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A small but growing number of Chinese people are fleeing home, with their sights set on Germany thanks to its reputation as a safe haven for refugees
Ling*, 42, arrived in Germany with his 10-year-old daughter, Feifei* in late 2024. Their journey from Jiangsu province in eastern China to the small town of Schöppenstedt on the outskirts of Hanover took more than three months and cost thousands of pounds in payments to people smugglers and plane tickets. Starting in August, it culminated with a dangerous wintry trek from Bosnia into the European Union – first Croatia, then Slovenia, Italy and, finally, Germany.
Ling is one of the hundreds of Chinese people who claimed asylum in Germany in 2024.

Volklec aims to start making batteries at part-government-funded site near Coventry before building its own factory
A startup has said it has learned from Britain’s faltering attempts to manufacture batteries for electric vehicles, as it signed a deal to license technology from an established Chinese firm.
Coventry-based Volklec plans to manufacture batteries for cars, boats, construction vehicles and aircraft using technology from China’s Far East Battery (FEB), a maker of batteries mainly for electric bikes.

US globalism is in retreat and Australia’s fear of abandonment is more acute than in ages
The iconoclastic news whirlwind around Donald Trump points to a new US approach on the international stage: globalism and free trade are out. Spheres of influence are back in vogue. It’s not isolationism, it’s transactional mercantilism. But with Australia heavily invested in its US relationship we need to calmly undertake a net assessment: to weigh up what’s at stake while looking to engage with our region more fully.

The Coast Guard said it was investigating how the cable was severed and said it could not rule out the possibility of sabotage.

In siding with Russia at the UN, the US has laid bare the extent of the shift. Bilateral visits cannot disguise the underlying crisis
The rumblings prompted by Donald Trump’s re-election soon gathered force. First came tariffs and threats of territorial annexation; then the greater shocks of JD Vance’s Valentine’s Day and Mr Trump’s enthusiastic amplification of Kremlin lines on Ukraine.
On Monday came another seismic moment. For more than a decade, the UN security council has been largely by the split between the five permanent members – Russia and China on one side; the US, France and Britain on the other. This time, when the US brought a resolution calling for an end to the war in Ukraine on the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion, it did not criticise Moscow, demand its withdrawal or back Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. The result was that China and Russia backed the resolution – while the UK and France, having failed to temper it, abstained.

Brother of the Dalai Lama and envoy who led talks on the exiled leader’s possible return to Tibet with the Chinese government
The life of Gyalo Thondup, who has died aged 97, was transformed after one of his younger brothers, Lhamo Thondup, was identified by senior Tibetan monks as the reincarnation of the great 13th Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader who in 1912 had declared Tibet’s independence. In 1940, the boy was installed as the 14th Dalai Lama.
At once, they were catapulted to being the leading family in the country, swapping their farmhouse for a mansion in the city of Lhasa, where Gyalo attended a private school for the children of aristocrats. In 1942, aged 14, he was sent to Nanjing, China.

Appeal from officials, including two senior figures from Trump’s first term, comes amid reports National Science Foundation’s budget will be slashed
Chuck Hagel, the former US defense secretary, and other former US national security officials, including two senior figures from first term, on Tuesday warned that was outpacing the US in critical technology fields and urged Congress to increase funding for federal scientific research.
The appeal comes a week after the National Science Foundation (NSF), which funds science research, fired 170 people in response to Donald Trump’s order to reduce the federal workforce. An NSF spokesman declined comment on reports that hundreds more layoffs were possible and that the agency’s budget could be slashed by billions.

As President Trump turns toward Russia, Taiwan grapples with its reliance on U.S. support in the face of conflict with China.

The U.S. is escalating its trade conflict with China by proposing steep fees on Chinese-built ships and shipping companies entering American ports. This plan would impose millions of dollars in new ...

Taiwan’s coastguard says it ‘cannot be ruled out that it was a grey-zone intrusion by China’
Taiwan’s coastguard has detained a cargo ship and its Chinese crew after an undersea cable in the Taiwan Strait was damaged on Tuesday, saying it cannot rule out the possibility it was a deliberate “grey zone” act.
“Whether the cause of the undersea cable breakage was intentional sabotage or a simple accident remains to be clarified by further investigation,” the coastguard said in a statement. “It cannot be ruled out that it was a grey-zone intrusion by China.”

The historic capital of China is rendered in gloriously intricate detail, but this animated feature feels like a state-sponsored history lesson
The first thing you need to know about this animated feature from China is that it is 168 minutes long, or two hours and 48 minutes. That’s a lot of time to spend watching a story about Chinese poet/warriors from the eighth century, celebrated via a screenplay that’s dense with historical incident drawn from the subjects’ biographies. If you know nothing about this period of history, which unfolds during the Tang dynasty, you’ll certainly learn a lot, but you’ll need to pay close attention to the welter of journeys to far-flung provinces, battles fought in mountain passes, and characters of note met along the way.
The two main characters are governor and general Gao Shi (voiced as a young man by Yang Tianxiang, as an elder by Wu Junquan) and poet Li Bai (Ling Zhenhe and then Xuan Xiaoming). The latter was considered one of the greatest poets in Chinese history, and the film honours him and his work by featuring dozens of his poems, often declaimed lustily by the character in various states of inebriation (he was a legendary drinker). Gao Shi was also a poet of some note apparently, but the film makes it clear he was not in Li Bai’s league. Instead, Gao Shi gets to basically narrate the story of his and Li Bai’s entwined lives in one long flashback, told to a visiting luminary over the course of a single night before a decisive battle. (Surely the storytelling could wait so that the elderly Gao Shi could have a good sleep before the fight?)

Airservices Australia notified Australian defence force about drills 10 minutes after initial contact with pilot, estimates hears
Australian officials did not know Chinese warships were conducting live-fire drills in the Tasman Sea until a Virgin commercial pilot alerted aviation authorities half an hour after they had begun.
Officials from Airservices Australia, the agency responsible for aviation safety, told a Senate estimates hearing on Monday night that it was first informed of the live-fire drill at 9.58am on Friday morning, when a Virgin pilot was informed by the Chinese navy flotilla by radio.