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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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Whereas then US president Joe Biden intially missed the group photo at the annual Group of 20 summit in Rio de Janeiro last year, requiring a reshoot, his successor did not even bother showing up for this year’s meeting in Johannesburg. US President Donald Trump boycotted the summit due to alleged mistreatment of whites in post-apartheid South Africa. Yet, even in the absence of the US, the G20 managed to make a leaders’ declaration at the start of the summit, which usually comes at the end. As...

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Bi Jingquan, China’s former top food and drug regulator who received an international accolade for promoting innovation, has been expelled from the Communist Party and removed from public office on corruption charges. An investigation found that Bi had accepted gifts, money, trips and banquets and borrowed vehicles from private business owners, a statement from the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) said on Monday. The statement also said Bi had “allowed others to pay for him,...

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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. Takaichi delivered these remarks during a session of the Diet, Japan’s parliament, on Tuesday morning. She was addressing a draft supplementary budget aimed at funding a comprehensive economic package which her administration hopes to pass. Asked to address concerns on economic...

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The Chinese aircraft carrier Liaoning has charted an unusual course towards Japan’s home islands following the mid-air stand-off between Chinese and Japanese fighter jets near Okinawa on the weekend, as tensions between Beijing and Tokyo continue to rise. The PLA Navy carrier and three guided missile destroyers travelled northeast from their position near the Miyako Strait where the stand-off occurred, heading towards waters off Kyushu and the eastern side of Japan that faces the west Pacific...

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China has tested a rail system that links multiple freight trains through a wireless system rather than physical coupling. On Monday, a test conducted on the Baoshen Railway in Inner Mongolia saw seven freight trains with a combined cargo capacity of 35,000 tonnes – 3½ times the weight of the Eiffel Tower – running together much more closely than would be usually required when they travel as single units. The technology could increase China’s railway freight transport capacity by more than 50...

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German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul has warned that Europe must be “extremely cautious” about slapping tariffs on China, as it could prompt Beijing to take countermeasures that could turn into a “spiral”. The remarks came after French President Emmanuel Macron said he had told Beijing during his visit to China last week that Europe would be forced to take “strong measures” against Chinese goods if the trade imbalance was not addressed. “I told them that if they do not react, we Europeans...

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Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing has launched its first equity index tracking Hong Kong-listed technology companies, underscoring the city’s ongoing shift from a market long dominated by property and finance towards innovation-driven growth. Unveiled on Tuesday, the HKEX Tech 100 Index tracks 100 large-cap and mid-cap companies spanning artificial intelligence, biotech and pharmaceuticals, electric vehicles and smart driving, information technology, internet and robotics, according to the HKEX...

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Taiwan’s ban on mainland Chinese social media app RedNote has sparked fierce pushback on the island, making the platform a top download as users rush to access it through workarounds. The island’s interior ministry announced on Thursday it had ordered local telecoms and internet providers to block access to the app, also known as Xiaohongshu, for one year over “rising online fraud cases”. Authorities also cited a “lack of cooperation from its operator in Shanghai”. But the move has unleashed a...

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For decades, New York and London have defined the flow of global capital. But while markets still chase short-term returns in US equities, the next great wave of productive investment is taking shape in East Asia, led by China’s financing, manufacturing and export of the clean technologies that are remaking the global economy. That contrast has only widened. As the United States retreats from climate leadership, China has doubled down. A day after US President Donald Trump called climate change...

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US President Donald Trump has announced a long-anticipated US$12 billion farm aid package to assist farmers caught in US-China trade tensions, crediting his tariff strategy for making the bailout possible and asserting that his negotiations with China had led to the resumption of massive soybean sales. But the announcement has not pleased all farmers, particularly those still struggling with low prices and lost markets. Some said it was too little, too late, and that a bailout wouldn’t be...

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More than six decades after British historian AJP Taylor termed war the “mother of invention”, economies around the world appear to be ramping up their military spending, at least in part, to reinvigorate industrial production. Taylor was referring to the genesis of the tank, the aeroplane and poison gas in World War I, and that of radar, the jet engine and the atomic bomb in World War II. More modern examples, such as satellite-based navigation systems and the internet, were the products of the...

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The US Congress is readying votes on a sprawling bill that would restrict US outbound investment to China in sensitive sectors as well as federal government contracting with Chinese biotechnology companies, two controversial measures that were left out of similar legislation last year. The provisions were included in a compromise defence bill released on Sunday after months of negotiation. Votes on the annual bill, known as the National Defence Authorisation Act (NDAA), could happen this week....

