• How Trump’s vision of a single-minded China containment has failed
• China announces joint Pacific naval exercise with Russia in August
• Trump says tariffs talks with China ‘moving along well’
• US-China trade talks: why Beijing unexpectedly emerged in a stronger position
• China vows to continue Thailand-Cambodia peace efforts after ‘informal’ post-truce talks
• Beijing to ‘exert strength’ to drive growth; China’s dynamic cities: SCMP daily highlights
• China’s finance minister vows fiscal support to spur demand, curb local government debt
• US Earth imaging satellite fleet is creating ‘low-cost orbital landmines’, China team says
• Alibaba’s finance chief voices confidence in China’s AI boom and consumer market
• Chinese police mount Xinjiang manhunt for fugitive wanted over wounding of 2 people
• IMF raises China’s GDP outlook more than any other economy after strong first-half data
• China guard dies after arriving early for shift, boss says not work-related, refuses payout
• Absolute dominance: what China needs to know about the tech elite’s role in Trump 2.0
• China unveils new oversight guidelines seen as a strategic ‘anti-involution effort’
• US eyes Philippine rare earths to counter China’s ‘chokehold’
• Shanghai, east China dodge tsunami, brace for severe tropical storm
• China’s stealth design software breakthrough, mega dam project boost: 7 science highlights
• China to convene gathering in October to discuss next 5-year plan
• Chinese woman dates 20 men, asks for iPhones, sells them to fund property down payment
• China fossil find reveals why ancient marine ‘lamp shells’ practised social distancing
• Why is Shenzhen adjusting China’s first pilot personal bankruptcy scheme?
• Hong Kong stocks trade lower on disappointment over China-US trade negotiations
• China says Japan’s space defence guidelines ‘threaten security and stability’
• From seas to space: China’s Type 815A spy ships are keeping PLA Navy informed and ready
• Masked China singer with 22 million online fans puts pioneering first concert on hold
• Li Auto launches six-seat electric SUV in pre-emptive strike against Tesla in China

How Trump’s vision of a single-minded China containment has failed

https://www.scmp.com/opinion/world-opinion/article/3319885/how-trumps-vision-single-minded-china-containment-has-failed?utm_source=rss_feed

Half a year into Donald Trump’s second US presidency, a stark reality confronts Washington: the grand vision of an unprecedented focus on countering China, heralded by his strategists and supporters, has faltered.

The fundamental premise that America could dramatically disengage from Europe and the Middle East, freeing up resources for a singular containment strategy against Beijing, has collided against a resistant world. Instead of pivoting to pursue China, Trump finds himself owning the very conflicts he vowed to end, draining American power and granting Beijing breathing room.

Resolving the Ukraine war swiftly was a core pillar. As a presidential candidate, Trump boasted he could end the conflict “in 24 hours”, later revising that to weeks. Six months since he took office, Trump stands not as a peacemaker but as a reluctant wartime supplier. His initial threats to abandon Ukraine, aimed at forcing European capitulation or Kyiv’s concessions to Moscow, were met with fierce domestic and Nato resistance.

Facing bipartisan Congressional pressure and the spectre of a Russian breakthrough, the administration has reversed course. Far from ending the war, Trump now presides over an escalated American commitment, authorising more weapons transfers and military support. The war he promised to stop is now unequivocally his war. This pivot underscores the first fracture: strategic disengagement from Europe proved illusory, with the relationship instead demanding greater attention and resources.

The Middle East offered an equally brutal rebuke. Trump pledged to bring peace. Not only does the Gaza conflict persist but his administration has launched strikes against Iran, framed as a blow against its nuclear programme. Yet Iran’s nuclear ambitions continue undeterred and Tehran has made no promise to cease uranium enrichment. The strikes have only inflamed tensions, strengthening Iran’s hardliners and potentially accelerating its weapons programmes.

Instead of extricating America to focus eastward, Trump compounded its entanglement. The volatile region now demands constant vigilance, diverting military assets and diplomatic bandwidth – another drain on US strategic reserves.

This dual failure to disengage from Europe and the Middle East cripples the China strategy’s foundation. The precondition – freeing national strength – never materialised. Washington now fights costly holding actions on two fronts. While efforts continue to tighten pressure on China – accelerating the military posture in US allies Japan and South Korea, pushing integration of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, and advancing Aukus and the so-called Squad – the reality is dilution.

Diplomats and planners are stretched thinner. Defence budgets strain under demands from Europe and the Middle East. Managing multiple crises blunts focus on the Pacific. This diversion hands China invaluable strategic time and space. Freed from America’s pressure, Beijing can bolster its technological base, solidify economic ties, refine military capabilities and exploit global instability. It watches as its principal rival becomes increasingly overstretched.

Compounding this, Trump’s confrontational trade and tech policies have also faltered. Aggressive trade tools are yielding diminishing returns, hurting America while hardening China’s drive for resilient supply chains. The tech blockade triggered Chinese retaliation in limiting rare earth exports – elements crucial to the hi-tech and defence sectors – to the US. After six months of maximalist rhetoric, the administration appears chastened.

Reports of quiet diplomatic feelers and preparations for a potential Xi-Trump summit signal an emerging realism: unilateral coercion has hit its limits. Negotiations are being scheduled regularly. Crucially, these included talks in Sweden where the US urged China to curb purchases of Russian and Iranian oil, underscoring Washington’s inability to disentangle from the very conflicts it hoped to avoid.

By asking Beijing to help isolate Moscow and Tehran, the US not only admits its Middle East and European distractions require Chinese leverage to resolve, but also hands Beijing a diplomatic veto. China has signalled a rejection of such demands, affirming its sovereign right to pursue energy partnerships.

This US shift towards a potential compromise in the economic and technological domains reveals a tactical retreat forced by the complexities of interdependence and mutually assured economic destruction.

Finally, the hope of fracturing the Russia-China axis lies in ruins. Trump’s initial ambivalence towards Russian President Vladimir Putin yielded nothing on Ukraine. Moscow, entrenched in its partnership and benefiting hugely from China as an economic lifeline, shows no inclination to break that bond. The strategic bet on fracturing the Russia-China relationship has failed. Consequently, Washington faces not a distracted China, but one potentially strengthened by a resilient alignment.

Recent reports revealing Beijing does not want to see Russia lose in Ukraine – fearing a full US pivot to Asia should the conflict end – only underscore how the prolonging of these distant conflicts serves China’s core interest in maintaining American distraction. This failed wedge eliminates another short cut to containment.

After six months, the strategic landscape diverges profoundly from the Trump administration’s vision. The re-pivot to Asia stumbled over Europe and the Middle East. The economic war inflicted more pain than progress, pushing leaders towards talks. America’s military and diplomatic apparatus, far from focused on the Pacific, is dispersed globally, firefighting crises of its own making.

Whatever his next steps, Trump now owns the Ukraine war, the volatile post-strike Middle East and the demands of managing fractious alliances. Critically, he does not own the strategic initiative against China. Beijing, navigating these turbulent waters, watches its primary adversary struggle with self-inflicted complications.

Each day America is mired elsewhere grants China more time to build strength, deepen partnerships and manoeuvre. The result is not a focused America relentlessly pursuing China containment, but an overextended superpower gifting its rival the one thing it needs most: strategic room to breathe.

China announces joint Pacific naval exercise with Russia in August

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/military/article/3320195/china-announces-joint-naval-exercise-russia-pacific-august?utm_source=rss_feed

China and Russia will hold their “Joint Sea 2025” joint naval exercise in August, followed by the sixth joint maritime patrol in the Pacific, China’s National Defence Ministry said on Wednesday.

will take place in the sea and airspace near Vladivostok, Russia’s far eastern port city on the Sea of Japan. Some of the forces in the exercise will then take part in the subsequent joint patrol in designated ocean areas, according to ministry spokesman Zhang Xiaogang.

“This is an arrangement within the annual cooperation plan between the Chinese and Russian militaries. It is not targeted at any third party, nor is it related to the current international and regional situation,” Zhang told his monthly press briefing in Beijing.

He did not specify the dates of the drill or the size of the event.

This announcement came as the US Air Force is hosting the “Resolute Force Pacific 2025” exercise in locations including Hawaii, Guam and Japan, as well as international airspace, which began on July 10 and extends to August 8, is described by the US Air Force as their “biggest combat exercise in the region”, involving more than 400 aircraft and 12,000 personnel from the US and allies such as Japan and Australia.

“The US, clinging to its Cold War mentality, has been constantly flexing muscles in the Asia-Pacific region and attempting to gang up under the guise of ‘military drills’, intimidate and pressure other countries, and undermine peace and stability in the region,” Zhang told reporters.

As Beijing and Moscow have deepened their partnership in recent years, increased joint naval cooperation has become a key component of the broader strengthening of their military ties.

will be the 11th exercise in the Joint Sea series, also known as “Maritime Cooperation”. It began in 2012 and has been held annually, except for 2018, 2020 and 2023.

Most of the previous exercises were held in the northwestern Pacific, including the Sea of Japan, Yellow Sea, and East China Sea, but also have been held in the Baltic and Mediterranean Seas.

The series involves warships, aircraft, and support units from both sides, conducting operations including formation manoeuvres, search and rescue exercises, air defence drills, anti-submarine operations and live-fire shootings. Demonstrations of interoperability are also part of the exercise.

A similar “Northern Cooperation” exercise, led by the PLA Northern Theatre Command, began in 2023, when there was no Joint Sea exercise, but both events were held last year, with the Joint Sea exercise in July in the South China Sea and the Northern Cooperation drill held in September in the Sea of Japan and the Sea of Okhotsk.

The two navies started joint patrols in the Pacific region in 2021, usually occurring before or after a joint exercise. Such patrols happened twice last year, in July and September, by ships of the PLA Southern Theatre Command and the Northern Theatre Command, respectively.

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Trump says tariffs talks with China ‘moving along well’

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3320196/trump-says-tariffs-talks-china-moving-along-well?utm_source=rss_feed

US President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that talks with China on a tariff deal were “moving along well” and that both countries would reach a “fair” deal on trade, without offering additional details of the long-awaited agreement.

“We’re moving along with China. We’re doing fine with China,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “I think it’s going to work out very well. We’re right in step … I think we’re going to have a very fair deal with China,” he added.

Trump’s latest comment came a day after delegations from both countries finished a third round of high-level talks in Sweden, ahead of an August 12 expiration of a pause on additional tariffs that the world’s two largest economies slapped on each others’ goods.

