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'Illegitimate and destabilising': US slams China's military build-up near Taiwan ahead of Han Kuang drills
The United States has strongly criticised China's heightened military activity around Taiwan, calling it 'illegitimate' and 'irresponsible' amid rising tensions just days ahead of the island's annual Han Kuang defence exercises, Taipei Times reported on Thursday.
Taiwan's Ministry of National Defence (MND) said that between Wednesday and Thursday morning, it tracked 41 Chinese military aircraft and eight naval vessels operating near the island. Among these, 27 aircraft crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait and entered northern, central, and southwestern sections of Taiwan's air defence identification zone (ADIZ).
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In response, Taiwan deployed patrol aircraft, naval assets, and coastal missile systems to monitor and shadow the intruding forces, the MND said.
A US State Department spokesperson, quoted by Taiwan's Central News Agency, described China's military manoeuvres as destabilising and warned that they risk escalating tensions in the region. The official reiterated Washington's stance that maintaining peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait is critical to global security and economic interests, urging Beijing to halt its coercive actions.
The US reaffirmed its support for Taiwan, pledging continued assistance across military, economic, and diplomatic domains.
Meanwhile, Taiwan's defence ministry also confirmed that a Chinese rocket launched from the Xichang Satellite Launch Centre in Sichuan on Wednesday evening had flown through the island's southwestern ADIZ. While the launch vehicle remained outside Earth's atmosphere and posed no immediate threat, the MND had issued an advance alert and tracked the rocket's trajectory using surveillance and intelligence systems.
The uptick in Chinese military and aerospace activity is seen as part of Beijing's broader pressure campaign on Taiwan, especially as the island prepares for its most significant military readiness exercises of the year.
With inputs from agencies
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The Hindu
28 minutes ago
- The Hindu
BRICS has no plan to create an alternate currency, says Brazil's Ambassador to India
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will land in Rio De Janeiro early Sunday (July 6, 2025) morning to attend the BRICS summit (July 6-7), along with leaders of the newly inducted members including Egypt, Ethiopia, UAE, Iran and Indonesia. All eyes will be on a Leaders' Joint Statement, especially given India's focus on terrorism after the Pahalgam attack and Operation Sindoor, as well as differences with new members over reforms in the UN Security Council , amid the absence of two key leaders, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping. Responding to a query on reactions from the U.S. if BRICS moves towards de-dollarisation, Brazil's Ambassador to India Kenneth Felix Haczynski da Nobrega says the grouping has no plans of creating an alternate currency, but will build options of local currency trade within itself. Excerpts: What are your hopes for real outcomes from this summit? We are envisaging a BRICS which will deliver some results, among them, a dedicated declaration on climate change financing, financing and regulation of artificial intelligence, and a partnership on socially-determined diseases, diseases which we associate with states of poverty. Apart from the first session, all sessions of the Rio BRICS summit will be open to the partner countries and to invited countries. This is an effort at transparency and inclusivity in the platform to discuss the big challenges of humanity. A telling sign is that 30-plus countries have expressed an interest in joining BRICS. This says a lot. U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened 100-500% tariffs against BRICS if it moves towards de-dollarisation. How seriously do you take the U.S. statements against BRICS? If you have declarations of an important country like the United States, it is taken seriously. But to speak of a BRICS currency... that is something that does not exist, and we are not envisioning creating a BRICS currency in the foreseeable future. What we are envisaging is stimulating businesses of BRICS countries to adopt local currencies as an option for conducting trade. This will be on a voluntary basis, and it's nothing new — within MERCOSUR, which is the South American integration process, we have had the possibility of using local-currency trades for more than 25 years. So this is just one more option, not a move against the dollar. This is the first BRICS summit since the Pahalgam terror attack. How will BRICS address the issue of terrorism? I can tell you that the Foreign Minister's meeting of BRICS (on April 28-29), which did not produce a joint statement but had a Chair's summary, included a paragraph on the Pahalgam attack. So we are quite confident that the Leaders' Statement at BRICS would also contain a robust paragraph condemning terrorism. Has the expansion of BRICS led to more tensions within the grouping? There is still no clarity on the membership of Saudi Arabia. Is BRICS losing its cohesiveness? In the past, even when BRICS was composed of only five members, it always focused on what unites such diverse countries, not on divisions. The five original members — Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa — were already diverse countries, and the focus was not on what we cannot do together, but what we can do together. By accepting new members, BRICS has shown its diversity and consensus-building ability. And it is this ability that led to notable results like the establishment of the New Development Bank. Given the focus on the Global South in BRICS, do you see the Rio Summit pitching itself as a challenger to the more established G-7 grouping? Brazil has never seen BRICS as a challenge to G-7, or as some kind of bloc against G-7. BRICS is a group that comes together to advance our converging interests. If you look at all BRICS statements, you would not be able to identify any language that could be considered anti-West. We have our interests, and those aren't against any group of countries. What are the main outcomes expected from Prime Minister Modi's visit to Brasilia, and a meeting with President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, which will follow the BRICS summit? The state visit will take place against a backdrop of booming business and engagement between our two countries. Just to give you a figure, in less than two years, we have had 110 missions (trade and bilateral) in both directions, between India and Brazil. These missions were basically focused on four areas: defence, agriculture, energy and the pharmaceutical industry. We have seen an intensification of contacts between government and government on digital partnerships and artificial intelligence. We now have space here to take stock and facilitate business in a number of areas. Oil is a case in point. Brazilian company Petrobras has world-class technology in deep-sea drilling and it wants to cooperate with Indian companies. Defence cooperation is at a turning point, so is agricultural research, and we will have an agreement on cooperation there.
