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The global artificial intelligence community’s attention was recently focused on DeepSeek’s latest open-source model, Math-V2, the first open-source AI model to score a gold medal-level performance at the International Mathematical Olympiad. But while California might hone in on the test scores, Jakarta and Nairobi are looking at something else entirely. For the Global South, the critical question is more likely to be whether that reasoning capability can optimise fertiliser distribution in a...

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Guangdong, China’s largest provincial economy, has vowed to double its economy by 2035 from 2022 levels, in line with the central government’s target of becoming a medium-level developed country by that year. “Looking ahead, from the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party (in 2022) to 2035, Guangdong aims to achieve socialist modernisation and build a modern, new Guangdong within 13 years,” provincial authorities said in their five-year plan proposals released on Monday. “By that time,...

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Japan is likely to become the “most serious and direct” threat to both China and Russia in the Asia-Pacific, a former Chinese diplomat and foreign ministry official has warned. Wu Hailong, assistant minister of foreign affairs from 2009 to 2011, now heads the semi-official China Public Diplomacy Association. Russia should factor in the challenge from Japan, he told a forum in Beijing last week. “When discussing China-Russia relations, I cannot avoid mentioning the Japan factor,” Wu said,...

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Deep Robotics – one of the “Six Little Dragons” from Hangzhou, the capital of eastern Zhejiang province – on Tuesday said it had raised 500 million yuan (US$70 million) in fresh funding from a group of Chinese investors. According to the company’s statement, its latest round of financing was led by CMB International, China Asset Management and funds under state-owned telecommunications network operators China Telecom and China Unicom. Deep Robotics founder and CEO Zhu Qiuguo, who also serves as...

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Lawmakers from both parties are warning that Chinese criminal groups have helped build what officials call a “Silk Road of crime”, a global network that launders Latin American cartel profits and supplies the chemicals used to make fentanyl bound for the United States. At a Senate hearing on Tuesday, members of the Caucus on International Narcotics Control said Chinese money brokers and Latin American cartels have merged their operations into a system that blurs the line between trade and...

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China and Hong Kong stocks could deliver nearly 20 per cent gains in 2026, supported by resilient global growth, improving earnings and easing competition among e-commerce giants, according to JPMorgan. The bank expected the MSCI China Index to rebound further as valuations normalised and Beijing’s push to curb excess capacity boosted profitability across key sectors, said Wendy Liu, chief China equity strategist at JPMorgan. “Earnings are giving us confidence,” Liu said during a media briefing...

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Don’t bring a knife to a gunfight, they say. Alas, the Dutch government has been a slow learner. No matter, the Nexperia debacle has shown how some European states have been too compliant with the United States and defiant with China. They don’t seem to realise they are little better than pawns in US President Donald Trump’s America. “Model allies that step up … will receive our special favour,” US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth declared at the 2025 Reagan National Defence Forum in California...

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When a European start-up developed a breakthrough technology capable of transforming low-grade bauxite – once considered waste – into high-quality feedstock for aluminium production, they announced it at an industry conference in Miami, United States. The innovation not only promises to revive exhausted mines, but also opens a new door to extracting critical minerals and rare earth elements essential for semiconductors, electric vehicles and national defence. With Western governments from...

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China on Tuesday released more details about Saturday’s mid-air stand-off between Chinese and Japanese fighter jets, as the two sides traded barbs over the radar lock-on incident amid rising tensions. The Japanese Defence Ministry claimed the Chinese ship-based J-15 fighters from aircraft carrier Liaoning had locked fire-control radars on Japan’s F-15 jets in the international airspace near Okinawa. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun stated on Tuesday that it is “standard practice for...

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Yuanxin, a 6-year-old immigrant from China who was detained and separated from his father, Fei Zheng, over the Thanksgiving holiday in New York City, was finally allowed to speak with his parent by phone this past weekend. Jennie Spector, who has been supporting the family since July, described the call as a “very good development”. She said a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer at the Orange County Correctional Facility in upstate New York, where Zheng is being held, made it...

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The People’s Liberation Army is testing what could be the world’s first portable quantum radio device in its border patrol troops, according to the official Science and Technology Daily. The PLA’s Information Support Force said its miniaturised prototype of quantum communication, weighing 3kg (6.6lbs), had successfully received radio signals from tens of kilometres away. The team was able to read lines of decoded information, the newspaper reported last Thursday. “This successful experiment will...

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US President Donald Trump’s green light for Nvidia to sell H200 artificial intelligence (AI) chips in China signals a calculated shift to export older technology, according to analysts who see the move as aiming to fortify the US market share while dampening China’s urgency for self-reliance. But some predict an ongoing policy tug of war in the US between advocates of this week’s relaxation and those who prefer continued tight restrictions on hi-tech gear shipped to China. Trump said on Monday...

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Taiwan has moved to deter what it sees as an alarming rise in deliberate damage to its undersea cables, revising its laws to impose stiffer prison sentences of up to seven years. The legal changes approved on Tuesday by Taiwan’s legislature came as the island accuses Beijing of sabotaging its submarine cables, describing such acts as “grey-zone” pressure tactics. Mainland authorities have strongly denied any involvement, calling the incidents “common maritime accidents” and accusing Taipei of...

