was by China’s first commissioned aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, a refitted Soviet-era vessel, in July 2017.

Why China’s yuan is forecast to extend gains against the US dollar through 2025

https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3316463/why-chinas-yuan-forecast-extend-gains-against-us-dollar-through-2025?utm_source=rss_feed

Market optimism for the Chinese currency continues to rise, with analysts projecting the yuan to appreciate further against the US dollar amid a stronger-than-expected domestic economy and growing concerns over US debt sustainability.

On Tuesday, the People’s Bank of China set its daily reference rate at 7.1534 per US dollar – strengthening from Monday’s 7.1656, and the strongest level since early November.

In June, the onshore yuan appreciated by 0.41 per cent against the greenback, bringing its cumulative gains to 1.2 per cent for the second quarter and 1.86 per cent for the first half of the year.

“Compared to late April, onshore clients have turned less bearish on China’s near-term growth outlook, as macro data has been more resilient than previously feared so far this year, despite notable divergence between exports and domestic demand,” Goldman Sachs analyst Lisheng Wang wrote in a note on Sunday.

At the same time, investors have grown increasingly concerned about the sustainability of US government debt, expecting the dollar to further depreciate amid fading confidence in US exceptionalism, loose fiscal policies and rising long-term financing costs, Wang added.

The Wall Street investment bank forecasts the yuan to strengthen further, breaking the 7 per dollar level in six months and 6.9 in 12 months.

The Chinese currency has experienced significant volatility this year, sliding to its weakest level at 7.3506 on April 9 – when tit-for-tat tariffs between Beijing and Washington escalated, pushing duties to more than 100 per cent on both sides.

The currency began to recover following the US-China trade truce and progress in negotiations held in London last month. The yuan’s total trading range for the first half of the year was about 2.6 per cent.

Wang noted that onshore sentiment is improving, with expectations that ongoing China-US talks will help support the country’s exports in the second half of this year.

Citic Securities, a leading Chinese investment bank in Beijing, said the yuan has remained relatively stable since June against the backdrop of a weaker dollar.

The narrowing spread between the official central parity rate, the onshore rate and the offshore rate has reduced pressure on the central bank to intervene in the foreign exchange market, it said in a research note on Friday, predicting that the yuan would likely remain in a low-volatility state in the short term.

While the remaining US tariffs on Chinese goods continue to weigh on exports, the yuan’s exchange rate will depend more heavily on domestic policy support – particularly for consumer spending – and progress in US-China trade negotiations, the investment bank said.

China-funded smelter fires up Indonesian defence concerns

https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/economics/article/3316425/china-funded-smelter-fires-indonesian-defence-concerns?utm_source=rss_feed

A China-funded bauxite smelter on an island in western Indonesia could scale down a key naval training area, prompting concerns that national defence priorities are being sidelined in favour of foreign investment, according to a Jakarta-based military analyst.

The proposed US$4.9 billion facility, to be developed by Tianshan Alumina Indonesia – a unit of Chinese metals giant Tianshan Aluminium – is set to occupy about 400 hectares (988.4 acres) of land currently used by the Indonesian Navy on Singkep island, part of the Riau Islands province.

The site has long hosted military drills and joint exercises with foreign partners, including the US-led Super Garuda Shield in 2022 and amphibious training exercises with Australian forces.

“It is true that there is a plan to build a bauxite smelter by Tianshan Alumina Indonesia, which is located in the south of Singkep island,” navy spokesman First Admiral Tunggul told Indonesia Defence Magazine on June 21.

The development was disclosed at a June 18 meeting between the presidential staff office, the ministry of defence and the navy, and comes under a broader policy push to encourage resource processing within Indonesia. The project was granted National Strategic Project status in 2023, accelerating its implementation.

According to Tunggul, the navy had earlier raised concerns with senior officials, including former maritime affairs and investment minister Luhut Pandjaitan, requesting a buffer zone between the industrial complex and the military training ground. It also sought shared management rights over the area to ensure its continued operational use.