Time of India
an hour ago
- Time of India
Dalai Lama issue: India can't be compliant to China or seen as insensitive to Tibetans, says Robert Barnett
. STRAP: Just days before his 90th birthday on July 6, the Dalai Lama — the revered spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism — declared that he would have a successor. The announcement is more than a theological decision since China has long sought control over the succession process. Neelam Raaj spoke to Robert Barnett, a leading Tibet scholar at SOAS, London, for insights into this high-stakes contest between faith and power. As someone who has studied Tibet closely, were you surprised by the Dalai Lama's recent announcement regarding his succession, especially given his earlier remarks suggesting he might be the last incumbent? For many years, the Dalai Lama has been reminding the public that he can choose from innumerable options and alternatives in terms of his succession. Sometimes he expressed this in a light-hearted way, such as saying he might come back as a butterfly, while at other times he referred to not returning at all, or he listed little-known theological alternatives, such as transmitting his consciousness to another adult through a process called 'trulwa' or emanation. But all of these alternatives were reminders that in Tibetan Buddhism it is the individual lama, and the karma of that individual lama, which decides how or whether a lama returns. Of course, these have all been messages to China and its rulers that their claim to have the sole right to control reincarnations makes little sense in the religious context. The Dalai Lama had also always said that the decision about whether he returns would depend on the wishes of his followers, and his officials spent the last year or more getting written opinions from the wider Buddhist community about that request. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like 5 Books Warren Buffett Wants You to Read In 2025 Blinkist: Warren Buffett's Reading List Undo This process was partly ceremonial – it reflects a very traditional understanding that a lama reincarnates only if his or her followers request for him or her to do so. So, no one doubted that the community would ask the Dalai Lama to return, and his decision to reincarnate is not a surprise. But here again the Dalai Lama seems to be sending a message to China, namely that, unlike Beijing, his decisions and his legitimacy are not based on the use of force or the resort to traditional authority, but on processes of consent and consultation. Tell us about the history of this contentious golden urn method of picking a successor. Contemporary Chinese officials say that in 1792-3 an order was given by the then emperor of China requiring Tibetans to use a golden vase or urn as the final stage in deciding between three children identified as candidate reincarnations of a high lama. After reciting appropriate prayers, the winning name would be drawn from the urn. This claim is correct, and , , the golden urn system was used scores of times in Tibet and Mongolia and other areas to select reincarnations up until the early 1900s. The current Chinese government claims that it is thus merely invoking a long-running legal precedent that requires Tibetans today to only use the same system and at the same time to recognise that only the Chinese government can authorize and select reincarnations. However, there are major weaknesses in this claim. Firstly, there had been scarcely any mention or use of the golden urn system for nearly 100 years before Beijing abruptly reintroduced it in 1995. Secondly, the emperors in the past who were involved with reincarnations and the golden urn were not Chinese and their governments were not Chinese – they were Manchus and were Buddhist believers, and were regarded by Tibetans at the time in many cases as emanations of the Buddha. Thirdly, it is not clear that use of the urn had meant in the past that the government in Beijing was seen by Tibetans as a sign of imperial sovereignty; according to the pioneering work of the historian Max Oidtmann, the process seems to have been more one of cooperation between Tibetans and the Manchus rather than one imposed on the former by the latter. And fourthly, the Manchu involvement in reincarnations seems to have been often understood by Tibetans as a kind of available option at times of dispute, rather than a law they were required to follow. And in general, religions and their believers tend to give priority to traditions and beliefs, rather than state laws. So, Beijing's invocation of 18th-century Manchu-Tibetan religious relations as proof of Chinese sovereignty today describes a world that seems vastly different from the contemporary situation. How do you anticipate Beijing will respond to this announcement? If China proceeds to name its own successor, are we looking at the possibility of two Dalai Lamas? It seems very likely, now