Global Pulse

标签： Asia

亚洲

  • East Asia braces for destructive typhoon as landslides kill 15 in Philippines

    East Asia braces for destructive typhoon as landslides kill 15 in Philippines

    One of the most powerful tropical cyclones to form in the western Pacific in decades has already left a trail of fatal devastation in the southern Philippines, and is now barreling toward multiple East Asian regions, prompting widespread emergency preparations. With a maximum diameter of 1,000 kilometers – nearly equal to the entire width of mainland France – Typhoon Bavi is currently tracking across open Pacific waters, with its projected path taking it directly toward Taiwan before a forecasted landfall in southeastern China this weekend.

    The storm’s first major impact hit the southern Philippines earlier this week, where intense rainfall from Bavi’s outer bands triggered catastrophic landslides on the island of Mindanao. The overnight mudslides buried residential areas, killing at least 15 people and leaving an unknown number of residents still unaccounted for, as rescue teams work around the clock to reach trapped and missing survivors. Philippine weather officials have cautioned that moderate to heavy downpours will continue to pelt multiple regions of the country through the end of the weekend, raising the risk of additional flood and landslide events.

    As Bavi advances, authorities across East Asia have activated full emergency response protocols to mitigate potential damage. For Taiwan, the typhoon is on track to become the largest storm to hit the island since 1987, according to the Central Weather Administration, with forecasts predicting up to one full meter of rainfall in northern and eastern coastal areas. The island’s defense ministry has placed 29,000 military personnel on standby to support emergency relief and rescue operations, while local governments have distributed thousands of sandbags to vulnerable, flood-prone neighborhoods. Earlier Friday, farmers hurried to harvest mature crops and secure their fields ahead of the storm’s arrival, while fishermen across the island’s harbors reinforced moorings for their vessels. “Don’t be fooled by the nice and calm weather now. A storm like this could be the most terrifying,” 60-year-old fisherman Chen Ming-hui told reporters, echoing official warnings for residents to take the threat seriously.

    Commercial air travel across the region has already been severely disrupted, with dozens of flights to and from Taiwan canceled, and major Japanese carriers scrapping more than 260 flights through Sunday across the country. The remote Sakishima Islands, which lie directly in Bavi’s projected path, have been placed on high alert, with local residents seen reinforcing home and shop windows with tape and protective wind netting. Japan Airlines has canceled over 100 flights for Friday and Saturday, disrupting travel plans for nearly 20,000 passengers, while All Nippon Airways has axed more than 160 flights through Sunday, affecting a similar number of travelers. Both Thai Airways and Malaysia Airlines have also suspended all flights to and from Taipei ahead of the storm. Schools across at-risk areas of Taiwan and Japan have already suspended classes, and grocery store shelves have been cleared out as local residents stock up on emergency water, food and supplies.

    Across the Taiwan Strait, Chinese authorities are bracing for what they warn could be a “significant impact” from Bavi, which is forecast to make landfall in Fujian Province before moving northward. Experts warn that the storm’s unusually large size and high residual energy means its rain bands will reach far inland, reaching as far north as the Bohai Sea region after passing through eastern Jiangsu and Anhui provinces. Ma Jun, director of China’s Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, noted that northern provinces, which have far less experience dealing with full-scale typhoons than their southern counterparts, must prioritize stepped-up preparedness measures. Some forecasting models even predict Bavi could make two separate landfalls across southern China.

    The approaching storm comes as parts of southern China are still recovering from the deadly devastation of Typhoon Maysak, which hit the region earlier this week. Maysak has already killed at least 39 people, with rescue crews still searching rubble for missing residents, and forced the evacuation of more than 130,000 people, most in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. The earlier storm wiped out large numbers of livestock, caused hundreds of millions of dollars in agricultural damage, and even sparked two rare tornadoes in central China’s Hubei Province, compounding the challenge for disaster response teams now preparing for Bavi. Climate scientists have noted that increasing ocean temperatures driven by climate change are leading to more intense and larger tropical cyclones across the western Pacific, raising the risk of extreme storm events in the region.

