Dong Jun rails at length about democratic island’s ‘separatists’ during Shangri-la Dialogue defence conference in Singapore

Peaceful “reunification” with Taiwan remains China’s goal but the prospect is being eroded by Taiwanese “separatists” and external forces, the Chinese defence minister, Dong Jun, has said.

Taiwan – which is democratically governed, and has never been ruled from the Communist-run People’s Republic of China – on 20 May inaugurated its newly elected president, Lai Ching-te. The routine democratic transition was greeted with fury by the Chinese Communist party, which staged war games around the island as a “punishment”.

Spacecraft to collect samples from rarely explored area before attempting unprecedented liftoff from ‘dark side’ for trip home

China’s Chang’e-6 lunar probe has successfully landed on the far side of the moon to collect samples, state media reported on Sunday.

The lander set down in the immense South Pole-Aitken Basin, one of the largest known impact craters in the solar system, Xinhua news agency said, citing the China National Space Administration.

Last week’s conviction of dissidents came in the biggest case since introduction of a new national security law

The verdict wasn’t surprising but outside room no 2 of the West Kowloon courthouse, people still wept. The panel of Hong Kong national security judges had set down two days for the hearing but dispensed with the core business in about 15 minutes. In the city’s largest ever national security trial – involving the prosecution of pro-democracy campaigners and activists from a group known as the “Hong Kong 47” – almost all the defendants were found guilty of conspiracy to commit subversion.

Their crime was trying to win an election, holding unofficial primaries in 2020 attended by an estimated 600,000 residents.

A hundred years ago, George Mallory and Andrew Irvine set off to conquer the summit. Mallory’s body was later discovered, but now the remains of both are nowhere to be found. Who moved them?

“It will be a great adventure,” George Mallory wrote to his mother before leaving for the summit of Everest a century ago this week.

His disappearance, along with his climbing partner Andrew Irvine, has become one of the most alluring mysteries in the history of exploration. A final, tantalising glimpse of the pair through mist not far from the summit has inspired successive generations of historians, authors and film-makers with competing theories on a single question: did they reach the top?

US says 14 protesters have been jailed for ‘peacefully participating in political activities’ that should have been allowed

The Hong Kong government has rejected western criticism of the conviction of 14 pro-democracy activists for subversion, calling it “untruthful, slandering and smearing”.

The US said on Friday it was “deeply concerned” about the guilty verdicts announced in the national security law trial of the activists in Hong Kong. The state department said the 14 activists had been subjected to “politically motivated prosecution and jailed simply for peacefully participating in political activities” that should have been protected under the basic law, which was supposed to guarantee a degree of autonomy for Hong Kong when it came under Beijing’s rule in 1997.

Videos on Douyin give people step-by-step instructions on how to get to the US – and then leave them stranded upon arrival

This article is copublished with Documented, a multilingual news site about immigrants in New York, and the Markup, a non-profit, investigative newsroom that challenges technology to serve the public good.

Xiong couldn’t pinpoint exactly what finally prompted him to leave his home town in China, the only place he had lived for 32 years, and embark on the arduous journey on foot through Central and South America to reach the United States in 2023. However, he clearly remembered the catalyst that first ignited the idea.

Networks in China and Iran also used AI models to create and post disinformation but campaigns did not reach large audiences

OpenAI on Thursday released its first ever report on how its artificial intelligence tools are being used for covert influence operations, revealing that the company had disrupted disinformation campaigns originating from Russia, China, Israel and Iran.

Malicious actors used the company’s generative AI models to create and post propaganda content across social media platforms, and to translate their content into different languages. None of the campaigns gained traction or reached large audiences, according to the report.

China shows off mechanical canine with an automatic rifle on its back at joint military drills with Cambodia

The Chinese army has debuted its latest weapon: a gun-toting robotic dog.

The mechanical canine, which has an automatic rifle on its back, was front and centre of recent joint military drills with Cambodia, according to footage from the state broadcaster CCTV.

Sixteen of 47 pro-democracy campaigners had denied charges of ‘conspiracy to subvert state power’ in national security case

Fourteen people have been found guilty in Hong Kong’s largest national security trial, the prosecution of the “Hong Kong 47” pro-democracy campaigners, in a ruling that was immediately condemned by rights groups.

