China denies FBI chief's accusation; customised robots for rent: SCMP daily highlights
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Claims by the head of the FBI that China is a threat to the Indo-Pacific are groundless, Beijing said as the American security agency opened its first permanent office in New Zealand.
The US government sent mixed messages on Thursday on where the latest trade agreement with China, including a possible extension of the pause on tariff hikes, is headed.
The containerised launch system was seen in footage from President Donald Trump's visit to the US Army's Fort Bragg base in June. Photo: X/Dan Scavino
China's military has warned that America's new containerised missile and rocket launch system could 'seriously undermine regional strategic stability'.
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AllAfrica
an hour ago
- AllAfrica
US willfully ceding the energy innovation race to China
During the Cold War, the US and Soviet Union were locked in a desperate race to develop cutting‑edge technologies like long-range missiles and satellites. Fast forward to today and the frontiers of global technology have pivoted to AI and next‑generation energy. In one domain, AI, the US has far outpaced any other nation – though China looks to be closing the gap. In the other, energy, it has just tied its shoelaces together. The reason isn't technology, economics or, despite the government's official line, even national security. Rather, it is politics. Since returning to the White House in January, Donald Trump has handed out huge wins to the coal and oil and gas industries. This is no great surprise. Trump has long been supportive of the US fossil fuel industry and, since his reelection, has appointed several former industry lobbyists to top political positions. According to the Trump administration, national security requires gutting support for renewable energy while performing political CPR on the dying coal industry. The reality is that, since 2019, the US has produced more oil, gas and coal annually than Americans want to use, with the rest exported and sold overseas. It is currently one of the most prolific exporters of fossil fuels in the world. In short, the US does not have an energy security problem. It does, however, have an energy cost problem combined with a growing climate change crisis. These issues will only be made worse by Trump's enthusiasm for fossil fuels. Over the past six months, the Trump administration has upended half a decade of green industrial policy. It has clawed back billions of US dollars in tax credits and grants that were supercharging American energy innovation. Meanwhile, China has roared forward. Beijing has doubled down on wind, solar and next‑generation batteries, installing more wind and solar power in 2024 than the rest of the world combined. To China's delight, the US has simply stopped competing to be the world's clean energy powerhouse. Roughly one-in-five lithium‑ion batteries, a key component in clean energy products, are made in China. Many of the newest high‑tech batteries are also being developed and patented there. While Trump repeats the tired mantra of 'drill, baby, drill', China is building factories, cornering the market for critical minerals such as lithium and nickel, and locking in export partners. At the same time, household energy spending in the US is expected to increase by $170 each year between now and 2035 as a result of Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The bill, which includes sweeping changes to taxes, social security and more, will raise energy costs mainly because it strips away support for cheap and abundant renewables like wind and solar. Household energy costs could go up even more as Trump threatens to make large‑scale clean energy development much more onerous by putting up bureaucratic hurdles. The administration recently issued a directive requiring the Secretary of the Interior to approve even routine activities for wind and solar projects connected to federal lands. Meanwhile, climate change is hitting American communities harder with each passing year. As recent flooding in Texas and urban fires in California and Hawaii have shown, fewer Americans still have the luxury of ignoring climate change. As the cost of these disasters mount – $183 billion in 2024 – the grifting of the oil and gas industry will become an increasingly bitter pill for the nation to swallow. China, with its authoritarian government, is less susceptible to the petroleum-obsessed dogma fueling the Republican party. It does not have prominent leaders like US politician Marjorie Taylor Greene, who previously warned that Democrats are trying to 'emasculate the way we drive' by advocating for electric vehicles. Rather, China's leaders are seeing green – not in the environmental sense, but in a monetary one. It is generally cheaper nowadays to build and operate renewable energy facilities than gas or coal power stations. According to a June 2025 report by Lazard, an asset management company, electricity from new large-scale solar farms costs up to $78 per megawatt hour – and often much less. The same electricity from a newly built natural gas plants, by comparison, can cost as much as $107 per megawatt hour. Across the world, utilities are embracing clean energy, choosing lower costs for their customers while reducing pollution. China saw the writing on the wall decades ago, and its early investments are bearing a rich harvest. It now produces more than half of the world's electric vehicles and the vast majority of its solar panels. The US can still compete at the leading edge of the energy sector. American companies are developing innovative new approaches to geothermal, battery recycling and many other energy technologies. But in the battle to become the world's 21st-century energy manufacturing powerhouse, the US seems to have walked off the playing field. In Trump's telling, the US may have simply exited one race and reentered another. But the fossil fuel industry – financially, environmentally and ethically – is obviously a dead end. Stephen Lezak is program manager at the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, University of Oxford This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
