Drug enforcement agencies of China and the U.S. jointly cracked down on a transnational drug smuggling case, arresting five suspects, Chinese authorities said on Monday (May 11, 2026).

The announcement comes ahead of U.S. President Donald Trump’s visit to Beijing this week.

The coordinated operations were conducted in early April between the narcotics control bureau of the Chinese Ministry of Public Security and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration under the Department of Justice, the Ministry said.

The agencies carried out the operations in Liaoning and Guangdong provinces in China, as well as Florida and Nevada in the U.S., jointly cracking the drug smuggling and trafficking case.

They arrested five suspects, two Chinese nationals and three U.S. nationals, and a batch of drugs, including protonitazene, a synthetic opioid, and bromazolam, a sedative, was seized.

The operation successfully cut off a cross-border drug smuggling and trafficking route between China and the U.S., the Ministry said.

It added that the successful handling of the case marked another major achievement in practical cooperation between drug control law enforcement agencies of the two countries, demonstrating shared determination to crack down on drug-related crimes.

Mr. Trump is visiting China from May 13-15 for talks with his counterpart, Xi Jinping, on a host of issues, including the crackdown on drug smuggling into the U.S., especially synthetic opioid fentanyl.

For years, the U.S. has been demanding that China crack down hard on the smuggling of fentanyl to the U.S., which has resulted in the addiction of thousands of American citizens.

An explosion at a fireworks plant in a central Chinese province killed at least 21 people and injured 61 others, state media reported on Tuesday (May 5, 2026).

China’s official news agency Xinhua said the blast occurred at a fireworks plant in Changsha city of Hunan province on Monday afternoon.

The Chinese space programme has undertaken major strides since it built and launched its first satellite in 1970. In last half a century Beijing has conducted satellite launches, built its own navigation system, carried out successful spacewalks, and built and operated its own space station. China is also in the process of undertaking a manned moon mission by 2030. China has also consistently promoted its space technologies and pushed for cooperation under Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) dubbed the space silk road. This entails “a service network weaved by satellites and ground stations among the BRI partner countries has promoted the space industry to better benefit the local people”. China has also used its launching platform, the Long March, to promote its soft power by launching satellite for a number of other countries.

The ‘all-weather friendship’ between China and Pakistan has been replicated in their space cooperation as well. The partnership began in 1990 with China launching Pakistan’s Badr-I satellite, the momentum took time. Today, China has built and launched satellites for Pakistan and in 2026 announced that it will send one Pakistani astronaut to the Tiangong space station.

China has set up a new county in its volatile Xinjiang province near Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) and the Afghanistan border in an apparent move to strengthen security along the narrow Wakhan Corridor to curb infiltration of Uyghur separatist militants.

The county, named Cenling, is located near the Karakoram mountain range and close to the borders with PoK and Afghanistan, underscoring its strategic significance.

As the Israel-US war on Iran has meandered on, India has faced the shortage of liquified petroleum gas (LPG) and experienced a social panic over the possible shortage of petrol and diesel. One does not see similar news from China despite its bigger economy, larger consumer market and role as a supplier to global markets, raising the question of how China escaped the early consequences and how, and in what ways it may be affected in the future. The answer to that question lies in what China has done in the past two decades and how its geography, its position as the world’s largest polluter, its stringent actions against the local air pollution challenges and its concerns over status have combined to protect it from the current crisis.

How did it tackle the Malacca dilemma?

About 15 years ago, China’s concerns over its dependence on the Malacca strait for trade and energy transits, and the near permanent American presence in the vicinity were real. The country sought to address this by building the capacity to create strategic petroleum reserves (SPR) and used long-term contracts to fill those up. Today China has nearly 120 days of SPR storage and it may be tapping into some of that. Data suggests that a combination of China’s oil reserves and diversification may allow it to bypass imports from the Strait of Hormuz for several months.

China’s second approach to reducing the dependence on the Malacca strait was to build pipelines to import oil and gas from Central Asia and Russia. If the straits were a geopolitical challenge, its stable relations with its Central Asian neighbours made the geography an opportunity.

Now almost 20 per cent of China’s crude oil imports happen through these pipelines, including an estimated 900,000 barrels per day from Russia. Consider that against the failed attempts to establish the Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) and the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan- India (TAPI) pipelines, which have been stalled for a combination of reasons. On the other hand, China’s national oil companies like Sinopec, CNPC and CNOOC, have traditionally had deeper pockets and China has been an active negotiator in conflict zones like Sudan or Angola and their proactive strategies have also helped it create a good diversification in its imports sources.

What are China’s climate and energy strategies?

For its part, China joined hands with India, South Africa, and Brazil, to protect their carbon space, forming the BASIC bloc during the early days of global climate change negotiations.