In a verdict delivered on Thursday, the panel of judges handpicked by Hong Kong’s government found 14 people had committed the national security offence of “conspiracy to subvert state power” by holding unofficial election primaries in 2020. The convicted included one organiser and 13 candidates, almost all of them former politicians.

We are raiding the Guardian Long Read archives to bring you some classic pieces from years past, with new introductions from the authors.

This week, from 2021: During the second world war, Chinese merchant seamen helped keep Britain fed, fuelled and safe – and many gave their lives doing so. But from late 1945, hundreds of them who had settled in Liverpool suddenly disappeared. Now their children are piecing together the truth. By Dan Hancox

Ex-England footballer’s deal with Alibaba’s AliExpress follows tie-ups with Hugo Boss and SharkNinja

The former England footballer David Beckham has signed up as a global ambassador for AliExpress, an online retail platform owned by the Chinese tech group Alibaba.

The deal comes in the run-up to the Euro 2024 football tournament, which starts in June, and is the latest tie-up for Beckham, following hot on the heels of partnerships with the suit maker Hugo Boss and the air fryer maker SharkNinja in recent weeks. He is also an ambassador for Tudor watches, Tempur mattresses, Unicef, and Nespresso coffee machines, and he also fronts a Walkers crisps ad.

Chow Hang-tung, a prominent barrister, among those held over social media posts before Tiananmen Square anniversary

Hong Kong police have arrested six people, marking the first time that the city’s new national security law, known as Article 23, has been used against suspects since it was implemented in March.

The six people, aged between 37 and 65, are accused of publishing messages with seditious intent ahead of an “upcoming sensitive date”, according to a police statement.

A TikTok ban threatens to destroy millions of jobs and silence diverse voices. It would change the world for the worse

I’m a TikTok creator. I’ve used TikTok to build a multimillion dollar business, focused on sharing interesting things I’ve learned in life and throughout my years in college. TikTok allowed me to create a community and help further my goal of educating the public. I always feared that one day, it would be threatened. And now, it’s happening.

Why does the US government want to ban TikTok? The reasons given include TikTok’s foreign ownership and its “addictive” nature, but I suspect that part of the reason is that the app primarily appeals to younger generations who often hold political and moral views that differ significantly from those of older generations, including many of today’s politicians.

Dominic Andre is a content creator and the CEO of The Lab

Concerns London listing of retailer facing forced labour allegations goes ahead while parliament is dissolved

Senior politicians, including three parliamentary committee chairs, have called for more scrutiny of Shein as the fast-fashion retailer founded in China sets its sights on a London stock market listing.

Shein is reportedly in talks to float on the London Stock Exchange after an attempt to float in New York faced regulatory hurdles.

In this intimate study of a period of upheaval, a Chinese-born writer uncovers the stories of four young citizens whose lives were transformed by Deng Xiaoping’s reforms – and the obstacles they strove to overcome

When Yuan Yang was four years old, she tells us, her parents brought her from China to the UK as they pursued new educational opportunities. Although Private Revolutions, her vivid and detailed memoir, is not primarily the story of her own family, they, too, exemplify the theme of the book: a close look at how China’s citizens responded to the potentially transformative opportunities that four decades of rapid growth afforded.

Under Mao, Yang’s father’s family laboured as peasants in western China; as a child, her father paid his school fees with sweet potatoes, and when the sweet potato season was over he ate watermelon. From this unpromising beginning, he made it to university and later to a doctorate in computer science in the UK. Yang writes of his departure from China: “It was a simple decision for him: all the students who could leave were doing so. Chinese academia lagged behind the west, especially in the sciences, and the Beijing government’s massacre of students and workers in Tiananmen Square in 1989 had left many questioning the future of China’s universities.”

Ukraine president urges Joe Biden and Xi Jinping to ‘show your leadership’ and send message to Moscow

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has released a desperate video plea calling on world leaders to attend a “peace summit” next month in Switzerland after a deadly Russian attack on a DIY hypermarket in Kharkiv on Saturday killed at least 16people and injured dozens more.

Zelenskiy appealed in particular to the US president, Joe Biden, and the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, to attend the summit, which is due to start on 15 June. “Please, show your leadership in advancing the peace – the real peace and not just a pause between the strikes,” said Zelenskiy in English.

