China lodged complaints with Canada through military and diplomatic channels after a Canadian warship recently sailed through the Taiwan Strait, China's defence ministry said on Friday.

According to Defence Minister Bill Blair, HMCS Montreal was in the area conducting a routine transit.

From Havana Syndrome to Russian warships, major media outlets in recent years have sparked and fanned the flames of hysteria when it comes to Cuba.
The latest boogeyman: “China spy bases.”
There is no evidence any such base exists on the island.
But who needs evidence when you have anonymous U.S. officials?
The Journal “Breaks” the China Spy Base Story

By hosting a historic signing of a unity agreement between 14 Palestinian political parties in Beijing on July 23, China has, once more, shown its ability to play a global role as a peace broker.

For years, China has attempted to play a role in Middle East politics, particularly in the region’s most enduring crisis, the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

China’s top diplomat on Wednesday visited Myanmar and met with the leader of its military government as growing instability from the neighboring country’s civil war causes concern in Beijing.

Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s visit came after Myanmar’s army has suffered unprecedented battlefield defeats from powerful ethnic militias, especially in the northeast along the border with China.

Myanmar state television MRTV said Wang told Min Aung Hlaing that China is cooperating seriously for stability and peace in Myanmar, and that it opposes the attacks by ethnic militias on army-controlled areas in northern Shan State. It said Wang and top officials exchanged views on bilateral relations, stability of the border region and cooperation in eliminating cybercrime and other illegal activities.

As Chinese scientists analyzed the soil samples that their lunar probe brought back from the moon, they realized something groundbreaking: There was water found along with minerals in the soil.

Finding water on the moon is, on its own, nothing new. NASA and Indian spacecraft have spotted what they believe to be water on the moon’s surface, and Chinese scientists last year found water trapped in glass beads strewn across the moon.

But this latest discovery, scientists say, is the first time water in its molecular form, H2O, has been found in physical samples – and, importantly, it was retrieved from a part of the moon where they’d previously thought water in that form couldn’t exist.

The United States and Europe are racing to narrow China’s commanding lead in clean energy technologies, throwing subsidies at local manufacturers and hiking tariffs on Chinese imports in a strikingly protectionist turn.

China’s dominance in clean energy supply chains presents a conundrum for governments trying to green their economies and meet fast-approaching climate targets while protecting entire industries and thousands of jobs from a flood of cheap imports.

Without China’s electric vehicles (EVs), solar panels, wind turbines, and batteries, reducing planet-heating pollution could take longer and ultimately increase costs for businesses and consumers.

Published: July 12, 2024
Written by: Michal Kolmaš

Abstract: Although there is a clear rise in academic interest in region formation, theoretical approaches to the topic vary greatly, stemming from geopolitical identifications of objective regional boundaries, through functionalist ideas of regional linkages, to post-structuralist ideas about fluid regional belonging. This article provides a typology of region formation approaches, based on the ontological assumptions of its authors. The typology is based on two main debates within contemporary international relations ontology: regarding the basic components of reality (material vs. ideational) and regarding the status of theories (transfactual vs. phenomenalist). The presented matrix provides an ideal-typical position for each of these four iterations and illustrates its viability in the case of region formation literature on the Asia-Pacific. Doing so, the text contributes to (meta)theoretical discussions of how regions are formed while at the same time illustrating the often-overlooked stories of region formation.

Published: July 29, 2024
Written by: Dongmin Shin

Abstract: Despite the rise of the importance of the ’Indo-Pacific,‘ this article argues that discussions on the concept remain at the theoretical level, such as seen in the grand strategy debate. However, in the policy field, the U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy has evolved to a much more detailed one that manifests as an action plan. Given the discrepancy between theory and practice, this article aims to provide a tool to read the development of the U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy with a focus on U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (USINDOPACOM), which is in charge of operationalizing the U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy in the security field...

...This analysis and review has implications for the allies and partners of the U.S. when pursuing their own Indo-Pacific strategies. Based on the current evidence, there is a likelihood that the U.S. will request allies and partners act jointly or mini-laterally beyond the established bilateral relationship... Allies and partners need to consider these practical trends toward which the U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy is heading and what this means for their own national interests, strategies, and operations.