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LandSpace recovered the first stage of its Zhuque-3 rocket on solid ground on August 19, the first time a Chinese commercial company has landed an orbital-class booster on land rather than at sea. The achievement puts Zhuque-3 alongside Falcon 9, New Glenn, and Long March-10B as the only orbital-class rockets to have recovered a first stage.

China’s eight biggest polysilicon makers just agreed to stop selling solar products below cost, a direct attempt to end the price war that has gutted the industry. Under the deal, signed the night of August 6 in Shanghai, Tongwei, GCL Technology, Daqo and Xinte Energy, joined by four smaller producers, pledged not to sell poly or module-grade product, including in bids, any cheaper than it costs to make. The pact covers more than 90% of China’s effective capacity. Markets liked it immediately.

Beijing’s Zhipu AI has released its premium GLM-5.3-Flash model claiming it runs entirely on roughly 100,000 domestically manufactured Chinese chips. In the process it confirmed that the anonymous “Ox” model which topped OpenRouter’s usage charts earlier this month was its own. Z.AI (Zhipu AI) unveiled GLM-5.3-Flash on August 26 and 27. It is a 320-billion-parameter model with a one-million-token context window, released under an MIT open-source license.

In late July, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio arrived in Manila for the annual ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ Meeting with a message Southeast Asian officials have heard, in one form or another, for a decade. The United States, he assured them, remains a committed Indo-Pacific partner – devoted to Southeast Asia, dependable, and invested in the region’s security and prosperity. “I believe very much that the future and the story of the 21st century will be written in this region,” Rubio said.

Trade tensions with Beijing have reached a breaking “point.” In the first half of the year, China’s surplus hit nearly US$576 billion, which was slightly down from $586 billion during the same period in 2025. But it is still on course to rival last year’s $1.2 trillion trade surplus. The fallout has been seismic inside the European Union and across major global democracies.

It might not be Star Wars, but it is certainly a combative Space Odyssey. Washington is reacting with increasing alarm at Beijing’s breakneck push to launch satellite constellations. Even the United States’ military nerve center in the Pentagon is deeply concerned. Last week, it was revealed that China’s payloads surged sixfold in the past decade. They jumped from 99 in 2016 to 595 this year, narrowing the technological gap with the US, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.

President Xi Jinping is peddling an economic illusion built on the rocky, red foundations of debt. Even China’s manufacturing muscle is unlikely to rescue flatlining growth amid rising unemployment and shrinking consumer spending. Last week, the National Bureau of Statistics reported that the economy grew by 4.3% in the second quarter to June. It was one of the lowest readings on record. Yet even those numbers were branded figments of Beijing’s imagination.

For nearly two decades, one finding in Pew Research Center’s global surveys was as reliable as the sunrise. The United States was always viewed more favorably than China. But that era is now over. In its July 15 report, which was based on interviews with more than 42,000 people across 36 countries, the Washington-based think tank found that China is now viewed more favorably than the US in most nations surveyed. The same report marked a second milestone.

On July 22, the Climate Clock – whose numbers Greta Thunberg, King Charles III, and other climate champions have for years used to demand urgent action – will drop below three years for the first time. This will signal a shrinking window to avert worsening Climate Catastrophe by preventing global warming from rising above 1.5°C. We will pass this critical red line before the next FIFA World Cup in 2030 and by the time this year’s undergraduate students earn their degrees. This is not doomerism.

It has been called “the world’s most complex machine.” Yet it looks like something from a bygone age and is the size of a “double-decker bus.” Without these monsters made by ASML, today’s high-tech world would grind to a halt. They “print” microscopic circuits onto silicon chips that drive today’s technological society of smartphones, smart cars, such as electric vehicles, and smart weapons.