Foreign ministry’s claim follows death of ex-Royal Marine charged with spying in Britain for Hong Kong

China has accused the UK of false accusations, “wanton stigmatisation” and arbitrary arrests after the unexplained death of a man charged with illegally assisting Hong Kong’s foreign intelligence service.

China’s foreign ministry office in Hong Kong said in a statement on its website on Saturday that it strongly condemned Britain for what it said were false accusations against Chinese citizens, infringing their lawful rights.

Exclusive: Experts say changes to Grand Mosque of Shadian mark completion of five-year sinification campaign

The last major mosque in China to have retained Arabic-style features has lost its domes and had its minarets radically modified, marking what experts say is the completion of a government campaign to sinicise the country’s Muslim places of worship.

The Grand Mosque of Shadian, one of China’s biggest and grandest mosques, towers over the small town from which it takes its name in south-western Yunnan province.

With its magnificently tranquil art gallery, its ‘lonely library’ and its pointy white chapel, Aranya is a blissful oasis for burnt-out urbanites – and architecture firms are now clambering to build there

Every summer, since the days of Mao Zedong, the leaders of China’s Communist party have decamped to the coastal resort of Beidaihe to debate the country’s future from the comfort of luxurious seaside villas hidden behind high walls. Four hours’ drive from the distractions of Beijing, it has been a perfect place to escape the capital’s stifling heat, take in the sea air, and conduct secretive conclaves in heavily guarded compounds, in between refreshing dips.

But in recent years, the region has been attracting visitors of a very different kind. On a chilly morning, just a little way south along the coast, the windswept beach is teaming with style-conscious twentysomethings. Crowds of young tourists, wrapped in thick down coats, queue up to take photos in sub-zero temperatures – not next to statues of Mao, but in front of striking works of contemporary architecture.

Jeremy Clarkson’s reality TV show has particular appeal for young people with no experience of farming

To one Chinese reviewer, Jeremy Clarkson is “a stupid old British man with too much money who farmed for a year without harvesting anything”. To another, he is “the British version of Li Ziqi”, a 33-year-old woman who is one of China’s biggest internet celebrities thanks to videos of herself farming and cooking in the idyllic Sichuanese countryside.

Clarkson’s Farm, the former Top Gear presenter’s beguilingly popular reality television show about his pivot from petrolhead to farmer, has been hugely successful on his home turf, becoming the most watched show on Amazon Prime in the UK. It is also a hit in China.

Kuo Chiu, known as KC to his friends, teaches urban design at Tunghai University in Taiwan. He’s also one of many of the country's citizens who practises rifle skills in his spare time, in case of a Chinese invasion.

The population of Taiwan has long grown familiar with Beijing’s pledge to one day ‘unify’ what it claims is a breakaway province. But recently, there has been a significant increase in aggressive and intimidatory acts.

Taiwan’s 160,000 active military personnel are vastly outnumbered by China’s 2 million-member armed forces, leading many civilians to turn to voluntary medical and combat training to protect themselves.

The Guardian's video team spent time with KC to see how he is preparing

PLA says exercises launched in response to president’s inauguration will test capacity to ‘launch joint attacks and occupy key areas’

China has conducted mock missile strikes against Taiwan on a second day of military drills, which it said was testing its ability to “seize power”, and inflict punishment for “separatist acts” after the inauguration of the island’s new president.

The exercises, which involved Chinese military units from the air force, rocket force, navy, army and coastguard, were announced suddenly on Thursday morning, with maps showing five approximate target areas in the sea surrounding Taiwan’s main island. Other areas targeted Taiwan’s offshore islands, which are close to the Chinese mainland.

China has launched two days of exercises after island swore in new president. How do they compare with previous ones?

China has launched two days of military drills around Taiwan after the island swore in its new president, Lai Ching-te.

Lai takes over from Tsai Ing-wen, Taiwan’s president since 2016. Both are from the Democratic Progressive party (DPP), a pro-sovereignty political party detested by the Chinese government, which views the group as separatists. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has vowed to take control of it, with force if necessary.

UK defence secretary, Grant Shapps, said Moscow was receiving help with combat equipment for use in Ukraine

• See all our Ukraine war coverage

Joe Biden’s administration has challenged a claim by the British defence secretary, Grant Shapps, that China is sending “lethal aid” to Russia for use in its war in Ukraine.

