Day: June 26, 2025

The National Palace Museum has defended its decision to partner with the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art rather than its Beijing counterpart to mark its 100th anniversary, given the current state of cross-strait relations.

A day after Israel hit Iran on June 13, several news outlets, including The Telegraph, reported mysterious cargo planes leaving China on three consecutive days flying westward across northern China before crossing into Kazakhstan, and then south through Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, before dropping off of radar tracking systems in western Iran. The newspaper said, “Aviation experts have noted that the type of plane used, Boeing 747 freighters, are commonly used for transporting military equipment and weapons, and hired to fly government contract orders.” However, others throw doubt on this hypothesis, saying tracking is often cut off before reaching the plane’s destination, in this case marked as Luxembourg. Following Washington’s surgical strikes on three Iranian nuclear sites, is China providing more than just rhetorical support? Our guests: Renato Cruz de Castro MOFA Taiwan Fellow at National Chengchi University Hsiao-chuan Liao National Taiwan University Department of Political Science Associate Professor and Deputy Chair Ocean Affairs Council Expert Advisory Member Mor Sobol Tamkang University Diplomacy and International Relations Associate Professor Chapters 00:00:00 – Iran-Israel War’s Impact in Indo-Pacific 00:01:19 – U.S. Intel on Iran’s Nuclear Program 00:10:45 – Beijing’s Position on Mid-East Conflict 00:19:15 – Is U.S. Distracted from Indo-Pacific? #Iran #Tehran #Israel #TelAviv #IranIsraelConflict #IndoPacific #USIntelligence #USMilitary #China #PRC #Beijing #USmilitary #USstrikes #DonaldTrump #BenjaminNetanyahu #XiJinping #PLA #PeoplesLiberationArmy #TaiwanStrait #AircraftCarrier #IranNuclearProgram #MiddleEast #TaiwanUSRelations #TaiwanTalks

00:00 Introduction00:10 Housing Crisis03:37 UK “China Audit”07:15 Tech Race: Chips, Cars, Drones & AI

A user revealed that eating expired food or pet food is nothing new. Now, many people in China have started eating “people’s feed.”

Dr. Elizabeth Economy and Ely Ratner sit down to discuss challenging security environment in the Indo-Pacific region, the specific goals and ambitions of China in the Western Pacific and East Asia, their experiences in the Biden Administration and the state of the alliance system in the region, based off his recent Foreign Affairs Piece, “The Case for a Pacific Defense Pact”. The two scholars touch on continuity between both the Biden and Trump administrations’ strategy in the Indo-Pacific, but also increasing intra-Asian cooperation and awareness between nations as the China threat grows. They conclude with a conversation about what a Pacific Defense Pact would look like, including the importance of long-term credible deterrence, how other partners could be brought in, and aligning objectives to help create a viable collective defense.

China’s Consumer Crash: The End of the Chinese Dream?China used to be the engine of global consumption.It fueled Apple’s iPhone sales, made Louis Vuitton richer than ever, and turned hotpot restaurants into cultural icons with two-hour waits. But today?