The navy had since submitted letters outlining its demands to the ministries of environment, defence, and agrarian affairs, Tunggul added.

In a June 19 Instagram post, the presidential staff office acknowledged the island’s “strategic position … for the national and operational defence of the Navy” and said efforts were under way to balance security and development interests.

“The Office affirms its commitment to continue to control the acceleration of the National Strategic Project implementation in a measured and balanced manner,” it wrote, describing the June 18 meeting as “part of a collaborative effort to support the economic development of the region without neglecting the defence interests of the country”.

Neither the presidential staff office nor the ministry of defence responded to requests for comment from This Week in Asia.

Alman Helvas Ali, a defence industry expert at the Jakarta-based political and security consultancy firm Marapi Consulting and Advisory, said the potential annexation of the combat training centre was “not a good precedent” as it would come at the expense of the country’s navy.

“The Indonesian navy must have a training area, don’t let it be sacrificed for other interests. Currently, land in the regions is increasingly scarce, so getting a large training area is not easy,” Alman said.

“With the increasing population, a training area will cost quite [a lot], including eviction of the residents. It is also unfortunate that training areas are being reduced for economic interests.”

In this matter, the navy could not reject the project as “the policy came from the top”, he said, adding that the navy’s request for a buffer zone between the training area and the industrial area was understandable, as it was “not good” if economic and military activities collided.

Indonesia is on a drive to boost the value of its mineral resources by requiring miners to set up processing and refining facilities domestically, in a policy known as “downstreaming”.

In 2020, Jakarta banned the export of nickel ore, of which the country is the world’s biggest producer and exporter, followed by a ban on raw bauxite export in June 2023. Last year, Indonesia exported 32 million tonnes of processed bauxite, making it the world’s fifth-largest exporter of the commodity, according to a US Geological Survey report in January.

On Sunday, President Prabowo Subianto described downstreaming as his “priority policy”.

“Downstreaming will continue. We will accelerate the momentum. We want to move fast, the people demand fast progress,” he said.

Muhammad Nizar, leader of Lingga regency where Singkep is located, said in April that the bauxite smelter would have an annual capacity of 2 million tonnes and provide 3,000 jobs to island residents, as cited by the Tribun Batam news outlet.

According to Alman, Singkep is “quite” significant as it is the navy’s only training area near Sumatra. The navy used to train at the Pasir Panjang coastal area on Bintan island before it was turned into a tourist destination, mainly to attract Singaporean visitors, in 1991.

In 1992, the governor of Riau province at the time agreed to the navy’s plan to use 180 sq km (69.5 square miles) of land on Singkep island as training ground for its amphibious operations.

China sanctions key Marcos ally Francis Tolentino

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3316456/china-sanctions-key-marcos-ally-francis-tolentino?utm_source=rss_feed

China has announced sanctions on former Philippine Senate leader Francis Tolentino, a key ally of the Southeast Asian country’s President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr on South China Sea issues.

Beijing accused Tolentino of “egregious conduct on China-related issues” and will bar the former Philippine lawmaker – whose term ended yesterday – from entering mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau, according to the Chinese foreign ministry.

“For some time now, individual anti-China politicians in the Philippines have adopted a series of malicious words and deeds on China-related issues for their own selfish interests, undermining China’s interests and damaging China-Philippines relations,” it said, in a statement released on Tuesday.

“The Chinese government’s determination to defend its national sovereignty, security and development interests is unwavering,” it added.

More to follow...

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Trump’s Golden Dome: will the numbers add up to deter China in the Indo-Pacific?

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/military/article/3316381/trumps-golden-dome-will-numbers-add-deter-china-indo-pacific?utm_source=rss_feed

America’s view of China as a “pacing threat” has shaped its defence priorities as the military seeks to maintain an edge over a rapidly modernising PLA. In the first of a three-part series on how US budget tensions will affect efforts to deter China, we look at the Golden Dome missile defence system.

