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A bipartisan group of 38 US senators is urging President Donald Trump to use his expected summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping in South Korea next week to secure the release of former Hong Kong media mogul Jimmy Lai Chee-ying, the latest in the US Congress’s efforts to get human rights on the agenda of the high-stakes meeting. In a letter released on Friday, the lawmakers described Lai as a political prisoner and said the case for his release was “more dire than ever” due to his worsening...

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Taiwan’s army has renamed the main auditorium of its headquarters in what is widely seen as another move by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government to erase the legacy of late Kuomintang leader Chiang Kai-shek and the island’s historical ties to mainland China. The auditorium, known for decades as Chiang Kai-shek Hall, has been retitled Loyalty Hall, according to the Army Command Headquarters. The change sparked uproar from opposition lawmakers, who accused the government of quietly...

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Few areas of China reflect the country’s decades-long economic transformation more vividly than its cities. Rapid development has made villages into dense urban landscapes and already sizeable metro areas into some of the world’s largest population centres. As the rate of urbanisation slows and the country transitions into a new economic era, we explore how select Chinese cities are navigating the change. Read the rest of our series here. Once a remote industrial powerhouse forged deep in the...

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China’s 15th five-year plan is more than a policy blueprint; it is a pivotal turning point. This plan and the next one will define an era of innovation-led growth, solidifying China’s status as a major power and peer competitor to the United States. Since the reform and opening-up policy was launched, China’s economic development has had distinct phases. The 1978-1992 period marked the initial stage of opening up. Reform and opening-up was imperative in the wake of economic challenges after the...

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Increasingly desperate US farmers, including many who voted for US President Donald Trump, are urging him to adopt a conciliatory approach rather than a confrontational one if a lasting soy deal can be reached when he meets Chinese President Xi Jinping this week. As the harvest season slips by with no orders from China and rising input costs – from equipment to fertiliser – farmers say partnership, not strong-arming Beijing, would serve both sides better. Many voiced frustration at Washington’s...

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A French cyclist freed after weeks in a Russian jail for illegally crossing the border on Monday described his time in the country as a “rather strange experience” but said the Russians he met were “friendly”. Sofiane Sehili, 44, was arrested on the Russian-Chinese border in early September while attempting to break the record for the fastest endurance cycle from Lisbon to Vladivostok. Sehili, who describes himself as an ultra-endurance racer and adventure cyclist, had faced two years in a...

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German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul on Monday called for “fair” trade with China in chips and rare earth minerals, amid heightened tensions between China and the European Union. Wadephul, who last week was forced to cancel a planned visit to China, said he plans to speak to Chinese representatives by phone “as soon as possible and reschedule the trip”. “It’s only postponed, not cancelled,” Wadephul said of the visit. Germany called off the trip after the Chinese side were unable to confirm...

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China on Monday reaffirmed its hardline approach towards virtual currencies at home, warning of the risks of stablecoins, despite growing concerns that the United States might have consolidated its US dollar dominance through them. Instead, the world’s second largest economy vowed to broaden the use of its central bank digital currency known as e-CNY, according to Pan Gongsheng, governor of the People’s Bank of China. “[Stablecoins] are still in their early stages of development,” said Pan,...

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Would the Cold War have unfolded differently if Nikita Khrushchev had chosen a different interpreter? It is a decades-old thought experiment, born of the phrase translated as “we will bury you”, but it is chiming with today’s strategic rivalry between China and the US. Whether the statement, attributed to the then-leader of the Soviet Union in 1956, should instead have been interpreted as the less aggressive “we will outlive you”, the incident sheds light on a recurrent headache in modern...

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Chinese researchers claim to have achieved a key breakthrough in lithography technology in the latest step in the country’s effort to achieve self-sufficiency with advanced chips. A group of scientists from Peking University, along with other collaborators, made a breakthrough in visualising the molecular behaviour of photoresist, a light-sensitive material used in chipmaking, according to a paper published in top scientific journal Nature. The advance could lead to a significant reduction in...

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United States President Donald Trump said a final ownership deal on TikTok could be struck during an expected meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping this week, a summit that would build on the latest round of trade talks between representatives of the world’s two largest economies in Malaysia. When asked whether he anticipated a concrete deal over Chinese firm ByteDance’s divestment of the American version of its short-video app – a persistent sticking point in bilateral relations – Trump...

