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A 16th-century Flemish castle is the setting on Thursday as European leaders try to resolve a set of economic tensions haunting Europe that are almost as old: the pull between free trade and protection, integration and sovereignty. On the agenda are prickly items such as how to kick-start the EU economy, whether to issue joint debt and how far to go with “buy Europe” provisions aimed at unpicking reliance on China and the United States. Seven years after European Commission President Ursula von...

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With jets forming complex formations as they soared overhead and amid ground displays of the world’s most advanced fighters, manufacturers from the US, China, South Korea and Turkey gathered in Riyadh to pursue deals of financial and strategic weight. China was relatively quiet at this year’s World Defence Show, with no air display or senior government delegation. Its exhibits included model J-10CE and J-35A fighter jets, along with Wing Loong and Rainbow series drones which have been making...

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A Netherlands court has upheld the suspension of Zhang Xuezheng, former CEO of Dutch chipmaker Nexperia, and ordered an investigation into the company’s governance – another setback for Chinese parent company Wingtech. “The Enterprise Chamber … acknowledges that Nexperia faced complex dilemmas due to geopolitical developments. However, this does not mean that an investigation should be omitted in this case,” the court said in its ruling, published on Wednesday. The court found there were valid...

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The US has established a new army foothold in the Philippines with a rotational deployment designed to sustain the Typhon missile system and contain China, according to military analysts. The US Army has commenced rotational deployments in the Philippines, according to a post published on January 29 on the Defence Visual Information Distribution Service, the US military’s image and video hosting website. The photographs showed exchanges on January 12 between the Army Rotational Force-Philippines...

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Chinese tech giant Baidu launched a Wikipedia challenger this week, banking on artificial intelligence to bridge information gaps for local and worldwide audiences in a move analysts said was aimed at seizing global opportunities. BaiduWiki, a Wikipedia-style service available in English, Spanish, French, Russian and Japanese, quietly went live on Monday, according to records from the Wayback Machine, a digital archive platform. A now deleted post on Baidu’s official account on social-media site...

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In January, James Zimmerman returned to the American Chamber of Commerce in China (AmCham China) as its chairman. He previously served in that role for four one-year terms in 2007, 2008, 2015 and 2016. A lawyer by training and a resident of China for 28 years, Zimmerman has witnessed the rise of the world’s second-largest economy, the challenges it has faced and the attendant changes to how American businesses operate in the country. In this interview, Zimmerman assesses the potential of US...

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As the global financial landscape shifts and policy uncertainty grows in the United States, China is likely to emerge as an increasingly attractive destination for foreign investors seeking to diversify away from dollar-denominated assets, according to a veteran Singaporean investor. US President Donald Trump’s push for a weaker dollar, together with recent volatility in gold, silver and cryptocurrencies, has prompted a reassessment of traditional safe havens, positioning China as a potential...

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After 30 years in the United States, world-leading computational biologist Bao Zhirong has taken up a full-time position at the Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech) in Shenzhen. Bao, who pioneered imaging technologies that allow scientists to track the behaviour of individual cells in real time as organs form and diseases emerge, has been a chair professor at SUSTech’s life sciences school since January, according to his new faculty profile. He was previously at New York’s...

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President Donald Trump faced noteworthy pushback over his signature tariff policy in the US Congress this week as his popularity slipped and more lawmakers in his party appeared willing to risk his wrath. While the pushback is unlikely to result in any immediate concrete change to his aggressive tariff policy, which has roiled markets and upended global supply chains, it represents a striking challenge for a president who has lashed out at critics and otherwise maintained an iron grip on his...

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China will support Cuba “in the best way possible” as the island grapples with an energy crisis following tougher measures imposed by US President Donald Trump’s administration, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson confirmed on Wednesday. Speaking at a regular press briefing in Beijing, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said China “will do what it can” to assist Havana and again condemned what he described as “inhumane actions that deprive the Cuban people of their right to survival and...

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The South China Sea continues to act as a lightning rod for competing claims among regional powers. In the final of a three-part series, Fan Chen investigates how Beijing is responding to the wake-up call on what is needed to win the narrative battle. For previous articles, click here and here. A video shared by the Philippine coastguard gained wide attention in December. It showed a ship from its Chinese counterpart deploying water cannon towards a smaller vessel, but the footage was used to...

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The United States and China are poised to extend the trade truce they negotiated in South Korea by up to a year when President Donald Trump and President Xi Jinping are expected to meet in Beijing in early April, according to several people familiar with the discussions. The uneasy truce, struck last October after a bilateral meeting between the two leaders in Busan, rolled back tariffs and export controls after months of spiralling tensions marked by triple-digit “retaliatory” levies and...

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Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) company Zhipu AI has launched its latest flagship model, the GLM-5, with a leap in coding capabilities amid a heated race among Chinese tech firms to roll out major new models ahead of the Spring Festival holiday. Zhipu AI, known internationally as Z.ai, said that the GLM-5 represented a shift in AI development from “vibe coding” to “agentic engineering” – AI-automated coding at a larger scale – thanks to its latest model’s enhanced performance. The company...

