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Walk around one of Phnom Penh’s boulevards after dark – one eye on the side-street traffic – and the tower blocks tell a story as good as any analyst report. Most of the windows in the glass-and-concrete residential apartments are unlit. Not because they are under construction or sold off-plan and awaiting to be handed over – they are simply empty. Phnom Penh is not a ghost town – the city still bustles.

Right-wing tech billionaire Peter Thiel has accused Pope Leo XIV of doing the work of the Chinese Communist Party with his criticisms of artificial intelligence. According to a CNN report last week, he told the Aspen Ideas Festival in Colorado that the pontiff was inadvertently serving as a “Chinese communist agent” when he released a 42,000-word encyclical.

Forget Grand Theft Auto. The biggest online game in town is Grand Theft AI, with Chinese high-tech labs literally stealing a march on their American rivals. To do this, they siphon off the brainpower of the most advanced artificial intelligence systems in the United States. They do not even have to foot the staggering multi-billion-dollar research bill. They just clone the cutting-edge models built by industry leaders such as OpenAI and Anthropic.

China has sparked alarm across the Pacific after test-firing a long-range ballistic missile from a nuclear-powered submarine. Today’s latest show of force immediately triggered protests from regional powers as Beijing continued to flex its military muscles.

Trade tensions between the European Union and China are deepening. On June 16, the EU’s trade chief, Maros Sefcovic, said the bloc’s unbalanced relationship with China “had reached a point that requires a reset.” The German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, then criticised Beijing days later for what he claimed were its unfair trade practices.

It was the same old rehashed rhetoric. In President Xi Jinping’s keynote speech to celebrate the 105th birthday of China’s Communist Party, he warned of the “risks and challenges” facing the economic superpower. At times, it was like “déjà vu all over again.” Flanked by key Politburo cadres in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People, his 40-minute address was riddled with repetition and short on substance.

Deep wounds from Japan’s brutal occupation of China still fester. From the late 1930s until the end of World War II in 1945, up to 20 million Chinese people were killed. Historically, it is known as the “Chinese People’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression.” For the ruling Communist Party of China, the scars of Tokyo’s imperialist past shape today’s geopolitical tensions between the two East Asian powerhouses. But it is not a rivalry between equals.

Chinese propaganda has portrayed President Xi Jinping as the champion of the Global South. Nothing, it appears, could be further from the truth. Already, fears are growing that “China’s export strategy will keep poor countries poor.” Last year, the economic superpower recorded an almost US$1.2 trillion trade surplus, despite rising protectionism in Western markets. It was fueled by a tsunami of exports washing up across nations in the developing world.

Taiwan’s scaled-back defense spending highlights the strategic costs of divided government. Last month, a compromise by the legislature in Taipei pushed through the NT$780 billion, or US$24.9 billion, special defense budget. This figure was far below the US$40 billion requested by President Lai Ching-te’s administration. The bill formalizes a restrictive oversight framework that replaces long-term strategic investment with continuous parliamentary approval.

Premier Li Qiang cracked a joke during a keynote address at the World Economic Forum summit in Dalian this week. Only the sycophants chuckled at what is known as China’s Summer Davos, where the so-called ‘movers and shakers’ gathered. In a clumsy attempt to turn fact into fiction, Li rejected claims that massive state funding has been poured into frontier technologies.