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The Chinese region of Inner Mongolia expects to start work this year on two new “flexible” power plants mixing coal and green energy. The plants, which will provide power to the eastern economic hubs of Shanghai and Jiangsu province, mark a major strategic shift in the use of coal because it will now be used to plug gaps in the power generated by wind and solar energy rather than being the primary source of energy. Inner Mongolia is home to around a quarter of China’s coal reserves but has also...

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Thousands of Chinese retail investors spent the last day of the Year of the Snake on Monday filing complaints against UBS SDIC Fund Management for an overnight valuation change that caused steep losses for holders of its silver fund, even after the firm offered remedies. More than 200,000 people lodged complaints against the operator of the country’s only silver fund after the controversial change on February 2, according to Xiaofei Bao, an online Chinese consumer protection platform. The switch...

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President Xi Jinping has deemed the acceleration of consumption and innovation, particularly in artificial intelligence, an essential task as the world’s second-largest economy seeks to overcome challenges in 2026. The president’s priorities, officially laid out before the year began, were revealed to the public in a speech excerpt published on Monday by the ruling Communist Party’s leading theoretical journal. Xi emphasised the need to boost domestic demand, giving it the lion’s share of...

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As families across China gather for the 2026 Lunar New Year holiday, pre-made dishes at their reunion dinners – the centrepiece of Spring Festival celebrations – have again come under scrutiny. Chinese households, many of which tend to reduce their budget, have increasingly been cautious, following a high-profile row over food transparency and quality involving a star influencer with millions of fans online and a national restaurant chain. “I work all year round overtime and do eat pre-made food...

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The Ministry of Emergency Management has warned officials of the urgent need to prevent a repeat of the fireworks explosion that killed eight people in Jiangsu province, eastern China, on Sunday, the start of the country’s nine-day Lunar New Year holiday. The ministry convened an emergency meeting following the blast at a fireworks shop in Dongan village in Donghai county, which happened after a villager “improperly set off fireworks near the store”. According to state broadcaster CCTV, two...

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Arthur Konnerth, a recipient of the prestigious Brain Prize, has joined the Shenzhen Bay Laboratory (SZBL) on a full-time basis, the institute announced on January 29. Konnerth is a leading figure in neuroscience whose work has helped transform the understanding of how the brain processes information. His research focuses on the fundamental mechanisms of learning and memory, employing a combination of electrophysiological, imaging and cellular techniques. Konnerth pioneered the in vitro brain...

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Chinese military activities – and the need to respond to them – were framed as a major driver of cooperation between US allies in the Indo-Pacific and Europe during this year’s Munich Security Conference (MSC). It comes as Washington pushes its allies to spend more on their own defence and in the collective defence of the “first island chain” to deter potential war with China. Speaking at the conference on Saturday, Elbridge Colby, US undersecretary of defence for policy, said that while...

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Chinese tech companies are competing to make their mark during the Spring Festival Gala presented by state-run broadcaster CCTV, a variety show and annual spectacle that provides a rare nationwide marketing opportunity, like the Super Bowl in the US, and is also an unmistakable signal of political alignment with Beijing’s industrial priorities. This year, ByteDance’s cloud computing arm, Volcano Engine, secured an “exclusive AI cloud partnership” with the gala, scheduled for Monday, taking the...

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Last month, in the same week that Chinese and Philippine diplomats restarted political dialogue for the first time in over a year, the People’s Liberation Army bombers conducted combat patrols over Scarborough Shoal. China then released a video marking the fifth anniversary of its coastguard law, emphasising the force’s legal mandate and role in maritime governance. It also features footage of the June 2024 confrontation with the Philippines. In the South China Sea, conference rooms and...

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China’s navy still lacks the advanced underwater equipment and operational readiness needed to effectively conduct salvage operations in the event of a carrier-based aircraft crash, a military magazine tied to the country’s largest state-owned shipbuilder has warned. According to an analysis published this month, Beijing risks exposing sensitive military technology if a carrier-borne aircraft crashes and the PLA Navy fails to secure or salvage the wreckage before rival forces reach the...

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At a Munich Security Conference drinks reception this week, a seasoned Chinese observer who has been coming to Bavaria for more than a decade said China had long felt like an observer on the periphery. China was mentioned mainly to be blamed, they said – but things flipped last year when, instead of taking Beijing to task, US Vice-President J.D. Vance targeted Europe. Later in the weekend, the event’s CEO Benedikt Franke praised the China Centre for Globalisation – a Beijing think tank – for...

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As a long-time observer of Hong Kong affairs – and someone who cares deeply about the city – I have often felt that external debates about Hong Kong have been louder than careful assessments of how the city is actually evolving. Since the implementation of the national security law, discussion of Hong Kong has often become polarised. Less attention has been paid to outcomes and observable change. From where I stand, however, a clear shift is under way: the city has moved from prolonged...

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China has announced visa-free entry for Canadian and British nationals, marking the United States as the only Five Eyes nation not granted this privilege. The new policy takes effect on Tuesday and will remain in place until the end of the year, according to the Chinese foreign ministry. Announcing the move on Sunday, the ministry said passport holders from Canada and Britain may stay in China for up to 30 days without a visa for business trips, sightseeing, visiting friends and family, or...