Beijing and Washington had been expected to extend their tariff truce another three months, sources on both sides told the South China Morning Post before discussions began on Monday.

The Chinese embassy in Washington has not responded to a request for comment. This month it noted that China’s exports to the US declined by 24 per cent year on year in the second quarter of 2025, with the situation “equivalent to the first quarter of 2020 when the economy activity was stagnant” during the pandemic.

At separate press briefings on Tuesday in Stockholm, US and Chinese negotiators, while calling their discussions “constructive”, diverged on the timing of the fresh tariff pause.

Li Chenggang, China’s vice-minister of commerce, told reporters that the two sides had reached a “consensus” concerning the pause extension, though he did not specify a date.

But US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent denied that any agreement on a new pause had been reached, insisting that nothing would be agreed to until Trump was briefed.

“I notice … that the Chinese deputy minister did say that we had agreed on a pause,” Bessent said. “We have not. Nothing is agreed until we speak with President Trump.”

“I think our Chinese counterparts have jumped the gun a little and said that we do have an extension,” he told CNBC later.

En route to the US from Scotland on Tuesday, Trump confirmed that he would be reviewing the deal, telling reporters aboard Air Force One, that “we’ll either approve it or not”.

The Stockholm talks, led by Bessent and Chinese Vice-Premier He Lifeng, were the third time the delegations had met in an effort to stabilise trade after both countries hiked tariffs on each other’s goods to triple-digit rates in April.

US-China trade talks: why Beijing unexpectedly emerged in a stronger position

https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3320157/us-china-trade-talks-why-beijing-unexpectedly-emerged-stronger-position?utm_source=rss_feed

Trade relations between China and the United States remain mired in uncertainty after two days of tense negotiations in Sweden earlier this week. But Beijing may actually have emerged in a stronger position as Washington continues to raise tariffs on other global economies, analysts said.

A third round of US-China trade talks in Stockholm ended on Tuesday with China announcing that both sides had agreed to extend their “tariff truce” by another 90 days, while the US side insisted the deal was still pending US President Donald Trump’s final approval.

That means, if nothing unexpected happens, the US will continue to impose 30 per cent additional tariffs on China after August 12, when the original truce is due to expire. The rate includes 20 per cent of duties Trump announced in the first quarter of the year, which were related to China’s role in the fentanyl trade, and another 10 per cent levy imposed in April.

But in relative terms, China’s tariff rate is starting to look less damaging, as the US moves to impose higher rates on a slew of major trading partners before an August 1 deadline set by Trump.

“It is interesting that the gap between tariffs on China and various Southeast Asian nations is reducing fast,” said Amitendu Palit, senior research fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies at the National University of Singapore.

“Once all deals are frozen, China might not be at a significant comparative disadvantage vis-à-vis other countries.”

The US has already announced deals that set a 20 per cent tariff on imports from Vietnam, as well as 19 per cent duties on goods from Indonesia and the Philippines.

Unless further agreements are brokered by Friday, Washington is also due to impose 25 per cent tariffs on countries including South Korea and Malaysia, and 36 per cent duties targeting Thailand.

The narrowing gap in tariff rates means that direct US-China trade flows may begin to recover, after years of goods being diverted via “connector” economies like Vietnam and Indonesia, Palit said.

Dan Wang, China director at Eurasia Group, said the current US tariff levels would have a minimal impact on China, primarily due to the country’s economic scale.

“Other countries may see some marginal substitution, but the scale is too small and the variety of affected products is limited,” she said.

“Moreover, prices are dynamic. China’s comprehensive industrial supply chain allows it to negotiate with suppliers to switch materials or adjust designs, effectively offsetting the increased costs.”

However, it will still be possible for the US to raise tariffs on specific products even during the extended US-China tariff truce – for example, through the means of a Section 301 investigation, said Zhang Zhiwei, president and chief economist at Pinpoint Asset Management.

At a press conference in Stockholm on Tuesday following the trade talks, US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said that higher tariffs on Chinese goods were possible “depending on the product”.

Maria Monica Wihardja, a visiting fellow at Singapore’s ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, said that while the US tariff rate on China was likely to remain at 30 per cent for now, it was hard to say whether China was maintaining or losing its export competitiveness relative to other countries, as so many details in the trade deals remained shrouded in uncertainty.

“None of the deals with Trump are a done deal,” she said. “In many cases, it is not clear what other tariffs are applied or could be applied in the future, on top of the base tariffs as announced in the headlines.”

The deals the other economies struck with the US were meant to minimise losses rather than to maximise gains, according to Wihardja. They reflected a defensive reaction to unilateral tariffs imposed by the US and a lopsided negotiation process, with countries forced to offer concessions in return for a lower tariff rate.

“This is in contrast with the US-China negotiation in which China has a powerful bargaining power, such as its rare earth exports to the US,” she said.

China “is probably the only country that is in the position to retaliate credibly”, she added. “It has many cards to play to secure a deal that works for them while other countries don’t.”

Under the current tariff truce, Chinese duties on overall US imports will be maintained at 10 per cent, on top of an extra 10 to 15 per cent on selected American goods – including energy and agricultural products – imposed in retaliation for the fentanyl tariffs.

In recent years, countries like Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia have steadily gained ground as alternative manufacturing hubs for the US market, particularly in sectors such as textiles, basic electronics and assembly-based manufacturing, said Matteo Giovannini, senior finance manager at the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China.

“That said, China retains critical structural advantages that continue to set it apart. Its manufacturing ecosystem is far more sophisticated, with deeply integrated supply chains, world-class infrastructure, and unmatched production capacity,” said Giovannini, who is also a non-resident associate fellow at the Center for China and Globalization think tank.

In particular, US fashion companies remain deeply concerned about the future of US-China trade under Trump and intend to further “reduce their China exposure” to mitigate sourcing risks, according to Sheng Lu, a professor at the University of Delaware’s Department of Fashion and Apparel Studies.

In a survey of 25 leading US apparel brands and retailers, Lu found that more than 80 per cent planned to further reduce their apparel sourcing from China over the next two years, despite the tariff truce reached in May.

Many large-scale US fashion companies are already limiting or plan to limit their apparel sourcing from China to a “low single-digit” percentage by 2026 or earlier, Lu said.

While US fashion companies still rated China as highly economically competitive as an apparel sourcing base compared to many of its Asian competitors regarding costs and efficiency, non-economic factors – particularly the perceived extremely high risks of facing US import restrictions – are driving their de-risking efforts, Lu said.

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China vows to continue Thailand-Cambodia peace efforts after ‘informal’ post-truce talks

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3320180/china-vows-continue-thailand-cambodia-peace-efforts-after-informal-post-truce-talks?utm_source=rss_feed

China held talks with representatives from Thailand and Cambodia on Wednesday as efforts to defuse tensions following the recent deadly border clashes continued.

The three-way discussions in Shanghai, hosted by vice-minister for foreign affairs Sun Weidong, secured a commitment from both sides to abide by the ceasefire and were described by Beijing as an “informal consultation” given the “fragile situation” on the ground.

Underscoring that fragility, the two sides continued to trade accusations on Wednesday, with Thailand accusing Cambodian forces of a “flagrant” violation of the ceasefire – claims Phnom Penh rejected as “misleading and fabricated”.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun told a press conference later in the day that the meeting took place in a “candid, friendly and conducive” atmosphere and both sides had “reaffirmed to China their commitment to upholding the ceasefire”.

Guo added that Beijing was working to “create conditions for the early restoration of peace and stability” along the Thai-Cambodian border.

“We stand ready to maintain close communication with Cambodia, Thailand and Malaysia and other regional countries to play a constructive role in cementing the ceasefire agreement and to restore regional peace and stability,” Guo said.

He added that Beijing supported the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) “in advancing a political settlement”.

China did not name the Thai or Cambodian delegates but photos released by the foreign ministry in Beijing showed Sun standing with Kung Phaok, a Cambodian government minister responsible for foreign affairs, and Jullapong Nonsrichai, an executive adviser to the Thai foreign ministry.

The latest round of fighting began last week after a landmine explosion wounded five Thai soldiers following months of escalating tensions. The fighting killed at least 41 people and forced hundreds of thousands to flee their homes.

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet and Thailand’s acting prime minister Phumtham Wechayachai agreed to a ceasefire at midnight on Monday after talks hosted by Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, the current chairman of Asean.

The talks in Kuala Lumpur were co-organised by the United States, while Chinese representatives also attended.

On Wednesday morning, the Thai foreign ministry said troops in a border province “came under attack by small arms fire and grenade assaults launched by Cambodian forces” less than 24 hours after the ceasefire agreement.

However Cambodia accused Bangkok of “distorting the facts on the ground and dangerously threatening the fragile trust and dialogue essential for lasting peace”.

“Cambodia reiterates that it has no intention, now or in the future, of breaching the ceasefire,” it added.

Underscoring its commitment to peace efforts, China also said on Wednesday that Liu Jinsong, head of Asian affairs at the foreign ministry, had recently met the Thai and Cambodian ambassadors for “in-depth and friendly exchanges on bilateral relations and issues of mutual concern”.

Meanwhile, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi also stressed that Beijing would play a “constructive role” in a meeting on Friday with Asean secretary general Kao Kim Hourn.

He also said that the conflict “stems from the enduring damage caused by Western colonisers” – an apparent reference to the border dispute’s roots in an early 20th century treaty between the French colonial authorities in Cambodia and what was then the Kingdom of Siam.

Beijing to ‘exert strength’ to drive growth; China’s dynamic cities: SCMP daily highlights

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/3320151/beijing-exert-strength-drive-growth-chinas-dynamic-cities-scmp-daily-highlights?utm_source=rss_feed

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 .

China has vowed to maintain its macro policy support for the rest of 2025 as the country seeks to navigate economic risks – both external and internal – in the second half of the year and plan for its next half-decade of development.

Shanghai and parts of China’s east coast are bracing for a severe tropical storm after a tsunami yellow alert for the region was cancelled on Wednesday, following a massive earthquake off Russia’s Kamchatka peninsula.

China’s most dynamic local economies are no longer metropolises like Beijing and Shanghai, but lesser-known cities including Hangzhou and Hefei, according to a new report by the Economist Intelligence Unit.

Panama’s chief prosecutor said that more than 160 actions have been taken so far in a high-profile investigation into alleged wrongdoing by Panama Ports Company, the unit of Hong Kong’s CK Hutchison Holdings that operates two Panama Canal ports, as the country finds itself in the crosshairs of a deepening power struggle between the US and China.

