Nothing ruins a Chinese neighborhood like a vacant skyscraper owned by a bankrupt real estate developer. But Hefei, the capital of Anhui Province, has something worse: the first floors of a building intended to be one of the world's tallest. Its owner, cash-strapped China Evergrande Group, has…

China is turning back to low-cost coal to boost its ailing economy. It's an understandable reaction to the toll caused by Covid lockdowns. But it will come with a steep price for the environment and the health of its citizens. It's also likely to worsen food insecurity in China just as the world…

In 2033, a US spacecraft will return to Earth carrying the second cache of rocks ever collected from the surface of Mars. The first cache? It will have been collected by China two years earlier, in 2031, according to plans released last week by one of China's top space scientists. Of course,…

It's been more than two years since countries started closing their borders to visitors to prevent the spread of Covid-19. Now China, facing its worst outbreak of the pandemic, is trying a new tactic. Henceforth, “unnecessary” overseas travel by Chinese citizens will also be restricted,…

The world's leading climate scientists have issued six assessments of the state of climate-change knowledge since 1990. The first five were influential, driving efforts to build global climate agreements. The sixth report, issued four days after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, has been largely…

The first batch of US sanctions targeting Russia last week included several designed to hamstring the country's space program. The move did not please Dmitry Rogozin, director of the Russian space program. For three decades, the US and Russia have collaborated on the International Space Station,…

Back in December the Chinese government notified the United Nations that its new space station had twice maneuvered out of the way of satellites belonging to Elon Musk's Space Exploration Technology Corp., or SpaceX, in 2021. Yet rather than phone SpaceX, NASA or even the White House, China leaned…

The most notable record at the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics won't be recorded by a skier or skater. Instead it'll be set by NBCUniversal. When the flame goes dark, the US network will likely have recorded the most poorly viewed Winter Games in history. Covid, half-empty stadiums, human-rights…

This year, astronauts will likely complete construction of Tiangong, China’s answer to the International Space Station. It’s the next step in China’s progress toward becoming a major space power. It also looks like a bet that the US lacks the planning and willpower to replace its much bigger…