Five-year-plan stresses AI, Xi-Trump summit still on track, K-pop sensation’s global comeback, landslide win in Nepal elections, security risks self-radicalise online, and Manila drops Nobel laureate charges.

China’s latest five-year plan leaves no doubt about its determination to challenge the US for technological supremacy, says Nikkei Asia, the online business and politics news site.

The plan aims to build on China’s high-tech-focused industrial policies and serve as a bridge to doubling per capita GDP by 2035, compared to 2020.

The plan was approved on Thursday, at the end the nine-day Two Sessions meetings of the National People’s Congress and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference – a conference the news site calls China's biggest annual political show.

In a five-takeaways wrap of the meetings, Nikkei Asia says the plan, the 15th five-year plan, listed as a top priority stepping up self-reliance on high-level science and technology. It called for extraordinary measures to achieve decisive breakthroughs in semi-conductors, industrial machine tools and software. The chip industry was upgraded from a frontier sector to an “emerging pillar.”

“The plan is heavy on AI, with a newly created chapter on ‘digital intelligence’ calling for accelerated development of homegrown chips and software with ‘international competitiveness’,” the report says. “This is paired with a push to apply the technologies across society.”

An analysis in The Diplomat, says the Chinese word for “lithography machine” does not appear in the plan. But neither, it says, does the entire vocabulary of the "chip war," as it is debated in Washington. China has moved on.

“What appears instead is a different strategic vocabulary,” the article says.

“Artificial intelligence outnumbers references to integrated circuits by roughly 13 to 1. Computing power, nearly absent from the previous plan, now receives its own dedicated chapter…[In the plan] the chip is one layer of four, alongside AI models, cloud infrastructure and application deployment. China’s strategic objective is not the chip; it is the system that contains the chip.”

Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post says China’s policymakers want the digital economy to account for 12.5 per cent of GDP by 2030 – a significant increase over the 10.5 per cent share achieved last year.

Beijing is accelerating its push to build a modern industrial system anchored in advanced manufacturing, the paper says.

Note: China is thwarting US attempts to choke its exports through Donald Trump’s tariffs, latest figures show. SCMP reports figures for January and February show exports to the US fell by 11%, year on year, but were  fuelled by demand for tech products.

Iran war weakens US moral authority in Asia

The planned summit between Xi Jinping and Donald Trump looks like will go ahead as scheduled, despite the international turmoil caused by the US-Israeli war against Iran.

The White House has said Trump will visit China from 31 March to 2 April – the first time in eight years a US president has made a trip to China. Beijing has not confirmed the dates but has said the two countries remain in communication over the visit.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi struck a positive tone on Beijing-Washington relations when speaking at a media conference during the Two Sessions meetings, Singapore’s The Straits Times said. Wang had stressed that interactions between the two leaders had helped stabilise the relationship.

Wang avoided criticism of the US over the Iran war, the paper said, even though he had previously said it violated international law.

Some media commentary has said the war damages China and its standing both with Iran and the Global South more generally. A striking example is an article in The Diplomat. The commentary said the unprecedented US-Israel military campaign was a catastrophic geoeconomic earthquake for Beijing.

“China’s entire Middle Eastern architecture has just suffered a fatal blow,” it said.

The article, written by Chinese scholar Youlun Nie, said Beijing faced the immediate fracturing of its energy security, the collapse of its defence exports and the rupture of its Belt and Road Initiative.

The article said: “Even more ominously, it must now confront a terrifying dual reality – a strategically unburdened Washington pivoting its military might toward the Indo-Pacific… and the rapid deflation of China’s own influence across the Global South.”

But an opinion piece in the South China Morning Post said Nie’s article mistook disruption for defeat. “For Beijing, the more consequential question is not whether Iran has fallen but whether Washington has stepped into its deepest quagmire since Iraq,” it said.

The analysis, written by Sophie Wushuang Yi, a Sino-US relations expert at Beijing’s Tsinghua University, said while Washington’s legal standing was being challenged, China had positioned itself as the consistent voice for sovereignty and de-escalation.

“The deeper story of Trump’s war with Iran might not be the displacement of China’s strategic interests but the acceleration of a question building for years: whether a United States that wages preventive war unilaterally, without allied consensus and against the grain of active diplomacy, can sustain the moral authority underpinning its Indo-Pacific leadership,” the commentary said.

Behind the BTS international phenomenon

A pop group will stage a concert this coming Saturday, 21 March. It expected to be attended by 260,000 people, with 4,800 police officers and 3,800 city officials managing the crowd. It will also be livestreamed on Netflix to 190 countries.

The event is the comeback concert for the K-pop boy band BTS, an international popular culture phenomenon.

Production of the concert, The Korea Times reported, would be led by Hamish Hamilton, the British director of the Super Bowl half-time show since 2010 and of the MTV and Academy awards. “Hamilton’s collaboration with BTS is expected to capture not just the choreography but also the emotions of the performance,” the paper said.

The concert will have a prequel – the release of an album named “Arirang”. And it will be followed by the launch of their world tour – 82 shows in 34 cities. A launch concert on 11 April in Goyang, a satellite city northwest of Seoul, and a Tokyo gig on 18 April, will be screened in 3,800 cinemas across 80 countries.

It is the first world tour for the seven-member band since 2019, with concerts interrupted by COVID and then by mandatory military service.

The Korea Herald said, in what must be an understatement, that the world tour was shaping up to be one of the year's biggest global touring events. Tickets for all 41 North American and European dates had already sold out.

BTS had a worldwide fandom that was one of the largest and most organised communities in pop music today, the Herald said. More than 44.7 million people followed the band on X and 33.5 million fans were registered on Weverse, a global fan platform used by BTS and other artists. More than 82 million people followed the BTS YouTube account and a 73.9 million followed them on Tik Tok.