China has hit out at Japan over its new space defence strategy, calling it a threat to security and stability.

The southern Chinese tech hub of Shenzhen plans to introduce a stricter supervisory mechanism for debtors who apply for personal bankruptcy, aiming to address public concerns over “debt evasion”.

China’s Type 815A spy ships have become pivotal to People’s Liberation Army naval operations and intelligence gathering, with recent incidents underscoring the vessels’ crucial role in Beijing’s maritime surveillance and power projection.

China’s finance minister vows fiscal support to spur demand, curb local government debt

https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3320142/chinas-finance-minister-vows-fiscal-support-spur-demand-curb-local-government-debt?utm_source=rss_feed

China’s finance minister has pledged to step up the use of fiscal tools to spur domestic demand and tackle local government debt, following stable growth and improved economic momentum in the first half of the year.

Finance Minister Lan Foan said the central government would accelerate fiscal spending, including the issuance and use of ultra-long-term bonds and local government special-purpose bonds, in an article published on Wednesday in Study Times – a newspaper run by the Central Party School of the Communist Party of China.

Lan’s article echoed Wednesday’s meeting of the ruling party’s Politburo, a major decision-making body, which called for the thorough implementation of a “more proactive fiscal policy” and a “moderately loose” monetary policy to maximise their impact.

Beijing would “firmly curb the growth of new hidden debt and continuously urge local governments to comply with fiscal discipline and strengthen budgetary constraints”, Lan wrote, adding that authorities would guide local governments to carry out debt swaps to mitigate risks.

By the end of June, 1.8 trillion yuan (US$251 billion) of the 2 trillion yuan in debt-swap bonds allocated for 2025 had been issued, with 1.44 trillion yuan already used, the ministry said at a press conference last Friday.

In the first six months of 2025, China issued 7.88 trillion yuan worth of government bonds – a record high that marked a 35.28 per cent year-on-year increase, according to official data.

The average interest rate on these bonds fell by 43 basis points year-on-year, dropping to 1.52 per cent.

As of the end of June, the outstanding debt of local governments nationwide stood at 51.95 trillion yuan, official data showed.

Lan also pledged policy support to upgrade traditional industries and nurture emerging sectors through special-purpose funds, tax breaks, government procurement and investment funds and other tools.

S&P Global Ratings predicted in a recent note that government investment funds would play an important role in advancing China’s industrial ambitions, with estimated target funds of US$2 trillion.

“We view these funds as an adjunct to the Chinese government’s industrial planning,” said Chloe Wang, a credit analyst at S&P Global Ratings.

“Government funds can tolerate low returns for extended periods, enabling them to invest in initiatives that may not yield immediate profits but are strategically important for the country’s long-term development.”

In the article, Lan also reaffirmed Beijing’s priority of boosting domestic demand, highlighting recent efforts to strengthen service consumption in sectors such as elderly care, childcare, culture and tourism.

On Monday, Beijing rolled out a new nationwide childcare subsidy of 3,600 yuan (US$501) per year per child, as the government looks to reverse its flagging birth rate.

Lan said authorities would press ahead with the programme and gradually introduce free pre-primary education.

On Wednesday, the finance ministry announced it would establish a fiscal transfer payment scheme for the childcare subsidies, with an initial budget of about 90 billion yuan this year.

The central government will support local governments by covering about 90 percent of the programme’s total costs, the ministry said.

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US Earth imaging satellite fleet is creating ‘low-cost orbital landmines’, China team says

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3320140/us-earth-imaging-satellite-fleet-creating-low-cost-orbital-landmines-china-team-says?utm_source=rss_feed

A team of Chinese researchers has criticised the world’s largest Earth-imaging satellite fleet, describing the shoebox-sized spacecraft as “low-cost orbital landmines” that threaten the safety of space operations.

Using a self-developed tracking platform, software scientists at the Chinese Academy of Sciences analysed the Dove constellation – which has launched hundreds of CubeSats since 2013 to provide daily, medium-resolution imagery of the Earth’s surface – according to the team’s article posted on Chinese social media on July 21.

The Chinese team said the thruster-less satellites operated by San Francisco-based Planet Labs, posed a growing threat to space safety.

They found that by early July more than 80 per cent of the 662 Dove satellites had deorbited, raising concerns about uncontrolled re-entry and potential collisions. They also noted that more than 100 Doves listed in public databases, including the US Space Force’s tracking website, were assigned “incorrect or fabricated” identification codes and lacked orbital data.

“The Dove constellation has reshaped the commercial Earth observation industry with its low-cost, high-frequency observation model,” the researchers wrote. “However, it may be turning valuable low Earth orbits into a dangerous ‘minefield’.”

Launched in large batches and lacking on-board propulsion, Doves drift between 300km and 500km (186-310 miles) in altitude and cannot manoeuvre to avoid collisions. Their small size also made them hard to track, the researchers said, adding that many remained in orbit long after they had stopped functioning.

With low Earth orbit becoming crowded, the team called for regulators to take action. “It’s time to revisit the regulatory framework for these satellites and find a balance between innovation and responsibility,” they wrote.

It remains unclear if their article has been peer reviewed or formally published. Planet did not respond to the multiple email inquiries from the South China Morning Post.

Jonathan McDowell, a Harvard astronomer and space historian, said many early Dove satellites were deployed from the International Space Station (ISS), which contributed to a quirk in how they were tracked.

Satellites released from the ISS typically re-entered Earth’s atmosphere quickly and posed little risk to other spacecraft, McDowell said, because “in those days, there were very few satellites lower than the ISS”.

He said the US Space Force could not determine which launch vehicle delivered each satellite to the ISS, so it assigned all such objects the same international ID – “1998-067”, referring to the first ISS module launched in 1998.

“It’s true that the tracking website lists the launch date of all these objects as 1998, and that’s incorrect,” McDowell said. “But this is basically incompetence, not a conspiracy.”

According to McDowell’s website, Jonathan’s Space Report, the actual launch dates for the misidentified Dove satellites span 2014 to 2016.

As of 2025, his data shows that of the more than 600 Dove satellites Planet has launched, around 150 remain active, a further 150 are defunct but still in orbit, and about 250 have already re-entered the atmosphere and burned up.

Dove satellites operate in two primary orbital regimes: some were deployed from the ISS at around 420km in altitude, while others were launched directly into sun-synchronous orbits at around 475km.

To keep the constellation running, Planet launches new batches every three to six months, maintaining a fleet of about 200 functioning satellites at any given time.

months, maintaining a fleet of about 200 functioning satellites at any given time.

Alibaba’s finance chief voices confidence in China’s AI boom and consumer market

https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3320131/alibabas-finance-chief-voices-confidence-chinas-ai-boom-and-consumer-market?utm_source=rss_feed

Alibaba Group Holding’s chief financial officer Toby Xu Hong reiterated the company’s confidence in China’s growing artificial intelligence sector and the consumer market’s resilience in an interview with state news agency Xinhua, as he highlighted the tech giant’s significant investments in AI research, infrastructure, and on-demand delivery.

Xu said Alibaba had earmarked 380 billion yuan (US$52 billion) for AI infrastructure, and 50 billion yuan for subsidies to merchants and consumers to support the country’s tech and internet services development, according to the report on Wednesday.

“Such large investments are based on in-depth analyses, with our continual confidence in the outlook of the Chinese market and the role of private enterprises in the nation’s development being the most important factors,” said Xu, who was appointed Alibaba’s finance chief in 2022 after joining the company in 2018.

Alibaba owns the Post.

Xu noted that a business symposium hosted by President Xi Jinping in February, which included entrepreneurs like Alibaba founder Jack Ma, greatly encouraged the private sector, prompting the company to make a series of strategic commitments.

That same month, Alibaba announced plans to invest at least 380 billion yuan over the next three years in AI, cloud computing and related infrastructure – an amount exceeding its total spending in those areas over the past decade.

That was followed in July by a pledge of 50 billion yuan over the next 12 months dedicated to its instant commerce business, benefiting both consumers and merchants.

“The biggest growth opportunities and variables we face in the future are driven by the changes brought about by AI, which will reshape all industries; this is a consensus,” Xu said, calling China a “leader” in this transformation.

He added that the 380 billion yuan investment – focusing on areas such as chips, servers, data centres, and AI technologies – was “steadily progressing”.

Alibaba’s Tongyi Lab has continued to upgrade its Qwen family of models. Recent releases include the Qwen3-Coder, which excels in coding and agentic tasks, and the versatile Qwen3 foundation model, Qwen3-235B-A22B-Instruct-2507.

According to Alibaba, its open-source series has amassed over 400 million downloads globally, leading to 140,000 derivative models.

Xu also emphasised technology’s role in enhancing the consumer market by improving connections between merchants and consumers, and discovering high-quality services.

Alibaba’s online marketplace Taobao, which merged with the company’s food delivery platform Ele.me in June to create a “comprehensive consumer platform”, is engaged in fierce competition with rivals Meituan and JD.com in the instant e-commerce sector.

Players have been aggressively distributing coupons and rolling out beneficial policies for merchants and riders.

Meituan recently recorded 150 million orders on a Saturday, while Taobao said daily orders exceeded 90 million for two consecutive weekends.

The intense competition has raised concerns, with some observers questioning its sustainability. On July 18, Chinese market regulators summoned JD.com, Meituan and Alibaba’s Ele.me to ensure compliance with legal standards and fair practices.

Xu said Taobao’s shift aimed to “bring service industries onto the platform”, leveraging technology, market insights, and platform capabilities to accelerate the development of service supply and consumption.

He pointed out that the digital penetration rate was low in the service industry, where the market size of the service e-commerce segment exceeded 10 trillion yuan, making it a lucrative opportunity that Alibaba hoped to capture.

Chinese police mount Xinjiang manhunt for fugitive wanted over wounding of 2 people

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3320144/chinese-police-mount-xinjiang-manhunt-fugitive-wanted-over-wounding-2-people?utm_source=rss_feed

Police in China’s far western region of Xinjiang are appealing for the public’s help to find a fugitive wanted over the wounding of two people near the border with Kazakhstan.

The authorities did not offer a motive for the attacks but the incident is one of the few publicly reported cases in recent years of intentional harm in Xinjiang – a region that is strictly controlled and politically sensitive.

