03a China

China’s Military Expansion in Southeast Asia Masks a More Complicated Reality– warontherocks.com

pgnewser October 19, 2026 0

China’s Military Expansion in Southeast Asia Masks a More Complicated Reality– warontherocks.com
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The Chinese Ministry of Defense’s announcement of a “joint support and training center” at an airport in Ban Keun, Laos, on Sept. 29 drew attention to the People’s Liberation Army’s growing footprint in Southeast Asia. Although China does not call it a “base” and said it’s “not targeted at any third party,” it is China’s first publicly acknowledged overseas military facility centered on airpower. Ban Keun joins Djibouti and Cambodia’s Ream Naval Base as nodes in a burgeoning network of overseas Chinese security infrastructure.

Concern is understandable. While smaller than China’s base in Djibouti, satellite imagery reveals eight light attack aircraft and support vehicles on a 2,000-meter runway that is currently under construction. Although insufficient to support long-range bombers, the facility likely benefits China’s logistics and intelligence capabilities, diversifies Southeast Asian base access beyond Cambodia, and ties Laos into its arms sales network. The joint center could eventually enhance the People’s Liberation Army Air Force’s power projection across mainland Southeast Asia, potentially affecting U.S. forces operating in the eastern Indian Ocean. For Vietnam, this development deepens its sense of siege.

The reflex among many policymakers in Washington after each rumored or announced Chinese military facility overseas is to interpret it through the lens of U.S.-Chinese competition. In Cambodia’s case with Ream, Washington imposed sanctions as punishment. Yet, this reflex misunderstands the nuanced interests driving regional partners to work with China — and how to counter it.

Trans-Identifying Muslim Migrant Who Murdered His Children Accused of Sexually Harassing Female Inmates in Swedish Women’s Prison– gellerreport.com

pgnewser October 15, 2026 0

Trans-Identifying Muslim Migrant Who Murdered His Children Accused of Sexually Harassing Female Inmates in Swedish Women’s Prison– gellerreport.com
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This horror story checks every box for the left’s identity politics. Try to keep up. Murdered children. Women sexually harassed in prison. But who will get the sympathy? The killer. The left’s elites and their lapdog media turn him into a cause while burying the people he victimized.

Surely,historians will refer to this era of Western civilization as the age of insanity.

Court documents and subsequent reporting state that prosecutors determined Abdelshahed had placed bags over each child’s head and pumped helium into the bags through a hose, depriving them of oxygen. The prosecution described the killings as intentional, carefully planned, and particularly ruthless. Investigators recovered items from the home consistent with this method, including bags, tape, and gas-related equipment.

Related: Egyptian Migrant Who Murdered His Two Young Children Has Been Transferred To A Women’s Prison After Changing Legal Sex Marker To “Female”

SWEDEN: Trans-Identifying Egyptian Migrant Who Murdered His Children Accused of Sexually Harassing Female Inmates in Women’s Prison

By: Genevieve Gluck, Reduxx, October 12, 2026

A father who murdered his two young children and was transferred to a women’s prison after beginning to identify as transgender has been accused of sexually harassing female inmates while authorities look the other way. Paulus Said Foukaih Abdelshahed, an Egyptian national, was transferred to a women’s prison after changing his name to “Lily,” where he is serving a life sentence for the killings.

On April 23, 2024, police and ambulances services were dispatched to Abdelshahed’s residence in response to a call that he had made. Abdelshahed told emergency services that his two children – a boy and a girl, both under the age of 10 – were not breathing, according to a criminal indictment lodged in November that year.

China using AI to Define “Online Hate”

pgnewser October 13, 2026 0

The People’s Security University of China have developed an AI agent they claim can both identify hate speech (including dog whistling and coding) and the source for the hate. If “successful,” the model is sure to “inspire” similar efforts with like-minded ideologues (mainly progressives).

From bioengineer.og, “Few-shot detection of coded hate speech sits at the intersection of machine learning, computational linguistics, and social science, and this study offers a concrete template for how modern agentic AI techniques can be marshaled against one of its hardest instances.”