  • China takes a page from SpaceX and recaptures the first stage of a rocket to reuse it

    China takes a page from SpaceX and recaptures the first stage of a rocket to reuse it

    In a landmark milestone for China’s expanding space exploration program, the nation has successfully completed the first-ever recapture of a rocket’s first stage following a weekend launch, state media confirmed Friday. The recovered booster belonged to the Long March-10B launch vehicle, which separated its first stage from the second upper stage moments after lifting off from the southern coastal spaceport on Hainan Island, a renowned tropical beach tourism destination. After separation, the first stage executed a controlled descent and landed safely on a pre-positioned maritime recovery platform in the open ocean, according to China’s official Xinhua News Agency.

    This breakthrough puts China in a small group of nations capable of reusable rocket technology, a development pioneered years ago by U.S. private space firm SpaceX that has transformed the global launch industry by drastically cutting mission costs. By reusing the first-stage booster — the most powerful and expensive component of a launch vehicle that carries payloads out of the lower atmosphere — space agencies and private companies can avoid building entirely new rockets for every mission, bringing down overhead and increasing launch frequency.

    Per Xinhua’s specifications, the reusable Long March-10B is designed to deliver a maximum payload of 16,000 kilograms (roughly 35,275 pounds) to low Earth orbit, the region of space within 2,000 kilometers of Earth’s surface that hosts most commercial satellites, the International Space Station, and other crewed missions. For comparison, SpaceX’s workhorse Falcon 9 rocket lists a maximum low Earth orbit payload capacity of 22,800 kilograms (approximately 50,265 pounds) on the company’s official website, and the Falcon rocket fleet has routinely ferried astronauts and critical cargo resupplies to the International Space Station for NASA for nearly a decade.

    Industry analysts note that this successful recovery marks a critical turning point for China’s space program, opening the door to lower-cost, more frequent access to space that can support the nation’s growing ambitions in satellite deployment, lunar exploration, and future crewed deep space missions.

  • Pakistan recovers more cargo plane debris from Arabian Sea as search for missing crew enters 3rd day

    Pakistan recovers more cargo plane debris from Arabian Sea as search for missing crew enters 3rd day

    On Friday, multi-agency search operations entered their third day to locate five missing crew members of a private Pakistani cargo plane that crashed into the Arabian Sea earlier this week, after search teams from the Pakistan Navy recovered additional fragments of the downed aircraft for official investigation.

    Operated by Karachi-based private aviation firm K2 Airways, the cargo jet was en route from Sharjah, United Arab Emirates to Pakistan’s largest city Karachi when it vanished from civilian radar systems late Tuesday. Shortly before losing contact, the flight crew reported a critical malfunction in the aircraft’s navigation system. Official radar records show that at approximately 9:21 p.m. local time, around 287 kilometers west of Karachi, the plane made an unexpected sharp turn before plunging rapidly, after which all radar and radio communications were cut off.

    The first fragments of wreckage were pulled from the water Wednesday by Pakistani Navy crews, roughly 100 kilometers off the coast of the southwestern town of Ormara, located in Balochistan province’s Makran coastal region. As of Friday, the plane’s main fuselage and all five crew members have yet to be located, according to government officials. All recovered wreckage will be turned over to air crash investigators for forensic analysis to determine the root cause of the disaster.

    In a statement posted to the social media platform X, the Pakistan Airports Authority confirmed that coordinated search-and-rescue efforts are still ongoing in the deep-water crash zone, with both surface vessels from the Pakistan Navy and Pakistan Maritime Security Agency, plus airborne surveillance assets deployed to narrow down the search area. The agency declined to release additional operational details, noting that further public updates will be shared once more verified information becomes available. The official cause of the crash remains undetermined as the investigation progresses.

    Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has already issued formal directives to all involved agencies, ordering them to deploy every available resource to locate the missing crew. For its part, K2 Airways has stated that it is providing full logistical and operational cooperation to Pakistan’s civil aviation authorities leading the crash investigation.

    Search efforts have been significantly hampered by challenging marine conditions, including choppy rough seas, persistent strong winds, and shifting ocean currents. These environmental factors have spread floating debris across a vast stretch of open water, making it far harder for teams to pin down the exact location of the main wreckage.

    This latest aviation incident adds to a long string of fatal air crashes that have occurred across Pakistan over the past several decades, raising ongoing questions about aviation safety oversight in the country.

  • Philippines commemorates 2016 South China Sea ruling rejected by Beijing

    Philippines commemorates 2016 South China Sea ruling rejected by Beijing

    Eight years after a landmark international arbitration tribunal delivered a historic ruling that reshaped global discourse over the contested South China Sea, the Philippines held official commemorations on Friday to reaffirm the legality and enduring importance of the 2016 decision. The ruling, which emerged from an arbitration case Manila launched under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) in 2013, invalidated Beijing’s broad territorial claims across the key strategic waterway, and has since been adopted by Western powers and regional allies as a cornerstone for challenging China’s growing maritime assertiveness.

    China has consistently refused to acknowledge the process or the outcome of the arbitration. Beijing has labeled the July 12, 2016 ruling from the UNCLOS-backed tribunal “illegal, null and void,” calling the entire proceeding a political sham. To this day, China maintains territorial claims to nearly the entire South China Sea — a critical global trade route that carries an estimated $3.4 trillion in annual commerce, and one that is the site of overlapping competing claims from the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan. For decades, the overlapping claims and frequent standoffs have marked the region as one of the most dangerous potential flashpoints for armed conflict in Asia.

    In remarks released ahead of the anniversary, Philippine Foreign Secretary Maria Theresa Lazaro emphasized the legally binding nature of the ruling, framing it as a steady guide for nations navigating competing maritime demands. “When the waters grow turbulent, when unilateral claims cloud the horizon and when the shadow of coercion looms, nations need something far more permanent than political convenience,” Lazaro said. “They need a lighthouse.”

    The United States, which is the Philippines’ oldest defense ally in Asia, has repeatedly pressured Beijing to comply with the 2016 ruling. Successive U.S. administrations — from the prior Biden administration to the current Trump administration — have reaffirmed that Washington is legally obligated to come to Manila’s defense under their 1951 mutual defense treaty if Philippine military assets, commercial vessels or aircraft come under armed attack in the disputed waters.

    Australia has also joined the international pushback against Chinese maritime activity. Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong used the anniversary to criticize Beijing, stating that Australia would “continue to register our concerns about China’s vessels engaging in destabilizing and dangerous conduct in the South China Sea.”

    As of Friday, China had not issued an immediate public response to the commemorations. But in a recent statement released through its embassy in Manila, Beijing reiterated its long-held position that it will never recognize the ruling. “The award will not alter the historical and factual basis for China’s sovereignty over the islands of the South China Sea and their adjacent waters,” the embassy said. It added that the ruling “will not weaken China’s resolve and determination to safeguard its sovereignty and maritime rights and interests.”

    The 2016 tribunal’s ruling, which sided overwhelmingly with the Philippines on most core claims, explicitly stated that UNCLOS provided no legal foundation for China’s claims to historic resource rights across large swathes of the South China Sea that fall outside its internationally recognized territorial sea and exclusive economic zone. UNCLOS, the global treaty that establishes the legal framework for all maritime activity and national ocean claims, entered into force in 1994 and has been ratified by more than 170 nations and parties — including both China and the Philippines.

    In recent years, territorial confrontations in the South China Sea have grown more frequent, with the most persistent standoffs occurring between Chinese maritime forces and fishing fleets on one side, and Philippine and Vietnamese counterparts on the other.