Police are searching for a 29-year-old herder identified as Kasitiele wanted in relation to the attack last Thursday in Huojierte Mongol ethnic township in Emin county.

The man is a resident of the county’s Woyijiayilao Pasture on the outskirts of Tacheng prefecture, an area in northern Xinjiang close to the border with Kazakhstan.

The pasture is home to 14 ethnic groups, including Han, Kazakh, Hui and Kyrgyz, with ethnic minorities accounting for over 90 per cent of the population.

Police in neighbouring Yumin county said on Wednesday that both victims of the attack were in a stable condition and did not have life-threatening injuries.

They urged the public to report any relevant information and “to not believe, create or spread rumours”.

Xinjiang authorities have previously been cautious about reporting details of security incidents.

The far-western region is home to the Uygur ethnic group and has long been a focal point of international concern over human rights and security issues, particularly since authorities launched a major security upgrade in 2016.

The Chinese government has invested heavily in security infrastructure, deploying thousands of police and security personnel, especially along the border areas with Central Asian countries such as Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan.

Beijing says that the region has not reported a single terrorist attack since late 2016, proving the success of those efforts, but critics say that many of those measures violated human rights.

Critics attribute the apparent calm to the unprecedented security architecture of facial-recognition cameras, omnipresent checkpoints and a large number of police officers and auxiliary guards.

Local officials routinely credit the “people’s war on terror” for eliminating organised violence.

IMF raises China’s GDP outlook more than any other economy after strong first-half data

https://www.scmp.com/economy/economic-indicators/article/3320138/imf-raises-chinas-gdp-outlook-more-any-other-economy-after-strong-first-half-data?utm_source=rss_feed

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has substantially raised its growth forecast for China this year, while also slightly revising up global estimates, as China diversifies its export partners and trade tensions between the world’s two largest economies de-escalate.

The IMF now projects that China’s economy will expand by 4.8 per cent in 2025, up 0.8 percentage point from its previous forecast in April, according to its World Economic Outlook report released on Tuesday.

The upwards revision for China’s forecast was the largest among all countries and regions included in the report, as this year’s global economic growth forecast was modestly revised up by 0.2 percentage points to 3 per cent.

“This revision reflects stronger-than-expected activity in the first half of 2025 and the significant reduction in US–China tariffs,” the IMF said in its report.

And the IMF’s chief economist, Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, said at a press conference on Tuesday: “A particularly important component [of China’s economic activity] was the strength of exports from China to other parts of the world [beyond the US].”

Chinese shipments to its largest export destination, the US, fell by 10.9 per cent in the first half of the year amid threats of tariffs as high as 245 per cent in April, according to customs data.

Despite this decline, the country’s overall trade growth remained robust, with total exports rising 5.9 per cent over the same period, driven by growing shipments to regions such as Southeast Asia, Africa and Europe.

Signs of a de-escalation in trade tensions have also helped, with China and the US both scaling back tariffs on each other’s goods following an agreement in May, according to Gourinchas.

“The expectation that this level of tariffs will remain at the lower level is certainly supporting China’s economic activity going forward,” he said.

Following a fresh round of trade talks in Stockholm that concluded on Tuesday, Chinese negotiators said that both sides had agreed to push for an extension of the pause on tariff hikes, which was set to end on August 12 – though the US side said an extension had not yet been decided.

The IMF projects the growth rate of the US economy to be 1.9 per cent this year, or 0.1 percentage point higher than its previous forecast.

This comes as countries are rushing to form trade agreements with Washington before a US tariff pause on their goods is set to expire on Friday.

“While the trade shock could turn out to be less severe than initially feared, it is still sizeable, and evidence is mounting that it is hurting the global economy,” Gourinchas said.

Though China’s economy expanded by 5.3 per cent in the first six months of the year, putting it on track to meet leadership’s annual growth target of around 5 per cent, some analysts anticipate a deceleration in the second half.

“Domestic demand in China remains relatively weak,” Gourinchas said, adding that this was a source of concern that could further slow its growth in 2026, when the IMF now projects that China’s economy will grow by 4.2 per cent.

China guard dies after arriving early for shift, boss says not work-related, refuses payout

https://www.scmp.com/news/people-culture/trending-china/article/3319400/china-guard-dies-after-arriving-early-shift-boss-says-not-work-related-refuses-payout?utm_source=rss_feed

The employer of an early-arriving security guard in China who died in a sweltering workplace without air conditioning has refused to recognise his demise as work-related.

The firm has also declined to pay the man’s family compensation, sparking widespread outrage online.

The 50-year-old man, surnamed Zhou, worked the early shift at a residential community in Xi’an, Shaanxi province, northeastern China, Jimu News reported.

On July 15, he arrived at work an hour early, at around 7.00am.

After eating breakfast in the security room, he collapsed and was rushed to hospital but died.

The death certificate confirmed Zhou died of a heart attack.

Zhou’s daughter said that the temperature that day reached 33 degrees Celsius, yet neither her father’s security booth nor his dormitory had air conditioning.

Mainland reports revealed that Zhou had worked in the community for years and, despite having a signed contract, the company did not contribute to his social insurance.

His cramped dormitory held 20 people in less than 200 square metres and also had poor sanitation and dim lighting.

Zhou’s family believes that he was in good health and that his sudden death, presumably caused by the heat, should be classed as an industrial accident.

However, the company argued that Zhou’s early arrival was outside working hours and refused to classify his death as work-related, offering only “humanitarian donations”.

A manager surnamed Jin said: “Compensation for industrial accidents is much higher than for non-workplace injuries.”

He added that if Zhou’s death is recognised as work-related by the local authorities, the company would take responsibility.

Jin also acknowledged management shortcomings relating to working conditions and mentioned plans to install air conditioning in both the security booths and dormitories.

Zhou’s daughter said her father had been recognised as “Service Model” and “Outstanding Employee” by the company.

A resident described Zhou as diligent and responsible, adding that he was well-liked by children in the community.

Another resident praised him for regularly helping the elderly and pregnant, describing him as a “warm-hearted person”.

As of writing, Zhou’s family has had multiple negotiations with the company and is awaiting the result of an industrial injury assessment by the local authorities.

The incident has attracted more than 15 million views on mainland social media.

One online observer said: “This heartless company did not provide insurance for Zhou. Not installing air conditioning in such high temperatures is killing people!”

“A responsible man loves his job and arrives early, yet he is not compensated for this. It is so wrong,” said another.

It is not the first report of harsh working conditions for security guards in China.

In July, a guard at a university in northern China died from heatstroke due to the lack of air conditioning in his room.

Under the country’s Industrial Injury Insurance Rule, if an employee dies from a sudden illness during work hours or while performing work-related tasks, it is classified as an industrial accident.

Family members can request compensation, funeral expenses and a lump sum death benefit.

In October 2014, a security guard in Beijing died while having sex with his girlfriend at his workplace. The court ruled it as an industrial accident, but the compensation amount has not been disclosed.

Absolute dominance: what China needs to know about the tech elite’s role in Trump 2.0

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3320037/absolute-dominance-what-china-needs-know-about-tech-elites-role-trump-20?utm_source=rss_feed

China should factor in the future visions of America’s right-wing tech barons to gain a more complete picture of the second Trump administration’s policies, a top Chinese strategist has suggested.

As the two powers had their latest round of trade talks in Stockholm, another prominent expert in China also called on Beijing to look beyond the present tariff tensions with the United States to understand Washington’s broader strategic agenda.

The inclusion of Silicon Valley tech elites as a new force on US President Donald Trump’s team had been a major difference in the American leader’s second term compared with his first, said Ni Feng, director of the Institute of American Studies under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

“The interaction between the tech right force and the Maga movement is likely to be a very meaningful point for us to observe the second Trump administration’s domestic and foreign policies,” Ni told a webinar about the Make America Great Again wave on Tuesday.

While Maga was nostalgic, the tech right was trying to “shape the future of the US”, Ni said at the event, which was organised by the National Academy of Development and Strategy at Renmin University in Beijing.

Ni described the American tech right not only as a powerful capital bloc but also as an entity that had its “unique philosophy” about where the US should be headed – so-called tech accelerationism.

“The most basic view of this philosophy is that the new wave of technological revolution – such as artificial intelligence, quantum computing, controlled nuclear fusion and biotechnology – will usher in a new epoch for not just America but for all societies that is fundamentally different from today’s world,” he said.

It was necessary to study how that ethos could shape future White House policies, he said.

He also referred to the important role that billionaire Elon Musk had played in the early stages of the second Trump administration and how American venture capitalist Peter Thiel, a widely recognised tech accelerationist, helped nurture the political rise of US Vice-President J.D. Vance.

While the public rupture between Trump and Musk has highlighted the fragility of such alliances, this is a rising sentiment among Chinese analysts that the political influence of US tech leaders has expanded since Trump’s return to the Oval Office in January and will give them a greater say over Washington’s China strategy.

Although the ongoing US-China trade war has dominated headlines, the strategic rivalry between the two countries has also continued to play out across a wider front – including a race to establish rules over emerging technologies, international politics, the global economy and security.

At the same webinar on Tuesday, Liu Yuanchun, president of the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, argued that the new US political elites emphasised that building America’s hard power was the fundamental way to make the nation great again.

“A significant shift from Trump 1.0 to 2.0 is [focusing on] comprehensively reshaping America’s technological and industrial competitiveness to put it in absolute dominance,” Liu said.

The prominent Chinese economist said that reaching the goal would require a coordinated set of US policies – spanning tariffs, exchange rates, industrial policy, fiscal measures and monetary tools.

Liu expected that Maga economic drive would take the form of a “package” during the second Trump administration.

“The package will definitely not be the simple containment of China and the simple trade war during Trump 1.0,” he added.

Liu also expected that Trump would combine tariff hikes with a revival of industrial policy and sweeping deregulation of emerging technologies.

“He hopes to harness the fourth technological and industrial revolution and ride the new wave to revitalise the US system of production,” Liu said.

Still, Liu warned, Washington’s pursuit of absolute superiority in cutting-edge technologies meant it would continue its efforts to “stifle” China’s overtaking trend.

China unveils new oversight guidelines seen as a strategic ‘anti-involution effort’

https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3320154/china-unveils-new-oversight-guidelines-seen-strategic-anti-involution-effort?utm_source=rss_feed

China’s top economic planner has unveiled new draft guidelines aimed at tightening oversight of government-backed investment funds, urging a sharper focus on advanced manufacturing and strategic emerging industries.