AI Agents Learn to Decode the Hidden Language of Online Hate– bioengineer.org
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Dog whistles are among the most slippery weapons in the online hate arsenal. A coded phrase that sounds innocuous to the average reader can carry a hostile, exclusionary, or extremist meaning for a specific in-group, giving the speaker plausible deniability while slipping past automated moderation systems. Because these expressions are implicit, tied to particular communities, and constantly evolving, they have long frustrated content moderation researchers. Now a team at the People’s Public Security University of China has unveiled a machine learning framework designed to catch them, combining agentic retrieval-augmented generation with a multi-agent data augmentation strategy in a few-shot learning setting. The work, published in the International Journal of Machine Learning and Cybernetics, reports consistent gains over widely used detectors such as BERTweet and RoBERTa as well as over augmentation-based baselines.

The challenge the researchers set out to address is fundamentally one of knowledge and context. Unlike overt slurs, dog whistles derive their meaning from historical and sociocultural cues that are rarely spelled out in the text itself. A model trained on standard hate speech corpora sees a benign-looking sentence and classifies it as harmless, while a human reader embedded in the relevant community immediately recognizes the coded hostility. Prior studies have made progress in discovering and understanding dog whistles, but downstream detection of dog-whistle hate speech has remained underexplored. Compounding the problem, large-scale human annotation is expensive and becomes obsolete quickly as new coded expressions emerge, which makes few-shot learning, where models must learn from only a handful of labeled examples, the realistic operational setting.

China Adds Air Base to “Training” in Laos

pgnewser October 13, 2026 0

China has extended its presence in Laos following reports it had set up a training camp inside the country. Now, China appears to have built an air base within Laos as well. Satellite imagery showed Chinese military aircraft leaving from and landing in the region identified as the new air base. Beijing has now claimed the base is to train Laotian pilots to fly Chinese fighters.

Are Chinese military aircraft already using a new joint air facility in Laos? – South China Morning Post
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Chinese military aircraft may already be using a new joint aviation facility in Laos, with satellite imagery showing twice as many K-8/JL-8-family trainer aircraft there as the Laotian air force is assessed to possess.

Eight of the two-seat trainer and light-attack aircraft were visible at Ban Keun Airport in commercial satellite imagery taken on September 30, according to Reuters, which first reported the images. More than two dozen military and support vehicles were also visible.

The image was taken a day after the China-Laos Joint Support and Training Centre and the China-Laos Friendship Aviation Academy formally began operations at the airport, with a People’s Liberation Army delegation attending the inauguration.

Beijing says the jointly maintained and operated centre is intended to strengthen training for Laotian air force pilots.

As AI mass-produces historical dramas in China, where are the boundaries? · TechNode– technode.com

pgnewser October 13, 2026 0

As AI mass-produces historical dramas in China, where are the boundaries? · TechNode– technode.com
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In 2026, AI is changing how historical dramas are produced in China. In the past, dramas featuring ancient battles, palace architecture and elaborate costumes often required large budgets and professional production teams.

Today, AI generation and virtual compositing tools are making it possible for smaller teams and even individual creators to produce historical scenes that were once difficult to realize. As production barriers fall, the volume of content is growing rapidly.

But as AI makes it possible to generate historical figures, battle scenes and depictions of ancient societies at scale, an important question emerges: when seemingly realistic historical narratives can be produced at low cost and in large quantities, how do we distinguish artistic interpretation from historical distortion?

The AI short drama boom raises questions about content quality

According to the 2026 H1 AI Drama and Animation Data Report released by industry research firm DataEye, China’s AI drama and animation market exceeded RMB 22 billion ($3.29 billion) in the first five months of 2026.

The market is projected to reach RMB 40 billion ($5.98 billion) for the full year, representing year-on-year growth of 138%. The audience base has also expanded rapidly, with the number of AI short-drama users in China surpassing 600 million in the first half of the year.

From January to June, 221,900 new AI short dramas were released, of which 1,055 surpassed 100 million views. These titles generated a combined 515.738 billion views. Monthly incremental views rose to 155.78 billion in June, the highest monthly figure in the first half of the year.