  • Seafarers attacked in the Strait of Hormuz sue shipping company in Thailand

    Seafarers attacked in the Strait of Hormuz sue shipping company in Thailand

    BANGKOK – Nearly five months after a projectile strike on a Thai cargo vessel in the politically charged Strait of Hormuz left three crew members dead, three surviving former crew have launched legal action against the ship’s operator over alleged labor rights abuses and wrongful early termination of their contracts. The incident, which unfolded on March 11 north of Oman, targeted the cargo ship *Mayuree Naree*, claiming three lives and leaving the remaining 20 crew rescued and repatriated to Thailand just seven days after the attack. The fatal strike came amid escalating cross-fire between the United States and Iran that has upended security in one of the world’s most critical global energy shipping corridors.

  • China lands reusable rocket for first time, state media says

    China lands reusable rocket for first time, state media says

    China has marked a transformative milestone in its national space exploration program, achieving the first ever successful vertical landing and recovery of a reusable rocket booster, state-run media has confirmed.

    The mission, developed and executed by the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, saw the Long March 10B rocket lift off from the coastal Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site in China’s southern Hainan Province at 12:15 local time (04:15 GMT) on Friday. Approximately six minutes after the booster separated from the rocket’s upper stage, it completed a controlled vertical descent back to Earth and was successfully retrieved on a purpose-built floating recovery platform in the South China Sea.

    This landmark achievement opens a new chapter in global commercial spaceflight, positioning China as an emerging competitor to the long-held U.S. dominance in reusable rocket technology. For nearly a decade, American aerospace firms have led the sector: SpaceX, founded by entrepreneur Elon Musk, completed the first successful orbital reusable rocket landing in December 2015 with its Falcon 9 booster, while Blue Origin—owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos—followed with its own successful landing of the New Glenn rocket in November 2025. Today, the Falcon 9 conducts roughly 150 launches annually, with each booster capable of being reused more than 30 times, drastically cutting launch costs for commercial and government clients alike.

    Prior to this mission, China conducted its first experimental reusable rocket recovery test in February of this year, when the earlier Long March 10A prototype completed a controlled descent and splashed down near a recovery vessel, stopping short of a full vertical capture. The Long March 10B, which is capable of delivering a minimum payload of 16 metric tons to low-Earth orbit, is functionally comparable to SpaceX’s workhorse Falcon 9, though it employs a unique landing mechanism: unlike the Falcon 9, which lands autonomously on drone ships or ground pads, the Long March 10B uses landing hooks mounted to the booster to catch a reinforced net stretched across the floating recovery platform.

    For decades, the global space industry relied on expendable rocket designs, where all segments of the launch vehicle are discarded and destroyed during ascent, driving astronomical costs for every launch. By reusing rocket boosters—the single most expensive component of any launch vehicle—organizations can slash launch costs by up to 90% in some cases, making frequent satellite deployment, deep space exploration, and even commercial space tourism far more accessible.

    In reaction to the breakthrough, public shares of Chinese aerospace companies soared on domestic markets immediately after the successful landing was announced. Both China Spacesat and China Satellite Communications saw their share prices rise by 10%—the maximum daily gain allowed under Chinese financial market regulations.

  • A shoe factory fire that killed 28 highlights China’s persisting worker safety risks

    A shoe factory fire that killed 28 highlights China’s persisting worker safety risks

    JINJIANG, FUJIAN – A devastating industrial fire that swept through a mid-sized shoe factory in China’s iconic sports footwear manufacturing hub of Jinjiang has claimed 28 lives, triggering a formal investigation into workplace safety failures and reigniting longstanding public concern over persistent lax standards in the country’s manufacturing sector.

