Britain’s highest taxpayers have been drifting offshore since the non-dom regime was scrapped in April 2025 and inheritance tax was extended to worldwide assets.

This shift is already visible on the Sunday Times lists: six of the 2026 Tax List’s top 100 (including Revolut’s Nik Storonsky) had left in the previous year, the compiler noted that one in nine names on that list were no longer UK-resident, and the companion Rich List dropped dozens of foreign billionaires while recording a sharp rise in British nationals now based in Dubai, Switzerland and Monaco.

But, the latest news is likely the most disturbing to the increasingly socialist government as the UK’s 3rd largest taxpayer – hedge fund founder Chris Rokos – is set to leave.

 The star trader paid a stunning £330 million ($447 million) in taxes last year…

That’s one hell of a hole for Burnham and his buddies to fill.

As Bloomberg reports, Rokos is the latest in a string of high-profile financiers and business leaders that have opted to leave.

Since winning the general election in 2024, Labour has targeted wealth with taxes on non-domiciled residents, inheritance on family farms and businesses, private equity and private school fees.

At her last budget, former chancellor Rachel Reeves introduced a tax on homes worth more than £2 million.

With a net worth of about $4 billion according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Rokos is among the UK’s most prominent figures in finance.

The Rokos Capital Management founder is switching his residency to Greece, people with knowledge of the arrangement said.

Rokos will also open an office in Athens as part of the move, one of the people said, asking not to be identified because the details are private.

Greece offers a 15-year high-net-worth investor regime.

Italy operates a similar 15-year system, but after recent increases, it has set the flat tax at €300,000 on foreign-sourced income.

Greece has also sought to lure fund managers and private equity executives, adopting new tax rules this summer designed to prevent double taxation.

If the highest taxpayers keep leaving – as Rokos’s reported move to Greece underlines – Labour’s bet that abolishing non-doms and tightening inheritance tax would raise more money starts to look fragile, because a thin slice of people already supplies a large share of income-tax receipts.

The government then faces an awkward choice: accept a smaller tax base and tighter budgets, or raise rates on the mobile and immobile alike and risk accelerating the outflow it is trying to tax.

Authored by Andrew Korybko via Substack,

Indefinitely perpetuating the Ukrainian Conflict through these means indefinitely delays the full implementation of the US’ planned “Pivot (back) to (East) Asia”, can lead to Russia selling its natural resource wealth to China at bargain-basement prices, and maintains China’s “active neutrality”.

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) referenced the EU’s summertime disbursement of the first €1 billion to Ukraine for drone procurement out of the €6 billion promised for this program in an article late last month about how “Ukraine’s Drone War Exposes An Uncomfortable Reliance On China“. They drew attention to the carve-out allowing Ukraine to purchase Chinese parts with these funds, ergo the politically incorrect observation back then that “The EU Plans To Pay China To Help Ukraine Kill Russians“.

RFE/RL reported that “While Kyiv has cut back on the purchase of ready-made drones from China, components such as motors, lithium batteries, and fiberoptics are still in high demand.” Additionally, “In the first six months of 2026, imports of Chinese parts had already reached around 76 percent of the total recorded for the previous year.” They also cited a Ukrainian report which claimed that “38 percent of the value of drone components imported by Ukraine in the first half of 2025 came from China.”

The purpose of their piece appears to be to instill a sense of urgency in Ukraine and the West alike to radically ramp up domestic drone production in order to reduce what one of their cited experts described as Ukraine’s “hostile interdependence” on China. They explained that “Beijing remains Kyiv’s largest trading partner, while Ukraine is a key supplier of agricultural goods to China.” That’s true, and it’s one of the reasons why China won’t cut Ukraine off from drone-related sales, but there’s more to it.

While Sino-Russo ties are better than at anytime in history, it was suspected as far back as early 2023 that “China Doesn’t Want Anyone To Win In Ukraine“, the reason being that a supposedly manageable forever war would indefinitely delay the full implementation of the US’ planned “Pivot (back) to (East) Asia“. Moreover, resource-rich Russia could become disproportionately dependent on China, thus leading to Moscow selling its natural wealth to Beijing at bargain-basement prices.