AI-generated historical content is also beginning to reach longer formats. The AI series Wielding Weapons in the Song Dynasty has reportedly maintained popularity scores above 46 million across multiple seasons.

Meanwhile, The Later Journey to the West, an AI-generated series, aired during Hunan Satellite TV’s prime-time slot, ranking first among provincial satellite channels in the same time slot during its broadcast.

For historical dramas, AI is lowering not only production costs but also the technical barriers to creating complex scenes. Ancient cities, palaces and large-scale battlefields can now be designed and composited with generative tools, giving smaller production teams more opportunities to explore historical storytelling.

However, an increase in output does not necessarily translate into better content. AI can generate convincing characters, costumes and architecture, but that does not mean these details are historically accurate. As images become increasingly realistic, audiences may find it easier to mistake visual authenticity for historical accuracy.

Historical dramas can take creative liberties, but fact and fiction should not be confused

Historical dramas are not the same as documentaries. Time travel, alternate histories and fictionalized retellings have long been part of screen storytelling. Artistic interpretation should not automatically be treated as a problem. The real question is how productions handle the boundary between historical fact and fiction.

AI introduces a new challenge because it can generate large amounts of detail in a short time. When information is incomplete, models may produce claims that sound plausible but lack historical evidence. Errors can involve people’s lives, clothing styles, the uses of artifacts and even the timelines of historical events.

A meticulously rendered ancient palace is not necessarily an accurate representation of architecture from that period. Likewise, a convincing dialogue attributed to a historical figure does not mean that the exchange is supported by historical records. If unverified details are presented as fact and repeated across large volumes of content, they may distort audiences’ understanding of history.

AI can therefore assist with historical research, scene design and image generation, but it cannot replace historical verification. For productions based on real historical events and figures, checking primary sources and consulting qualified experts remain essential.

How can content oversight protect both accuracy and creative freedom?

Rules governing short-form dramas are also evolving. The National Radio and Television Administration’s Measures for the Administration of Micro-Dramas, which took effect on September 1, 2026, introduced a classification-based management framework and set out requirements covering filing, review, distribution and disclosure labels for AI-generated content.

However, stronger content oversight does not mean that all AI historical dramas should face the same restrictions. Clearly identified alternate-history stories differ in their potential risks from productions based on real historical events that audiences may mistake for fact. The focus should not simply be on whether a work matches historical records in every detail, but also on whether it misleads audiences, violates applicable content rules or fails to meet reasonable standards of verification.

Platforms also need to look beyond views and engagement. As AI-generated content expands, stronger review processes, timely action against violations and appropriate disclosures about how content was produced will become increasingly important.

AI labels can tell audiences how a work was made, but they cannot replace fact-checking or exempt a production from other content requirements.

When generation becomes easy, what is the real barrier to entry?

AI historical dramas are giving more creators the opportunity to tell historical stories and bringing previously difficult creative ideas within reach. That is a meaningful change.

Yet as generating images becomes easier, the scarce skill may no longer be the ability to create an ancient palace, but knowing what that palace should have looked like in its historical context. It may no longer be the ability to generate a historical figure, but understanding that person’s era, background and documented experiences.

The challenge for AI historical dramas is therefore not simply how to increase production efficiency. It is how to balance artistic expression, historical accuracy and responsible distribution.

AI can certainly offer new ways to tell stories about the past, but the ability to generate a historical narrative does not justify disregarding historical facts. Technology can lower the barriers to creation, but creators’ understanding of history, their judgment about the boundaries of fiction, and platforms’ responsibility for the content they distribute will ultimately shape the results of this transformation.

 

China Issues Plague Alerts After Russia Declares Siberian Lab Death Scare Over– slaynews.com

pgnewser October 13, 2026 0

China Issues Plague Alerts After Russia Declares Siberian Lab Death Scare Over– slaynews.com
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Chinese authorities are introducing plague precautions and expanding health surveillance after the unexplained death of a Russian anti-plague researcher, even as Moscow declares its monitoring complete and threatens to jail anyone who reports what the government describes as “fake news” about the outbreak.

Officials in Hulunbuir, a city in Inner Mongolia bordering Russia, announced plague prevention protocols in response to the death of 28-year-old Daria Shipilova, Chinese state media reported Monday.