    The blaze broke out Thursday afternoon on the ground floor of the five-story Fujian Huitung factory building, a facility that houses both production workshops and raw material storage, according to official reports from China’s state-run broadcaster CCTV. At the time of ignition, 239 people – 237 on-site workers and two visiting guests – were inside the facility. First responders pulled 213 people to safety, but two of those rescued later succumbed to burn and smoke inhalation injuries at local hospitals. The remaining 26 people initially reported unaccounted for were later confirmed dead by Sunday morning.

    Footage broadcast on local Chinese media captured chaotic scenes during the height of the emergency: dozens of workers trapped on the building’s roof, surrounded by plumes of thick black toxic smoke pouring from upper-floor windows, while water streams from fire department hoses failed to reach the entrenched flames on the upper levels. Fire department officials told CCTV that piles of highly flammable shoe sole materials illegally stored along the building’s stairwells created two critical barriers: they blocked escape routes for workers trapped on upper floors, and slowed firefighters’ progress as they attempted to reach and extinguish the fire. In total, more than 500 emergency personnel and 35 fire trucks were deployed to the scene, and it took nearly four hours to fully extinguish the open flames.

    Fujian Huiteng, the facility’s operating company, produces footwear for both domestic Chinese and international consumer brands, according to public product listings on major import and e-commerce platforms. By Friday, authorities had arrested the factory’s owner and all senior management, and frozen all of the company’s financial accounts as part of the ongoing investigation. Chinese President Xi Jinping has called for a full, transparent probe of the disaster, and confirmed that all parties found responsible for safety failures will face strict legal accountability.

    Jinjiang, the city where the factory is located, is widely known as China’s “shoe capital.” The region is home to thousands of footwear manufacturers, producing more than 1 billion athletic shoes annually – roughly one-fifth of the country’s total athletic footwear output, according to industry and state media reports. The region’s rise from a cluster of small, informal workshops to a global export manufacturing hub has been framed by the Chinese government as the “Jinjiang Experience,” a national model for successful industrial development that President Xi has repeatedly cited in policy speeches.

    This fatal blaze is far from an isolated incident: workplace safety remains a longstanding systemic challenge across China’s industrial sector. Just months earlier in May, an explosion at a fireworks manufacturing plant in Changsha, Hunan, killed 37 people, and earlier in 2024, a fire at a under-construction refrigeration facility in Jiangxi’s Xinyu killed 39 people, making the Fujian factory fire one of the deadliest industrial accidents in China in recent years. National official data from 2025 shows that 18,261 people died across 19,900 reported workplace accidents, a slight decline from 2024’s total, but still a staggering toll that underscores the gap between national safety regulations and on-the-ground enforcement. Chinese authorities have repeatedly mandated that all private and state-owned businesses conduct regular screenings for workplace hazards, but enforcement remains inconsistent, particularly among small and mid-sized manufacturing firms.

  • Community screenings help a movie set during an Indian insurgency bypass censorship

    Community screenings help a movie set during an Indian insurgency bypass censorship

    As twilight falls over the golden farmlands of India’s Punjab state, villagers in Gurdaspur have gathered in the open courtyard of a local Sikh temple for an act of quiet defiance: a community screening of *Satluj*, a feature film blocked from official distribution by Indian authorities.

    The film traces the real-life story of Jaswant Singh Khalra, a fearless human rights activist who uncovered evidence of mass enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings during the Indian government’s 1980s to early 1990s crackdown on a Sikh separatist insurgency seeking an independent state of Khalistan. The decades-old conflict, one of the bloodiest internal conflicts in modern Indian history, claimed the lives of thousands of civilians, militants, and security force personnel.

    Rights groups have long documented widespread allegations of custodial deaths, secret cremations, and unrecorded disappearances from the insurgency era. It was Khalra who blew the lid off these abuses, revealing that police had secretly cremated thousands of disappeared people without notifying their next of kin or keeping any official records of the deaths. In 1995, Khalra was abducted by unknown assailants and later killed; multiple police officers have since been convicted in connection with his murder.