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US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth met their Australian counterparts on Monday in Washington for annual talks focused on Indo-Pacific security and countering mainland China’s increasing assertiveness in the region, including in the South China Sea and directed at Taiwan. Rubio, Hegseth, Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong and Defence Minister Richard Marles gathered at the State Department, with many eyes also on the Russia-Ukraine war, a fragile ceasefire in...

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The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) said on Monday it may bar three major Chinese telecoms companies from connecting to US networks over efforts to prevent robocalls, the latest in a series of actions Washington has taken against Beijing. The FCC issued orders saying China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom must address issues with their certifications in the agency’s robocall mitigation database, and raised concerns about their presence in the database. If the FCC removes them,...

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Ant International, the Singapore-based affiliate of Chinese fintech giant Ant Group, has named US basketball star Sabrina Ionescu as its global brand ambassador in a fresh partnership between sports and tech. The four-time all-star in the US Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) was chosen as part of an effort to expand access to financial tools via innovative technology, the digital payments provider said on Tuesday. The 28-year-old point guard – an Olympic gold medallist and the top...

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A Chinese court has ordered Malaysia Airlines to pay over 2.9 million yuan (US$410,240) per victim to family members who filed suit over missing flight MH370, 11 years after it disappeared over the Indian Ocean, state broadcaster CCTV said on Monday. The order, issued on Friday by the Chaoyang District People’s Court in Beijing, covers eight missing passengers. It is the first formal compensation ruling by a Chinese court on flight MH370. It includes death compensation, funeral expenses and...

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Scientists from Northwest A&F University in China have developed an innovative technology to extract and collect boron from seawater. Boron is a lightweight element used as solid fuel in scramjet engines on some advanced Chinese hypersonic weapons. Neodymium-iron-boron rare earth magnets – used extensively in industrial and military applications – have drawn particular attention amid ongoing trade tensions over critical minerals. These high-performance rare-earth magnets not only rely on...

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Few leaders travel to China seeking gravitas and return with only a couple of pandas, but French President Emmanuel Macron managed to do just that. After surrendering sovereignty to US President Donald Trump, Macron visited China seeking a validation that his citizens no longer grant. His authority at home has been eroded through cabinet implosions, collapsing support, stalled budgets and demands for his resignation. China could see that before he even stepped off the plane. Beijing handled a...

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China’s deliveries of rare earths, semiconductors and other commodities to Germany dominated the talks between German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul and Chinese Commerce Minister Wang Wentao on Monday. “In all of these areas, there has been uncertainty, and that needs to be eliminated,” Wadephul said as he kicked off a trip to China aimed at addressing Berlin’s trade and geopolitical concerns. According to Reuters, Beijing was far from being persuaded to grant general export licences for rare...

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Beijing pressed German carmakers to help resolve disputes over the European Union’s anti-subsidy tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles and the Nexperia semiconductor saga, in separate video meetings on Monday. Vice-Minister of Commerce Ling Ji made the appeal to German industry leaders, seeking to leverage their influence in Brussels. Ling spoke with Hildegard Mueller, president of the German Association of the Automotive Industry (VDA), and Ola Kallenius, president of the European Automobile...

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Chinese entrepreneur Liang Wenfeng, the founder and CEO of DeepSeek, appears to have made a big score from the initial public offering of chip designer Moore Threads Technology, whose shares surged more than fivefold in its trading debut in Shanghai. High-Flyer Quantitative Fund, a hedge fund co-founded by Liang, had subscribed to a total of 82,244 shares of Moore Threads, at 114.28 yuan per share, via two entities: Zhejiang High-Flyer Asset Management and Ningbo High-Flyer Quant Investment...

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Shanghai-based chip firm MetaX Integrated Circuits has emerged as the latest star in mainland China’s stock market, with the graphics processing unit (GPU) maker proving to be even more popular among retail investors than peer Moore Threads ahead of its trading debut. MetaX attracted 5.17 million retail investors for its online subscription, giving it a final allotment rate of 0.033 per cent, according to a stock exchange filing on Monday. Beijing-based Moore Threads drew 4.82 million retail...

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China’s tax authorities have told internet platforms to avoid passing tax obligations onto gig workers, tightening industry oversight while stepping up a crackdown on tax-dodging internet influencers. “Platforms should not disguise additional fees during tax withholding and remittance processes, nor should they use such processes to shift tax obligations and increase gig workers’ burdens,” officials from the State Taxation Administration said at a press conference on Monday. As regulation of the...

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China’s securities regulator has called on the country’s 160 mutual fund houses to establish a performance-based salary mechanism, as part of efforts to uproot elitism from the industry. The China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) has drawn up guidelines governing asset managers’ pay perks, suggesting that the performance of the funds they run should factor up to 80 per cent in determining their annual salaries, according to a report on Monday by the official Securities Times. The...

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