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Economic issues are expected to take centre stage at the US-China summit in April but regional security will also feature, according to former US ambassador to Beijing Nicholas Burns. Speaking via a video link to the Yale Centre Beijing on Tuesday, Burns said US President Donald Trump would be “right to focus on economic issues” during his trip to the Chinese capital for talks with President Xi Jinping. “And let us hope that they can sustain the truce in tariffs – the tariff wars – and sustain...

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China’s logistics efficiency hit a new high in 2025, as expanding infrastructure investment and rapid adoption of new technologies supported productivity growth in the world’s second-largest economy. The ratio of total social logistics costs to gross domestic product fell to 13.9 per cent in 2025 – the lowest level on record – down from 14.1 per cent in 2024, according to data released by the National Development and Reform Commission. That meant 13.9 yuan (US$2.01) was spent on logistics for...

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Central Asian governments are forging ahead with ambitious “smart city” mega-projects to tackle rapid population growth and ageing Soviet-era infrastructure. They are also pulling in much-needed foreign investment, and China’s strong visibility in these projects – while Russia is notably absent – is fuelling debate over whether the region is trying to reduce its economic dependence on Moscow. It comes as competition among major powers in Central Asia is intensifying, with the US-led C5+1...

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China has rejected US claims that it conducted a nuclear test in 2020, saying the accusation is “an excuse” to justify a potential US return to nuclear testing. “The United States has persistently distorted and smeared China’s nuclear policy,” foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian said on Wednesday. The pushback was in response to a statement by Thomas DiNanno, US undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, in Geneva on Friday. “The US government is aware that China has...

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As a flurry of European leaders flock to China, a different diplomatic dynamic has taken shape in Brussels, exposing deep-seated problems in the relationship between the EU and China. Several sources described a deliberate slowing of high-level appointments with Chinese diplomats in the Belgian capital – an effort to reciprocate the lack of access EU diplomats receive in Beijing. In the Chinese capital, the EU ambassador, Jorge Toledo, has been effectively frozen out of meetings with relevant...

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India and China opened a new round of strategic dialogue as US tariffs on their exports spur the two Asian giants to broaden global trade ties and move beyond past disputes. Both countries “uphold the strategic perception that China and India are cooperative partners instead of rivals”, China’s foreign ministry said in a statement after Tuesday’s meeting in New Delhi between Executive Vice-Foreign Minister Ma Zhaoxu and Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri. “China and India should deepen mutual...

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As we get ready for the Year of the Horse, preparations for the Spring Festival Gala, the most important event on China’s television calendar, are well under way. Most viewers will see choreography, spectacle and national pride – as well as humanoid robots. Policymakers and markets, however, should see something else: a carefully staged signal of how China’s political economy is positioning for the next cycle of industrial overcapacity – and its global consequences. The gala has become a...

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China has appointed a new ambassador to Libya after its embassy in Tripoli reopened in November, more than a decade after it was shuttered over security concerns. Ma Xueliang’s appointment was confirmed when he met Libyan charge d’affaires Khaled al-Sayeh in Beijing on January 27 in his new capacity before he left for Tripoli, according to the state-owned Libyan News Agency. China had closed its embassy in Tripoli in 2014 and moved its diplomatic mission to Tunisia because of the security...

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French wine and spirits exporters saw their worst results since 2020’s Covid-19 shock last year, as companies were buffeted by stormy trade relations between China and the US, two of their biggest export markets. “It’s weighing on everyone’s morale,” said Gabriel Picard, president of the French Federation of Wine and Spirit Exporters (FEVS), during a press conference in Paris on Tuesday where he presented the annual figures. France exported a total of €14.3 billion (117.5 billion yuan) of wine...

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China’s state-backed investors are stepping up funding for artificial intelligence-driven drug developers as Beijing pushes for technological self-reliance, with at least one company already advancing an AI-designed therapy into late-stage clinical trials. Hangzhou-based METiS TechBio, founded in 2020, raised 400 million yuan in Series D financing in August last year, led by the Beijing Medical and Health Industry Investment Fund and the Daxing Industrial Investment Fund – both government-linked...

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We have put together stories from our coverage on science from the past two weeks to help you stay informed. If you would like to see more of our reporting, please consider subscribing.

1. How old is Chinese civilisation? A scholar says it really dates back 8,000 years A noted archaeologist is challenging conventional wisdom on one of the world’s oldest cultures, arguing that Chinese civilisation has a recorded history stretching back 8,000 years – three millennia beyond the widely accepted...

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China has successfully completed a crucial safety test and fired off a new-generation rocket as part of the country’s preparations for a crewed mission to the moon. Wednesday’s escape test on board the Mengzhou crew carrier was designed to ensure that astronauts could be safely returned to Earth if something went wrong during the launch. The Chinese space programme had already carried out a ground-level safety test in June, but the latest test was designed to check that crew members would be...

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