China

A case involving two men accused of spying for China collapsed because evidence could not be obtained from the government referring to China as a national security threat, the UK's most senior prosecutor has said. Charges against Christopher Cash, 30, and Christopher Berry, 33 - who both deny the allegations - were dropped by prosecutors last month prompting criticism from ministers and MPs. In a rare intervention, the director of public prosecutions (DPP) Stephen Parkinson said the Crown Prosecution Service tried to obtain further evidence from the government "over many months" but witness statements did not meet the threshold to prosecute. Sir Keir Starmer said the government could only draw on the previous government's assessment, which dubbed China an "epoch-defining chal...

Once again, geopolitical rationales influenced energy decisions as much as purely economic ones A few weeks ago, Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller announced that Moscow and Beijing had reached a binding agreement regarding the construction of the Power of Siberia 2 (PoS2) natural gas pipeline. The long-delayed project is expected to complement the existing Power of Siberia (PoS1) by building a new pipeline with a capacity of 50 bcm, as well as increasing the capacity of existing routes.  PoS1 transports natural gas from Yakutia, Eastern Siberia, to Northeast China; PoS2 will do the same from Yamal, Western Siberia, to Northwest China, passing through Mongolia. If this comes to fruition, assuming that the two pipelines are used at full capacity, Russia’s gas exports to China would&n

China’s recent energy trajectory is less a story of transition and more a cautionary tale of fossil-fuel persistence. Between 2023 and 2025 Beijing presided over a surge in coal approvals, construction and imports that—taken together—amount to deliberate policy choices that lock in emissions, aggravate public-health burdens and prop up a global coal market that the world can ill afford. The facts from 2023–2025 are stark and simple: China expanded the physical and financial infrastructure for coal at scale, even as operational data show coal-fired generation rising. Those are policy choices with measurable consequences. Independent trackers documented that China began construction on roughly 94.5 gigawatts (GW) of new coal-fired power capacity in 2024—the highest level of coal-powe

Speculative fiction, which encompasses sci-fi and other futuristic literature, is emerging as a strong vehicle for China to project soft power in a competition with the United States over the imagined future. The genre may help China and the Global South challenge Western views of colonialism, capitalism and future tech, according to Chinese scholars of literature and culture. “Speculative fiction, as a genre that imagines the future while critiquing the present, has long been dominated by Euro-American discourses, and traditional science fiction studies have likewise focused primarily on the texts of Western economic powers,” said Du Lanlan, tenured professor of English literature at Nanjing University in eastern China. She made the remarks in a presentat

As China settles into its “golden week” National Day holiday, the country’s cyber watchdogs are hard at work scouring the internet for negative sentiment, and handing out harsh penalties or imposing bans on influential online figures and social media platforms.The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) said on Monday that the latest round of its “Clean Net” campaign aimed to “crack down on malicious incitement of negative emotions” and “create a more civilised and rational online environment”.In a statement, the administration listed a wide range of targets for this year’s campaign, including: “inciting extreme group antagonism”; forcibly linking social issues with identity, region and gender; “spreading negative and pessimistic emotions” such as referring to education or hard work