Speaking on Wednesday, Shapps cited “new intelligence” that suggested Beijing was giving Moscow deadly “combat equipment” for the first time. On Thursday, the Ministry of Defence in London said it would not give further details.

Taiwan’s military says its forces are on alert and is confident it can protect the island as China’s state media report mock airstrikes with jets carrying live missiles

China has launched two days of military drills surrounding Taiwan, as “punishment” for what it called the “separatist acts” of holding an election and inaugurating a new president.

Chinese state media claimed that dozens of People’s Liberation Army (PLA) fighter jets carrying live missiles had carried out mock strikes against “high value military targets”, operating alongside navy and rocket forces. Propaganda images spreading online and republished by state media also mentioned China’s land-based Dongfeng ballistic missiles, but did not say if they were being used.

Joe Biden and Donald Trump agree on tariffs against China. The world has lost its biggest cheerleader for globalisation

The biggest shift in American politics has nothing to do with Stormy Daniels or Michael Cohen, Fox News or golf courses. Indeed, its author is not Donald J Trump. Yet the implications stretch far beyond this year’s presidential elections, and affect countries across the world. The era of free trade is dying, and the man bringing down the guillotine represents the party that in the past three decades has been evangelically pro-globalisation: the Democrats.

Last week, Joe Biden imposed tariffs on a range of Chinese-made goods. Electric cars produced in China will now be hit with import tax of 100%, chips and solar cells 50% and lithium-ion batteries 25%. These and other tariffs on goods worth an estimated $18bn a year amount to a rounding error in the giant US economy. And in an election year, Mr Biden, who hails from Scranton, Pennsylvania, is fretting about support not only in his home state but across the country’s industrial heartland, gutted by decades of free trade.

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

Ciaran Martin says US warning that China is targeting key infrastructure should be taken more seriously

The UK is not paying enough attention to a “gamechanging” shift in China’s cyber-espionage tactics towards infiltrating critical infrastructure including energy and communications networks, a former head of Britain’s cybersecurity agency has warned.

Ciaran Martin, the ex-chief executive of the National Cyber Security Centre, said a warning from the US this year that Chinese state-backed hackers were targeting key sectors was a pivotal moment in Beijing’s approach to cyberwarfare.

Lai Ching-te’s inauguration speech has been panned by China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, which labelled the new president a “dangerous separatist”.

Beijing has warned of undefined reprisals against Taiwan after the inauguration speech of new president Lai Ching-te in which he maintained his government’s position on sovereignty, and did not concede to Beijing’s claim that Taiwan is a province of China.

In a statement late Tuesday, China’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) called Lai’s speech “a downright confession of Taiwan independence”, and again labeled Lai a “dangerous separatist”.

Comments come as Commission president hints EU could impose tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles

• Business live – latest updates

Janet Yellen, the US treasury secretary, has urged the EU to intervene urgently to dampen the growing export levels of Chinese cut-price green technology including solar panels and wind turbines, pushing European leaders to move to a full-scale trade war.

At the same time she urged German bank executives on Tuesday to step up efforts to comply with sanctions against Russia and shut down efforts to circumvent them to avoid potential penalties themselves that could see the US cut them off from dollar access.

Bim Afolami’s comments distance British government from protectionist moves by US

The UK cannot afford to give the “cold shoulder” to China, the City minister said on Monday, in comments that will distance the British government from the Biden administration’s protectionist crackdown.

Addressing financial services bosses at the City Week conference in London’s Guildhall, Bim Afolami said it was “crucial” to engage with strategic competitors such as Beijing, and that the UK risked losing control of its economic future if it failed to find common ground.

Lai Ching-te uses inauguration speech to push for peace in the region and says future of Taiwan important to future of the world

Lai Ching-te has been sworn in as Taiwan’s new president, urging China to “cease their political and military intimidation against Taiwan” and to keep the world free from the fear of more war.

Lai was inaugurated on Monday morning at the Japanese colonial-era presidential office in central Taipei, taking over from Tsai Ing-wen, whose eight years in power saw a deterioration in relations with Beijing.

