China Watch
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The Trump administration on Monday criticized China for conducting a test launch of a provocative submarine-launched, nuclear-capable missile that the State Department called a sign of Beijing’s continuing arms buildup.
China carried out the test launch on Monday of what analysts say is likely an advanced JL-2 missile or new JL-3 multi-warhead submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM), a strategic weapon shown during a military parade in September.
A spokesman for People’s Liberation Army navy provided no details on the type of submarine or missile involved, or the launch and splashdown locations, or the distance traveled.
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According to market research firm Counterpoint Research, smartphone sales in China fell 13% year over year during the month-long 618 shopping festival, as major brands raised prices to offset higher memory costs. Between May 26 and June 21, all major Chinese smartphone brands except Huawei posted double-digit sales declines. Promotions were less aggressive than last year, dampening consumer demand. Honor’s sales dropped 33%, while Xiaomi’s fell 24%.
Ivan Lam, Senior Analyst at Counterpoint Research, said: “Some Chinese smartphone brands priced both their new and existing models higher than comparable devices a year ago. Discounts during this year’s 618 shopping festival were also generally less aggressive, both in terms of price reductions and the range of products included in promotions.” [Jiwei, in Chinese]
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Among the many industries that China and the USA are competing in, space is a rising battleground. The two countries that have tried their best to form a bond in trade and truth but remain contentious in spirit. China is rapidly advancing its lunar exploration program and is expected to eventually send taikonauts to the Moon, as per media reports.
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WASHINGTON — A court in eastern China on Monday sentenced a former local official to death over taking bribes that authorities said amounted to hundreds of millions of dollars during a three-decade period.
Yang Youlin, a former economic development official in the Jiangsu Province capital of Nanjing on China’ s east coast, “illegally accepted property and assets” valued over 2.21 billion yuan ($325 million) from 1993 to 2023, the Changzhou Intermediate People’s Court said in a statement.
It appears Chairman Xi has not yet consolidated power after what appeared to be an attempted coup a few months ago. It has been announced 6 top PLA Generals, including the powerful procurement head, have been fired. The charges are corruption connected to taking money through the procurement process.
In the wake of a wave of crackdowns on Christians by Chairman Xi’s China, President Trump has successfully convinced the leader to let a Christian pastor go free. The pastor is Ezra Jin Mingri, who appears to have been released as a token “gift” to President Trump. He was released two months after President Trump’s Beijing visit.
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The competition to return humans to the Moon is no longer being spoken about as a distant ambition. According to Nasa Administrator Jared Isaacman, it has become a direct contest between the United States and China, with both countries working towards lunar landings within a remarkably similar timeframe. Although official schedules suggest the US is targeting a return in 2028 while China has set its sights on landing astronauts before 2030, Isaacman believes the practical difference between those goals is much smaller than it appears. His remarks reflect a growing sense inside the US space agency that the coming few years will shape the future of human exploration beyond Earth. Rather than treating the next Moon landing as a symbolic achievement, Nasa is framing it as the beginning of a much longer effort to establish a lasting presence on the lunar surface before turning its attention towards missions to Mars.
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Bangkok — China’s military test-launched a long-range ballistic missile Monday from one of its nuclear-powered submarines in the South Pacific, drawing protest and concern from countries in the region.
The missile was launched at 12:01 p.m. and carried a dummy warhead, according the official Xinhua News Agency.
China last conducted a missile test in the Pacific two years ago, firing an intercontinental ballistic missile with a dummy warhead. That previous launch in international waters was the first in decades, since 1980.
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Do American pharmaceutical companies conducting clinical trials on drugs in China help the CCP’s military capability? A bipartisan group of lawmakers wants to know, and they’ve opened an investigation into drugmakers, including Merck, Eli Lilly, Pfizer, Bristol Myers Squibb, and AbbVie (a spinoff of Abbott Laboratories), and are demanding that they detail their policies and due diligence efforts in their overseas operations.
Rep. John Moolenaar (MI-02), chair of the China Select Committee, is leading the charge:
Select Committee Chairman @RepMoolenaar sent a letter to @abbvie, which conducted clinical trials at Chinese military hospitals and in Xinjiang, the epicenter of the CCP’s genocide against Uyghurs.
Our investigation requests information on the company’s policies and due… pic.twitter.com/INYpACRRXR
— Select Committee on China (@ChinaSelect) June 30, 2026
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On May 13, 2026, Air Force One landed in Beijing for President Donald Trump’s first state visit to China in nearly a decade. That same morning, the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations published a report titled The Evolving World and the Right Way to China-US Coexistence. The summit dominated global media coverage for two days. The report received almost none.
The Beijing summit produced familiar imagery: honor guards, a state banquet in the Great Hall of the People, and carefully choreographed warmth. Chinese leader Xi Jinping announced that both sides had agreed to “strategic stability” as a framework for the next three years, and both leaders praised the collegial atmosphere.
Beneath the pageantry, China’s premier foreign policy think tank had published its own assessment of the state of bilateral relations. Read against Mao Zedong’s original theory of protracted struggle, its report describes the current moment not as a step toward partnership but as the product of a strategy in which struggle precedes and produces cooperation on terms favorable to Beijing. Treating that stabilization as evidence of strategic convergence, rather than as a single stage within a longer competition, would be a misreading worth correcting.
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A supercomputer in China now outranks its U.S. counterparts as the world’s most powerful, marking the first time since 2017 that a Chinese computer has topped a list sometimes viewed as a measure of a nation’s technological prowess
A supercomputer in China now outranks its U.S. counterparts as the world’s most powerful, marking the first time since 2017 that a Chinese computer has topped a list sometimes viewed as a measure of a nation’s technological prowess.
The LineShine computer in Shenzhen, China, displaced top-ranked U.S. computer El Capitan in the latest version of the TOP500 ranking announced Tuesday. It was the Chinese computer’s debut on the list.
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Chinese cars are a security risk.
That’s the message Washington has been sending the American consumer: Cheaper vehicles aren’t worth exposing sensitive data to theft. Hence the massive tariffs aimed at China.
The difference is that Stellantis is now openly telling investors that these partnerships are central to its long-term strategy.
But while America was focused on keeping brands like BYD and NIO out of local dealerships, the global auto industry quietly found another way in.
And Stellantis just made that strategy official.
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On May 28 in New York, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney declared that a strong Canada “will help make America great again.” His announcement came at a high-stakes moment, with China’s foreign minister arriving in Ottawa to build out the road map for the Canada-China “strategic partnership” and Minister Dominic Leblanc heading to Washington in an attempt to salvage USMCA. It’s all interconnected.
Struck last fall against the backdrop of trade tensions with Washington, the Canada-China partnership is alarming security experts on both sides of the border. They understand Beijing is working hard to build up its coercive power over Canada and to use Canada as a back door into the United States. They also know the U.S. will use its economic power — including its ability to impose harsh trade terms on Canada — to stop Canada from getting too deeply ensnared by Beijing.