China’s rare launch of a ballistic missile from a nuclear submarine into the Pacific, demonstrating the sea-based leg of its nuclear arsenal, will push countries in the region to wall themselves off from Beijing by tightening defense ties.

A People’s Liberation Army Navy submarine fired the missile, carrying a dummy warhead, toward international waters at 12:01 p.m. Monday, according to the official Xinhua News Agency. The missile “landed precisely within the designated waters,” it said, calling the launch “part of China’s routine military training” that targeted no specific country.

The launch was Beijing’s first strategic missile test into the region since September 2024, when it fired a nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missile into waters near French Polynesia — its first known ICBM test there in four decades.

Rather than drawing regional powers into its orbit, the test will likely push them to deepen defense ties with one another to counter China’s growing military might, according to analysts.

“This assertiveness from Beijing should serve to drive U.S. allies in Asia closer together,” said Ely Ratner, former U.S. assistant secretary for defense for Indo-Pacific security affairs. The test underscores the speed and scale of China’s military modernization, including nuclear forces, he added.

Beijing’s military modernization and expanding arsenal had already been driving regional governments toward one another, and “this test launch will likely fuel those concerns,” said Jeremy Chan, senior analyst at Eurasia Group.

“China primarily used this missile launch to test and demonstrate its second-strike nuclear capability,” said Chan, noting the sea-based test followed the 2024 land-based launch. “Presumably the next test will be an air-based missile.”

He expects greater cooperation in joint training, arms sales, and defense spending, among countries such as Australia, New Zealand, Japan and the Philippines.

Beijing has spent years assembling a nuclear triad — the ability to deliver warheads from land, air and sea — an arsenal that would strengthen its position in any regional crisis or conflict with the U.S.

The missile type, location and where it was fired from or landed remains unclear. The state-run media Global Times cited a military expert as saying it was likely the JL-3 — China’s most advanced submarine-launched ballistic missile, capable of reaching the continental U.S. from waters off the Chinese coast, according to the U.S. Department of Defense.

In a statement late Tuesday, Chen Xi, Chinese defense ministry spokesperson, said the test launch “achieved its intended targets” and neighboring countries were notified in…

BEIJING — As Brazil takes a greater share of Chinese soybean purchases away from American farmers, the U.S. is trying to win back buyers by emphasizing crop quality.

“Soybean production in North America and soybean production in South America is very different,” Carlos Salinas, executive director, East Asia, at the U.S. Soybean Export Council said in a presentation Tuesday at the China International Supply Chain Expo in Beijing.

He compared a range of weather factors between a city in Brazil and one in the U.S. state of Illinois, such as rainfall in the 30 days ahead of harvest: 231 millimeters versus 72 mm.

“That impacts crop condition. That impacts quality,” he said.

The half-day event for “advancing a sustainable and resilient U.S.-China soybean supply chain” was co-organized with the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade.

“What we really encourage buyers in soy to do is to make sure they’re educating themselves on this to go deeper,” Jim Sutter, CEO of the U.S. Soybean Export Council told CNBC on the sidelines of the event, noting new ways to measure quality and nutrition, especially for animal feed.

American soybeans have become a bargaining chip in the escalation of U.S.-China trade tensions over the last several years. Beijing, the world’s largest soybean importer, has also diversified its sourcing to Brazil and Argentina in an effort to ensure food security.

While the U.S. and Brazil each accounted for around 40% of China’s soybean imports a decade ago, Brazil started to take a far larger share in 2018 after the first round of U.S. tariffs on China, according CNBC calculations of Chinese customs data accessed through Wind Information.

As of the first five months of 2026, more than 60% of China’s soybean imports came from Brazil, 23% from the U.S. and 10% from Argentina, the data showed.

U.S. soybean exports to China plunged 76% last year to $3.1 billion, down sharply from a peak of $17.9 billion in 2022, according to official U.S. figures. At 7.37 million metric tons, U.S. soybeans remained the largest American agricultural export to China during the last calendar year.

Convincing Chinese buyers to ramp up purchases will take time.