In pursuit of this cynical end, China has simultaneously played an irreplaceable role in providing Ukraine with drones, parts, and fiber optics (even if only indirectly through intermediaries like apologists have speculated) while serving as an irreplaceable valve from sanctions pressure for Russia. Ukraine is therefore able to keep pace with Russia’s military-technical advancements, the Russian economy avoids the crisis that the West sought to catalyze through sanctions, and China maintains its “active neutrality”.

The last point refers to China actively helping Ukraine and Russia, thus making it neutral in the sense of not taking either side. China financially profits from Ukraine’s drone-related purchases, its economy continues growing due to the large-scale import of heavily discounted Russian energy, and it relatively reduces the overall Western pressure upon it by proving that it’s not secretly “allied” with Russia. This policy, for whatever one might think about its merits, indisputably contributed to prolonging the conflict.

Had China cut Ukraine off from its drone-related sales in the spirit of its “no-limits” partnership with Russia that was declared several weeks before the start of special operation, then Russia might have attained more of its stated objectives in the conflict by now, if not outright achieved maximum victory. The US’ military and intelligence support for Ukraine is more important than China’s drone-related sales, but since there’s no end to US support in sight, Russia should try to get China to finally cut Ukraine off.

Europe’s industrial base faces yet another setback, with Bloomberg reporting that Jaguar Land Rover plans to cut 4,000 jobs over the next two years. Britain’s largest carmaker is confronting intensifying Chinese competition and adding to the broadening wave of planned and ongoing layoffs across European automakers.

The job cuts represent about 10% of Jaguar Land Rover’s global workforce and is part of a $2.3 billion savings plan, Chief Executive Officer P B Balaji said Monday. The layoffs are not expected to begin immediately.

The workforce restructuring comes as the struggling automaker faces a sharp deterioration in earnings. Revenue fell 10% in the latest quarter, while pretax profit plunged 69% to 109 million pound sterling. 

On Monday, CEO P B Balaji said, “The automotive industry faces significant challenges, with technological change amidst intense competition and ongoing geopolitical uncertainty.”

It’s not just a BYD Motors invasion of Europe that is pressuring Jaguar Land Rover. As the Tata-owned automaker warned, pressures are developing from several directions. Higher tariffs have complicated business in the US, its largest market. A fire at a key parts supplier and disruption from the Middle East conflict have compounded the damage caused by the cyberattack.

In recent weeks, Europe’s automotive industry has continued its death spiral, with news that Volkswagen pushed ahead with its plan to eliminate another 50,000 jobs, adding to soaring job losses across the industry.

A sustained downturn in Europe’s automotive industry raises risks across the broader industrial base. Lower vehicle output would weaken demand for steel, aluminum, glass, chemicals, semiconductors, batteries, and other components, putting pressure on supplier margins and investment. If prolonged, that weakness could trigger additional production line closures and worker losses. That spiral appears to be already underway, eroding manufacturing capabilities that also support defense production.

Authored by Paul Homewood via The Daily Sceptic,

Greenland’s icecap is melting away thanks to global warming, at least that is what we are told. According to the EU’s European State of the Climate 2025 Report, the ice sheet lost 139 Gt last year. They say that is equivalent to about 1.5 times the amount of ice stored in all the glaciers in the European Alps, and raised global mean sea level by 0.4 mm. (A gigatonne is one billion tonnes.) Since 1972, losses have amounted to 5,747 Gt. The rate of ice loss has increased by around five times since the 1980s and is expected to continue increasing beyond the end of the century.

These amounts sound terrifying, which is of course the object of the exercise – at least until you realise that at present rates it would take Greenland 27,000 years to melt away.

I am always suspicious when ‘scientists’ present trends since the 1970s, a time when the Earth had gone through three decades of cooling and there were genuine fears among both scientists and world leaders about the return of the Little Ice Age. I am even more suspicious when I discover that official data about the Greenland ice sheet is publicly available back to 1840.