The warning against overlapping investments marks the latest push to rein in redundant spending that has intensified cutthroat competition and added to deflationary pressure – a key concern for policymakers seeking to steer capital toward high-impact, innovation-driven sectors.

On Wednesday, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) released two draft documents for public comment, laying out guidance on how government funds should be deployed and evaluated.

The new rules call for stronger top-down planning, better coordination between central and local funds, and a sharper focus on key industries such as advanced manufacturing, future tech and the digital economy.

“The government will enhance the planning and guidance of government investment fund allocation, highlight policy orientation and the guiding role of the state, avoid homogeneous competition and the crowding out of private capital,” according to one of the draft guidelines.

It will also promote the formation of a development pattern that is moderate in scale, rationally distributed, standardised in operation, efficient in execution, and risk-controlled, the document said.

The guidelines also emphasise the role of public capital as “patient, long-term funding” to stabilise investments across economic cycles.

Xu Tianchen, a senior China economist at the Economist Intelligence Unit, said the move was part of the central government’s push to prevent public funds from “piling in all at once” and creating a new wave of inefficient competition.

“A lot of local governments have similar industrial blueprints – they’re all focused on the same sectors, like the ‘new three’ and other hi-tech industries, and their investment strategies tend to overlap,” Xu said. “This is essentially an anti-involution effort. Because, at its core, involution stems from excessive investment in the past.”

In recent years, local governments have been overconcentrating their funds into similar industrial projects – from electric vehicles and batteries to solar panels – chasing windfalls from strategic sectors with overlapping blueprints and massive public funding.

Analysts contend that this type of fragmented investment spree has drained local coffers and crowded out private capital, fuelling the kind of economic distortions that Beijing is now scrambling to correct.

In January, the State Council also issued guidelines calling for the expansion of “long-term and patient capital”, urging local governments to “avoid redundant investment and disorderly competition” by coordinating fund layouts based on regional strengths and national priorities.

It stressed the need to “reasonably determine fund duration” and allow follow-on investments in sectors that require long-term commitments, while encouraging consolidation of overlapping funds to “enhance scale efficiency and better serve policy goals”.

The January directive also urged provincial governments to “strengthen unified fund management” and prevent “low-level, repetitive construction” in key industries.

US eyes Philippine rare earths to counter China’s ‘chokehold’

https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/health-environment/article/3320113/us-eyes-philippine-rare-earths-counter-chinas-chokehold?utm_source=rss_feed

When US officials met their Philippine counterparts in Kuala Lumpur this month to discuss critical minerals, few outside industry circles realised the quiet significance of the conversation: a new front in the global contest over resources essential to modern technology and national security.

Now, a potential rare earths deal between the United States and the Philippines has drawn attention to the largely overlooked abundance of these strategic resources in the Southeast Asian nation – and to the decades-long flow of Philippine raw materials to China.

For years, Manila may have been unwittingly supplying China with the vital ingredients for manufacturing items ranging from smartphones and electric vehicles to missiles, satellites and military aircraft, industry insiders say.

During the meeting in Kuala Lumpur on July 10, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Philippine Foreign Secretary Maria Theresa Lazaro that Washington was interested in “the Philippines’ wealth in critical minerals and stressed the need to diversify critical mineral supply chains”, according to a State Department statement.

Although neither US President Donald Trump nor Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr mentioned a possible deal during their joint press conference on July 22, Marcos identified “critical minerals” as a key sector for development in his State of the Nation Address on Monday.

Washington’s renewed focus on securing mineral supply chains follows China’s decision in April to restrict exports to the US of “rare earth elements” – a subset of the broader “critical minerals” category that are essential for defence and advanced technology.

Seventeen metallic elements are classified as rare earths. According to the Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies, Beijing’s export restrictions targeted seven of these: scandium, samarium, gadolinium, terbium, dysprosium, lutetium and yttrium, as well as magnets crucial to the defence, energy and automotive industries.

The move was a direct response “to Trump’s tariff increases” on Chinese goods, the think tank said.

In a hearing of the East Asia Indo-Pacific subcommittee on July 15 titled “Breaking China’s Chokehold on Critical Mineral Supply Chain”, Republican Congresswoman Young Kim of California warned that China “controls 92 per cent of global rare earth element processing and dominates the manufacturing of battery and magnet components”.

“This chokehold, reinforced by China’s tens of billions in global mining investments and tactics like price manipulation and export restrictions, poses a direct threat to the United States and our allies,” Kim said. She called for the creation of “non-Chinese supply chains” in partnership with US allies.

The Philippines is not just a strategically located archipelago, it also possesses significant, if underexplored, reserves of rare earth elements. Yet these deposits have so far been studied only sporadically due to a lack of resources.

A veteran mining engineer, with experience both in the Philippines and overseas, told This Week in Asia that local mining companies had not actively pursued rare earth extraction. “All that I have heard is that there is a potential for such minerals as associated with other deposits like laterites and bauxite but [I] don’t really know the specific location,” he said.

Scandium, one of the rare earths subject to China’s export ban, has been identified in the Philippines’ nickel-rich laterite deposits in Zambales, Surigao del Sur and Palawan provinces, according to geologist Dr Rene Juna Claveria, an emeritus professor at Ateneo de Manila University, citing a study by the Philippine Council for Industry, Energy and Emerging Technology.

Claveria, who has extensively studied rare earths, explained at a Manila Observatory lecture last month that the Philippines “is a major exporter of raw nickeliferous laterite as we do not have processing plants for nickel and other by-products”.

“Unfortunately, exporting raw laterites does not give us the benefit [of] value-adding in the acquisition of scandium,” he said. “This means China is the one which processes [the laterites], so the scandium is theirs.”

The Philippines was “not processing the soil. The soil itself is the one being exported”, Claveria said.

He emphasised that rare earths were “critical” to the manufacture of “smartphones, electric vehicles, wind turbines, semiconductors, nuclear reactors” and aircraft navigation guidance systems, among many other applications.

“In essence, without these elements, the high-technology products are more likely non-existent,” he said.

Claveria added that rare earth deposits were present in the black sands around the coasts of the Philippines and claimed that foreign entities had used giant dredgers to remove these, altering the coastline.

China’s dominance in rare earth processing was the result of decades of investment to perfect the “very tedious, difficult process” of separating out rare earth elements, he said.

“In contrast, the US did not persevere,” he said. “China is the only one who can sell those elements in pure form.”

He argued that the Philippines had yet to realise its rare earths potential and proposed a comprehensive inventory of all operating and abandoned mines.

“Joint sharing” with the US on rare earths development could also be an option, according to financial risk analyst Jonathan Ravelas, managing director of eManagement for Business and Marketing Services.

The mining engineer, speaking anonymously due to the sensitivity of the subject, cautiously welcomed potential US collaboration for funding, but said it was “too early to talk about mining”.

“[We] need to do prospecting, then exploration, then feasibility studies, then mining if all of the previous steps had positive outcomes,” he said, stressing that “governments don’t usually do the detailed exploration”, which is often expensive and high-risk.

“Some funding is given for a general study then the results are given to the private sector for interested companies to continue the work,” he added.

The engineer also warned of the environmental risks: “Given the possible association of rare earth minerals with bauxite and laterite deposits there would be no escaping from open pit mining.”

Claveria echoed these concerns, noting in his lecture the closures of rare earths mines in the US due to environmental non-compliance.

Despite repeated requests from This Week in Asia for more details, Claveria did not respond. His livestream lecture on rare earths was also quietly removed online from the Manila Observatory’s social media pages.

Shanghai, east China dodge tsunami, brace for severe tropical storm

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3320117/shanghai-east-china-dodge-tsunami-brace-severe-tropical-storm?utm_source=rss_feed

Shanghai and parts of China’s east coast are bracing for a severe tropical storm after a tsunami yellow alert for the region was cancelled on Wednesday, following a massive earthquake off Russia’s Kamchatka peninsula.

The tropical storm generated by Typhoon Co-May was expected to make landfall on Wednesday evening, authorities said.

China’s Tsunami Warning Centre at the Ministry of Natural Resources issued the yellow alert on Wednesday morning, warning that waves ranging up to 100cm (40 inches) could hit Shanghai’s coast. The alert was lifted in the early afternoon.

Severe winds and rainfall from Typhoon Co-May – the eighth typhoon of the season – were expected in the city at around 6pm, according to Zhejiang province’s department of water resources.

The tsunami alert has been issued after a powerful 8.8 magnitude earthquake hit Russia’s Kamchatka peninsula on Wednesday at 7.24am Beijing time, at a depth of 20km (12.4 miles), according to the ministry alert. Tsunami waves up to 30cm high were seen on Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido soon after.

The tsunami alert had been issued for the coast of Shanghai and Zhoushan in Zhejiang province, which is also where Typhoon Co-May made landfall earlier today.

Typhoon Co-May made landfall at around 4.30am on Wednesday, with maximum sustained winds at its centre of 83km/h (52 miles per hour), according to China’s National Meteorological Centre. It is now classified as a tropical storm, with heavy associated rainfall.

The forecast path of the severe tropical storm has varied, but it was expected to reach inland by 7pm.

China’s stealth design software breakthrough, mega dam project boost: 7 science highlights

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3320096/chinas-stealth-design-software-breakthrough-mega-dam-project-boost-7-science-highlights?utm_source=rss_feed

We have put together stories from our coverage on science from the past two weeks to help you stay informed. If you would like to see more of our reporting, please consider .

Chinese aerospace engineers have a revolutionary software design that they say will allow them to overcome a major barrier to stealth aircraft development.

A team of Chinese scientists has found that the spread of cancer from original tumour sites to distant organs can be caused by chemotherapy triggering the awakening of dormant cancer cells.

Beijing has launched the massive Yarlung Tsangpo hydropower project in southern Tibet after decades of scientific research.

Chinese researchers have manufactured the world’s largest barium gallium selenide (BGSe) crystal, a breakthrough that could pave the way for ultra-high-power laser weapons capable of zapping satellites from the ground.

Precision-guided bunker busters fly slowly but carry massive warheads wrapped in thick armour. Small nations without air power watch helplessly as bombs fall. When US B-2 stealth bombers struck Iran’s nuclear sites with GBU-57 MOP (Massive Ordnance Penetrator) bunker busters on June 22, there was reportedly little resistance.

Chinese researchers have offered a countermeasure: strike the weak flank.