    Originally titled *Punjab 95*, the film faced three years of bureaucratic delays after India’s central censor board demanded more than 120 edits to the content. After failing to secure permission for a wide theatrical release, the film premiered last week on Indian streaming platform ZEE5 — only to be pulled from the service within 48 hours following unspecified government pressure. New Delhi has not issued a public explanation for the takedown, but unnamed officials told local media the order was issued on national security grounds, as the government still views any open discussion of separatist sentiment as a threat to domestic stability.

    But the ban has backfired spectacularly. The removal of the film from official platforms spurred leaked copies to spread rapidly across social media and private online channels, and grassroots groups across Punjab have mobilized to organize hundreds of unauthorized community screenings. Sikh temple compounds, village community halls, and open fields have been converted into makeshift open-air cinemas, with local residents pooling resources to rent projectors, speakers, and backup power generators. Volunteers spread word of screenings door-to-door, drawing crowds that mix elderly survivors of the insurgency and teenagers born decades after the conflict ended.

    Inderjeet Singh Bains, a local organizer coordinating screenings in Gurdaspur district, explained that the grassroots movement is intended to create a shared space for communities to confront a painful chapter of Punjab’s history that still shapes intergenerational memory. “When we screen the film, we see our elders and mothers, many of them 60 or 70 years old, crying because they have lost their sons. Our people have endured immense suffering,” Bains said.

    Gurmukh Singh, an audience member at a recent Gurdaspur screening, noted that the film finally gives full voice to stories that young Punjabis have only ever heard as fragmented family anecdotes. For most Punjab villages, the insurgency is not distant history — it is a lived trauma that touches nearly every family. “After watching the movie, there is a feeling of the grief our earlier generations had to bear,” Singh said.

    The takedown of *Satluj* has reignited a long-simmering national debate over artistic freedom and censorship under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government. Critics argue that censorship cases against dissenting artistic works have grown increasingly frequent under Modi’s administration, which actively promotes films that align with its right-wing nationalist ideological narrative.

    Balwinder Singh, a prominent Sikh religious leader, challenged the government’s justification for the ban: “Everything happened right before our eyes, so what is there to oppose? The truth is coming to light, and people should be allowed to see it.”

    The Indian government maintains that film certification and censorship decisions are made independently by regulatory bodies under existing law. ZEE5, for its part, said in a statement that it pulled the film from its Indian platform “in light of current developments,” and added that it would explore “every appropriate avenue through due process” to restore the film to its service.

    Even without official distribution, *Satluj*’s lead actor Diljit Dosanjh, one of India’s biggest entertainment stars, says the film’s message can no longer be suppressed. “Once audiences have seen it, it cannot be erased,” he said.

    That reality is on full display in Gurdaspur’s temple courtyards. After the credits roll on screen, many audience members linger long into the night, comparing the film’s portrayal of the insurgency to the personal memories they have carried for decades. Pawan Deep Kaur, a young audience member, described the film as a devastating, honest portrait of the suffering endured by Punjab’s older generation. “It made us cry endlessly,” she said.

  • China braces for a powerful typhoon after a week of deadly storms

    China braces for a powerful typhoon after a week of deadly storms

    As East Asia braced for a new round of severe weather on Friday, powerful Typhoon Bavi was tracking steadily toward China’s eastern coastline, arriving on the heels of a catastrophic week that has already claimed dozens of lives across multiple regions of the country.

    The storm, which currently boasts maximum sustained winds of 162 kilometers per hour (101 miles per hour), was initially projected to pass north of Taiwan, bringing intense, prolonged rainfall to the island’s 23 million residents starting Friday evening and continuing through Saturday. In preparation for the incoming bad weather, Taipei, Taiwan’s capital, suspended all classes for Friday, while hundreds of fishing vessels have been secured and berthed closely together in northern Taiwanese ports. According to Taiwan’s Central News Agency, dozens of commercial flights bound for Japan, Hong Kong and other regional destinations have been canceled through Saturday, though a small number of services remain operational as of Friday.