In 2021, a peer-reviewed study calculated the annual changes in the ice sheet mass balance since 1840. (The heavy black line represents the net changes, which is of relevance to this discussion):

The graph confirms that the ice sheet has been losing mass since the 1980s. But crucially, we can see that the melting began around 1900. During the period 1920 to 1970, ice loss was running at similar levels to the last three decades – this is hardly surprising, as temperature records across Greenland show that it was just as ‘warm’ then as now. In between times, there was a sharp decline in temperatures in the 1970s and 80s.

In other words, this is not a new phenomenon, as we are expected to believe. It is part of a much longer process, which began long before so-called man-made global warming began.

Scientists have long established, with the help of ice cores and other evidence, that the 19th Century was probably the coldest era in Greenland since the Ice Age. During warm eras, such as the Middle Ages, Roman times and earlier millennia, the ice cap was smaller than it is now. Any reduction in the ice cap in the last century must be viewed as part of these longer-term cycles.

Ice mass data is still regularly published and provisional data is now available for the year ending August 2026 – Greenland ice data is normally presented by “hydro-year”, September to August.

Since the 2021 study, ice loss has continued to slow down and is back to 1920s levels. The 2025/26 season actually saw a small increase of 6 Gt in ice mass. Greenland never really had a summer this year. Whereas the summer melt usually begins in early June, cold, snowy weather persisted well into July. As a result, summer melt was around 200 Gt less than normal.

It is worth noting that the poor summer in Greenland was part of the wider jet stream setup, which brought our hot summer. While we had a summer dominated by high-pressure systems, the rainy weather stayed out in the Atlantic, battering Greenland.

6 Gt is of course a tiny amount, given the massive uncertainty in how these things are calculated. There is no way to directly measure ice cap changes; instead, the numbers are calculated from computer models fed with data such as precipitation and temperature. The experts accept that they can often be wrong by as much as 100 Gt.

Nevertheless, it is abundantly clear that Greenland’s icecap is doing just fine. It is still much larger than it has been for most of the last 10,000 years and, if it is shrinking at all, it is doing so no faster than a century ago.

By Abishek Vishnoi, Bloomberg Markets Live reporter and strategist

A rotation from growth to value stocks is more pronounced in Asia than anywhere else globally, as doubts grow over the chip rally’s staying power.

MSCI’s gauge for value stocks in Asia Pacific has risen about 6% this quarter, compared with a 2% drop in its growth counterpart, on track for its biggest outperformance since January-March 2022, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The gap is wider than the swings in the US and Europe over the period.

The divergence shows how Asia’s growth trade had come to rely on a handful of chip stocks, with their reversal now prompting investors to look for cheaper options. Asian value stocks remain inexpensive relative to both growth shares and global peers. A nearly 20% weighting of financials in the regional gauge offers another potential tailwind from higher yields.

“The value rotation in Asia is set to expand and extend as semiconductor’s downtrend is not yet finished,” said Hao Hong, chief investment officer at hedge fund Lotus Asset Management in Hong Kong. “The market has clearly entered a new phase as funds will favor those names with solid growth and track records.”

Value stocks in Asia are trading at 10.8 times their one-year forward earnings estimates, compared with 17.9 times for the US and 12.3 times for Europe, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The multiple for Asian growth stocks is 13.

A rise in bond yields across major markets can potentially support bank earnings by widening lending spreads. That gives the region’s value trade an additional earnings lever at a time when higher yields and Federal Reserve rate-hike bets are putting pressure on long-duration growth stocks.

MSCI’s financials gauge has climbed 12% in Asia this quarter, while information technology, which comprises about a third of the regional index, is down 5.6%. It was dragged by a recent selloff in some of the global best performers of the past year, including SK Hynix Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co. Among value stocks, Genscript Biotech Corp. has surged more than 150% this quarter in Hong Kong.

More recently, value has been Asia’s best-performing investment style even on a long-short basis. The strategy buying cheap stocks and shorting expensive ones returned about 1% over one week ending Sept. 5, while growth was the worst performer with a negative return of -1.3%.

“The encouraging story is the valuation gap and regional stickiness as Asian value stocks remain cheap relative to global peers, giving investors both a defensive buffer today and a coiled spring for when risk appetite rebuilds,” said Hebe Chen, a senior market analyst at Vantage Global Prime in Sydney. “And in Asia, when the tide turns, it rarely walks — it runs.”

