PLA’s Taiwan drills, China powers up record ‘air battery’: SCMP daily highlights

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The People’s Liberation Army kicked off drills around Taiwan on Monday that it called “legitimate and necessary” to safeguard national unity, soon after Washington approved the largest-ever arms sale to Taiwan.

Cambodia and Thailand have agreed to consolidate their ceasefire and restore exchanges after trilateral talks held in China. The three sides had “in-depth exchanges on working step by step through mutual efforts to resume normal exchanges, rebuild political mutual trust, improve Cambodia-Thailand bilateral relations and safeguard regional stability”, according to Beijing’s foreign ministry.

Ivan Krastev is a Bulgarian political scientist best known for his work on Europe’s democratic crisis, the psychology of post-communist societies and the political legacy of 1989. In this Open Questions interview, Krastev reflects on the fading of the post-Cold War transatlantic order and the psychological shock of a US that no longer treats Europe as a priority.

China’s central bank has set the yuan’s daily reference rate at its strongest level in 15 months, as the currency strengthened in offshore trading and briefly broke through the closely watched seven-per-US-dollar threshold.

In the Gobi Desert outside Golmud in the northwestern province of Qinghai, a row of white tanks stands tall in the open wilderness. Inside, air is compressed and cooled to -194 degrees Celsius (-317 Fahrenheit), and then it becomes liquid.

This is the world’s largest liquid-air energy storage plant. And it is nearly ready, according to a Science and Technology Daily report on December 23.

China is tapping the brakes on some subway expansions, including in certain affluent cities – a decision that analysts said reflects a shift from the debt-fuelled infrastructure boom of the past to a new era of fiscal discipline and investment efficiency.

China has protested to Panama over the removal on the weekend of a monument to the Chinese community, calling on Panamanian authorities to investigate the incident.