    Following Bavi’s current northwest trajectory, the storm will first pass over remote Japanese islands before skirting the northern edge of Taiwan on Saturday. Forecasters predict the typhoon will make landfall Saturday night south of Shanghai, near the provincial boundary between Fujian and Zhejiang, two populous eastern Chinese provinces.

    Local officials have already enacted sweeping emergency preparedness measures to mitigate potential damage. Official state news outlet Xinhua News Agency reported that more than 17,000 residents have already been evacuated from high-risk coastal and low-lying areas in Zhejiang, while 170,000 professional rescue workers have been placed on high standby to respond to emergencies. In Fujian, authorities have suspended multiple inter-island and cross-strait ferry routes due to dangerous wind speeds and choppy seas, and issued an urgent order for all ocean-going fishing vessels to return to sheltered ports before the storm arrives.

    Bavi has weakened significantly since earlier this week, when it raged as a category 5 supertyphoon that brought destructive, life-threatening winds to Saipan and other U.S. Pacific territories.

    The approaching storm marks the third major weather-related disaster to hit China in seven days, after two separate deadly events that have already claimed 50 lives. On Thursday, southern Chinese authorities confirmed 39 people had been killed in widespread flooding triggered by Tropical Storm Maysak, which dumped record-breaking rainfall across large swathes of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region over several days. The torrential rainfall overwhelmed local water infrastructure, causing multiple reservoir breaches and the dramatic partial collapse of a dam in Hengzhou. The failure sent fast-moving muddy floodwater surging through surrounding communities, trapping hundreds of residents on the second floors and higher levels of buildings for days, many cut off from electricity, before search and rescue teams could reach them.

    A further 11 people lost their lives in central China’s Hubei province after severe thunderstorms and tornadoes swept through the region on Monday night, leaving widespread destruction in their wake. In a separate, non-storm-related tragedy, a sudden landslide killed 21 forestry workers working in the mountainous terrain of northwestern China’s Gansu province on Tuesday.

  • Nvidia chips, soybean orders signal thaw before Xi-Trump summit

    Nvidia chips, soybean orders signal thaw before Xi-Trump summit

    As anticipation builds for a planned meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Donald Trump on the sidelines of the upcoming United Nations General Assembly in New York, Beijing has rolled out a series of confidence-building overtures to Washington, spanning technology, agriculture and diplomatic goodwill.

    The most high-profile of these steps is Beijing’s preliminary approval for Chinese technology giants including Alibaba and ByteDance to import Nvidia’s H200 artificial intelligence processors, according to reporting from technology outlet The Information. While initial discussions have floated a potential ceiling of 200,000 units, industry insiders note the final approved quota is likely to land below that figure — less than half of the total volume domestic Chinese firms requested earlier this year. Chinese regulators have also mandated that all imported H200 chips must be reserved exclusively for training cutting-edge AI models, with routine inference operations required to rely on domestically manufactured alternatives.

    Though the H200 is two generations behind Nvidia’s current top-tier flagship chips, industry analysts point out it still outperforms existing Chinese-designed AI processors. A limited allocation of H200 imports will not fully close China’s gap in high-end computing capacity, but it will ease near-term supply pressures and accelerate the development of domestic large language models, a columnist for Chinese technology news site PCPop.com explained.

    The path to H200 imports has been months in the making. Trump first approved H200 exports to China last December, and Reuters reported as early as January that ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent had already secured preliminary clearance to purchase a combined 400,000 units. However, no chips were shipped in the first half of 2026, after Beijing encouraged domestic firms to prioritize homegrown semiconductor development, creating widespread uncertainty in the market. That uncertainty prompted Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang to join Trump on Air Force One for a diplomatic visit to China in mid-May to push for progress on the issue.