Last month, the White House said China would buy at least $17 billion of U.S. agricultural goods annually through 2028, following U.S. President Donald Trump’s meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing. That amount would be “in addition to the soybean purchase commitments that it made in October 2025.”

After a Trump-Xi meeting in South Korea last fall, the U.S. said China agreed to buy at least 25 million metric tons of American soybeans in each of the following three years.

China has bought all 12 million metric tons of American soybeans that it agreed to purchase in the marketing year ending August 2026, and…

Every June, policymakers, regulators, bankers, investors, and financial executives gather in Shanghai for the Lujiazui Forum, China‘s premier financial policy conference. If Davos is where global elites discuss the future of the world economy, Lujiazui is increasingly where Beijing signals how it intends to shape that future to serve its own interests. As Americans, despite all the ways that our current focus is divided, I believe that this year’s forum deserves our attention.

At this year’s Lujiazui Forum, Chinese officials unveiled a series of measures designed to expand offshore renminbi (RMB) finance, deepen Shanghai’s role as an international financial center, create new liquidity facilities for foreign central banks and sovereign investors, expand cross-border RMB trading, and further open portions of China’s financial sector to international participation.

It is true that we have heard much of this before and, for skeptics and many observers, it is understandable if there are doubts about its sincerity or achievability. Is China finally ready and serious about posing a challenge to the U.S. dollar? The answer is that China is unquestionably serious about challenging aspects of dollar dominance, but it is also the wrong question.

I would argue that the world’s focus should not be on whether China will achieve its very real goal of having the renminbi replace the dollar. The world should focus more on the fact that Beijing continues, bit by bit and step by step, to methodically build the financial infrastructure necessary to reduce its dependence on a dollar-centric global system and create alternatives to American financial power for other countries. In other words, China is serious, but it may not be able to achieve its goals, at least not quickly. What it is doing, however, is positioning itself as a serious contender and disruptor of dollar dominance.

This is not primarily a monetary story. It is a geopolitical one.

For nearly eighty years, the United States has enjoyed extraordinary advantages from the dollar’s central role in the global financial system. Dollar dominance has provided Washington with tools of statecraft that previous great powers could scarcely imagine. The United States can impose sanctions, restrict access to dollar clearing, shape international compliance standards, influence capital flows, and leverage its position within the world’s financial architecture to advance national security objectives. China understands this reality as well as anyone and, like many countries, has bristled at this enormous concentration of power for decades.

Today, it is in a better position than ever before to do something about it.

Two-decade renminbi internationalization plan reaches new stage

The Chinese leadership has spent nearly two decades attempting to…

Beijing has stepped up corporate regulatory enforcement this year, though analysts say it’s unlikely to pursue a repeat of the 2021 crackdown that wiped out more than $1 trillion from Chinese tech stocks.

Since January, officials have opened a formal antitrust probe into the country’s largest online travel agency Trip.com and summoned a dozen tech giants — including Alibaba, Tencent, ByteDance’s Douyin, Baidu, JD.com and Meituan — over aggressive price competition and promotional claims ahead of a shopping festival in June. They also sent a stern warning earlier this month to Walmart China over repeated food-safety failures at its wholesale retailer Sam’s Club. 

“The concentration of actions and number of companies involved inevitably brings back memories of the regulatory crackdown on internet platform companies” from more than five years ago, said Neo Wang, chief China strategist at Evercore. 

Over a two-year span starting in late 2020, Beijing launched a sweeping crackdown on its most powerful corporations, blocking what would’ve been the world’s biggest stock-market debut by Alibaba’s fintech Ant Group, forcing ride-hailing giant Didi Global to delist from the U.S., and intensifying oversight across sectors from after-school tutoring to highly-leveraged property developers.  

“The state was reasserting political control over data, capital expansion, tutoring ideology, overseas listings, and platform power, along with over-financialization,” said Paul Triolo, partner and technology policy lead for China at DGA-Albright Stonebridge Group, a global advisory firm.