Warnings have also emerged in Hunan province, nearly 900 miles farther south.

Meanwhile, Hong Kong authorities announced increased health surveillance.

The measures come as the World Health Organization (WHO) says Russia has failed to provide enough information for a complete risk assessment.

Chinese Alert Cites Russian Researcher’s Death

Shipilova worked at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute in Siberia.

Russian authorities said she died of pneumonia of unknown cause but have not provided a fuller explanation.

Local reports suggested she had broken a vial or test tube containing a live pathogen before her death.

Russian officials denied those accounts.

Hulunbuir’s disease control center explicitly identified the case as the reason for its warning.

“Reports of the death of a staff member at Russia’s Irkutsk Plague Control and Research Institute from unexplained pneumonia have drawn widespread international attention,” the center said in an alert published on WeChat.

“The exact cause of the incident has not yet received final official confirmation.

“Nevertheless, given the nature of the institution involved and the area’s unique natural plague background, the event has sparked discussions over potential public health risks.”

According to the Global Times, Hulunbuir has not recorded a human plague case since 1927.

The newspaper reported that officials introduced “disinfection” protocols and advised residents to comply with “epidemic prevention rules in affected areas.”

Officials said the possibility of a local outbreak was low and noted that standard pneumonic plague cases can be treated with antibiotics.

Warnings Extend Beyond Border Region

Hunan public health authorities issued a separate alert Friday, according to China Daily.

The warning urged residents “not to panic or spread rumors” and advised travelers visiting natural plague areas to avoid potentially infected animals and take precautions against fleas and rodents.

It also urged prompt medical attention for symptoms including fever, swollen lymph nodes, coughing up blood, and breathing difficulties.

Hong Kong authorities said they would “step up health surveillance measures,” according to the South China Morning Post.

The report did not specify the measures involved.

Russia Warns Against ‘Fake News’ While Questions Remain

Russia’s media regulator, Roskomnadzor, issued an October 8 warning against “spreading fake news,” an offense that can carry jail time, and directed questions to the public health agency Rospotrebnadzor.

Rospotrebnadzor effectively declared the matter concluded Thursday.

Irkutsk Governor Igor Kobzev separately announced that contact tracing had ended without detecting plague transmission.

“Comprehensive preventive and anti-epidemic measures have been implemented,” Rospotrebnadzor said.

“There are no epidemic risks to the population of the city of Irkutsk and the Irkutsk region.”

But WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Moscow’s information remained insufficient.

“As we don’t yet have the full picture of this event, we are not able to conduct a full risk assessment,” Tedros stated.

“Timely, complete, and transparent information sharing under the International Health Regulations is essential to clarify conflicting reports and enable an accurate assessment of potential public health risks.”

China’s new precautions underscore the unresolved issue: Russia has declared the monitoring over without fully explaining the death that triggered international concern.

READ MORE – Dead Russian Scientist’s Mother Says Deadly Plague Didn’t ‘Accidentally’ Leak from Lab: ‘I Know the Truth’

 

Tencent moves to raise $5 billion in bonds to fund its AI buildout

pgnewser October 13, 2026 0

Tencent moves to raise $5 billion in bonds to fund its AI buildout– startupfortune.com
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Tencent is going back to the debt market for the second time this year, this time looking for up to $5 billion, barely four months after its last bond sale and weeks after it agreed to lease 100,000 AI chips it can’t buy at home.

Tencent is planning an offshore bond sale of roughly $5 billion, split across US dollar and offshore yuan tranches, according to Bloomberg, while Reuters reported that the company was seeking at least $4.5 billion. It would be the company’s second major debt raise of 2026, coming after a $4.66 billion dual-currency offering in June that was already its largest since 2020. Two bond sales inside five months is not routine treasury management. It’s a company that has decided borrowing is cheaper, or at least faster, than waiting on cash flow to catch up with its ambitions.