China’s expanding military footprint in the Indo-Pacific is now a focus of America’s defence strategy, with a renewed emphasis on space-based capabilities since Donald Trump returned to the White House.

Central to this is Trump’s ambitious bid to revamp the US Space Force and create a “next generation” missile defence system – the so-called Golden Dome.

Analysts say that if it gets built, the multibillion-dollar shield could bolster the US’ capacity to protect itself from long-range missiles while also deterring China’s military in the Indo-Pacific region, including in the event of a conflict near the Taiwan Strait.

But questions remain over the feasibility and cost of the project, which would rely on a network of satellites and space-based sensors to intercept missiles.

The project was announced days after Trump was inaugurated in January, when he issued an executive order calling for an “Iron Dome for America” – borrowing the name of Israel’s vaunted missile defence system.

It has since been renamed the Golden Dome, and the US Department of Defence has set out a timeline for deliverables starting early next year.

Trump’s order said the shield would be designed to “deter – and defend its citizens and critical infrastructure against – any foreign aerial attack on the homeland” using “ballistic, hypersonic, advanced cruise missiles and other next-generation aerial attacks from peer, near-peer and rogue adversaries”.

Shaun McDougall, a US defence budget analyst with Forecast International, said space-based missile defence was a “growing priority” under the Joe Biden administration, and Trump’s initiative was “poised to accelerate that trend in the coming years”.

“The likely intent is to signal to China that launching missile attacks against US interests wouldn’t be worth the risk or effort, given the increased likelihood of failure under new defensive systems,” McDougall said.

Malcolm Davis, a senior defence analyst with the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, said the Golden Dome’s use of space-based technology was clearly aimed at detecting and intercepting missiles in the boost phase, when the rocket engines were firing.

“[It] lasts maybe 90 seconds to a couple of minutes … the missile is still moving relatively slowly and is highly visible by space-based infrared sensors,” Davis said.

“Boost-phase intercept would also be essential to counter the emerging threat of hypersonic weapons, be they hypersonic glide vehicles delivered by ballistic missile or hypersonic cruise missiles relying on scramjet technologies.”

But he said the challenge would be that the space-based assets would have to be in a low-Earth orbit for efficiency, which would “necessitate a large number of sensors and interceptors overhead above likely missile launch locations”.

While mega-constellations of small satellites were now a mature technology, with lower launch costs making space-based missile defence more practical, Davis said it was still highly unlikely that the proposed Golden Dome would be able to provide a “leak-proof” defensive shield for the United States.

“Warheads will still get through, and traditions of nuclear deterrence and mutually assured destruction still remain relevant. Where I see the Golden Dome being most effective is in countering limited missile threats of intermediate-range missiles against forward-deployed forces and bases in the Indo-Pacific,” he said.

“So defending forward bases – such as Guam, Okinawa and so on – will benefit from Golden Dome, and make it harder for China to strike at those bases, or at carrier battlegroups trying to defend Taiwan.”

He added that the shield could also “undermine the PLA’s ability to do anti-access and area denial against the US and its allies” – a strategy to block the enemy from specific areas.

McDougall agreed that Guam’s defences could “eventually be strengthened by future space-based capabilities, including those envisioned under Golden Dome”.

“For example, missile tracking satellites would help detect incoming threats, and the theoretical space-based interceptors being discussed by the Trump administration for Golden Dome could potentially engage and neutralise incoming ballistic missiles or boost-glide hypersonic missiles targeting Guam,” he said.

He said the project raised “new questions” about nuclear stability, the potential for an arms race, and the further weaponisation of space.

He said while the US had not abandoned more “conventional” deterrence measures, Trump appeared to view the Golden Dome as an “added layer of deterrence”.

“[This] signals a broader shift in how the US views deterrence,” he said. “The programme suggests the administration may no longer see the strategic nuclear arsenal alone as a sufficient deterrent against adversaries like China and Russia.”

