China’s new exit and entry regulations might signal an increase in the risk that Taiwanese travelers will face, an analyst said on Tuesday last week. The new rules, which take effect on Sept. 15, expand the power of authorities to restrict travel on national, industrial and technological security grounds, question travelers about their reasons for leaving and inspect electronic data. Taiwanese who do not support the ruling party should not dismiss the warnings as fearmongering or propaganda. Beijing applies its “anti-secession” laws indiscriminately, an official said recently while presenting a report on proposed amendments to combat China’s efforts at transnational repression. Chinese
New large language models (LLM) like Moonshot’s Kimi K3 have dominated the debate about China’s artificial intelligence (AI) ambitions. Yet the clearest evidence of the country’s prowess might be in video and the stakes could extend far beyond just shaking up Hollywood. Outside of Alphabet Inc’s Google, nearly all of the leading video-generation models are Chinese, making up nine of the top 10 text-to-video systems on benchmarking platform Artificial Analysis’ leaderboard. ByteDance Ltd and MiniMax Group Inc recently released back-to-back updates to their rival video-generation models. That followed the surprise emergence of Happy Horse, a secretive video system that rattled the industry
It was shocking to hear Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) say that the legislative branch is somehow now under the control of “dark forces.” Frustrated at the glacial pace of the passage of the government’s annual budget for this year — it was finally passed at 6:08pm on Friday after a record delay of 266 days — Han had lost his temper during a cross-caucus negotiation meeting on Tuesday. The target of his ire was Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅崐萁), who was absent that day. Fu had failed to attend the cross-caucus negotiations on a total of
The American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) on July 28 posted on social media a picture of Taiwanese and US coast guard vessels sailing in formation, the first confirmation of the two countries’ combined patrols in waters near Taiwan. The post showed the 4,000-tonne Chiayi-class vessel Taipei and 4,500-tonne Legend-class cutter USCGC Midgett sailing together in the Taiwan Strait, and said that Taiwan and the US coast guard were coordinating on shared maritime objectives, such as preserving maritime resources and interdicting illegal drug shipments. “The US appreciates Taiwan’s partnership in maritime security and safety, and supports Taiwan’s meaningful contributions on global issues,” it
RSS