But the game has changed, Triolo said, now that policymakers are more wary about an economy weighed down by lackluster domestic demand, a sluggish job market, and eager for private tech companies to boost investment in computing infrastructure underpinning the country’s AI ambitions. Beijing is attempting to act but without “triggering another broad investor panic,” he said.

Han Shen Lin, China country director at The Asia Group, put it more bluntly, saying that “Beijing needs private-sector confidence, jobs and technology investment far more than it did in 2021.”

Beijing pivoted to support the private sector after years of regulatory clampdown, with a rare closed-door symposium in February 2025 where Chinese President Xi Jinping told the country’s top entrepreneurs, including Alibaba’s Jack Ma, to “showcase their talents” in a new era for the country’s private economy.

China has now made the so-called anti-involution campaign, which is meant to tackle ruinous deflation-fueling price wars and overcapacity across industries, a policy priority.

In January, Beijing launched an antitrust probe into Trip.com for alleged “abuse of market dominance,” forcing merchants into exclusive agreements before hiking commission fees. The move…

China imposed fresh trade restrictions on dozens of U.S. entities on Monday, retaliating against Washington’s move to add more Chinese companies to a Pentagon list of businesses it accuses of aiding Beijing’s military.

On Monday, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce placed 10 American industrial suppliers on its export control list, including rare earth miners MP Materials Corp and USA Rare Earth, and drone makers Teal Drones and Jaia Robotics — barring exports of any dual-use items originating in China to the companies.

Other companies included on the list are California-headquartered electronics manufacturer Aveox Inc, Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp, and military equipment provider Oshkosh Defense.

In a separate statement Monday, the Chinese Finance Ministry excluded 46 U.S. companies, mostly defense contractors, from participating in government procurement projects. Any foreign-funded, locally registered entities associated with the excluded firms are exempted.

The actions came after the Pentagon earlier this month updated its so-called 1260H list by adding a slew of Chinese technology companies to a list of entities it believes to have aided Beijing’s military. Alibaba Group, Baidu and carmaker BYD were among the latest additions.

Beijing’s countermeasures appear to be largely symbolic, rather than a substantive escalation in U.S.-China relations, said Han Shen Lin, China country director at consultancy The Asia Group, as most targeted companies have “little or no meaningful business exposure in China.”

The 1260H designation does not impose immediate sanctions but bars the U.S. Department of Defense from awarding direct contracts to affected companies starting June 30, with restrictions on indirect procurement following in 2027. The designation is likely to deter other federal agencies and commercial partners from doing business with listed companies.

Chinese authorities responded earlier this month, saying they would take all necessary measures to protect Chinese companies’ “legitimate and legal rights and benefits,” while criticizing the U.S. for “drawing up discriminatory lists under the pretext of national security.”

The latest countermeasures provide a “model example” of how China will likely handle mild escalation from the U.S. while keeping the broader relationship stable, said Dan Wang, China director at Eurasia Group, adding that last month’s Trump-Xi summit reset relations on a more positive footing.

While the Pentagon’s move was largely symbolic, it showed how broadly Washington has drawn the line around sensitive Chinese technology, from artificial intelligence to consumer electronics and biotech, analysts say.

Several designated Chinese firms have disputed the designations while pledging legal action to seek their…

Foreign governments, Wall Street banks and multinational companies are flocking to China’s domestic bond market as some of the world’s cheapest borrowing costs turn the yuan into an increasingly attractive funding currency.

The yuan-denominated bonds, also known as panda bonds, are sold by overseas issuers in China’s onshore market and have become a major beneficiary of Beijing’s push to internationalize its currency amid a widening gap between Chinese and Western interest rates.

Issuance has accelerated sharply this year, with sovereign borrowers including Kazakhstan and Pakistan joining global financial institutions such as Morgan Stanley and Deutsche Bank, as well as multinational firms including Volkswagen and Henkel. Deutsche Bank, as recently as late May, announced that it raised 3.5 billion yuan ($518 million) through a heavily oversubscribed three- and five-year panda bond offering.

