China does not plan to invade Taiwan in 2027: US intel report

The Annual Threat Assessment report said that Chinese leaders "do not currently plan to execute an invasion of Taiwan in 2027, nor do they have a fixed timeline for achieving unification".

Chinese ships patrol as the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) conduct military drills on Pingtan island,
in eastern China’s Fujian province, the closest point to Taiwan, on Dec 30, 2025.
(Photo: AFP/Adek Berry)

19 Mar 2026 

WASHINGTON: China does not currently plan to invade Taiwan in 2027 but seeks to take control of the self-ruled island without force, said an annual US intelligence report, which drew ire from Beijing on Thursday (Mar 19).

Urinating at MRT Stations - Cases in court in Jan 2025

2 more men charged with urinating in public at MRT stations

On Jan 14, Li Guorui, 41, pleaded guilty to one charge of being a public nuisance. ST PHOTO: KELVIN CHNG

Nadine Chua

JAN 15, 2025

SINGAPORE - Two more men have been charged with urinating in public at MRT stations.

This comes a day after a man was fined $2,000 for the same offence at Outram Park MRT station.

On Jan 15, Zhou Hongwei, 57, was charged with urinating in front of the passenger service centre at Potong Pasir MRT station on Jan 13 at around 7.30pm.

New "United Front"? Chinese Agents in South East Asia?

Firstpost is an India-based, obviously biased, anti-Chinese, news channel. So they would highlight or feature any news item that would put China in a bad light. But they do also cover the news about China, like this story about Linda Sun and Alice Guo.

ASEAN, China and the trust deficit

RAHMAN YAACOB

The gap between rhetoric and action is Beijing’s biggest
problem – and the region showed it isn’t afraid to call this out.

China’s Premier Li Qiang waves amid the assembled ASEAN leaders following the ASEAN-China Summit,
6 September 2023 (Willy Kurniawan, Mast Irham via AFP/Getty Images)

12 Sep 2023

Trust (or the lack of it) seems to be the central theme in describing relations between the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and China. Several ASEAN leaders emphasised this point during the leaders’ summit last week in Jakarta.

Will the Indian economy ever surpass that of China?

Alicia García-Herrero

Apr 30, 2024 

India’s growth rate is clearly higher than that of China, especially since 2022, and there is no expectation this trend will
change any time soon. Photo: Bloomberg

Had I asked this question ten years ago, the answer would have been clear cut: Impossible. But things are changing. The Chinese economy is five to six times bigger than that of India, but India’s growth rate is clearly higher than that of China, especially since 2022, and there is no expectation this trend will change any time soon. This means that, unless a major shock hits the Indian economy, it will continue to converge in size with that of China for at least 30 years until India completes its urbanization process. Whether this will make the Indian economy bigger than that of China is hard to tell since it will depend on how fast China will decelerate but also how long India will continue to benefit from its current long-hanging fruits to create growth, from urbanization, a growing population and a very favourable external environment as the most obvious hedge for the West against the rise of China.

How China became a Military Superpower

 TL;DR - They hack their way:

How Deng and his heirs misunderstood Singapore

MARK R THOMPSON 

01 FEB, 2019



As official China celebrates the four decades of “reform and opening” that began in late 1978 to early 1979, it is instructive to recall the role Singapore played in this process. The fulsome eulogies for Lee Kuan Yew offered by Chinese officials in 2015, beginning with Xi Jinping himself (who has been noticeably less enthusiastic in his praise for Deng Xiaoping given China’s top leader’s “family feud” over who deserves the most credit for the reforms), are just the most obvious indication that Lee and the “Singapore model” more generally have played (quite literally) an oversized role in China’s rapid transition from Maoism to “Market-Leninism”. Appropriately, Lee was honoured late last year as one of the foreigners who helped China most in its reform process.