Authored by Max Blumenthal via The GrayZone

As the US prepares to mark 25 years since Sept. 11, 2001, Donald Trump has removed top Al Qaeda figures from the US list of designated terrorists. Among those he delisted was Abdullah Muhaysini, a Saudi cleric who recruited child fighters and teen suicide bombers to wreak havoc across Syria.

The Trump administration has removed the names of some of the world’s most notorious commanders, recruiters and financiers for the Syrian branch of Al Qaeda from its list of specially designated terrorists. Among those relieved of US sanctions this August was Abdullah Muhaysini, a Salafi-jihadi cleric from Saudi Arabia who participated in videotaped massacres of captive soldiers and recruited droves of foreign youth to carry out suicide bombings throughout Syria over the past decade.

The delisting of the jihadist recruiters came as part of the Trump administration’s removal of the government of Syrian President Ahmad Al-Sharaa as a State Sponsor of Terrorists. “These actions represent another historic step by President Trump to give the Syrian people a path to prosperity,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared on August 24, 2026.

Formerly known as Abu Mohammad Al-Jolani, Al-Sharaa is the co-founder of ISIS and founder of Jabhat Al-Nusra, the Syrian branch of Al Qaeda. Under the guidance of Western advisors, Al-Sharaa rebranded Al-Nusra as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, before he toppled the government of President Bashar Al-Assad in December 2024.

By the time he seized power, Al-Sharaa had been groomed by his NATO handlers as a reliable local enforcer. When Trump hosted Al-Sharaa in the Oval Office in November 2025, playfully misting him with Trump Cologne and asking how many wives he had, it was clear the US was ready to lift the sanctions that had devastated Syria’s economy. Two months later, Trump pitched a half-baked plan for the Syrian military to attack Iran. Washington had finally found its man in Damascus.

This August, the Trump administration went a step further, lifting sanctions on Al Qaeda propagandists, funders and fighters responsible for gruesome atrocities during the dirty war on Syria. These figures include Abu Sulayman al-Muhajir, a top Al Qaeda recruiter in Australia who fled to Syria; Shafi Sultan Mohammed al-Ajmi, a major Kuwaiti financier of Al-Nusra; and Abdul Samrez Jashari, an Albanian foreign fighter who has taken on a senior role in Syria’s military under Al-Sharaa.

Here’s President Trump spraying Al-Sharaa with his cologne, asking him how many wives he has..at the Oval Office. pic.twitter.com/ojFHEIZmmT

— Olga Nesterova (@onestpress) November 12, 2025

Perhaps none of the Al Qaeda bandits who received sanctions relief from the Trump administration oversaw as many acts of sadistic violence as the Saudi-born, Turkish-backed cleric Abdullah Muhaysini.

Prolific recruiter of teenage suicide bombers earns sanctions relief from Trump

In 2015, Muhaysini was filmed in camouflaged battle dress uniform, glowering over a group of blindfolded, exhausted Syrian army regulars taken captive at an airbase in Syria’s Idlib province. In a videotaped message, he justified massacring them in cold blood because, despite being Sunni Muslims, they had fought for Syria’s secular government.

“I don’t like to call them Sunni,” Muhaysini declared. “They were once Sunni but became apostatized once they enlisted in the Alawites’ regime.” Moments later, the 56 men were lined up and riddled with bullets.

Office of Foreign Assets Control

Muhaysini studied under Sulayman Al-Alwan, the Wahhabi cleric who oversaw what his Muslim critics have called a “terrorist factory” in Saudi Arabia’s Al-Qassim Province. Al-Alwan also happened to be the instructor of the 9/11 hijacker Abdulaziz Alomari.

As The Grayzone reported, Muhaysini recruited thousands of young men as fighters and suicide bombers, promising them heavenly deliverance for sacrificing their lives in attacks on government targets. The foreign demagogue managed to find time for televised sermons counseling followers on when it was appropriate to beat their wives, while urging them to kill Shias and members of other minority groups wherever they found them across Syria.