Panda bond issuance has remained robust in recent years. The issuance volume hit a record 197.8 billion yuan in 2024 and totaled 183.1 billion yuan in 2025, according to Moody’s. Issuance exceeded 137.1 billion yuan by the second week of June, up 80.4% from a year earlier.

Panda bond issuance totaled 26.64 billion yuan in May, the highest on record for the month, according to Fareast Credit Rating.

The appeal is straightforward: money is cheap in China.

While borrowing costs in dollar markets remain elevated as the Federal Reserve keeps rates high, China’s prolonged economic slowdown and accommodative monetary policy have left domestic interest rates near historic lows.

Analysts estimate many foreign issuers can raise yuan funding at coupons below 3%, significantly cheaper than comparable dollar borrowing.

“We view the key driver as the interest rate gap: funding in RMB is much cheaper than in U.S. dollars,” Moody’s Ratings told CNBC in an email.

According to the financial risk assessment group, foreign banks issuing panda bonds can borrow at roughly 1.7% to 2.2%, compared with 4.5% to 5.5% in dollar markets, generating interest savings of two to three percentage points. 

BEIJING — Long gone are the days when catching World Cup soccer games on the go meant buying a portable mini television set.

Instead, consumers in China can just whip out their phones. Soccer is popular in China, even if the national team hasn’t qualified for the World Cup since 2002.

“We mostly watch on smartphones, very little on TV,” said Faye Jin. “The TV at home is basically not used. Maybe to watch some competitions we will turn on the TV at the last minute, but most of the time it’s on our phones.”

This year, Chinese social media company Xiaohongshu won the rights to stream the World Cup games for free to all users. The app, also called Little Red Book, is sometimes compared to Meta’s Instagram.

Xiaohongshu’s deal is a strategic partnership with state-owned China Media Group, which sealed broadcast rights less than a month before the World Cup kicked off last week. The company runs China Central Television (CCTV), which has both mobile and smart TV apps that let subscribers watch matches and replays ad-free.

CNBC spot checks found that locals in Beijing are not as eager to head out to bars for World Cup games this year, and instead follow matches online, often at home.

The games this year tend to fall in the middle of the night or during morning working hours due to the 12-hour-plus time difference. Interviews are translated from the original Mandarin Chinese.

“If my friends are interested in the World Cup they will definitely watch at home,” said Xu Wang, who works at Absolut Bar in a tourist-heavy part of Beijing. “It’s hard to find a suitable place for people to gather at that time of night, especially because everyone is spread out across the city.”

The shift to mobile devices builds on a digital-first trend in China.

During the World Cup in 2022, China already accounted for nearly half of all hours of viewing on digital and social platforms globally, according to FIFA.

Widespread 5G connectivity and relatively low-priced roaming packages help. People in China already spend 40% of their daily mobile phone time watching videos, primarily on short-video apps such as ByteDance’s Douyin, according to QuestMobile.

To stay updated on the World Cup matches, Quan Zhao said he scrolls through Douyin, and only plans to watch the last few games in full. He’s not sure yet whether he will go out to do so.

That also reflects how tough it is for Xiaohongshu to capitalize on World Cup streaming to reach more users.

Douyin won streaming rights for the World Cup in 2022, when many people in China still faced Covid-19 restrictions on gathering and moving around. This time, Douyin is promoting a packed lineup of soccer commentators and creators, along with World Cup-themed AI special effects templates.

Douyin has more than 1 billion monthly active users, Questmobile data showed, while Xiaohongshu had 245.3 million as of March.

A shopping-focused…

The rush of capital into China’s tech start-up world hit a speed bump this month.

Within hours of each other last Friday, a Chinese city government ordered companies to disclose their financial ties to robot vacuum maker Dreame Technology, and China’s State Council issued sweeping rules to tighten oversight of the country’s 23 trillion yuan ($3.4 trillion) private fund industry.

The events, in quick succession, underscored Beijing’s tough balancing act in trying to rival U.S. tech dominance. While the state pours in money to support China’s tech ambitions, there are not always the guardrails and market forces to prevent widespread misallocation.