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The route to challenging China’s supremacy in rare earth minerals lies in using artificial intelligence (AI) and quantum computing to create synthetic substitutes or alloys, according to a prominent American expert in AI. Jack Hidary, CEO of SandboxAQ, an AI and quantum technology Alphabet spin-off, said these technologies could cut the time required to secure critical materials to just a few years. This could bypass the traditional 10 to 20 years needed to bring a new mine online while also...

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ByteDance’s latest video generation model Seedance 2.0 has blown people away for its ability to rapidly generate lifelike videos, but is also receiving blowback globally for alleged intellectual property (IP) violations. The controversy focuses on TikTok-owner ByteDance’s alleged use of copyrighted content to train its artificial intelligence model, as videos of Hollywood celebrities, Disney characters and comic book heroes generated by Seedance have flooded the web in recent days. On Saturday,...

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China has expanded its list of domestic systemically important banks (D-SIBs) – institutions subject to tighter regulatory standards – as authorities step up macroprudential oversight to safeguard financial stability amid high exposure to property sector debt. China Zheshang Bank, a joint-stock lender in east China’s Zhejiang province with total assets of 3.35 trillion yuan (US$485 billion), was added to the list released on Friday by the People’s Bank of China and the National Financial...

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China’s top market regulator has summoned the country’s leading tech companies to demand an end to “involutionary” competition, at the time when the companies are pouring billions of yuan into a Lunar New Year promotional blitz to win over users for services including artificial intelligence apps. The companies summoned on Friday were Alibaba Group Holding, ByteDance’s Douyin, Baidu, Tencent Holdings, JD.com, Meituan and Taobao Instant Commerce, Alibaba’s on-demand delivery unit, the State...

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As France’s influence fades and with Russian weapons in limited supply, a “military vacuum” has been created in West and Central Africa that China is uniquely positioned to fill, according to analysts. In a January report in the official journal China Military to Civilian, arms supplier China National Aero-Technology Import & Export Corporation said Beijing was leveraging its reputation for “cost-effective technology and flexible financing” in Africa. This follows a wave of military coups across...

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China’s box office presales topped 200 million yuan (US$28.9 million) by Saturday ahead of the coming Lunar New Year holiday, led exclusively by domestic productions – a decline of more than 60 per cent from about 600 million yuan over the same period last year, according to Taopiaopiao, the online ticketing arm of Alibaba Pictures. Presales are closely watched by distributors and investors as an early indicator of holiday audience demand. Long seen as a crucial pillar of China’s film market,...

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One of China’s most anticipated Lunar New Year holiday films features a renowned director, a cast of stars and an unusual creative consultant: the country’s top counter-espionage agency. Scare Out, which will debut in cinemas in mainland China on February 17, is the first film directly supervised by the Ministry of State Security. The ministry said it provided technical guidance for the film and that the script was based on real cases. Directed by the multi-award-winning Zhang Yimou, the film...

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The US and China sought to manage their great power competition at Europe’s premier defence summit on Saturday, even as their top diplomats traded thinly veiled barbs at their respective roles in the current global tumult. In back-to-back speeches at the Munich Security Conference, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi spoke of the need to carefully manage the superpowers’ differences, continuing a relative thaw that is expected to see US President Donald Trump...

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Last week, US ambassador to Poland Tom Rose cut off contact with his host country’s parliamentary speaker over what he described as “outrageous and unprovoked insults” against President Donald Trump. Washington would “not permit anyone to harm US-Polish relations nor disrespect” the president, Rose warned, without specifying the insults. However, lower house speaker Wlodzimierz Czarzasty, a left-wing Polish politician, had earlier criticised Trump’s policies and said he would not support an...

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Japan has released the captain of a Chinese fishing boat that Tokyo says tried to flee an inspection while in its exclusive economic zone (EEZ). Japan’s fisheries agency said the captain was released before 8pm on Friday after China submitted documents guaranteeing payment of bail, Japanese broadcaster NHK reported on Saturday. The agency said the boat, the Qiong Dong Yu, was seized inside Japan’s EEZ off its southwestern Nagasaki prefecture on Thursday. It was ordered to stop for an inspection...

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People across China are buying up gold in large volumes ahead of the Lunar New Year holiday, as surging prices for the precious metal fuel its popularity as both a festive gift and an investment. From migrant workers splashing out on gold-coated jewellery, to white-collar workers pouring their savings into gold-linked investment funds, the metal is widely seen not only as a marker of social respectability, but also as a safety net amid an uncertain world. The rising demand comes amid an...

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More Taiwanese are visiting mainland China but the numbers have yet to cross pre-Covid levels, data from the island’s tourism body shows. Taiwanese media attributed the slow recovery to continued cross-strait tensions and partial travel restrictions. According to Taiwan’s Tourism Administration, around 3.24 million Taiwanese visited the mainland last year, nearly 17 per cent more than in 2024. But this was still 20 per cent lower than the figure for 2019, the year before the coronavirus...

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