标签： Asia

CANBERRA, Australia — In a landmark ruling that keeps an extradition process on track, an Australian federal judge has rejected a legal challenge from a former U.S. Marine Corps pilot fighting his transfer to U.S. authorities, who accuse the aviator of leading illegal training for Chinese military personnel more than 10 years ago.

Fifty-seven-year-old Daniel Duggan, a Boston-born former pilot who had been residing in Australia before his 2022 arrest, stands accused of conducting unlicensed training for Chinese military aircrew while working as an instructor for South Africa’s Test Flying Academy between 2010 and 2012, according to a U.S. indictment. Duggan has repeatedly denied all charges against him, arguing the accusations are nothing more than political maneuvering and that he has been unfairly targeted by U.S. authorities.

Federal Court Justice James Stellios handed down his ruling Thursday, confirming that no legal or jurisdictional error was committed by former Australian Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus when he approved Duggan’s extradition earlier in 2024. The judge’s decision to dismiss the appeal clears a major legal hurdle for the extradition process.

Speaking to reporters outside the Canberra courthouse immediately after the ruling, Saffrine Duggan — Daniel Duggan’s wife and mother to their six children — said the defendant’s legal team would explore all available avenues to challenge the extradition order. The team has also formally requested that current Attorney-General Michelle Rowland, Dreyfus’s successor, overturn the extradition approval.

“We are deeply disappointed by this outcome, and we will take time to carefully assess every legal option open to us,” Saffrine Duggan told reporters. “Make no mistake: we are not backing down. Today’s ruling does not mark the end of our fight for justice.”

In a formal statement released after the judgment, a spokesperson for Rowland’s office acknowledged the court’s ruling and confirmed that Duggan will remain in Australian extradition detention until he is formally transferred to U.S. custody.

The case against Duggan originated from a 2016 indictment issued by the U.S. District Court in Washington, which remained sealed until it was unsealed in late 2022. Prosecutors claim Duggan received roughly 88,000 Australian dollars, equal to around 61,000 U.S. dollars, split across nine separate payments from a co-conspirator, in addition to covering travel costs to the U.S., South Africa and China. Prosecutors note that much of this travel was labeled as “personal development training” to mask the true nature of the work, according to the indictment.

Since his arrest in 2022 at a grocery store near his New South Wales family home, Duggan has been held in maximum-security detention in Australia, a status that will continue following Thursday’s ruling.

Across TikTok and other major global social media platforms, a viral new trend has taken Gen Z by storm in recent months: users from around the world are declaring they are “becoming Chinese” or “Chinamaxxing,” celebrating their adoption of everyday Chinese cultural habits. From sipping hot water infused with boiled goji berries and regularly eating homemade dumplings to wearing comfortable house slippers indoors and singing praises of China’s cutting-edge modern infrastructure during trips to the country, short-form videos tagged with this trend have accumulated hundreds of millions of views globally.

What makes this wave of cultural fascination particularly remarkable is that it has outperformed every official soft power outreach campaign the Chinese government has launched over decades of work to expand China’s global cultural footprint. Even senior Chinese diplomatic leaders have taken note of the grassroots phenomenon: China’s Ambassador to the United States Xie Feng recently referenced the internet craze while promoting a new visa-free transit policy, urging more American travelers to visit China and experience the country’s dynamic reality firsthand.

Scholars of global affairs say this viral meme represents the most clear-cut example to date of Chinese culture and lifestyle gaining an unprecedented level of organic global cultural cachet that official efforts never managed to achieve. “China is gaining real soft power, and you can see it most clearly in how Chinese culture and ‘Chineseness’ are becoming familiar, repeatable, and globally consumable in everyday life,” explained Shaoyu Yuan, a professor at New York University’s Center for Global Affairs. “That legitimacy is earned through taste, utility, and entertainment.”

This grassroots soft power growth has been enabled by decades of expansion across multiple core Chinese industries. China holds a record $1.2 trillion annual trade surplus with the rest of the world as a global manufacturing powerhouse, it developed the algorithmic technology that turned TikTok into a global social media giant, and domestic Chinese consumer brands now compete on equal footing with established global giants in nearly every market segment.

The trend traces its origin to content created by young Chinese diaspora creators. Sherry Zhu, a 23-year-old creator from New Jersey, posted a pair of lighthearted videos last year joking about common habits that signal “being Chinese” — loving noodles and hotpot, wearing slippers around the home — that racked up nearly a million shares in December 2024, sparking the broader viral meme. However, the trend has also sparked complex debate within Chinese diaspora communities over questions of cultural appreciation versus appropriation.