Beijing is reining in a co-investment model that local authorities have embraced in recent years to lure businesses into their regions, said Dan Wang, China director at Eurasia Group.

Local governments often “race to outspend one another” on strategic sectors, generating substantial fiscal waste and raising credit risks for the central government, Wang said.

Chinese local governments have sought to pivot from land financing — which has essentially collapsed since the housing crisis in the early 2020s — to equity finance, using state capital and government guidance funds to acquire stakes in startups and use capital gains as a new source of fiscal income.

Wall Street-linked U.S. funds that once invested in China have also largely pulled out in recent years due to geopolitical risk, leaving a gap for local Chinese yuan-denominated funds to fill.

Local officials cannot necessarily evaluate projects the way professional investors do, and tend to go all-in on one or a handful of hopefuls — leaving public finances exposed when bets sour, Wang added.

Dreame became the world’s largest robotic vacuum maker by sales in the first quarter, according to research consultancy IDC, with fast-growing footholds in Europe and the U.S. And the startup’s ambitions run far beyond floor cleaning.

Echoing the aggressive expansion of certain Chinese start-ups, since its founding in 2017, Dreame has spawned nearly a thousand affiliated enterprises, spanning electric vehicles, smartphones, humanoid robots, bubble tea and satellite networks. Founder Yu Hao claimed in January he was building an ecosystem that would “become the first $100 trillion company in human history.”

That sprawl has come under scrutiny in recent weeks. A city government in Jiangsu province, one of China’s biggest electronics manufacturing hubs, asked local companies to audit their exposure to Dreame-linked entities, including investment sizes, fiscal outlays and business operations, according to state-backed media.

Yu’s social media account on…

Meta Platforms has begun dismantling its $2 billion acquisition of Manus, according to a Bloomberg report, as the tech giant moves to comply with Beijing’s unprecedented order to unwind the deal.

Meta has completed an operational split, ordering its employees to stop using Manus tools for internal projects while blocking the Singapore-based company’s staff from accessing Facebook-parent’s internal data systems from this month, Bloomberg reported Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter.

The separation comes as Manus and Meta scramble to heed Beijing’s demand to dismantle a deal that has become a test case for how far China will go to safeguard its strategic technology and talent.

Chinese regulators in April ordered the deal to be reversed, an unprecedented move under the country’s foreign investment security review mechanism that set in motion the intricate process of unraveling a completed deal, according to Zhonglun law firm. 

Beijing has since tightened tech export controls to keep a firmer grip on cross-border transactions, particularly those involving assets in strategic sectors, as the U.S.-China tech race intensifies into a contest over talent, hardware and data.

For U.S. tech firms eyeing Chinese assets, “Chinese-origin AI now carries a kind of reversibility risk that no clever deal structure can price out,” said Matthias Hendrichs, a Singapore-based advisor to global AI firms.

For Manus, the problem at the heart of Beijing’s objection may not be resolvable, Hendrichs added. “Once another company’s engineers have been inside your stack, you can delete the repository, but you can’t make them unsee what they’ve seen.”

Once celebrated as a breakthrough for Chinese AI startups taking on American rivals, Manus has become a cautionary tale for entrepreneurs looking to shed their Chinese image by relocating to countries such as Singapore.

“The unwind may be messy,” said Han Shen Lin, China managing director at The Asia Group. Beijing has sent a message to its tech sector that the so-called “Singapore washing” has limits, he said, and a lesson to Washington that shining a light on ownership structures may be just as effective as any prohibition.

Manus, with its roots in China, relocated its headquarters and core teams to Singapore last year, before Meta announced to acquire the agentic AI startup for $2 billion in December, triggering a months-long probe involving tech export controls.

Earlier this month, Beijing issued sweeping new rules tightening control of overseas deals involving Chinese investors, technology, data and on national security grounds.

The rules come as Beijing and Washington race to tighten their grip on AI. Chinese regulators have reportedly instructed firms, including Moonshot AI, StepFun and ByteDance to reject U.S. investment without explicit government approval, while…