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1. Beijing rejects G20 Japan meeting with Premier Li amid deepening Taiwan row China continued a diplomatic chill with Japan over the weekend by ruling out a leaders’ meeting at the coming G20 summit in South Africa amid heightened tensions.
2. Chinese student numbers in US fall as gap with Indian scholars widens: report Chinese student numbers in the United...

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A renowned mathematician who is also part of China’s Qian clan – a surname linked in the annals of Chinese scientific history to national pioneers in science and engineering – has become the latest US-based scientist to return to China. After more than 40 years in the United States, Qian Hong has left his endowed professorship at the University of Washington to join the prestigious and private Westlake University in eastern China. Qian’s appointment last month as a full-time chair professor with...

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Chinese tourists and students have expressed mixed reactions to Beijing’s travel and education advisories on Japan amid a spiralling diplomatic clash, with some downplaying the concerns as a peak travel season approaches. Tensions escalated following Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s remarks earlier this month that suggested Tokyo could deploy its military forces in the event of a conflict in the Taiwan Strait. Beijing has reacted with anger, including summoning the Japanese ambassador to...

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Chinese aircraft carriers have undergone intensive far-sea training to forge strong combat readiness, carrying out dozens of “train-as-you-fight” drills beyond the island chains and substantially increasing the frequency of aircraft launches, according to official media. The report by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Daily, the mouthpiece for the Chinese military, published on Thursday shed light on carrier training – a subject China has previously guarded closely – less than two weeks after...

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Yum China Holdings, operator of KFC and Pizza Hut restaurant chains across mainland China and Hong Kong, plans to ramp up expansion into more lower-tier cities based on its flexible store formats, expecting this push to generate higher returns for the company over the next five years. At the company’s Investor Day conference in Shenzhen on Monday, CEO Joey Wat said Yum China’s total number of outlets would increase to 30,000 by 2030, 76 per cent more than the firm’s estimated 17,000 outlets by...

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Chinese airlines have recorded about 491,000 cancellations of tickets to Japan since Saturday – roughly 32 per cent of their total bookings to the typically popular destination – after Beijing advised citizens to avoid travelling there amid a diplomatic spat, according to a veteran aviation analyst. The percentage of flights affected skyrocketed to 82.14 per cent on Sunday and 75.6 per cent on Monday, according to independent analyst Li Hanming, citing his research data covering all mainland...

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China’s ambassador to the United States has come to the defence of the country’s students and academics, saying they have been “smeared” as a threat to national security. “A few individuals in the United States have seen Chinese students, scholars, and friendly organisations … as national security threats through a biased lens and have tried every means to smear and obstruct them,” Xie Feng said in a video message to the US-China Hong Kong Forum. “People with vision in China and the US need to...

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Ant International, the Singapore-based spin-off of Chinese fintech giant Ant Group, is stepping up its global treasury operations through a strategic partnership with Swiss bank UBS, as both companies also seek to explore innovations in blockchain-based tokenised deposits. Under a memorandum of understanding signed at UBS’ Singapore offices, Ant International will use UBS Digital Cash – a blockchain-based payments platform launched last year – for its global treasury operations to enhance...

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Xiao Mei, a kindergarten teaching assistant living in the suburbs of Hangzhou in eastern China, has barely seen her income rise for three years and is not optimistic about her chances of getting a pay rise any time soon. Still, she counts herself as relatively fortunate. “At least I haven’t had my pay cut or lost my job,” she said, adding that several of her friends had suffered such setbacks recently. Earning around 6,000 yuan (US$845) a month – well below the local average of 13,500 yuan for...

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A county-level sanitation office in southern China has invited ridicule and stoked a public debate after posting a job that requires a PhD to supervise garbage trucks and landfills – an unusual demand that critics say epitomises China’s runaway degree inflation. The posting in Guangdong province, by the office that manages urban environmental sanitation for Shixing county, appeared online last week under a notice for “urgently needed high-level talent for public institutions” issued by the...

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People’s Daily has urged Asian nations to stay “on high alert” for Japan’s potentially “dangerous” strategic tilt in an editorial published amid a trip to Beijing by a senior Japanese diplomat over the escalating bilateral diplomatic row on Taiwan. The commentary in the Communist Party mouthpiece on Monday condemned Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s recent remarks on potentially intervening in a Taiwan conflict, calling them “tantamount to invoking the ghost of militarism”, a reference to...

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Chinese companies expanding overseas are increasingly using the yuan for financing and payments to build their international operations, boosting the currency’s growing clout in international trade and investment. “Based on my calculation, 10 per cent of our company’s total orders were priced and settled in renminbi,” said Yang Feng, finance director for overseas marketing at Sieyuan Electric, in a panel discussion organised by Standard Chartered at the China International Import Expo in...

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Chinese technology giant Huawei Technologies is expected to unveil a new artificial intelligence infrastructure technology on Friday that could double the utilisation efficiency of graphic processing units (GPUs), according to the state-owned Shanghai Securities News. The report said the technology would be able to lift the utilisation rate of AI chips – including GPUs and neural processing units (NPUs) – to 70 per cent, up from the current 30 to 40 per cent, in another major advance in “using...