AllAfrica
2 hours ago
- AllAfrica
Trump's Asia policy should prioritize security over revenue
Although People's Republic of China (PRC) officials say they do not seek hegemony, US regional pre-eminence is standing in the way of achieving their objectives, which include satisfying Beijing's vast irredentist claims, holding veto power over the foreign policies of neighboring countries and keeping out unwanted foreign military influence. China enjoys important advantages in this competition with the US for regional leadership: geography, ability to focus its forces close to home and superior manufacturing capability. China is also narrowing the technological gap. Washington recently tried to slow China's technological progress by restricting sales of US semiconductors and limiting visas for Chinese students, but soon relented because of American dependence on rare earth elements, of which China controls 90% of global production. Despite questions about possible US retrenchment, senior Trump administration officials say they are committed to maintaining US leadership in the Asia-Pacific region. One of their primary stated US foreign policy goals is to rally friendly governments to block Chinese expansionism. Perhaps the clearest advantage the US enjoys in pursuit of that goal is a robust network of allies and security partners. As the competition with China reaches a critical stage, America needs the full strategic value of these partnerships—to help prevent Chinese domination of vital supply chains, to unitedly oppose Chinese coercion and aggression against individual countries, to offer bases for US forces, to be prepared to provide additional combat capability if needed and even to build ships for the US Navy. The administration's efforts to raise revenue and cut government expenditures, however, are at odds with the geostrategic task of facing up to the China challenge. After half a year in office, the new US government still lacks a coherent Asia strategy. The most prominent issue here is the tariffs. Trying to maximize revenue from security partners both antagonizes them and makes it harder for them to fulfill US demands that they increase their defense spending. Washington announced a deal in July that would set Japan's tariff to 15%, which while lower than a previously threatened 35% rate, is still 10 times what the average US tariff on Japanese imports was in 2024. Simultaneously, the US has demanded that Japan further raise its defense spending target from an already difficult 2% to 3.5%, then 5%. Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba spoke of Japan becoming 'less dependent on America' for its security. South Korean tariffs on US imports already dropped to 1% under the 2012 US-Korea Free Trade Agreement (KORUS). Then the first Trump administration renegotiated KORUS in 2019, resulting in a deal that Trump called 'fantastic' and 'a model for fair trade.' Nevertheless, on July 7, Trump imposed a 25% tariff on South Korea imports. A statement from Korea's ruling Democratic Party said, 'Trump is betraying the trust of allies.' Later, Washington lowered the figure to 15%, but South Korean trade negotiator Yeo Han-koo said, 'We cannot be relieved, because we do not know when we will face pressure from tariffs or non-tariff measures again.' Such US pressure could give Seoul's new liberal government additional reason to seek a more equidistant position between the US and China. Australia has a trade deficit with the US, but still drew a 10% tariff, plus higher rates for steel and aluminum products and auto parts. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the tariffs 'have no basis in logic' and are 'not the act of a friend.' Although Taiwan is not a US ally, a similar incoherence is in play. Taiwan got a 20% tariff despite committing $100 billion to build factories for its economic crown jewel, advanced semiconductors, in the US. Although the US has strong political and strategic interests in helping Taiwan avoid forcible annexation by the PRC, Trump has spoken far more about the US-Taiwan relationship as an economic issue than a strategic issue, suggesting he thinks Taiwan has no value to the US beyond its ability to pay for US military protection. There are other examples of US policy being economically penny-wise and strategically pound-foolish, including reducing US diplomatic impact by large staff cuts at the Department of State and cutting funding for organizations such as USAID, which promotes international goodwill toward the US, and Radio Free Asia, which counters the anti-American narratives of the Authoritarian Bloc. Cuts to developmental aid and capacity-building programs are especially damaging in a region such as the Pacific Islands, where Beijing is attempting to increase its influence at the expense of traditional benefactors the US, Australia and New Zealand. In that case, an amount of aid that is relatively modest in monetary terms goes a long way because the small populations in the island states have sovereignty over huge and strategically important expanses of ocean. According to a recent report, US Under Secretary of Defense Elbridge Colby asked British defense officials if they could recall a UK aircraft carrier that was en route to a patrol in Asian waters. This bizarre episode seems to represent another instance of elevating economic concerns to the point of strategic counterproductivity. The Trump government wants NATO countries to spend 5% of their GDP on defense. This has