Those ambitions got a lot more expensive in the second quarter. Tencent’s capital expenditure hit RMB 52.8 billion, about $7.8 billion, up 176% year over year and 65% from the prior quarter, largely on AI compute and data centers tied to its Hunyuan model family. Free cash flow went negative, down RMB 13.8 billion. Management told investors to expect spending to climb further in the second half, as more China-made AI chips become available to supplement what Tencent can get from abroad. That last part matters. Tencent has told fixed-income investors the new bond will mainly support AI-related capital expenditure, putting the fundraising directly behind its compute buildout.

Both China and the US are racing for chips, energy, talent, data centers, and global AI influence. The AI race isn’t just about who builds the smartest model. It’s about who writes the rules. Can the rest of the world trust one system more than the other? #dwbusiness #dwdip

pgnewser October 12, 2026 0

Both China and the US are racing for chips, energy, talent, data centers, and global AI influence. The AI race isn’t just about who builds the smartest model. It’s about who writes the rules. Can the rest of the world trust one system more than the other? #dwbusiness #dwdip– www.facebook.com
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CCP Agent Caught Spying on Taiwanese Americans

pgnewser October 9, 2026 0

California Woman Arrested on Charges Alleging She Acted as Agent of China – finchannel
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 Wanying Zhang, 34, also known as Heather Zhang, of Irvine, California, was arrested Sunday on a one count complaint charging her with acting in the United States as an unregistered agent of the government of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), including by conducting surveillance on family members of a high-ranking Taiwanese government official.

“The central allegation here — that Zhang, at the behest of the People’s Republic of China, covertly surveilled relatives of a high-ranking foreign government official in the United States — is deeply troubling,” said Assistant Attorney General for National Security John A. Eisenberg.  “The National Security Division and U.S. Attorney’s Offices, along with the FBI and other law enforcement partners, will remain vigilant against threats like this on our soil.”

“Protecting our national security means confronting foreign governments that engage in covert operations in our nation,” said First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli for the Central District of California. “Ms. Zhang is charged with acting at the direction of Chinese government officials to spy on the family of a senior Taiwanese official here in the United States. She violated our laws and will be held accountable in our courts. We will aggressively investigate and prosecute illegal foreign operations on American soil.”

China Enters Laos

pgnewser October 7, 2026 0

China has sent a military convoy into the border nation of Laos, which is raising concerns of Laotians who have bad memories of colonization from world powers. The military is being moved into a permanent “Training Center,” which is raising even more red flags among the local population.

China Sends its Military to Laos and Calls it a “Training Center”: “We had a very bad experience with the French during colonial times” – El Mundo America
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A Chinese military convoy crosses a road leading to Ban Keun airport, about 45 kilometers north of Vientiane, the capital of Laos. “China is always helping us a lot, but I don’t like seeing soldiers from other countries here,” says a middle-aged Laotian taxi driver in good English who cannot explain what those Chinese soldiers are doing there. “We had a very bad experience with the French during colonial times and then with the United States during the Vietnam War bombings.”

The scene summarizes Beijing’s latest advance in this small and peaceful Southeast Asian country: after trains, construction companies, and tourists, military facilities arrive. The chosen name avoids the word base. Instead, two friendlier words appear: training and friendship.

The Chinese Ministry of Defense has announced the opening of a “support and training center” in Laos. It has not detailed how many Chinese soldiers will be there, what equipment they will bring, or how long they will stay. But the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) gains access to an air infrastructure in the heart of Indochina. Pilot training is the announced mission; the future scope of that presence remains unexplained.

Former Chinese Journalist Accuses Jiangxi Investigators of Torture, Coercion– www.visiontimes.com

pgnewser October 7, 2026 0

Former Chinese Journalist Accuses Jiangxi Investigators of Torture, Coercion– www.visiontimes.com
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A former journalist who spent more than a decade working for publications affiliated with China’s state-run People’s Daily has publicly accused anti-corruption investigators in Jiangxi Province of torturing him and coercing him into signing what he describes as a fabricated bribery confession.

In a complaint published Sept. 28 on the WeChat account “Xiaozhou Fengyu,” Zhou Wenshui used his real name and identified himself as a Hong Kong permanent resident and former editor and reporter for People’s Daily-affiliated publications. He accused Wang Yang, deputy director of the Guixi Municipal Supervisory Commission, and other investigators of abusing their authority during a 2024 investigation. The original complaint was later archived by China Digital Times.