It comes amid rising tensions in the Indo-Pacific, including over Beijing’s intensified military pressure on Taiwan. Beijing claims the self-ruled island as its territory and has not ruled out the use of force to take control of it. Most countries, including the US, do not recognise Taiwan as an independent state but oppose any attempt to seize the island by force.

The People’s Liberation Army is meanwhile undergoing a rapid modernisation and build-up. In September, the PLA Rocket Force conducted its first test launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile in 44 years. The DF-31AG, with a range of 13,200km (8,200 miles), puts the entire US mainland within reach.

A Pentagon report on China’s military development in December said the country had an estimated 400 ICBMs as of 2023, and had “probably completed” construction of three solid-propellant silo fields as of 2022.

China’s new ICBMs would “significantly improve” its nuclear-capable missile forces and required increased nuclear warhead production, the report said. It also noted the introduction of advanced technologies such as multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles that allow missiles to carry a payload containing several warheads.

The report also said China was likely to be developing advanced nuclear delivery systems such as a strategic hypersonic glide vehicle that could operate in low-Earth orbit – giving it unlimited range and the ability to strike from any direction, including the South Pole flight path.

It said China was developing these technologies “partly because of long-term concerns about United States missile defence capabilities as well as to attain qualitative parity with future worldwide missile capabilities”.

The PLA’s newest hypersonic missile, the DF-27, was tested in 2023 and is said to have a range of 5,000-8,000km – meaning it could potentially reach Hawaii and Alaska.

However, questions have been raised over the cost of the Golden Dome project and whether it is necessary to build a network of weapons and space-based infrastructure.

The US already has several missile defence systems in place, including the Terminal High Altitude Air Defence systems, Aegis systems on warships, and Patriot missiles. But it has struggled to develop a missile shield covering all of its territory – an ambition that dates back to the Strategic Defence Initiative proposed by the Ronald Reagan administration in the 1980s.

Trump in May said the Golden Dome would cost US$175 billion and be “fully operational” by the end of his term as president.

But according to the Congressional Budget Office, the US may need to invest up to US$542 billion over two decades to develop and launch a network of space-based interceptors for the project.

In March, Chief of Space Operations General Chance Saltzman said his service needed a budget increase of at least 20 per cent for “a fundamental shift, a step function shift” to build new capabilities, including the Golden Dome, and respond to Chinese and Russian military investments in space.

As the Trump administration slashes government spending, it aims to spend more on defence. A discretionary budget request in May seeks to increase the defence budget by 13 per cent, which would take it from US$892.6 billion in 2025 to US$1.01 trillion in 2026. That would mark the first time US defence spending has passed the US$1 trillion mark.

According to the budget document, the aim is to “deter Chinese aggression in the Indo-Pacific” while backing the Golden Dome and “space dominance to strengthen US national security and strategic advantage”.

But Roger Wicker, chairman of the Republican Senate Armed Services Committee, said the numbers did not add up. He said the 13 per cent increase did not equal spending more than US$1 trillion on defence in 2026 as it included this year’s reconciliation bill – a process for specific changes to federal spending, revenue and the debt limit. Wicker said the administration was “requesting a budget of US$892.6 billion, which is a cut in real terms” for 2026.

The budget document released in May also suggested that US Space Force spending would go down by 13 per cent next year – from the US$29.4 billion requested by the Biden administration for 2025 to US$26.3 billion.

The reconciliation bill, passed in the House in late May and currently pending in the Senate, calls for US$150 billion mandatory funding for national defence, including a US$25 billion down payment for the Golden Dome and US$11.1 billion to improve the Indo-Pacific Command’s capabilities in areas such as “space superiority” and providing additional military support to the government of Taiwan.

The Senate version of the reconciliation bill, released earlier this month, aligns with the House proposal, appropriating a similar amount for both the Golden Dome and the Indo-Pacific Command.

But several Republican senators have pointed to problems with the bill passed in the House, suggesting there could be revisions if the party fails to reach a compromise and maintain its narrow majority vote.

