China News

The recent drama surrounding US action in Venezuela, its renewed interest in Greenland and tariff threats on governments that object, along with comments on Cuba, Colombia and Mexico, appear disjointed – part diplomacy, part law enforcement, part political theatre. Like many observers, I rely on the news to try to make sense of the policy logic and what it may mean for those who have to live with its consequences. Washington’s rationale for its actions in Venezuela was initially framed as law...

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Neurologist Sun Bomin’s mother led him to believe that Alzheimer’s disease might not be incurable after all. On January 21, Sun released a short video on China’s Yitiao.tv platform and an article detailing what he said was the world’s first effective treatment of Alzheimer’s disease using the high-intensity FUS procedure. His mother, who appeared in the video but was not named, is aged in her nineties and had been suffering from the progressive brain disorder for around eight years. According to...

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As Chinese biotech and pharmaceutical firms gain importance on the global stage, foreign investors from sovereign wealth funds to industry players are securing strategic stakes in their future success. International institutional investors have built up significant positions in Chinese biotech firms over the past decade. These positions often approach, and in some cases exceed, the 5 per cent disclosure threshold for substantial shareholders in Hong Kong. BlackRock, the world’s largest asset...

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China will closely monitor developments in Greenland as it seeks to become an important player in Arctic affairs. Still, Beijing is unlikely to respond with any major action in the near future to counter US President Donald Trump’s bid to annex the island, analysts said. “The Arctic is certainly a central matter for policy for China, and they know it’s going to be important in the future, especially with climate change,” said Eurasia Group’s China practice head, David Meale. In his escalated...

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Ongoing tariff wars and a dependence on China are two of the top emerging risks for the global defence sector, according to a report released this week by the UK-based consultancy WTW (Willis Towers Watson). The defence sector is facing several new challenges in an increasingly volatile geopolitical environment, framed by the industry’s dependence on China’s materials and ongoing uncertainty amid a tariff dispute between Beijing and Washington. “The defence sector’s reliance on Chinese materials...

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China’s government is likely to set this year’s economic growth target in a range between 4.5 per cent and 5 per cent, according to three sources briefed on the matter. Such a target would indicate a tolerance for a modest deceleration from last year’s 5 per cent gross domestic product growth as Beijing highlights the importance of “high-quality” development and urges local officials to embrace “the right concept of political performance”, the sources said. The range, if confirmed, would serve...

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The United States’ abrupt withdrawal earlier this month from dozens of international institutions, including the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, was more than another episode of diplomatic retrenchment. It was a reminder that the post-war architecture of global governance, particularly in environmental affairs, is under strain. Against this backdrop, China’s decision to nominate Xiamen as the host city for the secretariat of the new High Seas Treaty should not be read as a quest for...

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Look for the US and Canada to move farther apart on China policy, even in areas where they were previously aligned, analysts say, days after Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney announced a multifaceted deal with Beijing. In recent years, Washington and Ottawa had drawn closer together when it came to dealing with Beijing, from electric vehicle tariffs and research security to investment screening. But that convergence is now fraying, analysts say, as Canada signals a greater willingness to...

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A small number of Chinese satellites and space debris forced SpaceX’s Starlink fleet to execute a large number of collision avoidance manoeuvres last year, as both sides complained of safety challenges from rival internet megaconstellations. The largest culprit was Hongqing Technology’s Honghu-2 satellite, which accounted for 1,143 such manoeuvres. The experimental satellite was launched aboard LandSpace’s Zhuque 2 Y-3 rocket in December 2023. Such manoeuvres consume fuel and shorten a...

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By 2030, China could operate about 1,000 units of the J-20 fifth-generation fighter jet, possibly challenging the US and its allies’ air power projection near the first island chain, according to a British think tank. A report this month by the London-based Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) found a “dramatic increase” in the past five years in China’s capacity to contest Western air power, citing the production of “modern and highly capable” fourth- and fifth-generation fighters. While the...

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After a year of Trump 2.0, China has much to be thankful for. This is not an endorsement of US hegemony but an expression of confidence in China’s increased resilience – and an acknowledgement of the US policies that pushed China there. The Chinese government’s stance towards Trump 2.0 remains the same: to adhere to its own principles, respond rationally and look to turn any crisis into an opportunity. For a start, Trump 2.0’s tariff war on China has backfired. All it did was force China to...

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Private sector enterprises comprised 40 per cent of the top 100 listed Chinese companies by market value in the second half of last year, led by high-profile technology firms involved in China’s artificial intelligence (AI) boom, according to the Peterson Institute for International Economics. That represented an increase of 2.4 percentage points from the first half of last year, the Washington-based think tank said in a report released on Tuesday that also highlighted a marked rebound from a...

