Ngày nay chúng ta thỉnh thoảng nghe nói đến Phùng Hưng, Bố Cái Đại Vương, là thủ lĩnh chống lại ách đô hộ An Nam của nhà Đường năm 791, thời Bắc thuộc lần thứ 3 (602-905) trong lịch sử VN. Vương hiệu Bố Cái Đại Vương được coi là một trong những trường hợp sử dụng chữ Nôm cổ nhất VN – Bố Cái là cha mẹ.
Theo sách Việt điện u linh tập của Lý Thế Xuyên thì ông sinh vào năm 760, lên ngôi năm 791, và mất năm 802. Vậy là ông làm vua được 11 năm.
Ngày nay, chúng ta cũng thường nghe lưu truyền trong dân gian câu truyện cho rằng Phùng Hưng đã dùng điệu múa “Con đĩ đánh bồng” để khích lệ tinh thần binh sĩ trước ngày tấn công doanh trại đầu não của nhà Đường ở An Nam. Và câu truyện này có vẻ không được ổn về tâm lý, chiến lược quân sự, cũng như văn hóa chính trị trường kỳ.
THIS WEEK: Politburo meeting projects institutional continuity after purges, Xi balances Putin and Trump diplomacy, Beijing signals reserve-currency ambitions, “future industries” take center stage in the 15th Five-Year Plan, and Shanxi marks a clean-energy turning pointRead back issues in the China 5 Archive.
China’s President Xi Jinping stands with Politburo Standing Committee members at the Monument to the People’s Heroes on Martyrs’ Day in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square on September 30, 2025. (Photo by Greg Baker/AFP via Getty Images)
1. A Signal of Institutional Stability Following High-Profile Purges
What Happened: On January 30, Xi Jinping chaired a routine Politburo meeting to review the annual Party affairs work reports of the National People’s Congress, the State Council, the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, the Supreme People’s Court, the Supreme People’s Procuratorate, and the Chinese Communist Party Central Secretariat. The meeting also discussed “other matters,” a phrase sometimes used to conceal politically sensitive issues from public reporting. Tiếp tục đọc “The latest on what’s happening in China from Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis”→
chatthamhouse.org Research paper Published 20 April 2020 ISBN: 978 1 78413 391 7
Royal Navy Vanguard Class submarine HMS Vigilant returning to HMNB Clyde after extended deployment. The four Vanguard-class submarines form the UK’s strategic nuclear deterrent force. Photo: Ministry of Defence.21st century. Researchers at Chatham House have worked with eight experts to produce this collection of essays examining four contested themes in contemporary policymaking on deterrence.
President Donald Trump speaks to the media before boarding Marine One on January 9, 2026. The day before, the President told New York Times reporters, “If it expires, it expires,” referring to New START—the last remaining bilateral nuclear arms control treaty between Washington and Moscow, which expires on February 5. (Photo: White House/Molly Riley)
For decades, nuclear weapons have been treated as the ultimate arbiter of international politics. They were supposed to deter great-power war, impose caution on leaders, and anchor what strategists liked to call strategic stability. Today, that framework is eroding in plain sight. Yet the reaction from policymakers and much of the expert community remains oddly muted.
Put simply, nuclear weapons are no longer functioning as a decisive factor in global security.
For almost four years, Russia—the world’s largest nuclear power—has been subjected to missile strikes carried out with systems supplied by several other nuclear-armed states. The United Kingdom now openly speaks of developing new tactical ballistic missiles for Kyiv and of placing “leading-edge weapons” directly into the hands of Ukrainians. Russia itself employs nuclear-capable intermediate-range ballistic Oreshnik missiles as if they were any other conventional weapon system for punishing Ukrainian infrastructure. Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump casually commented on New START—the last remaining bilateral nuclear arms control treaty between Washington and Moscow, which expires on February 5—“If it expires, it expires.” And former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, currently serving as a Deputy Chief of the Russian Security Council, stated, “No START-4 is better than a treaty that only masks mutual distrust and provokes an arms race in other countries,” referring to what may come next after New START expires.
China has officially unveiled its latest large autonomous drone, the Wing Loong X, at the Dubai Airshow 2025. Ostensibly the same as its predecessor, Wing Loong drone siblings, this new drone is reportedly the first unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) in the world capable of fully independent anti-submarine warfare (ASW).
If true, this is a big deal, as anti-submarine missions are widely considered the most difficult of all maritime military aviation operations. The new drone is huge, with a reported wingspan of well over 65.6 feet, or 20 meters (that’s roughly the same size as a small business jet).
Summary: Researchers using China’s “artificial sun” fusion reactor have broken through a long-standing density barrier in fusion plasma. The experiment confirmed that plasma can remain stable even at extreme densities if its interaction with the reactor walls is carefully controlled. This finding removes a major obstacle that has slowed progress toward fusion ignition. The advance could help future fusion reactors produce more power
China’s “artificial sun” fusion reactor has crossed a critical plasma density threshold that scientists once thought was unreachable. The result brings fusion ignition closer than ever. Credit: Shutterstock
Scientists working with China’s fully superconducting Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) have successfully reached a long-theorized “density-free regime” in fusion plasma experiments. In this state, the plasma remains stable even when its density rises far beyond traditional limits. The results, published in Science Advances on January 1, shed new light on how one of fusion energy’s most stubborn physical barriers might finally be overcome on the road to ignition.