    Many global affairs observers frame Beijing’s latest greenlight for partial H200 imports as a conciliatory gesture amid escalating U.S. chip export restrictions. In late May, the U.S. Commerce Department moved to close a longstanding loophole that allowed Chinese firms to acquire advanced Nvidia chips through overseas subsidiaries based in Singapore and Malaysia. The new rules require a government license for any export of advanced AI processors to entities ultimately controlled by Chinese headquarters, a restriction that also applies to rival chipmaker AMD.

    Beyond the semiconductor space, Beijing has made two additional notable goodwill moves to warm bilateral ties ahead of the planned leadership meeting. At Trump’s request, China released detained Chinese pastor Kim Myeongil, who led the country’s largest evangelical underground church before his arrest in October 2024, and allowed him to travel to the United States, a U.S. official confirmed.

    In agriculture, Chinese state-owned grain trader CofCO has booked at least six cargoes of U.S. soybeans for shipment between September and October 2026, Bloomberg reported. U.S. Department of Agriculture data later showed Beijing purchased 472,000 metric tons of U.S. soybeans in a single daily transaction — the largest single-day volume of soybean sales to China since November 2025. These purchases align with pledges Xi made during a May summit with Trump in Beijing, where the two leaders agreed to expanded U.S. agricultural imports to China, alongside tighter fentanyl enforcement, increased Chinese rare earth exports to the U.S., and a Chinese commitment to purchase 200 Boeing commercial aircraft.

    Discussions to expand low-risk trade cooperation are also advancing. The two countries announced in late June that they would establish a new bilateral trade council focused on agricultural cooperation, with plans to roll out reciprocal tariff cuts for roughly $30 billion worth of non-sensitive goods on both sides. Under the proposed framework, China will increase imports of U.S. beef, fruit and grain, while the U.S. will ease import restrictions on Chinese dairy products, ornamental potted plants, aquaculture goods and poultry. A columnist for China’s Commerce Ministry-run International Business Daily noted that while $30 billion is a small share of overall bilateral trade, starting with agricultural goods creates a pragmatic pathway to expand tariff liberalization in future negotiations. The U.S. has already extended a one-year truce in the bilateral tariff war that keeps U.S. levies on Chinese goods at roughly 30% through November 10, 2026.

    Trump announced Monday that the meeting with Xi is on track to take place around September 24, coinciding with the UN General Assembly session in New York. Trump tied the planned visit to his push for a new White House ballroom, citing the expected high-level visit as a key justification for the construction project. Trump is scheduled to address the General Assembly on September 22, and typically remains in New York for several days to hold bilateral meetings with other global leaders; Xi has only attended the UN General Assembly once since taking office in 2012.

    Not all outstanding bilateral issues have been resolved ahead of the meeting: Trump has raised the case of Jimmy Lai, the jailed Hong Kong media mogul, but Beijing has not agreed to release him. Tensions also remain over the proposed $14 billion U.S. arms sale to Taiwan, which includes High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, howitzers, Javelin anti-tank missiles, loitering munitions and Army Tactical Missile Systems.

    During a late June call between Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Wang explicitly warned that the Taiwan issue is a core red line for Sino-U.S. relations, urging Washington to approach the topic with extreme caution. “Both sides should always uphold the spirit of equality, respect and mutual benefit, and translate the consensus reached by the two heads of state into concrete policies,” Wang stated during the call. “To do so, both sides need to expand the cooperation list and create a more positive agenda, while narrowing the list of problems and managing various risks. A slight move on the Taiwan issue could affect the whole situation.”

    U.S. officials have offered conflicting updates on the arms sale: acting U.S. Navy Secretary Hung Cao said in late May that the sale was being paused to reallocate weapons to the ongoing conflict with Iran, but Rubio clarified during a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing in early June that the sale has not been halted, remains under review, and that U.S. policy toward Taiwan remains unchanged.