The future of ‘communist capitalism’ in China

The question of whether Xi-ism is killing Deng-ism is growing 

MARTIN WOLF

MARCH 13 2024 

What is the economic future of China? This question raises many specific issues, notably China’s persistent macroeconomic imbalances, the threat of population decline and worsening relations with important parts of the outside world, above all, an increasingly hostile US. But underneath all of these lies a deeper one: is “communist capitalism”, that seemingly self-contradicting invention of Deng Xiaoping, inexorably fading away under Xi Jinping? Will China’s regime ossify and, in the end, collapse, as the Soviet Union did? 

China-US Relations, Taiwan, and ASEAN

China seen as most influential power in Southeast Asia: ASEAN Studies Centre

But survey respondents from the 10 ASEAN states also expressed concern about the country's expanding influence.

Lowy Institute's Asia Power Index 2023: (from first to tenth place) United States, China, Japan, India, Russia, Australia, South Korea, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand.

Chew Hui Min

13 Feb 2023 


SINGAPORE: China is seen as the most influential economic and political power in Southeast Asia, but its expanding influence is not viewed favourably by a majority of respondents in a survey of Southeast Asians.

China’s Lessons from Russia’s War

Jun 17, 2022

KEVIN RUDD

For Chinese President Xi Jinping, a Marxist-Leninist dialectician, the events in Ukraine won’t fundamentally alter China's grand historical ascent. As a cautionary tale, Russia's military failures will simply impel China's leadership to make even more substantial preparations before seizing Taiwan.



MELBOURNE – Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, two views quickly emerged in the West about what lesson China would take from the war. The first suggested that NATO’s failure to deter Russia – or to defend Ukraine directly – would inspire China to advance the timetable for a planned invasion of Taiwan, or even to capitalize on the chaos brought about by the war to attack the island immediately. But after Russia’s military ran into significant and unexpected challenges early on, an alternate line of analysis emerged suggesting that China has now been significantly deterred from ever attempting to take Taiwan.

Slowing growth in China and what it could mean for the World.

 WSJ video on persistent deflation in China and how it would affect the Global Economy

Tourism in 2023, 13.76 million tourists to Singapore

That's about 70% of pre-pandemic arrivals. 

For 2024, tourists arrivals is expected to be as between 15 - 16 million. (Which probably means that we could expect maybe 17 million or more because Singapore tends to be conservative in our estimates.)

US intel shows China's army had missiles filled with water instead of fuel in a corruption scandal that led to Xi's military purge: Bloomberg

Matthew Loh

Jan 8, 2024

Chinese soldiers atop mobile rocket launchers in a parade in Beijing's Tiananmen Square in 2019 to celebrate the 70th Anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China.Kevin Frayer/Getty Images

• US intelligence said China's military purge stemmed from serious equipment issues, Bloomberg reported.
• Examples of these included missiles that had been filled with water instead of fuel, the report said.
• The problems are a blow to Xi Jinping's focus on the Rocket Force, China's main nuclear arm.

China’s Difficult Challenge to Reach the Middle (Or why China won't surpass US GDP)

Growth dreams deferred. 

China’s per capita income of $21,400 places it just above the 60th percentile of the global income distribution.

By Enda Curran

October 23, 2023

An unlikely geopolitical subplot of 2023 is the emerging view that China’s economy isn’t going to overtake the US after all.

Swift Justice in Singapore (A.K.A. "History is written by winners"... in exile... on Douyin...)

China "Karen"

'History is written by winners': Woman, 29, who verbally abused SGH nurse & deported to China

She was deported after spending 29 days behind bars.

Winnie Li

November 09, 2023

The woman who verbally abused a Singapore General Hospital staff and was jailed and deported for it, has taken to social media to write: "History is written by winners." 

Her latest update online came in the form of a Douyin video posted at around 1:20am on Nov. 9, 2023.

[Right! Losers tiktok & Douyin... Or blog. Like me. :-( ]

Remarks by President Biden at a Campaign Reception | Salt Lake City, UT

August 10, 2023

Private Residence
Salt Lake City, Utah

THE PRESIDENT: Please, please sit down. Thank you. Well, first of all, you know, I had forgotten about that incident. It was the time when there was a lot of discussion going on in the administration: would we recognize same-sex marriage.