As the world’s brightest young mathematical minds gathered last week at Australia’s Sunshine Coast for the biggest global maths competition of the year, one moment stood out before the contest had even begun.

China has pulled the wraps off its next-generation high-speed rail technology as the United States revokes federal funding for California’s high-speed rail project.

China to convene gathering in October to discuss next 5-year plan

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3320102/china-convene-gathering-october-discuss-next-five-year-plan?utm_source=rss_feed

China’s ruling Communist Party has set a date for a key annual conclave in October, with a main focus on deliberating the next five-year plan for the country’s economic, political and social goals amid continued tension with the United States.

The announcement came after a meeting of the Politburo on Wednesday that set the tone for the coming fourth plenary session to be attended by more than 370 Central Committee members of the party elite.

The much-anticipated plenum will be held in Beijing, according to the official Xinhua news agency. No specific date was announced.

In instructions on the new blueprint’s formulation, President Xi Jinping said in May that the party’s central leadership was “organising the drafting of a proposal for the 15th five-year plan”. A one-month online public consultation on the formulation of the plan was also launched in May.

According to official rules, the new five-year plan covering 2026-2030 must be endorsed by a plenary session of the party, after which it will be submitted to the annual legislative session in March for a final endorsement.

China continues to face external uncertainties as it remains locked in a trade and tech rivalry with the United States.

While Chinese and US negotiators have reached a series of agreements to halt an all-out trade war, most observers believe a protracted trade, tech and geopolitical competition between the world’s two largest economies will continue to intensify.

The fourth plenum will also be watched for potential announcements about the line-up of the Central Committee, with at least five members expected to be replaced – the highest number since 2017.

Four senior officials who have been targeted in corruption investigations are likely to be expelled from the Central Committee. They are Jin Xiangjun, former governor of Shanxi province; Lan Tianli, former deputy party chief of the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region; former People’s Liberation Army ideology official Miao Hua; and former agriculture minister Tang Renjian.

Tang faces bribery charges, while the other three are under investigation for corruption.

Another Central Committee vacancy has been left by Yu Jianhua, the former head of the General Administration of Customs, who died in December after a sudden illness, according to an official announcement.

Observers will also be watching for announcements on Jin Zhuanglong, former party chief of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, and General He Weidong, the second-ranked vice-chairman of the powerful Central Military Commission and a member of the Politburo.

Jin was removed from his position in February, two months after he disappeared from public view. He last appeared in public on March 11 and has been absent from a series of key events, fuelling speculation about his whereabouts.

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Chinese woman dates 20 men, asks for iPhones, sells them to fund property down payment

https://www.scmp.com/news/people-culture/trending-china/article/3319388/chinese-woman-dates-20-men-asks-iphones-sells-them-fund-property-down-payment?utm_source=rss_feed

The recent disclosure of a scam involving a cross-dressing man posing as a woman has brought about the re-emergence of a previous case that has gained more than 10 million views online.

Fresh interest in the old case comes after a recent viral story of a middle-aged man, known as Sister Hong, who posed as a woman to have sex with hundreds of men while asking them to send him gifts.

The previous case happened nine years ago when a woman cheated 20 men out of money to help fund the purchase of a flat.

Many people have praised the woman as the “master of Sister Hong” because she managed to date 20 men in six months.

She asked each of them to send her a new iPhone 7 before selling the gadget to accumulate 120,000 yuan (US$17,000), which she used as the down payment on a flat.

According to a 2016 report by Qianjiang Evening News, the woman, whose identity was not released, worked as a junior clerk in a company with a low salary in Shenzhen for a year.

The inconspicuous worker raised eyebrows when she shared on social media that she had bought a property in her hometown.

Her colleagues later learned that the woman had dated 20 men simultaneously over a period of six months. The down payment for her flat came from the new iPhone 7s bought by her dates.

She sold the mobile phones on the internet. A worker at an electrical product trading platform confirmed to the media the deal the woman made with them.

“We received an order from a woman. She claimed she had 20 new iPhone 7s to sell. We found the packaging for most of them had not been opened,” said the unnamed employee.

“Each mobile phone was sold at over 6,000 yuan. She got more than 120,000 yuan in total,” added the worker.

One of the woman’s colleagues said they were amazed by her behaviour.

“We could not imagine she is such a person. She has a bubbly personality and gets along well with us,” said a female colleague.

“We did not expect she would do this for money. I heard that our company plans to fire her.”

It is not known if the woman received any judicial punishment.

Many internet users compared her case with the recent Sister Hong scandal, saying her scheme was more sophisticated.

“Admire, admire, admire! What a multitasking epic,” said one online observer.

Sister Hong captivated mainland social media in early July.

The cross-dressing man claimed he had sex with more than 1,000 men, secretly filming them and sharing videos online.

The man was arrested by police in eastern Jiangsu province for disseminating obscene material. The case is still under investigation.

China fossil find reveals why ancient marine ‘lamp shells’ practised social distancing

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3319870/china-fossil-find-reveals-why-ancient-marine-lamp-shells-practised-social-distancing?utm_source=rss_feed

Ancient “lamp shells” – bottom-dwelling invertebrates that once ruled the oceans – may have used hundreds of bristle-like structures to “social distance” in a bid to improve their chances of survival, Chinese palaeontologists have discovered.

Their findings are based on a fossilised species of brachiopods – or clam-like marine animals – that was discovered in China’s southwestern Guizhou province.

The fossils, discovered embedded in rocks, were found to be arranged in a “checkerboard-like” pattern across what was once the sea floor.

Individuals of the extinct species Nucleospira calypta were likely to have used the flexible bristle-like structures – thinner than human hair – to help guide their movement and arrange their population to provide adequate space for filter feeding.

“We report exceptionally preserved soft, bristle-like structures (“setae”) on 436-million-year-old brachiopods, enabling analysis of ancient behaviour,” the team said in a paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on July 21.

Using advanced imaging and spatial analysis, the researchers determined that Nucleospira calypta formed a “highly regular” pattern of spacing that corresponded to about 1.5 to 2 times the length of their setae.

“Our findings point to a previously unrecognised mechanism shaping ecosystem structure in deep time,” said the researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ (CAS) Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology.

“This is the first time we’ve directly connected a specific anatomical feature – these tiny setae – to a statistically significant spatial pattern in fossils,” study authors Huang Bing and Rong Jiayu told CAS.

Brachiopods were the most diverse and common marine organisms during the Palaeozoic era (541 to 251 million years ago), according to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History.

There are 30,000 known brachiopod species based on fossil records, but fewer than 400 are alive today, and they are found in very cold waters in the polar regions or the deep sea.

Also called lamp shells due to their resemblance to ancient Roman oil lamps, some species of brachiopods have setae, which grow from the edges of the mantle – a vital tissue layer also found in molluscs.

“Brachiopod setae, hypothesised to function in feeding or defence, are exceedingly rare in the fossil record,” the team said.

“For filter-feeding brachiopods reliant on suspended plankton, dense aggregations could disrupt essential feeding currents, analogous to spacing optimising light capture in plants”.

The “exceptionally well-preserved” fossils analysed by the researchers belong to the early Silurian period, around 444 to 419 million years ago.

Adults of the Nucleospira calypta species found in the Hanchiatien geological formation in Guizhou had about 200 to 250 setae in total.

The length of each typically ranged from 3mm to 8mm (0.12 to 0.3 inch), with a diameter less than a third that of a single human hair.

The team determined that the setae were so well preserved because they were first rapidly mineralised by pyrite in oxygen-free waters, and then coated in calcite when ocean conditions became less acidic.

This double coating of minerals shielded the delicate bristles from decay and being crushed.

Spatial analysis revealed that the fossilised brachiopods were not randomly scattered, but rather had a “statistically significant, nonrandom, checkerboard-like distribution” across the rock.

“Such a pattern is characteristic of territorial behaviour or resource competition,” the researchers said.

“Strikingly, the measured average inter-individual spacing quantitatively relates to the length of the preserved setae”.

The Nucleospira calypta species lacked a pedicle, a stalk-like structure that can help marine animals anchor to the sea floor.

They also had a smooth and flat circular shell, which the researchers said possibly allowed them to slide on the ocean floor millimetre by millimetre.

When individuals would get too close, their setae would touch, which was likely to have prompted them to make gradual adjustments to their positioning, according to CAS.

Why is Shenzhen adjusting China’s first pilot personal bankruptcy scheme?

https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3320084/why-shenzhen-adjusting-chinas-first-pilot-personal-bankruptcy-scheme?utm_source=rss_feed

The southern Chinese tech hub of Shenzhen plans to introduce a stricter supervisory mechanism for debtors who apply for personal bankruptcy, aiming to address public concerns over “debt evasion”.

Starting in October, a debtor’s bankruptcy information will be publicly disclosed for up to eight years once a court rules that their outstanding debts be discharged, the city’s bankruptcy administration announced last week.

Shenzhen, in Guangdong province, adjoining Hong Kong, became the first city in mainland China to pilot a personal bankruptcy system in March 2021. Just over 500 cases have been processed since then, encompassing debt restructuring, liquidation and reconciliation totalling 193 million yuan (US$26.89 million).

However, no individual has had their debts fully discharged.

Some legal experts argue the pace remains slow relative to the thousands of applications submitted and broader societal demand. They have called for bolder reforms to offer more debtors – especially the owners of small businesses – a genuine second chance to restart their lives as personal and household debts rise in an ongoing economic downturn.

Over 65 per cent of the applicant debtors in the pilot scheme are self-employed individuals, corporate shareholders or entrepreneurs.

“Over 95 per cent of personal bankruptcy cases in Shenzhen are processed through restructuring, with very few proceeding to liquidation,” Li Shuguang, a law professor at China University of Political Science and Law in Beijing, told the Post this week. “From a bankruptcy professional standpoint, this is not a normal pattern.

Li, who helped draft and amend China’s Enterprise Bankruptcy Law, said he hoped more people could benefit from the personal bankruptcy system, rather than just a select few.

“Part of the reason lies in a deliberate choice of judicial policy aimed at reflecting a cautious approach to personal bankruptcy, and partly because it has design flaws and there is a lack of deeper understanding of the personal bankruptcy system,” he said.

“The fundamental logic of the personal bankruptcy system should be debt relief and its core value lies in giving honest but unfortunate debtors a chance to start over.”

Few details of Shenzhen’s pilot programme have been disclosed over the past four years – with even the number of applicants each year kept from the public. But the few details that have emerged have sparked widespread concern and heated debate online.

