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China has set a deadline for local governments to settle the outstanding payments they owe to companies, calling it essential for improving the country’s business environment amid an economic slowdown. All arrears less than 500,000 yuan (US$70,870) must be cleared by the end of the year, said Xiao Weiming, deputy secretary general of the National Development and Reform Commission, the country’s top economic planner. “The biggest step in improving the business environment right now is clearing...

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Just days after Chinese ambassador Yang Renhuo met Guinea-Bissau’s President Umaro Sissoco Embalo to donate airport security inspection equipment, the West African nation was hit by a military coup that ousted Embalo. The November 26 coup marked yet another military takeover along Africa’s “coup belt”, adding Guinea-Bissau to nations like Mali, Burkina Faso, Guinea, Niger and Gabon that had recently seen leaders toppled. The political turmoil has raised the stakes for China’s vast economic...

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When I woke up with a sore throat and fever in Beijing earlier this month, the last thing I wanted to do was go to a hospital. Even though the nearest public facility is just a 15-minute walk from my flat, I didn’t have the energy to leave my bed, let alone endure the long queues, crowds and cumbersome procedures that come with a hospital visit. In fact, I suspected I had contracted the virus that was causing my symptoms from a trip to that very hospital four days earlier, as it was the only...

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China will expand its national healthcare insurance programme next year to fully cover all out-of-pocket expenses related to childbirth, according to state media reports. It is the country’s latest bid to lift birth rates and avert a looming demographic crisis that threatens to undermine long-term growth prospects. The pledge to widen the medical insurance coverage was unveiled at a national healthcare security conference in Beijing on Saturday, state news agency Xinhua reported. According to a...

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Chinese demand for foreign luxury cars is waning as customers opt for more affordable Chinese brand models, often sold at big discounts, catering to their taste for fancy electronics and comfort. That is bad news for European carmakers like Porsche, Aston Martin, Mercedes-Benz and BMW that have long dominated the upper reaches of the world’s largest auto market. A prolonged property downturn in China has left many consumers with little appetite for big purchases. Meanwhile, the well-to-do are...

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With temperatures falling and holidays approaching, ski resorts across northern China are experiencing a surge in visitors from the south, a trend that is cheering airlines as well as resort operators including Malaysia-based Genting Group. Since the ski season opened on November 15, the Changbai Beautiful China Resort in the northeast province of Jilin, a complex owned by China Green Development Group, has welcomed more than 110,000 visitors, marking a nearly 40 per cent year-on-year increase....

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Mounting US pressure on allies to bolster the first island chain’s defence in the western Pacific Ocean is raising concerns about South Korea’s possible but reluctant involvement in a conflict over Taiwan, analysts have said. In its recently released National Security Strategy (NSS), US President Donald Trump’s administration highlighted the importance of a “favourable conventional military balance” as an “essential component of strategic competition”, focusing on deterring conflict over Taiwan...

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While China continues to produce many young self-made billionaires, showcasing its economic dynamism, observers have urged the creation of a more supportive environment, saying that innovation is still being held back. About 98 per cent of the super-rich in mainland China, with assets valued at US$1 billion or more, are relatively young first-generation entrepreneurs, reflecting the vitality and wealth-creation power of its economy, Swiss bank UBS said in a recent report. However, Beijing’s...

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Mary Roettger was just one of millions of Americans seeking a social media life raft when she warily logged onto China’s RedNote platform for the first time in January. As fears loomed over a threatened US ban on TikTok, the Florida writer braced for a clumsy, spam-filled experience full of “negative people”. Instead, she was struck by a starkly different culture. Roettger was “blown away with the amount of tenderness and excitement” of the online community suddenly before her. “That was new,”...

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In October, as Simon Li finished speaking at an international conference about embracing technological innovation in education, several Chinese history educators approached him with a potent, pressing question: could a virtual reality (VR) project about the 1937 Nanking massacre become the next pedagogical frontier? Li, executive director of the Hong Kong Holocaust and Tolerance Centre, recalled it as an electrifying moment. “They were genuinely energised, saying that such a programme could help...

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US start-up OpenAI’s launch of ChatGPT on November 30 three years ago sent China’s technology industry scrambling to get up to speed on the latest artificial intelligence developments. Chinese government authorities sent urgent requests to various experts, including professors from Tsinghua University, to provide briefings on the implications of generative AI technology, according to people with knowledge of the matter. China’s Big Tech firms and ambitious start-ups rushed to roll out their own...

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When Elyn MacInnis first moved to Nanjing in the late 1980s, she was greeted by a wholly unexpected connection. Local elderly residents would look at the American newcomer, pause and tell her she resembled Minnie Vautrin: a middle-aged woman with round glasses and centre-parted hair often pinned up. MacInnis, who goes by the Chinese name Mu Yanling, knew the name only vaguely then. Vautrin was an American missionary who led Jinling Women’s College during the Nanking massacre, in the city now...