After moving to Syria in 2014, Muhaysini embedded himself among the rebels’ most powerful factions and worked to unite them under a single banner. At first, he helped cobble together the coalition known as Jaish al-Fatah, or the Army of Conquest. (The Trump administration has lifted sanctions on a successor group to Jaish al-Fatah as part of its delisting of Al-Sharaa’s HTS).

Through his connections with wealthy Salafis in the Gulf states, Muhaysini organized the “wage jihad with your money” fundraising effort that raised some $5 million for the armed opposition’s push to take the northern Idlib governate from the Syrian army in 2015.

In an online interview, Muhaysini thanked “a group of brothers in Islam from Riyadh (Saudi Arabia), some from our brother Abu Ahmed from Kuwait, some from our brother Abu Joud from Qatar.”

Muhaysni congratulates mother of a boy he is about to send on a suicide mission in #Aleppo & assures her he will get his virgins 😂 #Syria pic.twitter.com/p4XQKsphSy

— Ibn Walid (@walid970721) October 29, 2016

In 2018, Muhaysini’s Jihad Caller’s Network recruited child fighters inside the Atmeh Refugee Camp on the Syrian-Turkish border, a squalid redoubt for some 30,000 war victims, handing the adolescent volunteers rifles before trucking them off to Idlib and elsewhere. (Video of the child soldier recruitment drive has been removed from the internet). Earlier programs on the cleric’s network featured small children training for combat.

On December 12, 2024, days after Al-Sharaa’s forces stormed into Damascus following the collapse of Assad’s government, Muhaysini materialized again in Damascus. From inside the Umayyad Mosque, the Al Qaeda propagandist proclaimed, “I truly believe that in Paradise there are entire villages for the people of the Levant.”

Almost two years later, Muhaysini received another blessing. One day after Trump announced plans to skip the ceremony memorializing the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks at New York City’s Ground Zero, his administration lifted sanctions on Muhaysini and his closest partners in crime.

They might have once been designated terrorists who joined the organization credited with bringing down the Twin Towers. But now, they’re officially our terrorists.

At the start of the year, we warned about the prospect of humanoid robots moving beyond factory floors and into military operations.

China’s World Humanoid Robot Games last month showcased advances in robotic speed and mobility, while reports of Beijing’s expanding military research suggest preparations for eventual battlefield deployment are gathering pace. The prospect of humanoids operating alongside troops and one-way attack drones presents an unsettling new view of warfare’s next phase: the rise of the machines.

China’s humanoid robots are crashing, falling—and pushing the future forward.

At this year’s robot games, some humanoids have slammed into walls or fallen halfway through races, leaving many asking: Are these robots disposable? And what’s the point of making them run so fast?…

— China pulse 🇨🇳 (@Eng_china5) August 23, 2026

Reuters published a new report on Monday that said:

China’s defense establishment is accelerating research into humanoids’ military uses and planning for their eventual wartime deployment, according to a Reuters review of more than 100 Chinese military procurement notices, academic studies, patents, official publications, government records and defense-company materials.

While the world marveled at China’s World Humanoid Robot Games, which showcased robots sprinting, jumping, dancing, and participating in sporting events, the Chinese military urged researchers to accelerate the transfer of advanced technologies from laboratories to military training grounds for robotic “combatants.”

China is testing humanoid robots for jobs far beyond factories.

At the World Robot Conference in Beijing China Ordnance is showing its Fuxi humanoid robotdesigned for security and emergency response tasks. https://t.co/8YptW2f50R pic.twitter.com/zv3PzBNtCa

— Techniahqrobot | humanoid robots (@techniahqrobot) August 18, 2026

China’s largest robotics company, Unitree, published a video on X on Monday morning showcasing “Fully Autonomous Humanoid Robot Combat.”

Unitree Breakthrough: The World’s First Real-Time World Model-Driven Fully Autonomous Humanoid Robot Combat🥊
UnifoLM-X2-1.0 breaks through world-action foundation models’ bottlenecks in instant planning, decision-making, and dynamic interactive execution, achieve high dynamics,… pic.twitter.com/xqAodjuD1m

— Unitree (@UnitreeRobotics) September 7, 2026

We reported on February 2 that “humanoid warfare nears,” and a TIME magazine article in early March later confirmed our report about the American humanoid robotics company Foundation testing its robots for war.

