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President Trump warned on February 10 that Washington would use military force if Iran does not agree to a tougher nuclear framework that also curbs missiles and regional proxies. Israel has reinforced US resolve by sharing intelligence, while Iran vows destructive retaliation and Russia urges diplomacy to avoid wider war.

The 2026 Munich Security Conference adopts a markedly bleaker tone, saying the international order is “being destroyed” and signalling a shift from trans‑Atlantic coordination to European efforts at strategic autonomy. Practical, sectoral issues — technology, supply chains and energy — have risen in prominence, and China’s role at the conference has expanded from political foil to potential partner on concrete challenges.

Chinese military media have spotlighted a theme of intensified combat readiness over the Spring Festival, showing front-line units from coastal missile crews to high-altitude sentries staying on duty. The coverage ties operational readiness to political training and organizational strengthening, sending both domestic reassurances and external deterrent signals amid ongoing regional tensions.

China has ordered the phased establishment of a mandatory liability insurance regime for unmanned aircraft, aiming for an initial system by 2027 and a comprehensive framework by 2030. The plan links insurance to flight approvals, promotes expanded insurance products across the drone value chain, and calls for a national data platform to support underwriting and supervision.

China’s Foreign Ministry condemned DPP leader Lai Ching‑te for seeking foreign support for Taiwanese independence, calling such efforts futile and labelling him a provocateur. The exchange follows Lai’s outreach to Japan and highlights Beijing’s use of sharp rhetoric to deter Taipei’s international engagements while signalling resolve to domestic and international audiences.

China’s central bank will inject ¥10 trillion via a six‑month buyout reverse repo on 13 February to ensure ample banking liquidity. The move provides durable, medium‑term funding and signals a continued, measured easing stance aimed at supporting financing conditions and stabilising the economy.

KMT vice‑chair Zhang Ronggong pledged to convert a Beijing think‑tank forum’s 15 joint recommendations into concrete cross‑strait exchanges, framing the effort as a response to popular demand and a defence of Chinese identity on the island. He accused the DPP of obstructing ties and warned that "de‑Sinicisation" threatens Taiwan’s stability, signalling a renewed contest between engagement and distancing in Taipei politics.

Zhang Xiaoquan, a 400‑year‑old knife‑and‑scissors maker listed in 2021, has seen its largest shareholder position change hands after judicial auctions triggered by its controlling group’s debt crisis. The company now lacks a controlling shareholder, faces concentrated revenue risk and governance uncertainty, even as a new investor with e‑commerce credentials forecasts a sizeable profit rebound for 2025.

Zhuosheng Micro’s chairman, Xu Zhihan, has transferred roughly half of his directly held shares — valued at about Rmb1.29 billion (≈US$190m) — to his ex‑wife as part of a divorce settlement. The move comes as the company warned of its first annual loss since listing in 2019, raising investor concerns about potential share sales, governance stability and management continuity.

China’s Spring Festival promotional campaigns—collectively worth nearly ¥100 billion—have driven extreme traffic spikes that briefly knocked services offline and highlighted a growing mismatch between consumer‑facing AI adoption and available compute capacity. Firms are ramping cloud and data‑centre investments even as advances in models and token windows multiply inference demand, creating cross‑cutting pressures on energy systems and commodity supply chains.

Zhipu Technology raised prices for its GLM Coding Plan and launched GLM-5 overseas on February 12, citing surging developer demand and the need for heavier investment in compute and model optimisation. The increase — 30% or higher domestically and substantially larger on overseas API pricing — marks a shift in China’s AI industry from low‑price competition to value-based monetisation.

China’s MBA market is under pressure as the 2025 national entrance line falls to a 25-year low and universities slash fees to attract candidates. Economic slowdown, shrinking hiring by major employers and falling cohort quality mean the degree’s traditional ROI is increasingly uncertain, making MBAs worthwhile mainly for narrowly defined objectives.

Microsoft is pivoting from heavy reliance on OpenAI to building its own leading large language models, mobilising vast compute and teams and planning roughly $140 billion in AI‑related capital spending. CEO Mustafa Suleyman warned many desk‑based white‑collar tasks could be automated within 12–18 months, a claim that underlines both the opportunity and disruption in Microsoft’s strategy to deploy professional‑grade general AI for enterprises.

Senior researchers exiting US AI companies have publicly warned that commercialization and IPO pressures are sidelining safety, risking manipulative or harmful model behaviour. The conflict between monetisation incentives and the need for interpretability, privacy safeguards and robust alignment work has produced real‑world moderation failures and could invite regulatory intervention.

DeepSeek activated a grayscale update extending context length to 1 million tokens, prompting user complaints that the assistant sounds colder and less personalised. Industry sources say the build is a speed‑focused variant intended to stress‑test long‑context performance ahead of a V4 launch, highlighting trade‑offs between throughput and conversational quality. The episode illustrates the wider tension in scaling LLMs: architectural gains can come at the cost of user experience and trust.

Chang'e‑5’s successful lunar sample return owed as much to specialised, domestically produced components as to mission planning. Radars, SAW filters, crystal oscillators, a microwave rendezvous radar and powered exoskeletons supplied by CASIC’s Second Academy were crucial to launch tracking, signal integrity, timing stability, orbital docking and capsule recovery.

China’s defence ministry rejected Taiwanese proposals to forward‑deploy HIMARS rocket systems and entertain pre‑emptive strikes, warning any attempt to provoke conflict would be met with annihilation. The exchange deepens cross‑Strait tensions, highlighting the risks of forward deployments, tight decision timelines, and potential miscalculation with the United States watching closely.

The U.S. Department of Defense has ordered a second carrier strike group—the USS George H.W. Bush—to prepare for deployment to the Middle East, accelerating training off Virginia to meet a departure roughly two weeks away. The move aims to bolster deterrence and reassure regional partners but raises questions about strain on U.S. naval resources and implications for the Indo-Pacific balance with China.

China’s ChiNext and tech‑heavy STAR board outperformed as investors poured money into stocks tied to AI computing power and data‑centre infrastructure, lifting several mid‑caps to multi‑day gains. The rally was narrow: overall market breadth was weak with more than 3,200 decliners, and consumer sectors registered significant losses.

China will levy countervailing duties on certain dairy imports from the EU for five years starting 13 February 2026, following an investigation that found EU subsidies harmed China’s dairy industry. The decision imposes company-specific duties, includes limited retroactivity for provisional bonds, and opens administrative and judicial review pathways.