Analysts said the Golden Dome project would rely on the reconciliation bill or other sources of funding, and the base defence budget was expected to remain at this year’s level.

Clayton Swope, deputy director of the aerospace security project at Washington-based think tank the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, said a smaller Space Force budget was “hard to reconcile” with the Trump administration’s priorities, particularly Golden Dome.

“[But it] probably reflects an intention to budget Golden Dome and other high priorities separately,” he said. “For example, the president’s signature policy bill, separate from the budget request, includes a significant amount of funding for Golden Dome.”

McDougall said the Trump administration appeared to be shifting funding out of the base budget for programmes like Golden Dome that it planned to support through the reconciliation bill instead.

“This accounting approach is less transparent than a traditional budget request and makes it more difficult to track spending patterns,” he said.

He said the bill was the foundation for the 2026 defence spending increase and would act as a “short cut” to obtain funding for high-priority programmes.

“Going forward, either the Space Force’s base budget will need to increase in [2027] and beyond, or the administration will have to pursue further supplemental funding to sustain the space component of the Golden Dome programme,” he added.

Swope said the administration was likely to focus on capabilities that helped the US establish and maintain space superiority.

“Such capabilities could be used to deter hostilities against the United States not just in the space domain, but generally in any domain,” he added.

China’s coffee lovers skip urban grind for a rural buzz, but is cafe craze sustainable?

https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3316395/chinas-coffee-lovers-skip-urban-grind-rural-buzz-cafe-craze-sustainable?utm_source=rss_feed

She seldom visits the same suburban cafe twice. Asa Jin has her cuppa, takes in the view, snaps her share of pictures for social, and then considers which among the rising number of coffee shops she will visit next.

“Most rural cafes are leaning into a trendy, influencer-driven vibe, but it’s not sustainable,” said the 37-year-old freelancer from Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, explaining that many shops try to lure customers with “unique natural settings” – perfect for coffee-sipping social media users like herself.

“But after one visit, the sense of novelty has already faded,” she said.

Fortunately for Asa, there is probably another cafe just around the corner. Or closer, in many cases.

While tea has long been the drink of choice for Chinese people, a coffee culture has boomed and is now spreading to the countryside. Citing customs data, Xinhua said: “China’s net coffee imports increased by 130,800 tonnes from 2020-2024, representing 6.53-fold growth, with an average annual compound growth rate of 65.7 per cent.”

China now has 300-billion-yuan (US$42 billion) coffee industry, and consumption is expected to rise by double-digits again this year, according to the Ministry of Agricultural and Rural Affairs.

Dubbed “rural cafes”, coffee shops in suburban areas are viewed as a means of “rural revitalisation” for the way they create jobs and drive up the local economy, helping offset urban-rural disparities.

For example, Deep Blue, a cafe in Anji county, Zhejiang, operates on a “two investments, three returns” model, where villagers receive dividends from shares, rental income and wages at the cafe after lending their land to the cafe operator or working there.

Its success has led to a cafe craze – Anji boasts more than 300 cafes now. And with a population of about 600,000 people, the county reportedly has a greater density of cafes than Shanghai, whose population is 40 times larger.

Across the country, there are more than 40,000 coffee shops opening in suburban areas, according to state media reports citing national statistics. Yunnan in the southwest and Guangdong in the south lead the provincial rankings, Xinhua said.

The abundance of cafes is helping to manifest oft-repeated revitalisation plans by President Xi Jinping: “Rural revitalisation in the new era requires the development of speciality agricultural products and rural tourism, developing tourism tailored to local conditions.”

However, even as the coffee scene gains notoriety, challenges are emerging as saturation sets in.

“Although demand for coffee will continue to grow, the growth rate of cafes far exceeds that of coffee demand, which will inevitably squeeze the profit margins of the rural cafe industry,” warned Professor Li Bin of the School of Economics at the Central University of Finance and Economics.