Then, in July, we reported:

• Ukraine Plans To Hyper-Innovate Humanoid Robot Soldiers

And in mid-August:

• Humanoid War Robots Could Soon Patrol US Southern Border To Combat Weaponized Migrant Flows

The prospect of “Skynet-like” warfare is becoming more real by the week as humanoid robotics advances alongside one-way attack drones, unmanned ground vehicles, and increasingly automated kill chains. If integrated at scale, these robots could further accelerate the shift to an automated modern battlefield.  

Authored by Ziaulhaq Tanin via RealClearWorld,

Three decades after their independence, Central Asia is still often viewed through outdated geopolitical lenses – a region once called “Russia’s backyard” and more recently as an arena of competition among Russia, China, and the West. Yet this familiar narrative no longer captures the region’s strategic reality. Central Asian states are increasingly using great-power rivalry not simply to navigate external pressure, but to expand their own choices and strategic room for maneuver.

This transformation is driven not by a single event but by the convergence of several trends: the war in Ukraine, new connectivity corridors, China’s growing role, deeper engagement of Europe, Türkiye, and the Gulf states, and regional efforts to reduce dependence on a single power. Together, these developments are reshaping the traditional framework of regional politics and creating new space for Central Asia to redefine its position.

The central question is no longer who will dominate Central Asia, but whether its states can turn this changing geopolitical environment into greater strategic autonomy. This article argues that the region is moving from the logic of “backyard” toward that of a “crossroads” – a transition shaped not by the departure of major powers, but by the growing agency of Central Asia itself.

The Ukraine War and the End of Geopolitical Monopoly

For decades, Central Asia was viewed largely through the lens of Russian influence. The legacy of the Russian Empire and then the Soviet Union created deep security, economic, and cultural ties between Moscow and the region – ties that endured after independence through institutions such as the Collective Security Treaty Organization and the Commonwealth of Independent States. Yet today’s transformation does not reflect the collapse of these connections; it marks the end of an era in which a single power could define Central Asia’s strategic trajectory.

The war in Ukraine did not initiate this shift, but it accelerated existing trends. Even before 2022, regional states were diversifying foreign relations, reducing traditional dependencies, and seeking alternative routes of connectivity. The war exposed more clearly the risks of relying on a single partner or corridor, prompting governments to reshape their security, trade, and connectivity policies around a wider range of options.

For years, Central Asia faced a geopolitical paradox: despite its central position in Eurasia, access to the global economy depended largely on Soviet-era networks. These historical, infrastructural, economic, and security links reinforced Russia’s position as the region’s dominant external actor.

The war did not dismantle this structure, but it revealed the costs of dependence on traditional routes. Western sanctions on Russia and disruptions to established trade corridors pushed regional governments to pursue alternatives. The central question became whether its geography would remain a historical constraint or become a source of strategic choice.

This shift is most visible in the growing importance of the Middle Corridor, linking China and Europe through Central Asia, the Caspian Sea, the South Caucasus, and Türkiye. More than a trade route, it offers alternative to Soviet-era connectivity and allows Central Asian states to turn geography into a strategic asset. Kazakhstan, with its location and natural resources, stands at the center of this transformation, illustrating how the region is increasingly using great-power competition to expand its own choices.

At the same time, competition around Central Asia has broadened. China has expanded its presence through investment and infrastructure, Russia remains a security actor, while the West, Türkiye, and Gulf states have strengthened their roles in energy, trade, and strategic resources. The wider external engagement has increased regional room for maneuver, but it has also made balancing competing interests more demanding.

From Balance of Power to Balance of Options

In Central Asia, independence has never meant complete freedom from great-power influence. Geography, history, and economic ties have made such separation unrealistic. The challenge has therefore not been to sever these ties, but to prevent any single partnership from becoming source of decisive dependency. In this context, independence is increasingly defined not by distance from any power, but by the ability to preserve multiple options and manage competing relationships.

This shift is evident in the foreign policy of Central Asian states. Rather than choosing between major powers, they are using the simultaneous presence of different actors to expand their strategic room for maneuver. This is a form of practical autonomy: not on isolation from great powers, but the ability to engage with several partners at once.

