Southeast Asia Watch
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WASHINGTON — The Trump administration announced Thursday it will drastically shorten visas for foreign journalists in the U.S. to 240 days, down from years, and cut those for Chinese journalists to only 90 days, raising concerns over press freedom in the United States and retaliation against American journalists overseas.
The final rule announced by the Department of Homeland Security will do away with the “duration of status” system, which allows foreign journalists to stay and work in the United States as long as they meet eligibility requirements. That will be replaced with a fixed period of time, though the visas may be extended.
The agency says it’s necessary to better vet the visa holders. But advocates for foreign journalists oppose the change, saying the drastically shorter stay would severely restrict their ability to live and work in the States.
The even shorter visa rule for Chinese journalists, which does not include those from the “special administrative regions” of Hong Kong or Macau, is particularly harsh and could add tensions to the already fraught relations between Washington and Beijing, despite stated intents by both leaders to stabilize ties.
The decision comes at a time when President Donald Trump is targeting news organizations with multiple threats and legal actions at home and his administration is tightening immigration policies, though foreign journalists are not considered immigrants.
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German carmakers have long complained of high costs and onerous red tape while critics contend the companies themselves need to restructure and improve how they are run.
Volkswagen boss Blume – who also told staff that four plants might need to close – said in April that he was open to Volkswagen’s Chinese partners using its plants.
However, the group has since sought to dampen speculation of any imminent deals.
Other carmakers in Europe are also partnering with Chinese firms.
Jeep and Fiat owner Stellantis said in May it had formed a joint venture with China’s Dongfeng to share manufacturing, sales and engineering operations on the continent.
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Aside from benefiting from the fading memory of the pandemic, China appears to have gained from comparison with the US, Silver said.
“By comparison, we know that China is seen to be a more reliable partner in many places. It’s more likely to be seen to contribute to global peace and stability,” the researcher said.
Notably, those in some US-allied countries have drastically shifted their views in recent years, such as Canada. In the new survey, only 33 per cent of Canadians have positive views of the US, down from 57 per cent in 2023. Over the same period, their favourable opinions of China rose from 14 per cent to 44 per cent.
Trump slapped a barrage of tariffs on Canadian goods last year, and even claimed that Canada could be the “51st state”.
Major European countries — including France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Sweden, the Netherlands and Italy — all have switched their opinions toward the world’s two largest economies.
People in the UK, where about six in 10 held positive views of the US in 2023, now view China and the US similarly. Three years ago, the spread was 32 percentage points in Washington’s favour.
Of the six countries where people have more favourable views of the US, Israel leads the way. About eight in 10 Israelis view the US positively, compared with 19 per cent for China.
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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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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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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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BEIJING — The Philippines defense secretary and his family have been banned from entering China over comments he has made about Beijing’s claims in the South China Sea, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Thursday.
Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro and his wife and kids are banned from entering China, including Hong Kong, while individuals and groups in China are also banned from having any sort of transaction with Teodoro, the ministry said in a statement
Teodoro is known for using strong language to counter China’s claims over the strategic waters, calling them a “fiction and lie” that no Southeast Asian country would accept.
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Federal authorities on Wednesday shut down 13 internet domains said to be used by China for operations to obtain classified and sensitive U.S. government information, the Justice Department said.
The internet sites were used by Chinese actors to recruit Americans and others with access to secret information while posing as fraudulent professional consulting services, according to a department statement.
“The fake consulting company domains seized by the FBI illustrate the lengths the Chinese government’s intelligence services will go to as they try to use AI-generated content to trick, recruit, or coerce current and former U.S. security clearance holders into sharing sensitive information,” said Roman Rozhavsky, assistant FBI director for counterintelligence and espionage.
“The FBI and our partners have observed China’s intelligence services resort to using AI, professional networking sites, and online payment platforms to target Americans, and we have taken actions to defend the homeland and our national security.”
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Judge said only a handful of allegations were even worth considering
A Chinese man cannot file a racial discrimination lawsuit against the University of Notre Dame for a legal brief that commented on genocide in the country.
District Court Judge Gretchen Lund tossed out the self-filed suit from Bing Chen, which raised concerns about an amicus filed by the Catholic university’s religious liberty clinic. Chen sought more than $1 billion in damages – $1 for every Chinese person in China, along with $1 for every American living in the United States.