China has struggled to gain support from its Central Asian neighbors to build the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan (CKU) railway since the 1990s. The CKU railway is crucial to China for two interconnected purposes—to advance its geopolitical interests and to secure favorable relations with Central Asian elites for their support over Chinese legitimacy in Xinjiang (East Turkestan). Originally signed in 1997 with Kyrgyzstan […]

The Tsushima Strait, also known as the Eastern Channel of the Korea Strait, sits at a critical crossroads of Northeast Asia, which is home to some of the world’s largest economies, such as Japan, South Korea, and China. The 243-kilometre-long Tsushima Strait is a narrow waterway that connects South Korea and Japan, two key middle powers in the Indo-Pacific, and […]

A Pakistani intelligence official was killed and seven of his team members were injured in an encounter with militants in northwestern Pakistan on Tuesday, the country’s military said. The region has seen a resurgence of Islamist militant attacks since late last year, including a deadly bombing of a mosque in the city of Peshawar that killed over 100 people, mostly […]

A Pakistani court on Tuesday granted former Prime Minister Imran Khan a weeklong bail in two new cases in which he faces terrorism charges, officials said. The ruling gave the embattled ousted premier and now popular opposition leader another brief reprieve from arrest. Since his ouster in a no-confidence vote in Parliament last April, the 70-year-old former cricket player turned […]

Xi signs an agreement with Russian president Vladimir Putin cementing their ‘no limits’ partnership, days after the latter was issued an international arrest warrant. China’s President Xi Jinping has said he signed an agreement with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin bringing their ties into a “new era” of cooperation, as the two leaders called for “responsible dialogue” to resolve the […]

The administration of U.S. President Joe Biden is trying to lower any possible animosity from China over an upcoming visit to the United States by Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen. President Tsai will stopover in California and New York later this month before embarking on an official mission to Central America. An unnamed administration official says the Biden administration has told […]

Since the nationalist forces established a government on the island of Taiwan in 1949, all Chinese leaders have adhered to the reunification of the motherland based on the priority of political and military actions. The only thing that has changed over the past decades is China’s military capability through which it can now attack Taiwan and objectify united China. But […]

Operating nuclear submarines from HMAS Stirling naval base near Perth will increase military surveillance off Australian coastline Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese, UK prime minister Rishi Sunak, and US president Joe Biden, publicly announced an implementation timetable for the AUKUS agreement, which until this week had been very abstract. Under the plan, there would be a combined fleet of nuclear-powered […]

Few people in the West think of China as a kleptocracy, or at least not in the same sense as Vladimir Putin’s Russia. This is perhaps because the scale and nature of China’s global engagement are of an entirely different order. But systemic corruption has also shaped China’s domestic governance, and as Beijing pushes for worldwide influence, it increasingly exports […]

The Taliban’s rule in Afghanistan is a new geopolitical reality that the world is still grappling with. Over the past year, the Taliban has continued its quest for diplomatic recognition with varying degrees of success. While most countries have shied away from affording the group any status of political normalcy, others such as Iran, Russia, and China, pushed by new […]