To stand out from the competitive pack, many rural cafes are wrangling with how to strike a balance between offering quality coffee products, turning a profit, and catering to customers who are looking for a bit of variety – or perhaps a brief escape from the hustle and bustle of the urban grind.

In Deping county, not far from Anji, Gelien Coffee is the top-rated local cafe on Chinese lifestyle platform Dianping, often described as a combination of Yelp and TripAdvisor.

Gelien gained social media buzz for the surrounding man-made area that is known for its picturesque landscapes and charm reminiscent of parts of Switzerland.

In contrast, nearly 30 per cent of the reviews were negative or mediocre. Common complaints included: “bad-tasting coffee”, “only good for photos”, “instant-coffee quality”. The shop owner declined to reply to a pair of requests for comment.

“Whether a shop can turn ‘checkout’ customers into regular customers is the standard of measuring its success,” said Zhou Haojie, a 49-year-old coffee brewer who honed his skills with help from the RedNote social media platform.

In May, he took a gamble – closing down his restaurant in a Deping county and opening up a cafe out of his home in Guozhao village.

Guozhao has been engaged in a provincial campaign aimed at transforming villages and promoting better integration between urban and rural development. Dubbed a “Thousand Villages Demonstration, Ten Thousand Villages Renovation”, the project is considered part of China’s broader rural-revitalisation strategy.

Since last year, the village’s development has included modernised roads and improved infrastructure, making it more easily accessible to outsiders, a burgeoning sightseeing destination, and perhaps more appealing to urban residents who might consider a rural relocation.

Zhou is now hoping that local promotional videos will help spread the word of cafes like his, rather than merely highlighting the most well-known and popular ones.

But as more villages try similar tactics to pull in tourists and urbanites, the risk of homogenisation has reared its head.

According to state media, 98 per cent of rural cafes in Zhejiang province choose to include “natural settings” in their shop designs. And a search for “cafes” on Rednotes’ data tracker showed that “sense of atmosphere” was among the top-ranked terms.

“The development of rural cultural and tourism industries has reached a bottleneck period,” Professor Li said. “Homogenised business models and insufficient rural culture and other resources are limiting their sustained expansion.

“The government’s cultural and tourism policies should be based on a friendly business environment, utilising culture to create in-depth, differentiated development models to help boost local rural economies.”

TOEIC fraud: Chinese student in Japan charged with cheating on English exams multiple times

https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/people/article/3316375/toeic-fraud-chinese-student-japan-charged-cheating-english-exams-multiple-times?utm_source=rss_feed

A Chinese student at one of Japan’s top universities has been charged for the third time with helping others cheat in English proficiency tests, a case that observers say may be part of a broader and more sophisticated cheating network involving overseas university admissions.

Wang Likun, a 27-year-old studying artificial intelligence at Kyoto University, was first arrested in May when he attempted to enter a TOEIC (Test of English for International Communication) venue while impersonating another candidate.

Police reportedly found a miniature microphone hidden in his face mask and smart glasses connected to a mobile phone, which they suspect he intended to use to feed answers to test-takers equipped with wireless earpieces.

Wang was arrested again on Monday on suspicion of using forged identification to pose as another person at a different exam venue. Police had already linked him to a TOEIC test taken under a pseudonym in March, where he scored 945 out of a possible 990 points, according to the Mainichi newspaper.

The Institute for International Business Communication, which administers the TOEIC exam in Japan, had earlier reported a suspicious surge in high scores among Chinese test-takers and received complaints of some candidates “murmuring in Chinese” during the exam.

After being arrested, Wang reportedly told police that he had been looking for a part-time job and received an online message in Chinese saying he would be paid for taking exams for other people and also for communicating with other test-takers at the same time.

A Japanese academic said there had been a sharp increase in Chinese attending Japanese universities in the last couple of years, but noted a discrepancy between some students’ TOEIC scores and their performance in classes.

“Some of these scores, I would say, are quite dubious, although it is not only Chinese students with high scores but also some from Southeast Asian nations,” said the academic, who asked not to be named.