The region’s transformation also extends beyond the traditional Russia – China – West triangle. Gulf states have become increasingly active in Central Asia through investments in energy, infrastructure, transport, mining, and trade, with the United Arab Emirates emerging as an important partner in renewable energy, logistics, and infrastructure projects. For the Central Asian states, these ties offer opportunities to diversify economic partnerships and attract new investment; for Gulf countries, the region’s strategic location and role in the emerging Eurasian connectivity routes have made it increasingly important.

Kazakhstan is a prominent example of this approach. Despite its long border with Russia and deep historical ties to Moscow, Astana has expanded its economic ties with China while strengthening cooperation with Europe and other partners. Its goal is not to replace one partner with another, but to maintain diversified relationships to increase strategic flexibility and reduces overdependence on any single power.

Uzbekistan has followed a similar path since 2016, gradually opening its economy and pursuing a more active regional diplomacy. Tashkent’s has sought to broaden cooperation with multiple partners including Russia, China, Europe, and the United States while increasing its strategic flexibility.

The experience of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan shows that Central Asia’s transformation is not only a result of changing great-power behavior. It also depends on whether regional states can turn this evolving geopolitical space into bargaining power.

Beyond Geopolitics: The Return of Identity

For decades, Central Asia was largely defined by narratives shaped outside the region itself – from the legacy of the Russian Empire and Soviet Union to contemporary perspectives based on great-power competition. Today, however, regional states are increasingly seeking to define their history and place in the world beyond the lens of external powers. This shift shows that the struggle over Central Asia’s position is not taking place only through trade routes and security calculations; it is also unfolding at the level of the historical and political identity.

Central Asia’s departure from the logic of “backyard” is visible not only in the change in its foreign ties, but also in efforts by regional states to redefine their historical standing. Since independence – and especially in recent years – the Central Asian states have gradually tried to adjust their national narratives beyond the frameworks left over from the Soviet era.

From Tajikistan’s emphasis on its Persian heritage, to strengthening cultural ties among Turkic-speaking states, and Uzbekistan’s renewed engagement with its historical past, this trend shows that the competition over the region’s future is not limited to economics and security. It is also a competition over narratives, and identity. Ultimately, it shows that Central Asian states are trying to define their status based on historical experience and their own interests.

Central Asia’s Future: Sphere of Influence or Hub of Connectivity?

For decades, Central Asia’s geography was seen as a constraint – a region caught between great powers, whit its security, economic, and connectivity shaped largely by external interests. Today, that same geography is becoming a strategic asset, expanding the region’s choices and influence.

Central Asian governments are no longer merely adapting to geopolitical changes; they are using it to widen their strategic options. More diverse partnerships and new connectivity corridors have expanded their diplomatic flexibility.

Great-power competition has not disappeared. Russia remains the principal security actor, China the leading economic partner, while west, Türkiye and the Gulf states continue expanding their presence. What has changed is that no single relationship can define the region’s future. Geography alone is insufficient; without stronger institutions and independent decision-making, new routes of connectivity could simply produce new form of dependence.

Ultimately, Central Asia’s transformation is not about replacing one dominant power with another, but about expanding regional agency. Russia, China, and other actors will remain influential, yet no single power is likely to define the region’s future alone. The region’s states are turning geography into leverage – not to escape power competition, but to shape the conditions in which they have more choices.

Ziaulhaq Tanin is a University lecturer, researcher, and analyst specializing in international security, regionalism, and foreign policy.

NEC has ended its effort to develop a working quantum computer, reportedly deciding that the project would take too long to deliver an acceptable return on investment, according to a new report by Nikkei.

The move represents a significant change in direction for a company that has been involved in quantum computing research for more than three decades.

NEC was among the earliest companies to pursue the technology, beginning its research in the 1990s and achieving a major breakthrough in 1999 with the first demonstration of superconducting qubits. Those qubits remain one of the principal approaches used in quantum computer development today. Despite that early lead, NEC discontinued work on its own physical quantum computer at the end of March.