Visions of planting walls of trees to block the expansion of the desert have long been promoted but never realized. The green wall myth persists today even though it is premised on outdated understandings of desertification. We review the history of the idea of green walls and focus on two sets of contemporary initiatives to assess their outcomes: peri-Saharan programs (Algeria’s Green Dam and Great Green Wall in sub-Saharan Africa) and China’s Three Norths Shelterbelt Program. This review reveals a mixed record of technical success with low rates of the establishment of monocultures of fast-growing trees vulnerable to disease. While there is evidence for reduced wind erosion in some areas, afforestation is also associated with reduced soil moisture and lowering of water tables. Social impacts include increased water scarcity for people and livestock in some cases, and resource enclosures that particularly work against pastoralist livelihoods.
Green walls refer to continuous bands of planted trees stretching across single or multiple countries in dryland regions. As socioecological projects, green walls invoke powerfully attractive images of maintaining life over the assumed sterility of the desert through human ingenuity and effort. A wall of planted trees is envisioned to hold back an expansionary desert from degrading the productivity of the lands behind the wall. Despite the persistent discursive power of this image, its scientific foundation rests on now discredited understandings of desertification.1Desertification, scientifically understood as land degradation due to human mismanagement, is less a regional phenomenon across a broad front than a highly localized phenomenon in areas of greater and more persistent human pressures. The power of the green wall vision is illustrated by its persistent use in promotions of a diverse array of dryland afforestation initiatives with different afforestation patterns (e.g., shelterbelts, scattered woodlots and larger afforested blocks, and agroforestry) and goals (ecological rehabilitation, carbon sequestration, and improved climate resilience). In short, green wall rhetoric mobilizes support and empowers certain actors rather than describing actual dryland afforestation practices.2This article focuses on the vision, practices, and effects of these programs.
This review was written during a period of global enthusiasm for trees and mobilization for mass afforestation, with the World Economic Forum’s Trillion Trees initiative the most prominent example (https://www.1t.org/) but also a wide range of other afforestation efforts across the globe (3). While the arborocentrism of this moment has a long history (see below), concerns about climate change and an interest in increasing the sequestration of industrial carbon has led to a rapid rise of tree planting initiatives. The world’s drylands could be seen as “empty” and thus important “untapped” landscapes to store carbon. Through a consideration of the empirical record of green wall programs, this article outlines reasons to be cautious. Trees are often not suited for the arid zones where they are planted and, even if they are established, may have negative ecological and social impacts (4). By ignoring the need for ecological and social monitoring of afforestation impacts, green wall enthusiasm has often worked to hide the mixed record of these initiatives.
CNA More than half of Chinese adults are overweight or obese, a potential ticking timebomb for the country’s healthcare sector. So, last March, China announced greater efforts to tackle rising obesity rates, with health authorities rolling out a nationwide weight management campaign during the annual ‘Two Sessions’ meeting.
How did China go from food scarcity two generations ago to rapid weight gain now? What does diet, lifestyle and education have to do with it? As beating obesity becomes a national priority, can China beat the bulge?
If you’ve been following travel trends this year, you might have noticed something interesting: social media feeds are filling up with foreigners riding Chinese high-speed trains, walking through ancient towns, and paying for everything with their phones—in China.
China’s Tourism Explodes in 2025: 100% More Visitors, and Here’s Why
If you’ve been following travel trends this year, you might have noticed something interesting: social media feeds are filling up with foreigners riding Chinese high-speed trains, walking through ancient towns, and paying for everything with their phones—in China.
According to data from the Chinese online travel platform Ctrip, inbound tourism to China surged by over 100% in 2025 compared to last year. And it’s not just about more arrivals—spending is up sharply, with U.S. tourist expenditure growing 50% and French visitors’ spending jumping an astonishing 160%.
I suggest you visit China. It reversed my preconception. I am from Norway, North Europe. A rather modern and advanced society.
On my first visit to the US over 20 years ago, I was surprised at how backward and old fashioned it was. Movies had let me to believe it was the epitome of modern society. I visited several states on the East/South-East. Very backwards digitally. Terrible infrastructure. Unwalkable. Dirty. Hard to find quality restaurants outside of big cities. Dead city centres in medium sized cities.
CNA Few countries are better prepared against China threatening their rare earth supplies than Japan, says David Fickling for Bloomberg Opinion.
A labourer works at a site of a rare earth metals mine at Nancheng county, Jiangxi province, China, on Mar 14, 2012. (File photo: Reuters)
David Fickling 09 Jan 2026 05:59AM(Updated: 09 Jan 2026 09:30AM)
SYDNEY: To a hammer, every problem is a nail. If your most potent means of geopolitical leverage is threatening supplies of high-strength magnets, rare earth elements will always be the solution.
The most obvious victim of this threat will be rare earth magnets made with the elements neodymium and praseodymium, and increasingly spiced up with rarer samarium, dysprosium and terbium. They’re used everywhere from charging cables to the switchgear in wind turbines to motors powering electric vehicles, missile guidance systems and aircraft flaps.
Satellite analysis has identified 517 suspected riverbank mines in Laos, many likely illegal, with clusters along key Mekong tributaries, raising fears of widespread, unmonitored contamination.
Officials in Attapeu province confirmed illegal mining remains pervasive despite crackdowns, with most operations missing from official records and many linked to Vietnamese or Chinese supply chains.
The mining surge, including gold and rare earth extraction, poses major risks to ecosystems and communities in the Mekong Basin, where water testing capacity is weak and signs of declining fish populations and polluted rivers are emerging.
Researchers say Mekong countries must coordinate regionally and engage China, the main importer of the region’s mining output, while strengthening enforcement and environmental oversight to address a rapidly expanding, largely unregulated mining sector.
President Donald Trump speaks to the media before boarding Marine One on January 9, 2026. The day before, the President told New York Times reporters, “If it expires, it expires,” referring to New START—the last remaining bilateral nuclear arms control treaty between Washington and Moscow, which expires on February 5. (Photo: White House/Molly Riley)
CVD 