Taiwan’s first female president has presided over big social changes, but her main legacy is the cultivation of the island’s rising prominence on the world stage

• Taiwan’s new president takes office as China says independence and peace ‘like water and fire’

In a riot of yellow braids, glitter and spandex, garnished with a huge yellow water lily, Taiwan’s latest global celebrity danced her heart out for the island’s diminutive, softly spoken president, whose mild manners belie her outsized legacy.

Tsai Ing-wen, 67, stepped down as Taiwan’s president on Monday. Before handing over the keys, on Wednesday she welcomed Taiwan’s most famous drag queen, Nymphia Wind, for a live performance in the presidential office. After sashaying to Lady Gaga’s Marry the Night, Nymphia Wind, who recently won the 16th season of the US reality show RuPaul’s Drag Race, thanked Tsai for “all these years of making Taiwan the first in so many things”.

Lai represents an historic third term in power for the pro-sovereignty Democratic Progressive party (DPP)

• Who is Lai Ching-te?
• Taiwan’s new president to take office
• See all of our Taiwan coverage

The Guardian’s Helen Davidson and Chi Hui Lin are at the inauguration in Taipei. They have this report:

It is a sea of bucket hats outside the Presidential Office.

Protectionism in the form of tariffs is justified but the focus will be on whether Beijing retaliates

The global economy is fragmenting and a new era of protectionism has dawned. Dreams by free marketeers of a frictionless world in which goods and services moved seamlessly from country to country are dead.

That was the clear message from Joe Biden’s decision last week to target China with a range of new, much higher tariffs on electric vehicles and a range of other products crucial to sectors seen by the White House as vital to the future health of the US economy and to national security.

Friends and analysts say Lai’s tough upbringing in a working-class family has prepared him well for his next opponent: China

The house itself is a modest, two-storey dwelling on a larger parcel of picturesque land. Mist floats down from the jungled hills behind, settling in the narrow lane that winds towards the rundown remnants of a mine.

The only people there on the day the Guardian visits are curious tourists. They are there for one thing: to see the family home of Lai Ching-te, Taiwan’s next president.

The 20-year failed romance between a singer and a dodgy music promoter becomes the vehicle for director Jia Zhangke’s latest exploration of China’s momentous recent history

As so often in the past, Chinese film-maker Jia Zhangke swims down into an ocean of sadness and strangeness; his new film is a mysterious quest narrative with a dynamic, westernised musical score. It tells a human story of a failed romance spanning 20 years, and brings this into parallel with a larger panorama: the awe-inspiring scale of millennial change that has transformed China in the same period, a futurist fervour for quasi-capitalist innovation that has turned out to co-exist with some very old-fashioned state coercion.

Caught by the Tides reflects with a kind of numb astonishment at all the novelties that the country has been required to welcome, all the vast upheavals for which the people have had to make sacrifices. The film shows us the mobster-businessmen who have done well in modern China, the patriotic ecstasy of Beijing getting picked to host the 2008 Olympic Games, the creation of the Three Gorges hydroelectric dam which meant so much unacknowledged pain for the displaced communities. (This latter was the subject of Jia’s Venice Golden Lion winner Still Life in 2006.) And finally of course there is the misery of the Covid lockdown.

News avatars are proliferating on social media and experts say they will spread as the technology becomes more accessible

The news presenter has a deeply uncanny air as he delivers a partisan and pejorative message in Mandarin: Taiwan’s outgoing president, Tsai Ing-wen, is as effective as limp spinach, her period in office beset by economic under performance, social problems and protests.

“Water spinach looks at water spinach. Turns out that water spinach isn’t just a name,” says the presenter, in an extended metaphor about Tsai being “Hollow Tsai” – a pun related to the Mandarin word for water spinach.

Yonaguni is a tourist hotspot – but its location just 100km from Taiwan means residents must wrestle with the creeping militarisation of their home

In the minds of many Japanese people, Yonaguni is a sleepy paradise of crystal-clear sea and pristine beaches, where miniature horses graze on clifftops and empty roads dissect fields of sugar cane; where tourists dive with hammerhead sharks and marvel at the Ayamihabiru – the world’s largest Atlas moth.

But this tiny island, located far closer to Taipei than Tokyo, now finds itself at the centre of regional tensions triggered by a new round of Chinese aggression towards Taiwan.