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Last weekend’s US raid on Venezuela has shone a spotlight on the wider strategic concerns in play in South America, including the US-China rivalry in countries such as Peru. The country is a key hub for mineral exports to Asian markets, but it has tried to maintain a balance between Beijing and Washington. China had funded a strategically important port on Peru’s Pacific coast, but it had remained “broadly aligned” with US interests, analysts said. Washington also regards it as part of its...

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China has pulled off a daring underground feat, using a multimillion-dollar tunnel boring machine (TBM) to recover its stranded twin beneath the country’s largest river. The rendezvous between the TBMs was achieved with just 2mm (0.078 inch) of vertical error and no horizontal deviation under the Yangtze’s riverbed, setting a benchmark for precision in deep underground engineering, according to state media on Wednesday. The feat saved a megaproject that might otherwise have been scrapped. In...

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Last weekend, following the US military operation in Venezuela abducting its leader, Nicolas Maduro, Brazil’s president denounced the attack as a “flagrant violation of international law” and having “crossed an unacceptable line”. “These acts represent a grave affront to Venezuela’s sovereignty and yet another extremely dangerous precedent for the entire international community,” Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva wrote on social media. Lula, who said attacking countries was “the first step towards a...

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The global artificial intelligence (AI) race remains one of the most hotly contested spheres of international competition. Few would bet today on an eventual winner, but current trends point to three possible scenarios that we should consider. In the first scenario, the AI world is dominated by the US and China. While the US still has the technological edge, China is closing in fast and vies with the US for leadership on many of the key dimensions of AI prowess. According to Stanford...

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Taiwan’s latest military crash involving an upgraded F-16 fighter jet has sparked fresh scrutiny of the readiness of the island’s ageing arsenal amid the sustained high-tempo demands of cross-strait tensions. The episode on Tuesday has sharpened debate over whether upgrades and new armament purchases can realistically keep pace with increasing wear, maintenance constraints and the rapid modernisation of mainland China’s forces, according to lawmakers and analysts. The incident involved an F-16V...

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China has called on the US to work together to prevent a resurgence of militarism in Japan, with Beijing signalling that more sanctions could be in the pipeline for Tokyo’s defence industry. “Preventing militarism from harming the world again is in the common interest of both our countries [China and the United States],” Liu Pengyu, spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Washington, said in an article published in US-based Executive Intelligence Review earlier this week. “We should rise above...

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Taiwan will double down on strengthening key facilities, including defences against drones, and ramp up ammunition production to withstand growing pressure from the mainland, according to senior officials on the island. Taiwanese Vice-Premier Cheng Li-chiun said on Thursday that the government would continue to reinforce critical infrastructure and defences against unmanned aerial vehicles. “Taiwan must be more fully prepared, especially in the face of the possibility of various new forms of...

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The leaders of South Korea and China wrapped up a summit this week with both underlining support for one of Beijing’s diplomatic priorities but making no tangible progress on North Korea, Seoul’s main concern. South Korean President Lee Jae Myung met his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping in Beijing on Monday for a high-stakes summit held just over nine weeks after their first meeting. During the trip, Lee declared 2026 as the year for the “full restoration of South Korea-China relations” and Xi...

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Foreign direct investment (FDI) has been a crucial pillar of China’s economy since it opened up, drawing in trillions and helping fuel its rise as the “world’s factory”. But outbound direct investment (ODI) has expanded rapidly over the past two decades, transforming the country into a major exporter of capital. Today, China’s outbound investments exceed inflows, and the country has consistently ranked among the top three global investors in recent years. In this explainer, the Post examines the...

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A China-led team has built the world’s first mini-womb on a chip that can fully replicate the “invasion” of human embryos in the uterus during early pregnancy. Their 3D model on a microfluidic chip can be used to uncover the mysteries behind human embryo implantation and lead to personalised treatments for women struggling to get pregnant. The team led by researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Zoology said that while achieving a better understanding of human implantation...

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The US Commerce Department has revoked a plan to slap restrictions on Chinese drones, originally proposed to address national security concerns, the latest example of the Donald Trump administration avoiding actions that might fuel tensions ahead of a planned summit between Trump and President Xi Jinping this spring. “This decision underscores President Trump’s desire to sustain the trade framework that he and President Xi approved this past October and ensure a cordial meeting between the two...

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Taiwan’s asymmetric warfare plan – also known as the “porcupine” strategy – could pose a significant threat to a PLA campaign against the island, a mainland Chinese military magazine has warned. But the People’s Liberation Army could counter that strategy with an American-style “decapitation” strike, according to the article in the November issue of Naval and Merchant Ships. It analysed how the porcupine strategy played out in Taiwan’s annual military exercise in July – known as Han Kuang –...

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In 2025, even as US President Donald Trump sought to stabilise trade ties with Beijing, two Republican-led states were moving in the opposite direction, securing nearly US$50 billion in federal lawsuits for what they say was economic damage caused by China’s deliberate stripping of US hospitals and businesses of essential Covid-19 supplies. Using a new reading of the “commercial activity” exception to a 50-year-old US law that generally blocks lawsuits against foreign governments, a federal...