In April, the Shenzhen Intermediate People’s Court released some details from two controversial cases. One involved a 37-year-old woman who reportedly owed 25.44 million yuan but earned just 4,784 yuan a month. Another featured a retired couple with a combined monthly income of just 12,000 yuan who were carrying over 120 million yuan in debt.

When those details sparked public outrage, the authorities said the debtors’ liabilities were mainly debts incurred from previous business ventures and the cases were still under review, the Paper.cn media outlet reported.

In reality, Shenzhen’s oversight of the programme, which allows city residents to discharge outstanding debts three years after a successful filing, remains strict.

The city’s first known personal bankruptcy filer, surnamed Hu, began a three-year observation period in 2021, but that was extended until November this year after authorities found that Hu had failed to fully disclose relevant financial information.

Shenzhen’s cautious stance has inadvertently made it more difficult for debtors in other cities to seek relief, according to industry insiders.

“In the past two years, my colleagues and I have received an increasing number of consultations from debtors in Guangzhou, most of whom are owners of small and medium-sized enterprises, but their expectations cannot be met under the current system,” said Luo Aiping, a lawyer in Guangzhou, Guangdong’s provincial capital.

According to the China Association of Small and Medium Enterprises, there are around 53 million micro-sized, small and medium-sized enterprises across the country, many solely funded by individual families through personal assets and loans.

Data from the National Institution for Finance and Development shows that China’s household leverage ratio, which was under 30 per cent in 2011, rose to 61.1 per cent in the second quarter of this year.

“I have several clients who tried everything they could to repay their debts but ultimately failed,” Luo said. “One of them passed away without ever seeing a glimmer of hope.”

Hong Kong stocks trade lower on disappointment over China-US trade negotiations

https://www.scmp.com/business/markets/article/3320065/hong-kong-stocks-trade-lower-disappointment-over-china-us-trade-negotiations?utm_source=rss_feed

Concerns about trade tensions between China and the US drove Hong Kong stocks lower for a second day, as the world’s two largest economies stopped short of finalising a deal that would extend a 90-day tariff pause.

The Hang Seng Index fell 0.5 per cent to 25,393.80 as of 10.01am local time, while the Hang Seng Tech Index slumped 1.8 per cent. On the mainland, the CSI 300 Index and the Shanghai Composite Index both rose 0.5 per cent.

Electric-vehicle makers led the declines, as Li Auto tumbled 9.1 per cent to HK$109 and BYD sank 6.3 per cent to HK$122. Post owner Alibaba Group Holding slid 2.5 per cent to HK$117.70 and rival JD.com dropped 2.3 per cent to HK$127.40. HSBC Holdings rose 0.2 per cent to HK$101 ahead of its earnings release.

China and the US concluded their third round of trade negotiations in Stockholm, with the two sides remaining at odds over the extension of a ceasefire plan. Chinese negotiators said that an extension agreement was reached, but US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said China had “jumped the gun a little” and that all terms needed to be approved by President Donald Trump.

Investors are also keeping a close eye on the US Federal Reserve’s rate decision and the unfolding earnings season. The Fed is widely expected to keep its benchmark interest rate between 4.25 and 4.5 per cent on Thursday. Some eight companies in the Hang Seng Index are due to release interim reports this week. Among them, HSBC Holdings will likely say that second-quarter profit dropped 19 per cent from a year earlier.

Other major Asia-Pacific markets were mixed: Japan’s Nikkei 225 slipped 0.3 per cent, South Korea’s Kospi rose 0.6 per cent and Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 added 0.5 per cent.

China says Japan’s space defence guidelines ‘threaten security and stability’

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/military/article/3320063/china-says-japans-space-defence-guidelines-threaten-security-and-stability?utm_source=rss_feed

China has hit out at Japan over its new space defence strategy, calling it a threat to security and stability.

Japan unveiled the space defence guidelines in Tokyo on Monday. Its defence ministry cited Chinese and Russian development of military capabilities in space as a reason it was seeking to boost defence in space and cooperation with the United States and other allies.

In response, China’s foreign ministry on Tuesday said that in space, Japan, the US and other Western countries continued “expanding military cooperation and used ‘defence’ as a pretext to develop and deploy space weapons”.

“These measures threaten the security and stability of outer space and trigger the concerns of neighbouring countries about a revival of militarism,” foreign ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun said at a regular press conference in Beijing.

Japan’s guidelines state that China and Russia are actively developing technologies to jam or neutralise other countries’ satellites, such as so-called killer satellites, in-orbit rendezvous and proximity operations, and direct ascent anti-satellite missiles.

The guidelines say China has significantly increased its network of military satellites in recent years and that it has built constellations for monitoring, tracking and communication with targets. They say those satellites will support long-range precision strikes and rapidly improve the Chinese military’s command, control, communication, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities.

“To ensure their military superiority, some states, including China and Russia, are actively developing technologies to disrupt and disable other countries’ satellites … investing in improving capabilities, turning space into a growing combat domain and increasing threats and risks in outer space,” the guidelines say.

It comes as Japan and the US have stepped up cooperation on space-based surveillance and intelligence sharing. That includes the US forces in Japan setting up a space command at its Yokota air base in December.

Guo defended China’s activities, saying the country was committed to the peaceful use of space and it opposed any arms race in or weaponising of outer space.

“China firmly opposes Japan’s attempt to create a pretext for its own military build-up by peddling the narrative of threats from other countries,” Guo said.

Guo said Japan had increased defence spending each year and moved further down the path of military expansion. He said in the lead-up to the 80th anniversary of Japan’s defeat in World War II, Tokyo should “take a hard look at its responsibility for the war crimes, draw lessons from history”.

“We urge Japan to … stop hiding its true intention of a military build-up by acting as a scaremonger in the region,” Guo said.

Japan has budgeted a record high 8.7 trillion yen (US$58.5 billion) for defence spending for the 2025 financial year – a 9.4 per cent increase from a year ago. Some 283.2 billion yen of that is earmarked for a satellite constellation.

Tokyo also plans to rename the Japan Air Self-Defence Force as the Japan Air and Space Self-Defence Force in 2027 to recognise the importance of space as a primary domain of operations.

The new guidelines identify four key areas where space defence capabilities are to be strengthened: real-time detection and tracking for situational awareness; resilient satellite communication; early warning of threats and mission assurance; and disruption of enemy command, control and communications.

To deal with threats from killer satellites and direct ascent anti-satellite missiles, the guidelines call for an upgrade of situational awareness in space, improved protective capabilities, and the development of quick-launch rockets and satellites.

Other proposed measures include a system for “stand-off defence” with a satellite constellation to monitor and track moving threats – particularly hypersonic glide vehicles – that come within 3,000km (1,800 miles) of Japan. The system would also use AI for data processing, next-generation communication satellites that would be less prone to interference and would increase interoperability with allies and partners like the US.

From seas to space: China’s Type 815A spy ships are keeping PLA Navy informed and ready

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/military/article/3317443/seas-space-chinas-type-815a-spy-ships-are-keeping-pla-navy-informed-and-ready?utm_source=rss_feed

China’s Type 815A spy ships have become pivotal to People’s Liberation Army naval operations and intelligence gathering, with recent incidents underscoring the vessels’ crucial role in Beijing’s maritime surveillance and power projection.

On July 12, the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) reported the interception of the Type 815A electronic surveillance ship Tianwangxing (hull number 793) operating about 69 nautical miles (128km) off the western Philippines, within Manila’s exclusive economic zone.

Despite repeated radio challenges from the flagship PCG vessel Teresa Magbanua, the Tianwangxing remained unresponsive while the accompanying China Coast Guard (CCG) ship undertook manoeuvres described by the PCG as “asserting Beijing’s jurisdiction over the disputed waters”.

The Chinese spy ship, accompanied by the CCG’s Zhaojun-class cutter 4203 and later joined by PLA Navy Type 052D guided missile destroyer Guilin (hull number 164), was conducting what appeared to be intelligence-gathering operations during the US-Philippine Cope Thunder aerial combat exercise.

The drills, carried out on July 7-18, saw America’s most advanced F-35A Lightning II stealth fighters deployed to the Philippines for the first time.

In April, the Japanese defence ministry also reported spotting two PLA Navy Type 815A spy ships near Japan’s southwestern islands.

It said Japanese naval vessels closely monitored the Yuhengxing (hull number 798) and the Kaiyangxing (hull number 796) as they made their way from the Philippine Sea to the East China Sea, the first one passing through the strategic Miyako Strait and the other sailing between Taiwan and Japan’s Yonaguni Island.

The Chinese deployments in the Philippine Sea coincided with annual US-Philippine Balikatan war games and the USS Nimitz carrier strike group’s operations nearby, US media reports citing navy sources said.

And in late February and early March, another Type 815A – hull number 795 – shadowed the American aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson through Japan’s Osumi Strait, despite reported US attempts to disrupt its tracking operations.

The Chinese spy ship continued its surveillance as the carrier strike group sailed towards South Korea’s Busan port, raising concerns in Tokyo and Seoul, both treaty allies of Washington.

Some analysts suggested the ship was simulating real-time targeting support for intermediate and long-range anti-ship missiles, such as China’s road-mobile ballistic missile DF-26, which is capable of striking both land-based and maritime targets, or the sea-launched hypersonic anti-ship ballistic missile YJ-21.

Originally developed in the late 1990s, the Type 815 is China’s third-generation electronic reconnaissance vessel. The first ship – initially called Dongdiao and later renamed Beijixing, with the hull number 851 – entered service with the PLA Navy’s East Sea Fleet in late 1999.

Built at a Shanghai shipyard, the Beijixing is the PLA Navy’s first domestically designed spy ship fully outfitted with indigenous technology, making China one of the few countries capable of independently developing advanced electronic reconnaissance vessels.

It was built at a cost of around 10 billion yuan (US$1.4 billion), compared to the 7 billion yuan spent on the Type 055 advanced missile-guided stealth destroyers.

Notably, the Beijixing monitored the 2014 US-led Rim of the Pacific (Rimpac) exercise near Hawaii, marking the international debut of the Type 815 fleet.

The PLA Navy has introduced markedly advanced variants since 2010, with at least eight Type 815A vessels currently active.

At about 130 metres long and 16 metres wide, the Type 815A has a full-load displacement of around 6,000 tonnes.

It is powered by diesel engines driving twin shafts and can reach top speeds of 20 knots (37km/h or 23mph), with an operational range of more than 10,000 nautical miles.