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Under pressure from Beijing’s chokehold on rare earths and the simmering feud over chipmaker Nexperia, EU officials have been asked to tone down their public rhetoric on Beijing, even as the bloc moves forward aggressively with its de-risking plans. Brussels is in “de-escalation mode”, several official sources confirmed, as it looks to convince China to issue more licences for the export of the critical minerals vital to hi-tech manufacturing and ensure the supply of chips from beleaguered...

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Chinese student numbers in the United States have continued to decline over the past year, but they remain the second-largest student group after Indians and the biggest contributors to the US economy, according to new data released on Monday. A total of 265,919 Chinese studied in the US in the 2024-25 academic year, marking a four per cent decrease from the previous academic year, according to the latest annual survey of higher education institutions by the Institute of International Education...

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After 15 years of testing, China unveiled the HQ-29 at its Victory Day parade in September, showcasing the land-based air-defence missile system that is capable of intercepting targets in the near region of space outside the Earth’s atmosphere. The HQ-29, also known as the Red Flag-29, is considered a key supplement to the top layer of China’s multilayered ballistic missile defence system. The missile is mounted on a six-axle launcher, according to the Chinese military magazine Ordnance Science...

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Few women in Chinese history have been as scorned – or as misunderstood – as Bao Si. For nearly three millennia, the queen has been remembered not as a person, but as a symbol: the beautiful femme fatale whose cold heart and unparalleled beauty brought down a dynasty. According to legend, Bao Si was a queen so aloof she never smiled. Desperate to amuse her, King You of the Western Zhou Dynasty (about 1046-771 BC) is said to have played a deadly prank: he lit the kingdom’s sacred beacon fires –...

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Lower rents improved occupancy rates in Shanghai’s premium office market as the city reported solid economic growth, but most companies remained cost-conscious amid a cloudy economic outlook and expectations for bigger discounts, according to JLL. Discounts attracted corporate tenants in the quarter ended September, prompting relocations from business parks and suburban areas to grade-A office buildings, the property firm said. “As the rental disparity between grade-A and grade-B properties...

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Lu Feng is a professor of economics and a former deputy dean at Peking University’s National School of Development. In more than 40 academic papers, six books and numerous magazine articles, he has studied issues critical to China’s economy, including the exchange rate, industrial development, food security and external imbalances. Lu has also served as an adviser to several government agencies, including the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security. This...

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It happens in an instant – your eyes register motion, your brain predicts what comes next and, in a split second, you think you understand what you are seeing. But what if that instinct is wrong? That happened when the world saw China’s most advanced warship, the Fujian, in action earlier this month. When a video was released on November 8 showing the carrier’s electromagnetic catapult firing in an empty launch, viewers saw the catapult accelerate down the deck with blinding force and then stop...

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China’s next-generation “drone-carrier” amphibious assault ship, the Sichuan, completed its first sea trials on Sunday afternoon, state broadcaster CCTV said. The three-day trial marks a major step forward for the People’s Liberation Army to take delivery of its first Type 076 amphibious assault carrier, seen as a key asset for China’s unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) operations. The trials, which began on Friday morning, aimed to test the reliability and stability of the supersized warship’s...

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When President Xi Jinping commissioned the Fujian on November 5, China became only the second nation to have an aircraft carrier with an electromagnetic catapult system. It is also notable that, last month, two navy aircraft from the USS Nimitz crashed into the South China Sea. These events crystallise a strategic reality often obscured by aggregate force comparisons: the relevant naval balance is not between the 11 US aircraft carriers and China’s three, but between what the United States can...

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Chinese scientists have identified micron-sized grains of “iron rust” in lunar soil samples brought back by the Chang’e-6 mission last year. This finding challenges the traditional understanding of the moon’s surface chemistry and offers new clues to explain lunar magnetic anomalies. The results were published on Friday in the peer-reviewed journal Science Advances. A research team from Shandong University, in collaboration with the Institute of Geochemistry of the Chinese Academy of Sciences...

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By lifting its arms embargo on Cambodia, Washington has signalled that President Donald Trump aims to lure Phnom Penh away from Beijing – a move experts warn would be difficult to achieve. According to a notice from the US Federal Register, the State Department formally ended its arms embargo on Cambodia as of November 7, and any arms sales to the country will now be decided on a case-by-case basis. “Based on Cambodia’s diligent pursuit of peace and security, including through renewed engagement...

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Local authorities have formally approved the arrest of the former head of China’s famous Shaolin Temple, four months after he was placed under criminal investigation for alleged financial and sex scandals. Shi Yongxin’s arrest had been approved “on suspicion of embezzlement, misappropriation of funds, and accepting bribes as a non-state functionary”, the Xinxiang Procuratorate announced in a statement on Sunday. Xinxiang, in China’s central Henan province, is about two hours’ drive from the...

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