Nikkei reported that the company will continue pursuing quantum-related technologies and services, including quantum annealing, which is used to find efficient solutions to complex optimization problems. NEC also plans to expand services that use conventional computers to simulate quantum computing.

The shift suggests that management sees a more immediate commercial opportunity in applying quantum-related techniques than in funding the lengthy and expensive development of its own hardware.

NEC’s retreat comes as other major players continue investing heavily in the field. IBM and Google remain prominent competitors in the United States, while China is advancing quantum computing through coordinated public- and private-sector efforts.

In Japan, Fujitsu is continuing its research and signed an agreement in August with an Australian university and government research institution to collaborate on quantum-related projects.

The industry has nevertheless made meaningful technical progress over the past two to three years. Google’s Willow processor, introduced in 2024, demonstrated that error rates could decline as additional qubits were added, an important step toward building larger and more reliable systems.

Microsoft and Quantinuum have also reported advances in error correction, while Amazon’s Ocelot prototype, unveiled in 2025, was designed to reduce the hardware required to produce reliable logical qubits. Increasingly, the challenge is not simply to build machines with more qubits, but to make those qubits stable enough to perform useful calculations.

That progress has yet to resolve the commercial question. IBM’s experimental Loon chip, unveiled in November 2025, forms part of its effort to develop a fault-tolerant quantum computer by 2029, while Google reported another quantum-advantage demonstration in October.

Such milestones show that the technology is advancing, but they do not establish when quantum computers will become broadly useful or economically viable. NEC’s decision therefore illustrates the distinction between scientific progress and investment returns: the industry may be moving forward, but the timetable for turning those advances into a profitable business remains uncertain.

Authored by Milton Ezrati via The Epoch Times,

Some 28 provinces and separate jurisdictions increasingly have had to turn to Beijing for help closing budget gaps, according to China’s Ministry of Finance.

It is not unusual for Beijing to have to chip in. It gets the lion’s share of the country’s tax revenues. But the growing need to turn to Beijing nonetheless points to the economy’s imbalances and other problems.

Some transfers from Beijing have occurred since the country’s tax-sharing reforms were implemented in the 1990s. Beijing gets all income tax revenues from both individuals and companies, all securities trading levies, and all customs duties.

Provinces and like entities must depend almost entirely on deed and land appreciation taxes. Even during the boom years of property development, some provinces needed help. Few had what the Chinese call budgetary “self-sufficiency ratios” at 100 percent.

Outlining the most recent data from this year’s first quarter, the deputy director general of the finance ministry’s budget department, Tang Zaifu, downplayed the troubling direction of provincial finances. The figures, however, make clear that self-sufficiency has deteriorated and dependency has grown.

Now, Beijing must cover half the budget needs of the 22 provinces under its control and an additional five separate jurisdictions. (Beijing claims 23 provinces, but one, Taiwan, manages its own budget and obviously is not subject to the People’s Republic of China’s governance.)

The needs of this large number of jurisdictions vary greatly. It is significant, however, that even Shanghai – one of the country’s richest areas – failed to meet its own budget needs during this year’s opening quarter – this for the first time since the pandemic.

Some areas have done comparatively well. Zhejiang, for instance, managed a self-sufficiency ratio of just over 96 percent. Other rich areas, such as Shandong and Guangdong provinces, showed self-sufficiency ratios exceeding 70 percent.

Other areas did less well, a lot less well. Filling all the budget gaps will cost Beijing some 10.5 trillion yuan, more than a third of the government’s entire budget.

Though arcane in many respects, these budget needs and burdens offer yet other perspectives on the imbalances in China’s economy and finances.

The first point that becomes clear is how much China’s economic reality has changed since the still-prevailing budget reform rules of the 1990s. Those revenue-sharing arrangements, implicitly dependent on a booming property development sector, are simply no longer viable. The still-ongoing property crisis has thoroughly reordered the economy.

These budget figures also point, albeit obliquely, to how narrowly focused China’s economy has become. The only reliable growth lies in the mostly high-technology sectors favored by Beijing’s “Made in China 2025” program.

Broad-based development has received short shrift, including the Chinese consumer and investments in other, mostly privately owned sectors, making China’s economy narrower and more export-dependent than ever.