U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will leave China "in absolutely no doubt" about Washington's commitment to ensuring freedom of navigation and flight in the South China Sea when he visits Beijing this weekend, a senior State Department official said on Wednesday.
Japan's cabinet approved on Thursday bills to implement a drastic shift in security policy allowing the military to fight abroad for the first time since World War Two, although the public is divided and wary over the changes.
The U.S. Marine Corps is bringing together foreign commanders from amphibious forces deployed mostly in the Asia-Pacific for a conference aimed at taking steps to integrate operations, with China excluded from the event, according to officials and planning documents.
China will ensure that all key public areas are covered with video surveillance cameras by 2020 to fight crime and ensure social stability, the government said on Wednesday, part of a broader push to step up security in response to violent unrest.
Russian land forces will join troops from China, India, Mongolia and Belarus in a series of joint military training exercises during the second half of this year, President Vladimir Putin's office said on Wednesday.
China rebuked the Philippines on Tuesday for taking journalists to a disputed island in the South China Sea, dismissing its occupation as "futile and illegal" in the latest war of words between the two sides.
China has invited Russian troops to march in a parade in Beijing in September to commemorate the end of World War Two, the Defence Ministry said on Monday, a move likely to further put off Western leaders from attending.
China's military warned on Saturday of the need for a high degree of vigilance against attempts in Japan to deny its history of aggression, ahead of President Xi Jinping's attendance at World War Two commemorations in Moscow.
China is set to raise the wholesale tax rate for cigarettes to 11 percent from 5 percent, the Ministry of Finance said on Friday, in a move to deter smokers in the world's biggest maker and consumer of tobacco.
Newly released images show Vietnam has carried out significant land reclamation at two sites in the disputed South China Sea, though the scale and pace is dwarfed by that of China, a U.S. research institute said.
Japan and the Philippines will hold their first joint naval drill this month in the South China Sea near a disputed shoal claimed by Beijing, sources in Tokyo and the Philippines said.
Authorities in China's southwestern city of Chengdu visited the offices of Uber on Wednesday as part of a new investigation into the online taxi-hailing service, a spokeswoman for Chengdu's transportation commission said.
China and India cooperated well on relief efforts after the earthquake in Nepal, a senior diplomat was quoted as saying on Thursday, dismissing the idea that China was trying to compete for influence with its work.
China has warned Philippine air force and navy planes at least six times to leave areas around the disputed South China Sea, the Philippine military commander responsible for the region told a Senate hearing on Thursday.
Washington wants to be certain that any nuclear deal between Iran and major powers includes the possibility of restoring U.N. sanctions if Tehran breaks the agreement without risking Russian and Chinese vetoes, a senior U.S. official said on Tuesday.
China has accused the Philippines of violating a 13-year-old informal code of conduct in the South China Sea with its building work on disputed islets, firing back again after repeated criticism of China's own construction work.
North Korea condemned on Friday plans by Japan to hold a summit in New York on the abduction of Japanese citizens by Pyongyang decades ago, saying the issue had been resolved and accusing Tokyo of escalating a human rights campaign against North Korea.
The United States and other countries will be welcome to use civilian facilities China is building in the South China Sea for search and rescue and weather forecasting "when conditions are right", China's navy chief has told a senior U.S. officer.
China's top graft buster took the unusual step on Friday of plastering its website with pictures of 21 top Chinese tourist sites where officials are banned from holding meetings, a reminder of its crackdown on extravagance and corruption.
Russia said on Friday the United Nations Security Council should not intervene in Burundi's constitutional dispute that has sparked the biggest political crisis in the East African state since an ethnically fuelled civil war ended in 2005.
Thousands of people were still missing in Nepal on Friday as food and help began to trickle through to those stranded in remote areas after last week's earthquake which killed 6,250.