And I was rai- — I was a lucky man. I was raised by a father who was a — thought everyone was entitled to be treated with dignity. I remember when I was — I hadn’t thought about this a long time. I remember when I was a kid, I — I was a lifeguard at a country club, but I wanted to — I was — got deeply involved in the Civil Rights Movement. And so, I wanted to work in what they called “The Bucket,” which was a public housing complex — a large complex on the east side of Wilmington — and — which was all African American.

And they had the — like all big cities, they had three major swimming pools. One on the east side, which is where they — a thousand African American kids a day would come and swim in this big pool. And I wanted to be a lifeguard there. 

In Singapore, loud echoes of Beijing’s positions generate anxiety

President Xi Jinping wants to build influence among ethnic-Chinese communities in Southeast Asia, raising concerns that the Chinese Communist Party is stoking divided loyalties

Waterloo Street, one of the oldest streets in multiracial Singapore, is host to Chinese temples, food centers and
newspaper vendors, alongside a Hindu temple and a synagogue.

By Shibani Mahtani 
Amrita Chandradas

July 24 at 5:00 p.m.


SINGAPORE — As China accelerates efforts to build its global power, President Xi Jinping has laid out an extravagant vision for overseas ethnic-Chinese communities that he hopes will “give shape to a powerful joint force for advancing the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.”

China's aircraft carriers play 'theatrical' role but pose little threat yet: Analysts

A helicopter takes off from China's Shandong aircraft carrier, over Pacific Ocean waters, south of Okinawa
prefecture, Japan, in this handout photo taken Apr 15, 2023, and released by the Joint Staff Office of the
Defense Ministry of Japan, Apr 17, 2023.
(File photo: Joint Staff Office of the Defense Ministry of Japan/HANDOUT via REUTERS)

05 May 2023 

HONG KONG: When China sailed one of its two active aircraft carriers, the Shandong, east of Taiwan last month as part of military drills surrounding the island, it was showcasing a capability that it has yet to master and could take years to perfect.

As Beijing modernises its military, its formidable missile forces and other naval vessels, such as cutting-edge cruisers, are posing a concern for the US and its allies. But it could be more than a decade before China can mount a credible carrier threat far from its shores, according to four military attaches and six defence analysts familiar with regional naval deployments.

Commentary: How to stop a war between America and China

In the militarised rivalry between China and the US, one side’s deterrence is another side’s escalation, says the Financial Times' Gideon Rachman.

The Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Milius (DDG 69) conducts a routine Taiwan Strait transit on
Sunday, April 16, 2023. (U.S. Navy via AP)

Gideon Rachman

26 Apr 2023

LONDON: Visiting Washington last week, it was striking how commonplace talk of war between the United States and China has become. That discussion has been fed by loose-lipped statements from American generals musing about potential dates for the opening of hostilities.

Singapore, China hold joint naval exercise, amid routine port call by US submarine

Personnel from the Republic of Singapore Navy and People’s Liberation Army (Navy) conducted joint training at the
Damage Control Training Centre in Changi Naval Base. Ministry of Defence

• Singapore and China are holding a joint naval exercise between April 28 and May 1
• This comes after a US submarine made a routine port call in Singapore this week
• The Sino-Singapore drills will consist of a shore and sea phase at Changi Naval Base and the southern reaches of the South China Sea respectively

SUFIYAN SAMSURI

April 28, 2023


SINGAPORE — The Singapore and China navies are holding a joint maritime exercise from April 28 to May 1, which consists of a shore and sea phase, the Ministry of Defence (Mindef) said in a press statement on Friday (April 28).

This year’s drills will be the second in the bilateral series, called Exercise Maritime Cooperation, between the two countries, with the first taking place in 2015.

This comes as a United States submarine — the USS Columbia — made a routine port call at the Changi Naval Base this week.