However, it also used its status as the world’s largest polluter and managed to get the US-China Ten-Year Framework Cooperation on Energy and Environment, in June 2008, before it agreed to any commitments under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). This cooperation and the subsequent knowledge and technology transfer led to the success of the Paris Climate Accord and allowed China to create a foundation for its industrial surge in sectors like solar panels, wind and tidal energy, energy efficiency and management, carbon storage and sequestration, electric mobility including cars and buses.

Along with this, China has also faced a significant criticism for its role as the world’s largest coal consumer. China has also worked to undertake energy transition plans and address the air pollution challenge that Beijing and other cities have faced via time-bound targets declared in its numerous white papers, task forces and bureaucratic restructuring initiatives.

How did EVs help lower oil demand?

China’s role as a large middle-class economy also matters. China is also the largest consumer of electric vehicles. And in 2025 nearly half of the cars sold in China were electric vehicles. Its preferential policies favour EV via tax concessions, mandates and preferential lottery chances and its scaling capabilities and larger size of consumer markets have contributed to their popularity. This has allowed China to significantly reduce its imports in 2025 and this number is bound to grow in the coming years.

Is economic slowdown a factor?

Lastly, China is indeed facing a serious economic slowdown which means its overall energy consumption is lower. It has set a modest target of growth at 4.5% for 2026. Its construction sector has nearly stalled and it means that sectors such as cement, iron and steel and others are not doing well too. China’s role as the world’s factory is changing gradually compared to how it was a decade ago, and it has been a good thing for its energy demand.

To sum it up, a combination of opportunities, proactive strategies and strategic and status concerns have helped China to stay afloat stronger in the current crisis.

(Avinash Godbole is a Professor and Associate Academic Dean, JSLH, JGU. Views expressed are personal)

An irony hides in the context of the NASA Artemis II launch on April 2. The U.S. has both openly and in internal reports cast the Artemis programme to return American astronauts to the moon as part of a race against China. But as China in Space editor Jack Congram has pointed out, China does not believe it is racing the U.S. to the moon.

Also read: NASA Artemis II launch highlights

Instead, it has developed its programme to send Chinese astronauts (taikonauts) to the moon as part of a national programme, with ties to local industries and developmental goals. The Chinese Government is thus committed to funding the programme and providing political support for it, allowing it to advance at a steady pace — one that has evidently unnerved the U.S.

Under pressure, NASA, in its public messaging at least, has responded by describing its priorities and urgency in terms of being in a race with the China National Space Administration (CNSA), with the U.S. state providing vacillating support for those priorities: swinging one way because of the costs, then the other because ‘beating’ China offers the prospect of projecting American supremacy in at least one high-technology domain, after having that undermined in semiconductor and clean energy.

Editorial | On the Artemis II launch

The irony? As Mr. Congram put it, the liberal democracy “sees the moon as a proving ground in a geopolitical contest”, with commercial connotations tacked on, while the party state “views it as an extension of long-term science-driven development”. Perhaps this is not an irony at all given the success of China’s state-directed techno-nationalist development in the last half century, or perhaps CNSA’s apparent indifference to NASA’s efforts is rooted in secure knowledge that it is, in fact, ahead. Either way, China is giving the U.S. more than a run for its money.

Chinese pressure

And if the Chinese pressure is taken away, the U.S. may lose the sole reason it is in such a rush to return American astronauts to the moon. Politicians, policymakers, and pundits have mentioned research and exploration, but they don’t seem to be driving forces. In fact, as astrophysicist Erika Nesvold has observed, neither the U.S. government nor NASA has formally articulated what is so objectionable about allowing Chinese astronauts on the moon first (a stand reminiscent of U.S. President Donald Trump’s speech on the same day, April 2, about why he went to war against Iran.)

This extended preamble may be necessary to understand the NASA Artemis programme because, in general, the sights and sounds of any sufficiently ‘large’ space mission can spark enough awe and wonder to blow away sceptical thoughts. The spectacle alone can seem sufficient reason to do it.

When the 98-m-tall Space Launch System (SLS) rocket lifted off with the Orion capsule and its crew of four astronauts early on April 2, there were cheers on the ground and around the world. These machines were products of a sophisticated engineering effort. The rocket’s core stage was powered by four RS-25 engines and two five-part boosters that together exerted more liftoff thrust than the workhorse of the Apollo missions.

This configuration was required to support the Orion crew capsule, which has been integrated with the European Service Module to provide propulsion and life-support systems. Orion is a little larger than a Maruti Suzuki Swift, weighs 11 tonnes (26 tonnes including the service module), can sustain a crew of four for 21 days, includes an advanced launch abort system for crew safety, and uses modern avionics and touchscreen interfaces instead of the largely analogue controls of earlier spacecraft. The capsule’s 5-metre-wide heat shield is also the largest of its kind.

There is in all of us a tendency to equate one country’s achievement in spaceflight as being indicative of what humans as a species are capable of. Space is hard and the astronauts who ‘survive’ it are (technically) proof that we can all survive it. But as much as this tendency is justified and lends itself to gratifying romanticisms, it bears remembering that at least for now the Artemis programme is a flawed representative of the human aspirations for space.