led US officials to discourage European allies from maintaining a military presence in Asia that could help deter China, based on the logic that the Europeans should concentrate on their own neighborhood to free up American resources for Asia. But if the primary US objective is countering China, Washington should be welcoming rather than rebuffing such direct European assistance. Already outnumbered by the Chinese Navy, America is in no position to turn away additional friendly platforms. Showing the flags of European countries in maritime Asia complicates Chinese planning for possible aggressive actions and signals that the international costs to Beijing of such actions would be high. Moreover, sending ships to visit Asian waters has minimal negative impact on Europe's capacity to defeat a Russian invasion, which would primarily require ground and air forces. Trump government officials have said they will stop helping China wrest global technological leadership from the US, a goal clearly in line with US strategic and security interests. There is a danger, however, that this goal will conflict with Trump's pursuit of a bilateral trade agreement with China. During the first Trump Administration, US sanctions came close to killing Chinese telecommunications company ZTE, which would have reduced the danger of China stealing sensitive data from US trade and security partners. Trump, however, decided to let ZTE off the hook, apparently to grease US-China trade talks. In May 2025, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that out of national security concerns, the US would revoke the visas of Chinese students who have ties to the Chinese Communist Party or study in sensitive technological fields. In June, however, Trump said in a social media post that 'our deal with China is done,' and 'we will provide to China what was agreed to, including Chinese students using our colleges and universities.' In the recent past, the implied American pitch to friendly governments was 'help us support a global order that we overpay for and that benefits you.' Now it's 'you must pay more, and our relationship must clearly benefit us.' It was not always like this. After World War II, the US offered its former bitter enemy Japan generous economic assistance, including $25 billion (in today's dollars) in grants and loans from 1945 to 1952. Washington opened the US market to Japanese exports, becoming Japan's largest trade partner. The Americans also facilitated Japan's entry into international financial institutions and helped Japan re-integrate into the Asian regional economy. The assistance was significant enough that Tokyo felt obligated to offer at least symbolic concessions when US President George H. W. Bush visited in 1992 to ask for a redress of the US trade deficit with Japan (a request punctuated by Bush becoming sick during dinner and vomiting on Japanese Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa). Under the cloud of a compelling geostrategic threat (in that case the Cold War), Washington viewed bilateral trade and investment not as decontextualized transactionalism, but as part of a larger strategic vision. Such an approach is necessary again. In setting tariffs, the US government should consider both the strategic value of its relationships with friendly governments and efforts these countries are making to increase their potential contributions to a counter-China coalition. These considerations should at least partially, if not fully, offset the assessment that a security partner is underpaying for its access to US markets. Washington should go back to encouraging Western European governments to send military vessels and aircraft to visit the region to demonstrate support for the peaceful settlement of disputes. The non-military tools that increase US influence in the Asia-Pacific tend to be highly cost-effective. Yanking funding from them is not wise policy. In trade, investment and research cooperation with China, the US government should carefully identify critically important areas in which to implement de-risking and should stick to the policy even if the Chinese complain it is preventing a trade agreement. It is far from certain that the geostrategic component of US policy toward the Asia-Pacific—specifically, winning the competition with China—can succeed without subordinating revenue generation to the goals of helping security partners maximize their strategic value to the US. Denny Roy is senior fellow at the East-West Center in Honolulu.
South China Morning Post
2 hours ago
- South China Morning Post
US, Nato seek to supply Ukraine with weapons paid for by allies, target US$10 billion
The US and Nato are working on a novel approach to supply Ukraine with weapons using funds from Nato countries to pay for the purchase or transfer of US arms, according to three sources familiar with the matter. The renewed transatlantic cooperation on Ukraine comes as US President Donald Trump has expressed frustration with Moscow's ongoing attacks on its neighbour. Trump, who initially took a more conciliatory tone toward Russia as he tried to end the more than three-year war in Ukraine, has threatened to start imposing tariffs and other measures if Moscow shows no progress toward ending the conflict by August 8. The president said last month the US would supply weapons to Ukraine, paid for by European allies, but did not indicate how this would be done. Nato countries, Ukraine, and the United States were developing a new mechanism that would focus on getting US weapons to Ukraine from the Priority Ukraine Requirements List, known by the acronym PURL, the sources said. Ukraine would prioritise the weapons it needs in tranches of roughly US$500 million, and Nato allies – coordinated by Nato Secretary General Mark Rutte – would then negotiate among themselves who would donate or pay for items on the list.
