By Lawrence Chung in Taipei Taiwan’s parliament is set to prioritise review of a disputed NT$1.25 trillion (US$40 billion) special defence budget bill when its new session begins on Tuesday, as pressure mounts from Washington. But US President Donald Trump’s recent remarks about consulting Chinese President Xi Jinping on arms sales could complicate the debate, […]
Read MoreU.S. intelligence agencies are raising alarms about an explosive test conducted by China, linking it to a broader effort to accelerate and modernize the nation’s nuclear arsenal. In a detailed report for CNN, national security correspondents Zachary Cohen and Kylie Atwood explain how American analysts see the test as part of Beijing’s push toward next‑generation […]
Read MoreSouth Korea on Sunday protested a Japanese government event commemorating a cluster of disputed islands between the two countries, calling the move an unjust assertion of sovereignty over its territory. In a statement, the foreign ministry said it strongly objected to the Takeshima Day event held by Japan’s Shimane prefecture and to the attendance of […]
Read MoreBy Alyssa Chen While K-pop has conquered almost every corner of the globe, South Korea’s entertainment industry remains largely locked out of the Chinese market due to a geopolitical chill that has lingered for a decade. China unofficially banned South Korean entertainment products in 2016 after Seoul deployed the US Terminal High Altitude Area Defence […]
Read MoreBy Park Chan-kyong North Korea’s ruling party congress, convened only once every five years, opened in Pyongyang this weekend with supreme leader Kim Jong-un poised to formalise a military doctrine with far-reaching implications for security on the Korean peninsula and beyond. State media described the opening of the ninth congress of the Workers’ Party of […]
Read MoreA wave of online backlash against South Korea is spreading across Southeast Asia, fuelled by a dispute over fan behaviour at a K-pop concert and intensified by controversial comments from public officials, highlighting how quickly digital tensions can take on a regional dimension. Posts accusing Koreans of discrimination have circulated widely on social media in […]
Read MoreBy Meredith Chen For overseas researchers, policymakers, businesses and casual users alike, access to China’s public information is quietly shrinking as a growing number of official websites go dark outside the country, a new study has found. The contraction is far from marginal. A number of Chinese government websites were inaccessible from outside the country, […]
Read MoreSEOUL: A South Korean court sentenced ex-president Yoon Suk Yeol to life in prison on Thursday after finding him guilty of leading an insurrection with his martial law declaration in 2024. Yoon abruptly declared martial law in a televised address in December 2024, saying drastic measures were needed to root out “anti-state forces” in South […]
Read MoreChina’s envoy to the United Nations, Fu Cong, has warned that any military involvement by Japan in the Taiwan issue would amount to aggression against Beijing, which would “retaliate resolutely”. Fu told a UN meeting on Wednesday that Tokyo had publicly tied the question of the island’s defence to what it called an existential crisis […]
Read MoreChina sees an opening to turn President Donald Trump’s tariffs to its advantage by reshaping global trade in ways that would insulate its $19 trillion economy from US pressure far into the future. Beijing is exploiting the uncertainty created by Trump to try to stitch China’s vast manufacturing base into the world’s biggest economic blocs, […]
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