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China’s artificial intelligence developers are expected to welcome Washington’s go-ahead for Nvidia to ship its H200 AI chips to approved customers on the mainland, according to analysts, even as Beijing continues to drive the country’s tech self-sufficiency efforts. In a post on his Truth Social platform on Monday, US President Donald Trump said he had informed his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, of that decision “under conditions that allow for continued strong national security”. Xi had...

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Catch up on some of SCMP’s biggest China stories of the day. If you would like to see more of our reporting, please consider subscribing.

1. Tokyo ‘closely monitoring’ backlash from China, Japanese PM tells lawmakers One month after the Taiwan contingency remarks that set off the diplomatic firestorm with China, Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said Japan would “closely monitor” the situation and respond appropriately.
2. Taiwan RedNote ban backfires, driving mainland Chinese app’s top...

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A prominent economist has dismissed the “China threat” phenomenon as a “complete mislabelling”, arguing that the country has instead supported the global diffusion of technology by significantly lowering costs through production at scale. Speaking at a summit on Tuesday, Jin Keyu – a professor of finance at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology – also said China’s proposals for its next five-year plan indicate Beijing recognises the need to rebalance its economy and better harmonise...

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Beijing and Tokyo’s war of words over Taiwan was expected to be bad news for Japanese businesses in China. Previous diplomatic flare-ups have brought waves of online vitriol, protests and boycotts. But at a Japanese-invested luxury department store in China’s eastern Zhejiang province, the outlet’s executives seemed largely unruffled. They are already well versed in riding out tense political situations. The billion-dollar project – which is operated by a major Japanese retail group – had a...

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Hong Kong tycoon Victor Fung Kwok-king former chairman of supply chain management conglomerate Fung Group, warned on Tuesday that consumers around the world will ultimately bear the cost of a de facto 20 per cent tariff in global trade. Speaking at the Global Supply Chain Business Summit 2025 held by the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology’s Li & Fung Supply Chain Institute, the 80-year-old said the global trading environment was converging towards an average tariff rate of about 20...

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The renowned Chinese-born architect Wang Fei has died at the age of 45 following an accident in London. The China Academy of Art, where he had worked as a visiting professor between 2009 and 2011, confirmed that Wang, who taught at Syracuse University in New York state, had died on Monday. Some friends and colleagues leaving tributes online suggested that Wang had been killed in a car accident. Li Lexian, an architectural designer, wrote on social media that Wang had died at the Royal London...

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International and Chinese consumer brands will be forced to maintain a low-price strategy in mainland China amid persistent deflationary pressures, while looking to lower-tier cities and emerging sales channels for growth, according to a study by global consultancy Bain & Co and market research firm Kantar Worldpanel. Companies in the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) sector would need to respond quickly to new market trends with a focus on product affordability to increase sales volume, said...

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China has executed a former senior banker who was found guilty of taking more than 1.1 billion yuan (US$155 million) in bribes. Bai Tianhui, the former general manager of the asset management firm China Huarong International Holdings, was executed on Tuesday after the Supreme People’s Court approved the sentence, state broadcaster CCTV reported. The state-owned offshore unit Bai ran was taken over by Citic Group and renamed China Citic Financial Asset Management in January last year. It is rare...

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Chinese social media and gaming giant Tencent Holdings has pulled out of US media group Paramount Skydance Corp’s takeover bid for Warner Bros Discovery to avoid heightened scrutiny of foreign investment in the United States, according to a filing on the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s website. Tencent had pledged US$1 billion as part of Paramount’s December 1 proposal to acquire Warner Bros, but the Shenzhen-based company was removed as a financing partner in Paramount’s latest all-cash...

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New Zealand’s largest naval vessel was followed by seven Chinese warships in a deployment to East Asia last month, including a rare transit through the Taiwan Strait, according to the Pacific nation’s military. HMNZS Aotearoa, a Polar-class replenishment vessel, was deployed to the East China and Yellow seas with allies, the New Zealand Defence Force said in a statement on Monday. “During the operation, the ship was shadowed by seven different People’s Liberation Army (Navy) warships, which...

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DeepSeek’s founder and CEO, Liang Wenfeng, has been listed among the top 10 “people who shaped science in 2025” by the British journal Nature, which hailed the 40-year-old entrepreneur as a “Chinese finance whizz” whose breakthrough artificial intelligence models had stunned the world. The Nature’s 10 profile of Liang recognised the disruption caused in January by the release of DeepSeek-R1, a reasoning model that showed how “the United States was not as far ahead in AI as many experts had...

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Military aircraft from China and Russia entered South Korea’s air defence zone without notification on Tuesday, prompting the deployment of fighter jets, the Korean military said. The nine aircraft appeared to be part of a joint patrol in the area, their first such exercise in more than 12 months. They did not violate Korean airspace, the country’s military command authority said. According to the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff, seven Russian and two Chinese military aircraft sequentially...

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