For many Chinese people who have faced systemic anti-Asian racism in Western countries, the sudden global fascination with Chinese cultural traits feels like a superficial trend that ignores long histories of discrimination. “Appreciation does not erase the racism that many Chinese people grew up with,” said Elise Zeng, a 28-year-old Brooklyn-based creator whose critical video about the trend has earned more than 36,000 likes. Zeng recalled the fear her family experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic, when anti-Asian hate crimes surged and many Asian Americans avoided public spaces for safety. “Those experiences don’t just disappear because Chinese culture is suddenly cool and trendy,” she noted. Zhu, who has also faced identity-based bullying, disagrees, arguing that increased cultural visibility and open sharing will reduce cross-cultural misunderstanding over time.

The “Chinamaxxing” trend is not an isolated moment, but rather the latest peak of a years-long groundswell of global embrace of Chinese popular culture. Last year, the fuzzy, “ugly-cute” Labubu toy dolls from Chinese brand Pop Martin became a global obsession among A-listers including Rihanna, driving a 300% jump in the company’s annual profit. Cantonese rapper Skaii isyourgod (also known as Lanlao) has amassed a massive global TikTok following despite rapping in a thick regional accent that even many Mandarin speakers struggle to understand; his hit single “Blueprint Supreme” has earned billions of global views since going viral last summer. Animated blockbuster *Ne Zha 2* became the highest-grossing animated film of all time in China before it even debuted in North American theaters, and action role-playing game *Black Myth: Wukong*, based on the classic Chinese legend of the Monkey King, broke Steam’s record for concurrent single-player players with 2.4 million users online at launch just months after its release. Most recently, Chinese digital mapping app Amap has gone viral globally for offering more detailed features than mainstream options like Google Maps and Apple Maps, including the ability to tell users whether a route will be in shade or full sun.

For more than a decade, Chinese President Xi Jinping has pushed the government to expand Chinese soft power globally, calling on officials to “tell China’s story well” starting in 2013. Official efforts have included massive infrastructure projects like the multi-billion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative and investments in hundreds of Confucius Institutes designed to teach Chinese language and culture around the world. However, many of these state-led projects have faced headwinds in the West: dozens of Confucius Institutes have closed over unsubstantiated concerns that they serve as propaganda and espionage fronts, while Belt and Road has faced repeated criticism from Western governments that frame it as a “debt trap” for developing nations.

While China’s growing hard power — from its dominance of global green energy manufacturing, including electric vehicles and solar panels, to its position as the world’s second-largest military and top manufacturing export powerhouse — has been widely documented, organic soft power is far harder to manufacture or measure. State media outlets like the Global Times have already attempted to tie the popularity of the “Chinamaxxing” meme to official policy successes, but Professor Yuan argues that overly loud official claims of victory may actually trigger more public skepticism of the trend. As Yuan puts it: “Cultural influence travels farther when it is chosen rather than announced.”

April 13 delivered a packed day of geopolitical developments that sent ripples across global politics: a stunning electoral defeat for Hungary’s long-serving authoritarian prime minister Viktor Orbán, the widely predicted collapse of US-Iran diplomatic negotiations in Islamabad (with conflicting reports of the meeting’s duration), a surprise announcement from former president and current US leader Donald Trump ordering a US Navy blockade of the strategic Strait of Hormuz, and a closing controversy in the form of a late-night verbal tirade from Trump against Pope Leo XIV over the pontiff’s public call for peace over conflict.

While Orbán’s defeat has been broadly interpreted as a reassuring sign that democratic institutions remain robust in this Euroskeptic EU member state, and Trump’s angry rebuke of the pope is seen by many as confirmation that the Catholic Church is standing on the right side of global tensions, the evolving standoff between the US, Iran and key regional ally Israel leaves far more room for uncertainty. Across military, political, and economic lines, cautious optimism about a peaceful de-escalation remains possible but difficult to sustain.