that the Dalai Lama has announced that there will be a 15th Dalai Lama, that China will feel required to assert its sovereignty in these matters by naming its own Dalai Lama. So we are looking at a future, after the lifetime of the present Dalai Lama, where there will be two competing Dalai Lamas. But this will not be like a medieval competition between two rival popes, because only one of these Dalai Lamas will have been selected according to religious traditions and with the imprimatur of the previous Dalai Lama – the one who will be selected by the exiles. The Chinese candidate will have been selected by the Chinese state, whose rulers are by definition atheists if not, at times, outright enemies of religion. So, the Chinese candidate is at risk of having limited credibility among the Buddhist community and worldwide. Yet we might want to keep in mind that everything we are reading about is at some level a process of signalling to China. So the Dalai Lama's announcement is also an indirect reminder that if China wished to, it could still offer him a settlement. That settlement is actually easy to imagine, in theory: the Chinese could simply return to the position they took on reincarnation in the 1980s and the early 1990s, when they claimed only the right to confirm the choices made by the relevant lamas and did not claim any role in the reincarnation process or selection itself. But few people currently expect today's Chinese leaders to make concessions. The Dalai Lama has suggested that his reincarnation could be found outside China. If that successor emerges from the Tibetan diaspora in India, what kind of diplomatic and political challenges might this pose for New Delhi? The succession of the Dalai Lama has become a controversy because of Beijing's claim in 1995 to have sole authority over that process. Why did it make that claim, which is clearly one that would lead to conflict and dispute? One theory is that Chinese foreign policy strategists see an advantage in using this issue to advance China's aims abroad. According to this theory, the succession issue provides a new opportunity for China's diplomats to seek compliance from other governments – it provides an entry-point for China to call on those governments to support its claims and to denounce any claims or actions by the Tibetan exiles. If so, it's a clever move, because most governments have few exiles and few Buddhists in their population. Such governments might feel it less costly to comply with China's request than to refuse on what for them will seem a minor or obscure issue. But this is not, of course, the case for India, for whom such a request would have major implications in terms of soft power, international diplomacy, religious respect and even border negotiations. Whatever happens, India will be the chief focus among all nations of China's strategic interests in this matter, and will likely come under significant Chinese pressure. India's policy makers and diplomats will certainly be deploying all their skills and resources in order to find a way to respond to those pressures without seeming compliant to China or insensitive to Tibetan or religious priorities. How do you interpret China's recent efforts in Tibet — including large-scale infrastructure projects, population resettlements, and the campaign to re-educate Tibetan children? It used to be rather difficult for outside analysts to characterise Chinese policies in Tibet – they varied, being sometimes extremely harsh and in other ways and at certain times less so. But since 2014 a new policy has emerged under Xi Jinping which is clear: minorities, including the Tibetans and others, are to be gradually 'integrated' (jiaorong in Chinese) into the larger Chinese 'community' or nation (Zhonghua minzu). It has also become clear that Xi Jinping has ordered this process to begin from early childhood, because since 2021 his government has required all kindergartens – and kindergarten attendance is more or less compulsory these days for children aged 3-5 or so – to teach primarily or solely in the Chinese language. These schools and preschools increasingly teach children about Chinese or Communist history and values, rather than Tibetan ones. So there are serious concerns about the extent to which the next generation of Tibetans, Uyghur, Mongols and others within China will have substantive knowledge of their mother-tongue or their culture. At the same time, China has been moving many thousands of rural and nomadic Tibetans to settlements in or near towns, or to remote border regions, sometimes for very unclear reasons, and this too is likely to have a dramatic impact on cultural traditions and identity. There will be practical benefits for some of these relocated people, in terms of work, medical access and knowledge of Chinese, but there is much uncertainty about the overall effect of what is an ongoing process of massive social and cultural engineering.