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China is looking to the United Arab Emirates to help speed up negotiations for a free-trade agreement with the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), according to Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi. Wang met his Emirati counterpart in Abu Dhabi on Friday, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement on its website. He told Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan that China supported the UAE’s “measures to safeguard national security and development” and its “increased role in international and...

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Underwater drones being tested by China could be used to blockade the Panama Canal or even the US west coast, an American defence publication has claimed. The drones, referred to as XXLUUVs (Extra-Extra-Large Unmanned Underwater Vehicles), are highly classified and little is known for certain about them. However, some clues have been gleaned from satellite imagery, eyewitness photographs and a builder’s concept model displayed at a defence exhibition, according to the Naval News website. The...

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A top official warned against moves to revive Japanese militarism as China held its annual national commemoration of the Nanking massacre amid tense ties with Tokyo. Speaking at a memorial ceremony in the eastern city of Nanjing on Saturday, Shi Taifeng, head of the ruling Communist Party’s organisation department, said that any attempt to revive militarism, challenge the post-war international order or undermine global peace and stability was “doomed to failure”, according to state broadcaster...

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The Chinese ambassador to Rwanda said on Friday that China-Africa cooperation had expanded into forward-looking sectors such as artificial intelligence, the digital economy, green energy, fintech and sustainable development. While attending the Seventh Africa’s Business Heroes Summit held in Kigali, Rwanda, Gao Wenqi thanked entrepreneurs from China and African nations for expanding cooperation into sectors that “reflect the future trends of the global economy”. “China will continue to broaden...

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China is cementing its image as a lasting partner across Africa by gifting high-profile infrastructure, such as presidential palaces and parliament buildings. A key example is the new US$32 million Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) headquarters in Abuja. Funded by China and set for handover by the end of January, this centralised complex for the 15-member bloc aims to boost staff productivity and cut operational costs. On December 4, Chinese ambassador to Nigeria Yu Dunhai...

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Beijing’s embassy in Israel has protested following reports of a secret trip by Taiwan’s deputy foreign minister to the Middle Eastern country. Citing several anonymous sources, Reuters reported on Thursday that Francois Wu Chih-chung had travelled to Israel in recent weeks, though it was not disclosed who he met there. Taipei has not officially confirmed that the visit took place. On Saturday, the Chinese embassy in Israel commented on the visit, stating that Beijing firmly opposed official...

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The global green energy transition is less about geopolitics and more about economic reality, according to Arif Aga, director of global renewable engineering consultancy SgurrEnergy. For many nations seeking to adopt clean energy, their priority remains the practical pursuit of lowering costs, a reality that has entrenched China’s leading role in the global clean power supply. According to the renewable energy technical adviser, the vast scale of Chinese manufacturing and its rapid enhancement...

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A key industrial hub in eastern China is launching a push to transform itself into one of the world’s top copper-smelting bases, aiming to forge stronger supply chains for the strategic metal as prices flirt with record highs. In an implementation plan released on Tuesday, the Shandong provincial government pledged to expand its copper industry, with the next two years seeing rapid advancements. The move comes as geopolitical tensions and the race for technological dominance shore up copper’s...

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After decades of human activities and overgrazing, desertification has accelerated at an alarming speed in China, resulting in sandstorms, flooding and drought. The economic repercussions are potentially affecting more than 400 million people. In the past, Chinese kingdoms and empires erected the Great Wall to prevent steppe nomads from invading from the north. Now, the government is planting a whole new kind of wall to protect from encroaching deserts.

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Multiple documents on websites run by public institutions in China were found to feature fake names and people, a pattern state media warned could harm government credibility and provide a haven for corruption. The series of blunders unfolded when internet users on December 3 found that a tender document listed what appeared to be a fake judging panel, with the names of all five members coinciding with the first five entries on Baidu’s “10,000 Popular Chinese Names” archive. The proposal was...

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In 1865, when a British entrepreneur built a demonstration railroad near Beijing, Empress Dowager Cixi saw not progress but danger – of disruptions to feng shui, imperial graves and rural order – and had the tracks torn up. Two decades later, when a Chinese-built coal line threatened to steam too close to sacred grounds, Cixi’s solution was not innovation but regression. She ordered that the locomotive be replaced with horses. By clinging to tradition in the face of technological transformation,...

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During a trip home, I took my daughters to the Nanking massacre memorial hall. It is not an easy place to visit. In shadowy rooms, photographs of victims line the walls. The names of the dead stretch across black stone. In glass cases lie bones unearthed from mass graves. I wanted my children to learn history honestly, to understand what war does to people. I shared stories my grandma had told me: as she fled town, a bomb fell on a nearby street. One neighbour vanished. Only bits of her remained...

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European Union members have observed an uptick in China’s support for Russia, multiple sources said, as Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine prepares to drag into its fourth year. Officials are parsing evidence of an increase in battlefield weapons being shipped from China to Russia, to add to the well-documented flow of goods with dual civilian and military uses between the two states. “We note that 80 per cent of critical dual-use goods come to Russia either through or from China. They claim to be...

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