Although the more than one hour meeting between Chinese Defense Minister Dong Jun and U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore on Friday was the first face-to-face meeting between the two countries’ defense chiefs since 2022, both chose to cut short the formalities and go straight to the core issues impacting Sino-U.S. security relations — the Taiwan question and the South China Sea disputes.

When Japanese director Ryo Takeuchi filmed the 2011 NHK documentary “The Chronicle of The Yangtze River,” there had been plenty of films about the river before it, most of which were focused on the Three Gorges Dam project — an engineering miracle — and its huge impact on people’s lives and the natural environment along the river. We got to know about the huge difficulty and technological breakthroughs involved in this project from various productions by China’s State television and National Geographic, as well as the lives of people faced with dramatic changes in a Canadian production titled “Up the Yangtze.”

As the Group of Seven (G7) finance ministers and central bank governors convened in Italy from Thursday to Saturday, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen urged those countries to form a “wall of opposition” against China’s industrial policies.

The latest farce staged by the Philippines to challenge China’s sovereignty over Huangyan Island in the South China Sea came to an end Thursday after a convoy of so-called civilian boats tasked with trespassing into the waters around the Chinese reef — in the name of distributing fuel and food to Filipino fishermen there — called off the plan even before reaching the targeted area while declaring “mission accomplished.”

China announced some of its strongest moves yet to revive its property sector, encouraging local governments to buy real estate and relaxing mortgage rules as it seeks to boost a recovery in the world’s second-largest economy.

The latest U.S. decision to raise tariffs on a host of clean energy products from China is not just economically myopic but also detrimental to its own transition to a greener economy.

During the May Day holiday, while countless people reveled in popular tourist spots, a specific group opted for an unconventional destination: the outside of a police station in Changsha, Hunan Province.

Apple has apologized for its “Crush!” ad, which sparked a furious backlash among artists, musicians, and other creators. AdAge reports Apple said the video “missed the mark,” and it has scrapped plans to run the commercial on TV.