An irony hides in the context of the NASA Artemis II launch on April 2. The U.S. has both openly and in internal reports cast the Artemis programme to return American astronauts to the moon as part of a race against China. But as China in Space editor Jack Congram has pointed out, China does not believe it is racing the U.S. to the moon.

Also read: NASA Artemis II launch highlights

Instead, it has developed its programme to send Chinese astronauts (taikonauts) to the moon as part of a national programme, with ties to local industries and developmental goals. The Chinese Government is thus committed to funding the programme and providing political support for it, allowing it to advance at a steady pace — one that has evidently unnerved the U.S.

Under pressure, NASA, in its public messaging at least, has responded by describing its priorities and urgency in terms of being in a race with the China National Space Administration (CNSA), with the U.S. state providing vacillating support for those priorities: swinging one way because of the costs, then the other because ‘beating’ China offers the prospect of projecting American supremacy in at least one high-technology domain, after having that undermined in semiconductor and clean energy.

Editorial | On the Artemis II launch

The irony? As Mr. Congram put it, the liberal democracy “sees the moon as a proving ground in a geopolitical contest”, with commercial connotations tacked on, while the party state “views it as an extension of long-term science-driven development”. Perhaps this is not an irony at all given the success of China’s state-directed techno-nationalist development in the last half century, or perhaps CNSA’s apparent indifference to NASA’s efforts is rooted in secure knowledge that it is, in fact, ahead. Either way, China is giving the U.S. more than a run for its money.

Chinese pressure

And if the Chinese pressure is taken away, the U.S. may lose the sole reason it is in such a rush to return American astronauts to the moon. Politicians, policymakers, and pundits have mentioned research and exploration, but they don’t seem to be driving forces. In fact, as astrophysicist Erika Nesvold has observed, neither the U.S. government nor NASA has formally articulated what is so objectionable about allowing Chinese astronauts on the moon first (a stand reminiscent of U.S. President Donald Trump’s speech on the same day, April 2, about why he went to war against Iran.)

This extended preamble may be necessary to understand the NASA Artemis programme because, in general, the sights and sounds of any sufficiently ‘large’ space mission can spark enough awe and wonder to blow away sceptical thoughts. The spectacle alone can seem sufficient reason to do it.

When the 98-m-tall Space Launch System (SLS) rocket lifted off with the Orion capsule and its crew of four astronauts early on April 2, there were cheers on the ground and around the world. These machines were products of a sophisticated engineering effort. The rocket’s core stage was powered by four RS-25 engines and two five-part boosters that together exerted more liftoff thrust than the workhorse of the Apollo missions.

This configuration was required to support the Orion crew capsule, which has been integrated with the European Service Module to provide propulsion and life-support systems. Orion is a little larger than a Maruti Suzuki Swift, weighs 11 tonnes (26 tonnes including the service module), can sustain a crew of four for 21 days, includes an advanced launch abort system for crew safety, and uses modern avionics and touchscreen interfaces instead of the largely analogue controls of earlier spacecraft. The capsule’s 5-metre-wide heat shield is also the largest of its kind.

There is in all of us a tendency to equate one country’s achievement in spaceflight as being indicative of what humans as a species are capable of. Space is hard and the astronauts who ‘survive’ it are (technically) proof that we can all survive it. But as much as this tendency is justified and lends itself to gratifying romanticisms, it bears remembering that at least for now the Artemis programme is a flawed representative of the human aspirations for space.

China’s top diplomat condemned on Sunday (March 8, 2026) the war in West Asia and urged the United States to iron out its differences with Beijing.

Follow the Israel-Iran war LIVE

Mr. Wang Yi told a press conference in the Chinese capital that the war, which was sparked by U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran, “should never have happened”.

“A strong fist does not mean strong reason. The world cannot return to the law of the jungle,” he told reporters.

He made the comments during China’s annual political gathering, known as the “Two Sessions”, which began this week.

The parallel meetings of China’s parliament and political consultative body are closely watched for signals as to Chinese leaders’ geopolitical strategy, as tensions with the United States and regional rivals persist and wars in the West Asia and Ukraine rage.

“This year is indeed a big year for Sino-U.S. relations,” Mr. Wang said.

Ties between China and the United States have been strained since U.S. President Donald Trump returned to the White House last year, followed by a trade war that saw the two countries impose tit-for-tat tariffs on each other’s products.

Beijing has previously blasted US and Israeli military actions in Iran, with which it has diplomatic and trade ties, and condemned in particular the killing of the country’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Mr. Wang told reporters on Sunday that China and the United States must “make careful preparations, create a suitable environment, manage existing differences, and eliminate unnecessary interference”.

He also maintained that China’s relations with Moscow, which have been criticised by Western countries as sustaining the war in Ukraine, remained “steadfast and unshakeable”.

“Amidst the turbulent and complex international environment, China-Russia relations remain steadfast and unshakable,” he said.