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China’s drive for chip manufacturing equipment self-sufficiency advanced so rapidly in 2025 that even the country’s planners were caught by surprise, as the ratio of domestically developed semiconductor equipment surged to 35 per cent by the year’s end, up from 25 per cent in 2024. The ratio was higher than Beijing’s target of 30 per cent, set in early 2025 to encourage China’s semiconductor industry to favour local suppliers over US rivals such as Applied Materials, Lam Research and KLA,...

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Following months of opposition from the Asian-American community, US House lawmakers on Thursday removed a provision from a bill aimed at restarting the China Initiative, a programme that unfairly targeted Chinese-American researchers. Last September, the proposal to “direct the re-establishment of the China Initiative” was included as a measure to “counter China and maintain America’s competitive edge” in the financial year 2026 appropriations bill approved by the House Committee on...

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China is expected to be cautious about confronting the United States over Cuba as Washington ramps up its threats following the abduction of former Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro. Since the raid on Caracas, the White House has increasingly turned its attention towards the western hemisphere’s only Communist state, along with Colombia and Greenland, with President Donald Trump saying “Cuba looks like it’s ready to fall”. Havana is also heavily reliant on subsidised Venezuelan oil and is...

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China said on Friday it would continue to offer its firm support to Venezuela after its ambassador met the country’s interim president Delcy Rodriguez. She described her meeting with Chinese ambassador Lan Hu as “cordial” and thanked Beijing for its condemnation of the abduction of former leader Nicolas Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores. “We value China’s firm and consistent stance in strongly condemning the serious violation of international law and Venezuelan sovereignty,” Rodriguez...

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A mouthpiece for China’s ruling Communist Party has warned against conflicting economic measures, urging officials to better guide market expectations in a front-page commentary highlighting Beijing’s growing focus on policy coordination. “The more policies there are, the greater the risk they will be working at odds,” the People’s Daily editorial said on Friday, pointing to China’s increasingly complex economic environment, “with more and more policy dilemmas emerging and greater demands on...

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US Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth was in a belligerently high mood after the Pentagon’s successful operation to abduct Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife in the dead of night. After all, the guy managed not to leak the US war plan in unsecure chat groups before the raid in Caracas, as he did with the US bombing of Houthi militias in Yemen in March. Remember that one? Maybe I have a warped sense of humour, but I still find this passage from the chief editor of the Atlantic,...

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The Communist Party and Taiwan’s Kuomintang (KMT) appear to be in the final stages of talks to revive an inter-party forum suspended nine years ago. The three-day forum, designed to facilitate party-to-party communication and promote cross-strait exchanges, was scheduled to start in Beijing on January 27, Taiwan’s China Times newspaper reported on Friday. If it takes place, it will be the first time the event has been held since 2016, when it was suspended because of tensions between the...

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Shanghai-based AgiBot topped global humanoid robot shipments in 2025, with nearly a 38 per cent share, as China’s robotics firms dominated the market, leaving in the dust major US players like Elon Musk’s Tesla. According to data released on Thursday by Omdia, AgiBot shipped 5,168 humanoid robots last year to lead five other Chinese companies in the research firm’s top 10 list. Unitree Robotics, headquartered in Hangzhou, ranked second with 4,200 humanoids shipped last year, which accounted for...

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Cainiao, the logistics arm of Alibaba Group Holding, is stepping up its overseas push with a new service crossing the US-Mexico border. The cross-border logistics service, a first for Cainiao in the Americas, was designed to handle parcel flow between the two countries, which was one of the region’s high-traffic corridors, the Alibaba unit said on Friday. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post. The service was expected to reach 99 per cent of the Mexico market and would be priced at around 60...

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China released an official report on Thursday stating that Japan “may already have produced weapons-grade plutonium in secret” and “has the technological and economic capabilities to achieve nuclear armament in a short period of time”. The report assessing Japan’s nuclear threat cited former US president Joe Biden’s direct message to Chinese President Xi Jinping that Japan had the capacity to have nuclear weapons “virtually overnight”. Biden first disclosed the information in an interview with...

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Morgan Stanley has revised its outlook for the yuan, now forecasting it to strengthen to about 6.85 per US dollar in the first quarter of 2026 from a previous call of 7.05, before weakening slightly to about 7.0 by the end of the year. The bank said it expects China’s “robust” exports through 2026 to 2027 to provide “a steady tailwind to nominal yuan”, with volumes projected to grow 5 to 6 per cent as the recovery in global demand broadens beyond tech and the country’s price competitiveness...

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A Chinese defence giant has flexed its production muscle early in the new year by releasing a video of its star product, the J-35 stealth fighter, and pledging to double its warplane production over the next three to five years. On Tuesday, a green-coated J-35 fighter roared down the runway at the Shenyang Aircraft Corporation (SAC) airfield in China’s northern Liaoning province, making its first flight of the year, according to a video released by the manufacturer, a subsidiary of Aviation...

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