“There is a high – and growing – percentage of Chinese at my university and I understand that for many of them, the motivation is to get out of China,” she said. “These are the sons and daughters of wealthy Chinese who want them to get an international education, but they might not be able to get a place at a US or European university.”

Japanese universities are not only easier to enter but also significantly less expensive than elsewhere, including the top Chinese schools, according to the academic. It has also become more challenging in recent years for graduates in China to find a good job.

Makoto Watanabe, a professor of communications and media at Hokkaido Bunkyo University in Eniwa, agreed that a degree from a foreign university could “upgrade” a Chinese national’s career prospects and social standing.

“Chinese students started coming to Japanese universities in the 1980s, but they later began to go further afield, with a place at a US university seen as the ultimate achievement,” he said.

According to Watanabe, those applying to Japanese universities more recently fall into two categories: students whose English scores are not good enough to get into a US or European university, and those who find Japanese culture appealing and want to study and live in Japan.

“I think we might also see a change in Chinese going abroad to study. There is a lot of insecurity around the world at the moment, with the war continuing in the Ukraine and problems in the Middle East, while the crackdown by the US administration on foreign students mean that they could be forced to leave at any time and without completing their studies,” Watanabe said.

“It would not surprise me at all to see more Chinese students coming to Japan again.”

He said that growing demand would also mean more students needing to pass the TOEIC exam.

“I do not believe that Japan is lax when it comes to exams as there are always proctors, but a lot of venues are very large and it can be difficult to monitor all the students all the time,” he said.

“Also, it appears that the cheats are using advanced technology now, and it can be difficult to check that everyone is following the rules,” he said. “But now this case has come to light, I think schools will know what to look out for, how these people cheat, and they can be better prepared to stop them.”

The cheats appear to be organised, however, and it may be difficult to weed out every bad actor.

In early June, Tokyo police confirmed that 70 Chinese nationals had all given the same residential address when they registered to take a TOEIC exam, ensuring they would all be assigned the same test location. Investigators believe the Chinese students were given instructions and issued with earpieces before going to the test centre by an underground agency helping individuals cheat.

Questioned by police, a number of suspects admitted they were planning to cheat in the exam, with one saying they had paid 50,000 yen (US$347) to an agency for assistance.

How does long-term exercise slow ageing? Chinese scientists have an answer

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3316057/how-does-long-term-exercise-slow-ageing-chinese-scientists-have-answer?utm_source=rss_feed

A team of Chinese scientists has found that betaine – a compound naturally occurring in the kidneys during long-term exercise – can slow down the ageing process.

By looking at the key molecular pathways that help to reshape the physiology of the human body and delay ageing through exercise, they revealed that betaine acts as a core messenger in this process. It prevents inflammation and the ageing of multiple organs by targeting and inhibiting an enzyme called TBK1.

The findings not only shed light on the mechanism behind the anti-ageing effects of exercise, but also suggest possible anti-ageing strategies by simulating exercise, according to the joint team from the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Zoology and Beijing Institute of Genomics.

Led by Liu Guanghui and Qu Jing from the zoology institute and Zhang Weiqi from the genomics institute, the researchers reported their findings in the peer-reviewed journal Cell on June 25.

Nutrition, exercise, sleep and stress management are widely considered the four pillars of health, including by institutions such as the World Health Organization. Much research has shown that exercise can powerfully influence the ageing process.

However, the Chinese researchers noted the fundamental molecular mechanisms between exercise and longevity remained poorly understood, as did other questions such as how various exercise patterns differed in their beneficial effects on health.

To solve this puzzle, they launched a study in 2019 to investigate the effects of exercise on health in both mice and humans. By 2023, they had made progress, having systematically analysed the cellular and molecular responses of 14 organ tissues to long-term aerobic exercise in young and aged mice.

Building on these findings, the researchers continued their study with human participants.

In this phase, 13 healthy male volunteers were recruited. The participants were required to run 5km (3.1 miles) in 40 minutes and then take up long-term regular exercise for 25 days.