Hindustan Times
2 hours ago
- Hindustan Times
Between renewal & rebirth: The Dalai Lama succession
In Tibetan Buddhism, the bardo is the space between lives — a liminal zone where the soul hovers, neither here nor there, waiting for its next embodiment. It is a place of uncertainty, transformation, and reckoning. Since 1950, Tibet has lived in such a state. That year, Chinese forces entered Tibet, marking the start of a profound shift in the region's political and cultural landscape. In the years that followed, many Tibetans left their homeland, facing dislocation and uncertainty. Religious institutions were restructured, traditional ways of life transformed, and the Tibetan language and identity came under increasing strain. The Dalai Lama sought refuge in India in 1959, followed by thousands of his people. Around the world, there was sympathy, but little action. Tibet — never formally recognised as an independent State by the major powers — drifted into a kind of political bardo: Not entirely forgotten, but no longer central to the world's attention. Today, that suspended state is once again being tested. The 14th Dalai Lama, turning 90 today, has signalled that his successor will be born in exile, and identified through traditional methods — not selected by any government. Beijing, predictably, has other plans. It has codified its authority to approve all reincarnations of Tibetan lamas and declared that the next Dalai Lama must be chosen according to Chinese law. The State even claims the right to employ the Golden Urn, an 18th-century ritual once used to select high-ranking reincarnate lamas, to give its candidate a supposed veil of legitimacy. The stage is set for a metaphysical standoff: One Dalai Lama born of visions, dreams, and ritual recognition; another produced by committee, installed by fiat. It is less a theological debate than a collision between historical memory and statecraft — between a displaced people's spiritual continuity and a powerful nation's political choreography. At the heart of this drama lies India. India has, for more than 60 years, hosted the Dalai Lama and the Central Tibetan Administration in Dharamshala. It has given sanctuary, but not much more. In 2003, India formally acknowledged the Tibet Autonomous Region as part of China. The tension in that duality has always been there — between a moral responsibility to a people it sheltered and a geopolitical calculation to avoid provoking Beijing. This next chapter will test the limits of that careful ambiguity. If, as expected, the next Dalai Lama is born in India, the country will become more than host — it will become caretaker of the lineage. The young reincarnate's education, his monastic training, his symbolic authority — all of it will unfold on Indian soil. India may say little. It may issue no declarations. But it will be, in every meaningful sense, the ground on which the Tibetan tradition stakes its future. And this is where the past comes back to haunt the present. In recent years, the Dalai Lama has spoken with quiet pain of Tibet's abandonment. Of how, in those pivotal moments after 1950, when things might still have been altered, most nations — India among them — chose silence. For Tibetans, exile became not a temporary waiting room but a permanent geography. 'We are those in-between people,' the Tibetan poet Tsering Wangmo Dhompa has written, 'making up the rules as we go along, because there is no guidebook to living in exile.' The longer exile lasts, the more it becomes an elusive inheritance. Among the Tibetan diaspora, the idea of return has grown quieter. A generation has come of age for whom Tibet is not a place on a map but an idea passed down in language, in prayer, in the particular geometry of the mandala. In place of a homeland, they have built a spiritual architecture — held together by teachers, temples, and the enduring magnetism of the Dalai Lama. The Chinese State understands this, which is precisely why it wants to insert itself into the metaphysics. A reincarnation is not merely symbolic; it is a line of continuity, a claim to legitimacy. If Beijing can appoint the next Dalai Lama, it can assert control not just over territory but over the meaning of Tibet itself. India is unlikely to challenge China directly. It shares a volatile border, has a history of military conflict with Beijing, and remains locked in a delicate geopolitical ballet. But there are other forms of resistance — quieter, less visible, no less significant. India can allow the monastic institutions in Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, and Ladakh to conduct the traditional search. It can ensure that the child chosen by Tibetan lamas is educated freely, without pressure or constraint. It can create, through silence and space, the conditions for authenticity to survive. This moment is not only about succession — it is about the layered architecture of belief, and whether it can withstand the heavy hand of power. When the child is found, there may be no headlines. The world may offer polite interest, followed by forgetfulness. China will move swiftly, naming its own candidate, embedding the chosen child in ritual, surrounding him with legitimacy devised by decree. And yet the real question will not be who claims the next Dalai Lama — but who allowed the tradition itself to breathe. Recognition, in this case, may not come with public endorsement. It may come through the soft gestures of refuge: a door left ajar, a temple left untouched, a people left free to remember who they are. India's choices may remain unspoken. But the Tibetan people have always understood the weight of silence. They have lived in it, made meaning inside it, and carried it with them through generations of exile. Now, on the edge of another transition, they wait once again in the bardo — not just for a leader, but for the world to remember. Nirupama Rao is a former foreign secretary. The views expressed are personal.