The fans collectively were known as Army, the paper said.

A Herald columnist described the 21 March concert as a blockbuster event that might well mark another milestone in Korea’s rise as a global cultural powerhouse.

She said “Arirang”, the title of the album to be released on Friday, was especially meaningful. “Arirang” was arguably Korea’s most beloved traditional folk song, carrying immense emotional and historical significance for Koreans.

The columnist so absorbed in BTS – their success and the emotional impact of their music - is Lee Kyong-hee, a former editor-in-chief of The Korea Herald.

Former rapper in historic post-uprising win

The immediate cost of last September’s Gen Z uprising in Nepal was high – 77 people killed by the government’s brutal attempted suppression. But it has succeeded, in three steps: the overthrow of the old-guard government; the appointment of an effective interim government; and now, six months later, a sweeping election victory for a new government.

The government will be formed by the Rastriya Swatantra (National Independent) Party, known as RSP – a centrist party led by Balendra (Balen) Shah, a former rapper and mayor of Kathmandu.

RSP won a landslide victory, gaining 182 of the parliament’s 275 seats.

A commentary in the Nepali Times said it was the first time since 1999 that a single party had won a majority, even though the country had a mixed electorate system that reduced the possibility of one-party control. “The popularity of the rapper-turned-politician… has made this remarkable outcome possible,” it said.

An analysis in The Diplomat said the last time a political party in Nepal had won such a thumping mandate was in the country’s first general elections, in 1959.

The article, written by Biswas Baral, editor of The Kathmandu Post, said the election was held against the backdrop of the Gen Z uprising, the result of widespread anger against corruption and resentment over attempts to restrict social media use. It represented a collective rebuke from the younger generation against the entrenched political elite.

But it was the immense popularity of Shah that propelled the RSP to such unprecedented heights, Baral wrote.

The new government would be judged according to several measures, he said. First, it had to tackle to demands of the Gen Z protestors, including implementing the recommendations of a commission formed to investigate the suppression of the uprising.

Secondly, it had to maintain its clean image and avoid the corruption that had plagued previous governments.

Thirdly, economic development and job creation would be crucial metrics of progress.

Baral said India seemed to take a positive view of the RSP’s victory. And The Hindu newspaper noted in an editorial the election results showed the Gen Z protests were no flash in the pan.

“This is a verdict against incestuous patronage politics, endemic corruption and … dire economic conditions,” the paper said.

ISIS lures in online videos and games

National security authorities in Singapore have found a common thread in recent radicalisation cases – self-radicalisation through extremist online materials, including video games, video talks by fundamentalist leaders, and AI chatbots.

The Straits Times reported eight Singaporeans were dealt with under the Internal Security Act in 2024-25 and all were self-radicalised by online material.

The paper singled out video games Roblox and Gorebox. These are known as sandbox games, which let players create and manipulate virtual worlds. Gorebox was known for its graphic depictions of violence, the paper said.

It reported the case of a 16-year-old who, in 2023, joined multiple ISIS-themed Roblox servers where the virtual game settings mimicked ISIS conflict zones.

The story said: “The youth regarded himself as an ISIS member in the game and said his shooting of enemies in the virtual world was intended to mimic his desire to become a real-life member of the group.”

In another case, a 17-year-old youth who was weeks away from carrying out knife attacks against non-Muslims had used an AI chatbot to generate a pledge of allegiance to ISIS, as well as a declaration of armed jihad against non-Muslims.

In a separate story, the paper reported on an 18-year-old whose search for religious identity led him to platforms like YouTube. He was drawn to the sermons of charismatic, fundamentalist preachers. He consumed copious amounts of jihadist propaganda online and even made contact with a cleric linked to Al Qaeda.

The Internal Security Department said online platforms had been pivotal in facilitating the rising trend of youth radicalisation.

As they were digital natives, youth were more susceptible to engaging with extremist materials online, the department said. Their developing sense of identity, along with their lack of critical thinking and information-evaluation skills, made them more vulnerable to extremist influences.

End of Ressa’s Duterte-era legal actions

The Philippine Government has ended the Duterte-era legal action against distinguished journalist and publisher Maria Ressa and her former colleague Reynaldo Santos Jr.

Solicitor General Darlene Berberabe this week asked the Supreme Court to acquit the journalists of cyber libel charges, even though they had already been convicted.

She said Philippine legal precedent limited the expiration period for filing cyber libel charges to one year. In this case, the time limit had been exceeded before the charges were filed.

The case against Ressa, a Nobel Peace laureate, and Santos was filed in 2019, the Inquirer.com news site said. But the story at issue in the case, published by Rappler, Ressa’s website, appeared in 2012 and was updated, supposedly because of a typographical error, in 2014.

Inquirer.com said the story, written by Santos, claimed businessman Wilfredo Keng lent sports utility vehicles he owned to then Chief Justice Renato Corona. The story also said Keng had been under surveillance by the National Security Council for alleged human trafficking and drug smuggling.

Keng had filed a complaint with the National Bureau of Investigation in 2017, five years after the article was first posted.

The complaints against Rappler were filed at the height of criticism of disgraced former president Rodrigo Duterte for extrajudicial killings carried out under his war on drugs, Inquirer.com said.

In 2020, the Manila Regional Court found Ressa and Santos guilty of cyber libel and sentenced them to up to six years in prison. Two years later, the Court of Appeals upheld the ruling and added eight months to the prison sentences.

But this week, Solicitor General Berberabe said the case was time-barred.

Rappler quoted her as saying her recommendation did not dilute the state's interest in punishing cyber libel but simply gave effect to the temporal limitation imposed by law.

“[The] only lawful disposition is acquittal,” she said.