Alleged Chinese agent accused of surveilling Taiwanese president’s son appears in federal court– www.cbsnews.com

pgnewser October 7, 2026 0

Alleged Chinese agent accused of surveilling Taiwanese president’s son appears in federal court– www.cbsnews.com
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A suspected Chinese agent appeared in a Los Angeles federal court Monday after she allegedly surveilled the Taiwanese president’s son near Seattle last year.

Orange County, California, realtor Wanying “Heather” Zhang, 34, appeared calm, dressed in a tailored, white zip-up jacket, sweatpants and white sneakers, with shackles on her wrists and ankles. CBS News was first to report that the FBI arrested Zhang on Sunday at Los Angeles International Airport before she boarded a flight to Shanghai, China.

In court, she spoke only to confirm her name and that she understood the charge against her of working as an unregistered agent of the Chinese government.

China warns France, Germany against ‘protectionist’ trade tools– www.channelnewsasia.com

pgnewser October 7, 2026 0

China warns France, Germany against ‘protectionist’ trade tools– www.channelnewsasia.com
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BEIJING: China called on France and Germany to steer clear of “protectionist” trade measures on Tuesday (Oct 6), after their leaders urged the European Union to develop a legal arsenal for a potential trade war.

French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said in a letter to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen that “we need a credible instrument” for swift and decisive action.

This includes the ability to cut off access to the European single market “if needed”, according to the letter seen by AFP on Monday.

Macron and Merz stopped short of explicitly naming China but their letter comes just days before EU trade commissioner Maros Sefcovic heads to Beijing to tackle trade frictions.

China’s commerce ministry, in a statement on Tuesday, urged France and Germany to “refrain from encouraging the EU to resort to protectionist tools at every turn”.

“We hope that France and Germany, as major economies in the world, will uphold openness, cooperation and free trade,” the ministry said in a statement.

“They should avoid going down the wrong path in the wrong way, only to ultimately suffer the consequences themselves.”

 

Trump-Xi Meeting Produces Little Movement

pgnewser October 3, 2026 1

China might win some relief from Trump’s tariffs after President Trump met with Chairman Xi at the White House. The state visit produced little significant results outside of a promise to reduce tariffs on both sides and the President allegedly offering to sell arms to China. The President also made it clear to Xi that China should not attempt to help Iran, though no clear consequence was offered should China do so.

Triumph or Procrastination? Experts Split on the Trump-Xi Summit– warontherocks.com
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Over the better part of three days, President Donald Trump hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping in Washington for a summit that drew international attention for its high-stakes agenda, from trade and AI to Taiwan. While some experts saw the summit as an exercise in kicking the can down the road on major issues, others emphasized the significance of Trump treating Xi as an equal on the world stage.

British Intelligence Accuses China Of Spying On UK’s AI Research– dailycaller.com

pgnewser October 1, 2026 0

British Intelligence Accuses China Of Spying On UK’s AI Research– dailycaller.com
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British security officials warned that a Chinese research body is funding academic work that aids Beijing’s spy agency.

Britain’s MI5 security service on Wednesday named the China General Technology Research Institute (CGTRI) as a funder of work by more than 100 academics based in the UK, including artificial intelligence research, according to an espionage alert the agency published. The service said CGTRI is closely tied to China’s civilian spy agency — the Ministry of State Security (MSS) — and exists mainly to bankroll research that sharpens that agency’s technical tools.

“MI5 has identified that the primary purpose of CGTRI is to fund academic research that directly improves MSS technical capability for espionage,” the alert stated in part.

U.K. academics have contributed to CGTRI-funded projects on AI, cybersecurity, covert communications systems and steganography, according to the MI5 alert. The agency said some universities and researchers likely did not know CGTRI’s link to Chinese intelligence when they took the money, Reuters reported. (RELATED: As Trump Meets Xi, Experts Say China Targets Weak Spots In Western Tech)

Researchers who keep working with the institute could be prosecuted under Britain’s National Security Act, a 2023 law aimed at foreign spying and hostile state activity, MI5 warned.