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Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said it all in a phone call to his Iranian counterpart, Abbas Araghchi, last week. With Tehran in turmoil and Washington threatening to intervene, Wang was holding Beijing’s long-standing line. “[China] opposes the use or threat of force in international relations, opposes imposing one’s own will on others and opposes a return of the world to the law of the jungle,” he said, adding that Beijing was willing to play a “constructive role” in resolving differences...

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Moore Threads, one of China’s artificial intelligence chip champions, expects to report a tripling of revenue for 2025, reflecting how local semiconductor firms are expanding rapidly amid Beijing’s push for self-sufficiency. The company, founded in 2020 by Nvidia’s former China head Zhang Jianzhong, said it expected revenue to land between 1.45 billion yuan (US$208 million) and 1.52 billion yuan after surging between 231 per cent and 247 per cent compared with 2024, according to a stock exchange...

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China’s ambassador to the Philippines, Jing Quan, said Beijing and Manila were seeking a “road map” for the next phase of talks aimed at settling their long-running dispute in the South China Sea. Speaking at a media reception at the Chinese embassy on Tuesday, Jing warned that any conflict would “inevitably harm the long-term relationship … So, the best option is to sit down for talks”, according to the state-run Philippine News Agency. He added: “At present, our diplomats from the two sides...

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US President Donald Trump announced a framework for a Greenland agreement and ditched threats to invade the Arctic island after a row with Nato allies partly over how to respond to growing Chinese and Russian activity in the region. “This solution, if consummated, will be a great one for the United States of America, and all NATO Nations,” Trump posted on social media on Wednesday. He also said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that he was dropping plans to hit eight European...

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US tech giant Apple is offering discounts of up to 1,000 yuan (US$144) on selected products to customers in mainland China, the latest promotion from the iPhone maker ahead of an expected holiday shopping wave and heightened competition from local rivals. Promoted as a limited-time Lunar New Year offer, Apple said buyers of iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus from its mainland China website and official stores between January 24 and 27 would receive the discounts, which also applied to some MacBook,...

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It’s been one year since US President Donald Trump began his second term. Few analysts and investors doubted Trump 2.0 would be more confrontational and disruptive. Still, the ferocity of Trump’s attacks on the rule of law, institutions and US allies have far exceeded the worst fears of his sternest critics. That a supposed ally is using economic coercion to seize the sovereign territory of a fellow member of Nato shows how fast the unthinkable has become real. At the World Economic Forum in...

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China’s youth unemployment rate fell slightly in December for the fourth consecutive month, though competition for jobs remains intense as policymakers confront deflationary pressures and a labour market marked by a growing mismatch between skills and vacancies. The jobless rate for those aged 16 to 24, excluding students, fell to 16.5 per cent last month from 16.9 per cent in November, according to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics on Thursday. That figure has eased since...

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Jeffrey Ding is an assistant professor of political science at George Washington University. He is the author of Technology and the Rise of Great Powers, an award-winning book exploring the impact of technology on geopolitical competition, as well as the founder of the ChinAI newsletter, which tracks developments in China’s artificial intelligence (AI) industry. In this interview, Ding explains why “diffusion”, not innovation, will determine whether China or the US will prevail in the AI race,...

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People carrying a specific gene mutation could have a significantly higher risk of developing the respiratory condition asthma, according to Chinese scientists who have created a detailed immune cell atlas. The team has mapped how genetic variations influence immune cell function and disease development, creating a tool to help researchers understand how particular gene variations make people more likely to develop certain diseases and potentially guide the development of precise treatments,...

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China is pushing consumption to grow faster than overall economic expansion as the nation accelerates a shift to domestic demand-driven growth amid external criticism over trade imbalances, a former deputy governor of the People’s Bank of China said at the World Economic Forum. “The policy says consumption growth [should be] stronger than GDP growth … [and] income growth will be higher than GDP growth,” Zhu Min said in Davos, Switzerland, explaining that this is the key performance indicator for...

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An adviser to China’s central bank has publicly questioned the stability of the United States’ debt – highlighting growing concerns over Washington’s fiscal trajectory and the risk of a global spillover. “I’ve heard so many people telling me that [debt] as a share of GDP [gross domestic product] has been rising and probably will continue to rise. That’s probably not sustainable,” said Huang Yiping, an adviser to the People’s Bank of China, on Wednesday. The current institutional setting in the...

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A self-taught former factory worker who studied for his engineering degree by night has been elected as the head of one of the world’s leading electronic engineering societies. This year, Gao Huijun will become the first president of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society from mainland China. The society, founded in 1951, is a branch of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), an organisation with over 400,000 members in more than 160 countries. Gao, a professor at the...

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Tiny carbon nanotubes with walls just one atom thick found on the far side of the moon have provided the first confirmed evidence that a material long thought to require sophisticated human engineering could also be produced naturally. They were found in rocks collected by China’s 2024 Chang’e-6 mission, the first probe to land on the far side of the moon and bring samples back to Earth. Using high-resolution electron microscopes, a team from Jilin University in northeastern China detected the...

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