By deploying a naval blockade to counter Iran’s repeated claims of authority over shipping through the strait — a chokepoint that normally carries roughly one-fifth of the world’s global oil supply via commercial tanker traffic — Trump’s move is framed as a high-stakes gambit to call Iran’s bluff and force the country’s leadership to back away from the hardline position its negotiators took during the Islamabad talks. Strategically, the logic holds: if Iran’s primary leverage over the West is its ability to disrupt global energy flows through the strait, directly challenging that control would seemingly undermine Tehran’s bargaining position. Compared to more aggressive military options floated in recent weeks, including potential ground invasions of Iranian-held islands or coastal territory, the blockade also carries a lower immediate risk of catastrophic casualties, on paper at least.

Even so, the move opens three dangerous new pathways to escalation. First, Iran could respond with a direct strike on a US Navy warship to assert its control over the waterway. Second, by intercepting all tankers departing Iranian ports, the US risks a direct military confrontation with Chinese commercial vessels, since most Iranian oil exports currently flow to China. Third, the already volatile global energy market could see a prolonged and deepening crisis that drives prices sharply higher for importing nations across the globe.

A fully enforced blockade would indeed cut off a major stream of export revenue for Iran, worsening the country’s already fragile economy and putting additional pressure on its regime to negotiate. But Iran does not stand alone: both China and Russia have long provided Tehran with financial and military support, and both are capable of ramping up that assistance to counter US pressure.

Unless the behind-the-scenes signals from the Islamabad talks — held between US Vice President JD Vance and Iranian negotiators — point to more room for compromise than official public statements have suggested, analysts widely expect the Iranian regime to retaliate to demonstrate its strength before any return to negotiations. The most likely immediate step is renewed missile and drone attacks on US-aligned Gulf states including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, a threat Tehran has already issued. But a direct strike on US naval vessels cannot be ruled out, as Iran would seek to prove that it alone controls security in the strait.

There is also the possibility that this escalation is exactly what Trump wants: by goading Iran into launching an attack, he would gain a public pretext for the massive bombing campaign he threatened before the current two-week ceasefire took effect. It was Trump’s incendiary threat to “destroy a whole civilization” that prompted Pope Leo XIV’s criticism, which in turn sparked Trump’s late-night angry outburst against the pontiff.

While few analysts believe Trump intends to follow through on the genocidal framing of his earlier threat, there is strong reason to suspect that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is pushing hard for a resumption of full-scale hostilities, and that Trump is open to his arguments. The ceasefire has been fragile from its inception, and the US blockade — which qualifies as an act of war under international law — is itself a clear violation of the ceasefire terms, a fact Iranian leaders have already highlighted. It would take very little to trigger a new round of large-scale destruction that would likely only end with another fragile, temporary truce rather than a lasting resolution.

For Trump, there is an additional long-term risk to consider if the blockade persists beyond a matter of days. Most of the tankers Iran authorizes to depart the Gulf are either Chinese-flagged or carry Iranian crude bound for Chinese markets. Trump’s apparent bet is that the resulting disruption will push Chinese President Xi Jinping to pressure Iran into making concessions ahead of the planned US-China summit in Beijing scheduled for May 14 and 15. But the gamble could backfire spectacularly, bringing the US Navy into direct confrontation with Chinese commercial or military vessels in the strait ahead of the critical meeting.

For the rest of the world, the single greatest risk is a prolonged deepening of the energy and commodity market crisis sparked by disrupted Persian Gulf supplies. Russia stands to benefit from this outcome: elevated global crude and natural gas prices would offset the geopolitical loss of Putin’s close ally Viktor Orbán in the EU, as well as the ongoing damage Ukrainian drone and missile strikes have inflicted on Russia’s own oil export infrastructure. But every other major energy-importing region — including the whole of Europe — would face severe economic pain from prolonged high energy prices.

The scale of that pain depends entirely on how long the US-Iran standoff drags on. Hopes that the existing ceasefire could hold even without a long-term formal agreement have already dimmed significantly. Since there is no way to predict whether Trump’s gambit will lead to full-scale escalation, a continued stalemate, or a return to constructive negotiations, governments around the world are already caught in contradictory policy positions: encouraging public energy conservation while simultaneously rolling out consumer subsidies to soften the blow of high oil and gas prices.

In reality, the world is not facing a shortage of energy. Over the coming years, new pipeline routes and alternative supply chains will be developed to bypass the Strait of Hormuz. In the longer term, nations will almost certainly accelerate investments in renewable energy sources including wind, solar, and geothermal power, as well as slower, costlier options like nuclear energy, to build greater resilience against politically driven volatility in global energy markets. But these long-term solutions offer no relief from the immediate economic and security pain that a prolonged confrontation would inflict on communities across the globe.