After that, the researchers collected blood and faecal samples from the participants at various intervals, as well as health examination data. They later used a range of analytical methods, including plasma proteomics analysis, to study the samples and establish a research framework.

The six-year research project identified the kidney as “the key responsive organ” for exercise and found that betaine, its product of metabolism, serves as the core molecular messenger for slowing ageing.

Even more significant for real-life applications, the team discovered that supplementing this compound “can precisely mimic the benefits of long-term exercise”, according to the authors.

In experiments on aged mice, the team found that oral administration of betaine could extend their healthy lifespan, significantly improving functional indicators such as metabolic capacity, kidney function and motor coordination, while also reducing depressive-like behaviour and improving cognitive function.

The team pointed out that betaine’s efficacy at low doses and its good safety profile “offer a potential anti-ageing strategy for the elderly”, who are unable to undertake long-term intense exercise.

Furthermore, they said the study pioneered a new research paradigm capable of “translating complex physiological effects into quantifiable, actionable chemical language”, opening up a new avenue for future ageing intervention studies.

China ‘folded boy’ stands up straight for first time after surgeries to break, reset bones

https://www.scmp.com/news/people-culture/trending-china/article/3316386/china-folded-boy-stands-straight-first-time-after-surgeries-break-reset-bones?utm_source=rss_feed

A university student, known as China’s “folded boy” due to his spinal condition, has inspired countless people online after undergoing a series of complex surgeries and achieving the remarkable milestone of straightening his body and lying flat in bed for the first time in his life.

Jiang Yanchen, 21, hailing from Shandong province in northern China, has fought against ankylosing spondylitis – a form of arthritis causing severe inflammation in the joints and ligaments of the spine – since his primary school years.

This rare condition left his neck bent backward, creating barely a hand’s width between his head and buttocks, reducing his height to just one metre.

His mother, Yu Meiying, recalled their daily challenges: “His head was facing up; he could barely see when putting on socks or pants, and had to rely on touch.”

Despite these overwhelming physical obstacles, Jiang never wavered in his determination. In 2022, he completed his high school entrance exam while lying on a yoga mat and was accepted into Dezhou University, majoring in Energy and Power Engineering.

In August last year, Jiang sought treatment from Liang Yijian, a leading expert in severe spinal correction based in Chengdu. Over the following months, he underwent a series of gruelling surgeries.

On June 25, after enduring four exceptionally complex procedures – including cervical, thoracic, and lumbar osteotomies, along with hip joint release surgery – during which his bones were broken and realigned, Jiang’s condition finally improved.

For the first time in his life, his body could be fully straightened, allowing him to lie flat.

“Jiang underwent a total of four surgeries, each extremely complex – technically, they were at the upper limits of surgical difficulty. The final surgery lasted over 12 hours, and his spine was corrected by around 170 degrees. Once he completes rehabilitation, he’ll be able to return home,” Liang explained.

A trending video online showed the doctor kneeling while performing surgery on Jiang during the procedure.

Liang later shared with Jimu News that Jiang initially lay in a prone position during the operation, but it became necessary to shift him to a supine position at one point. Kneeling allowed Liang to better assist with the adjustment.

“Liang is like our lifeline, our last hope. Our child’s dream has finally come true. He can now lie flat,” Jiang’s mother said.

Reflecting on his future, Jiang expressed a strong desire to give back to society, stating: “If I get better in the future, I can be a capable person and maybe contribute something to society.”

He added: “I got into college on my knees. Next, I aim to stand tall and pursue graduate school.”

Jiang’s story has profoundly touched the hearts of Chinese netizens, many of whom have offered strong support and heartfelt wishes for his future.

One person commented: “He is a true testament that with determination, anything is possible. We eagerly await his postgraduate success!”

Another added: “An incredible doctor and an incredible young man. The twists and turns in his life have been straightened – what lies ahead of him is a clear path forward.”