South China Morning Post - Policies & Politics

Taiwan’s main opposition leader hailed US President Donald Trump’s recent comments opposing the island’s independence as a “relatively positive first step” towards reducing tensions. Cheng Li-wun, chairwoman of the Kuomintang (KMT), told the South China Morning Post on Sunday in an exclusive interview: “The ‘one China’ principle and opposition to Taiwan independence have always ...

Last week, Chinese President Xi Jinping’s chief of staff Cai Qi, the fifth most senior official in the ruling Communist Party, was chosen to lead the Central Party School, Beijing’s leading academy for cadres. The Central Party School is not just any training site for Chinese officials, but part of a nationwide system that Xi considers key to the ideological purity of the party ...

A Taiwan-US defence planning programme has sparked debate in Taiwan’s legislature over whether its strategic value justifies its higher cost after the government proposed raising its budget more than twelvefold next year. At the centre of the controversy is a sharp increase in funding for the Joint Force Design (JFD) programme, a bilateral defence planning mechanism used to asse...

The Pentagon has designated Alibaba, BYD, Baidu and more than a dozen other prominent Chinese companies as “Chinese military companies” operating in the United States, widening a blacklist that has become an increasingly effective tool in Washington’s campaign to restrict China’s access to American capital, technology and government contracts. In a Federal Register notice schedu...

Taiwan has accused Beijing of escalating tensions after mainland Chinese coastguard and survey vessels carried out law-enforcement operations in waters off the island’s east coast. Over the weekend, mainland China’s transport ministry announced a “special maritime traffic law enforcement operation” and dispatched a flotilla of coastguard vessels into the waters east of Taiwan. T...