This range allows the fleet to carry out prolonged intelligence missions far from home shores, with operations spanning the Pacific and Indian oceans and even off the US west coast, without the need to refuel.

Like the Type 055, the Type 815A incorporates stealth technologies, including inward-sloping hull sides, fully enclosed masts, and radar-absorbing coatings to reduce detectability.

What sets the Type 815A apart, however, are its prominent radomes. These protective, weatherproof enclosures house state-of-the-art electronic intelligence (ELINT) systems and communications intelligence (COMINT) antennas, advanced radars, and electronic warfare suites capable of intercepting and analysing a wide range of electromagnetic signals.

Two satellite communication (SATCOM) domes allow continuous satellite tracking and secure data links with China’s BeiDou navigation system, compared with a single SATCOM antenna on earlier variants.

An aircraft communication relay antenna also supports real-time data transmission between onboard systems and uncrewed aerial vehicles or helicopters conducting reconnaissance missions.

Notably, the vessels are equipped with an upgraded radar system capable of providing 360-degree active and passive over-the-horizon surveillance on multiple targets. This allows the spy ship to identify foreign radar signals from platforms like aircraft carriers and destroyers over 700km (435 miles) away, with some reports suggesting capabilities of up to 1,200km.

The fleet can also reportedly track missiles and airborne targets up to 1,500km away, monitoring adversaries’ ballistic missile tests and intercepting satellite communications, missile guidance signals, and radar emissions.

China’s newly unveiled reconnaissance ship, the Liaowang-1, further expands these capabilities. Its 5,000km to 6,000 km detection range for early-warning functions is up to three times greater than that of the US Navy’s most advanced Howard O. Lorenzen missile-tracking ship, and it can also track objects in geostationary orbit at distances of 40,000km.

Its six advanced stealth radomes house multi-band sensors capable of detecting and tracking up to 1,200 targets simultaneously, enabling comprehensive surveillance across sea, air and space. These capabilities are improved by deep neural network algorithms that maintain a claimed 95 per cent target identification accuracy even under electromagnetic interference conditions.

China has also gained an edge in active electronically scanned array or AESA radar technology. While early systems relied on gallium arsenide compound semiconductors, China has since developed gallium nitride modules that deliver 10 times the power output, significantly improving detection range and tracking precision.

Despite its weak firepower – limited to a handful of light manually operated guns intended only for close-range self-defence – the Type 815A is considered to pose a threat to US carrier strike groups due to its role in guiding China’s anti-ship ballistic missiles (ASBMs).

The spy ships have become frequent observers of international military exercises, particularly those involving the US and its allies.

Two years after the fleet marked its international debut during the 2014 Rimpac, another Type 815A – the Tianlangxing (hull number 794) – was reported sailing around Japan, tracking joint US-Japanese naval exercises.

Similar deployments have become routine at Australia’s biennial Talisman Sabre exercises since 2017, with at least one PLA surveillance ship regularly observed closely monitoring activities and forcing participants to limit radar and radio communications.

The entry of a Type 815A into a multinational exercise area triggers the tracking of all nearby warships by China’s space-based satellite system. The PLA vessels provide real-time target acquisition and mid-course guidance for ASBMs, such as the DF-26 and YJ-21, which are designed to strike high-value naval assets like aircraft carriers.

In case of a hot conflict, the presence of a Type 815A could mean that US and allied warships would already be in China’s missile crosshairs.

US naval forces are known to have largely opted for passive countermeasures, such as electronic warfare and evasive manoeuvres, to mitigate the risks posed by the Type 815A’s persistent surveillance. The presence of the Chinese spy ships often forces navies on the other side to restrict sensitive communications or alter strategic plans, limiting the effectiveness of joint drills.

Another critical strategic use of the Type 815A spy ships involves intelligence gathering on missile tests conducted by potential adversaries, particularly the United States. With their advanced telemetry interception power, the vessels can accurately gather data on missile trajectories, warhead characteristics and radar emissions.

Such intelligence is crucial to China’s strategic planning, potentially aiding the PLA in developing effective countermeasures against US missile defence systems.

Experts also say that the Type 815A’s advanced electronic warfare capabilities can disrupt and neutralise enemy radar and communication systems, adding an offensive layer to their intelligence-gathering functions.

Their visibility, however, may raise vulnerabilities. The distinctive radar domes and antennas make the Type 815A easy to identify, allowing foreign navies to anticipate their movements and potentially take countermeasures.

Some analysts suggest future variants might include conformal antenna technology that can integrate radar systems directly into the hull, eliminating the vessel’s signature radomes and boosting stealth.

Other features may include command systems driven by artificial intelligence and capable of autonomously coordinating drone warfare and electronic attacks, as well as advanced satellite connectivity with China’s BeiDou navigation system that could further expand surveillance beyond physical boundaries.

Masked China singer with 22 million online fans puts pioneering first concert on hold

https://www.scmp.com/news/people-culture/china-personalities/article/3319267/masked-china-singer-22-million-online-fans-hold-pioneering-first-concert?utm_source=rss_feed

A 20-year-old mask-wearing singer in China who has more than 22 million followers on social media and is to hold a concert with her face concealed has triggered controversy online.

The singer, from Shanxi province in northern China, who uses the alias “wangzaixiaoqiao” on a leading social media platform, has never shown her face in public, Chao News reported.

She has attracted attention after she began releasing videos of herself singing a cappella five years ago.

Fans have said that her voice has been “kissed by an angel.”

In all her videos, she uses a cartoon girl image to cover her face. Her identity has never been disclosed.

In the past year, wangzaixiaoqiao has sung songs with famous mainland stars.

A clip showing her singing with accomplished diva Han Hong has attracted 11.3 million likes, while another piece of her singing with actress Yao Chen has received 5.5 million likes.

Most of the songs she sings are not her own.

She was originally set to hold her first concert in Shanghai on August 9, but on July 26 she said it had been postponed and a fresh date had not yet been fixed.

When it goes ahead, it will be the first concert in China to feature a masked singer, the report said.

The event’s organiser, Warner Music China, released a statement on July 21 to address public queries about how to make sure the person performing is indeed wangzaixiaoqiao.

“The performer is the owner and operator of the social media account @wangzaixiaoqiao. She has signed her name and submitted the performance consent letter to the concerning government administrative department and will therefore perform the contents approved by the authority,” the company said.

It also addressed concerns about possible lip-synching.

“Every mask the singer wears is specially made for this concert. The lower part of the mask is made of a bridal net material, enabling the microphone to easily catch her voice,” the statement said.

“Due to the special form of this concert, the authorities will supervise the concert by taking videos and checking the real-time audio track to make sure the singer does not pretend to sing,” it added.

Wangzaixiaoqiao has said she does not show her face in public after suffering psychological damage from being stalked in the past.

She was also anxious about her appearance, fearing her audience would be disappointed if they saw what she looked like.

“I hope the public focuses on my songs. That will be more pure and can also separate my personal life from the online world,” the singer said during a live-streaming session.

Some internet users support wangzaixiaoqiao’s concert, with one netizen saying: “It is a creative idea. We should just care about the music itself.”

However, another person said: “We cannot even see her face. So why not just stay at home and listen through earphones?”

Li Auto launches six-seat electric SUV in pre-emptive strike against Tesla in China

https://www.scmp.com/business/china-business/article/3320044/li-auto-launches-six-seat-electric-suv-pre-emptive-strike-against-tesla-china?utm_source=rss_feed

Chinese carmaker Li Auto launched a pre-emptive strike against US rival Tesla by offering a new six-seat, fully electric SUV to affluent families on the mainland, as competition in the world’s largest automotive market continues to escalate.

Beijing-based Li Auto, one of the only three profitable electric vehicle (EV) makers in mainland China, on Tuesday unveiled the Li i8 – built with autonomous driving technology and a digital cockpit – that would be priced from 321,800 yuan (US$44,889) to 369,800 yuan, with its basic edition able to travel as far as 720km on a single charge.

The Li i8 also comes installed with custom refrigerators and plush sofa-like seats, which are expected to elevate passenger comfort and add another dimension to the features inside a luxury EV.

“Li Auto wants to make itself distinct from other carmakers,” founder and CEO Li Xiang told the online audience at the Li 18’s virtual launch. “We envision building a mobile home for our clients, creating a comfortable space for them when driving.”

Li Auto, founded in 2015, will start delivering the new vehicle to mainland customers from August 20.

The launch puts the Chinese carmaker ahead in this market segment against Tesla, which said earlier this month that its first Shanghai-made six-seat Model Y variant would be available this autumn to local clients.

“Both Tesla and its Chinese rivals have invested in new models or upgraded variants, as they try to attract more customers,” said Gao Shen, an independent analyst in Shanghai. “Six-seat SUVs have become a new battleground for Tesla and premium Chinese EV makers.”

Tesla has yet to unveil prices for its refreshed SUV model, known as the Model Y L, which has a driving range of more than 800km. With three rows of seats, this model would represent Tesla’s most substantial update to its Chinese-made EVs.

Prices for the existing five-seat Model Y start at 263,500 yuan.

Li Auto has been Tesla’s closest competitor in mainland China’s premium EV segment since 2023.

The company’s large SUVs, which offer extended-range technology, have been well received on the mainland, where thousands of wealthy clients were lured away from premium-car assemblers such as BMW and Audi.

These vehicles – known as extended-range EVs, a subcategory of plug-in hybrids – are equipped with a small internal-combustion engine that generates additional power to charge the electric battery when needed, in addition to being able to be charged via a power cable.

Such extended-range cars can typically travel as far as 1,000km on a single charge, while also costing about 10 per cent less than pure-electric alternatives.

The Li i8 will be Li Auto’s second pure electric model, following the launch of its Li Mega multipurpose vehicle in March 2022.

Both Tesla and Li Auto, however, face slowing sales on the mainland this year.

Li Auto reported 36,279 deliveries in June, down 24 per cent from a year ago. In the first half of 2025, it recorded a 7.9 per cent year-on-year increase in sales to 203,938 units. In 2024, the company posted sales growth of 33 per cent.

In June, Tesla’s Gigafactory in Shanghai delivered 61,484 vehicles to Chinese buyers, up 3.8 per cent year on year.

Before that, Tesla was stuck in a downward spiral in mainland China, which is also the world’s largest EV market, since late 2024. The US carmaker’s deliveries declined for eight consecutive months from October last year to May.