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China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi said “a multipolar world is emerging”, positioning Beijing’s latest vision for global governance as a unifying and stabilising framework at a time of increasing turbulence and Washington-driven unilateralism. Speaking in Beijing on Monday, Wang also called for “an end to politicising economic and trade issues, artificially fragmenting global markets, and frequently provoking trade and tariff battles”, a thinly veiled jab at US President Donald Trump. His remarks...

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1. To counter China, Trump’s Asia trip seen shoring up shipbuilding with key allies With US President Donald Trump having kicked off his visit to Asia, new collaborations in shipbuilding with Japan and South Korea are set to advance amid ongoing port-fee disputes with China, as Washington seeks to counter Beijing’s dominance in the maritime sector.
2. Beijing...

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After two days of high-level US-China trade talks in Malaysia, Washington hinted the world’s two largest economies had found common ground on key issues ranging from tariffs to Beijing’s expanded rare earth export controls. But analysts cautioned the “real test” would come when both sides had to execute a resulting deal. Both Chinese and US trade officials described the negotiations in Kuala Lumpur over the weekend as “constructive”, with US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent adding that the...

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China and the US should “meet each other halfway” to solve disputes via dialogue instead of exerting pressure, Beijing’s top diplomat Wang Yi told his American counterpart in a phone call on Monday. More to follow …

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China’s military mouthpiece has launched a series on “political rectification” – linking it to the ideological purity of the People’s Liberation Army – days after several generals were expelled from the ruling Communist Party for corruption. In the first instalment on Monday, PLA Daily ran four pages of commentary and reporting urging the military to “strengthen and consolidate the consciousness of alignment and adherence”. That was a reference to the alignment between the party leadership and...

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A commentary by state news agency Xinhua on Monday said that Taiwan will be “governed by patriots” after reunification with the mainland, and that all of its products could enter mainland China’s market duty free. “We not only seek reunification in formality, what’s more important is the mental bonding of compatriots on the two sides of the strait,” the commentary said, using the pseudonym of Zhong Tai Wen, a new byline that suggested it was important Taiwan-related commentary. The article was...

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While the world’s air forces are racing to build sixth-generation stealth fighters, it was an older model that made the headlines earlier this month. A Chinese J-16, a 4.5-generation multirole fighter, was reported by state media to have intercepted two unidentified foreign warplanes near China’s east coast and to have performed a barrel roll over one of the planes. Reports said it may have got as close as 10 metres (33 feet) to the other plane during the manoeuvre last year, which was only...

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The United States has ramped up efforts to hedge against rare earth export controls by China – the world’s dominant supplier – through agreements signed on Sunday with two Southeast Asian countries, including one that experts believe could deliver results relatively quickly. Memoranda of understanding with Malaysia and Thailand pave the way for increased critical mineral exports to US automotive, defence and hi-tech hardware manufacturers – following a US$8.5 billion US-Australia framework deal...

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Chinese Premier Li Qiang on Monday urged the European Union to steer their ties in the “right direction” and address trade discord through dialogue as Beijing and Brussels continue struggling to see eye to eye. At a bilateral meeting with European Council President Antonio Costa in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Li said Beijing was willing to work with the EU on matters ranging from the environment to technological innovation to supply chains. “The development of China-EU relations currently presents...

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Chinese artificial intelligence models DeepSeek and Qwen have surged ahead of Western rivals, including GPT, with returns exceeding 100 per cent in just nine days during an ongoing real-market cryptocurrency trading competition. DeepSeek’s Chat V3.1 model grew its initial capital of US$10,000 to US$22,900 by 2pm on Monday – a 126 per cent gain since trading began on October 18 – according to the latest update from Alpha Arena, a crypto investment project launched on Friday by US research firm...

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China’s central government should borrow more to lift domestic demand through supportive monetary and fiscal policy, a Chinese economist has urged. “If I can make a recommendation, what I think we could also do is to put together a more aggressive macroeconomic policy using central government leverage or adding central government leverage,” Huang Yiping, a professor at Peking University and dean of its National School of Development, said at the Bund Summit in Shanghai on Saturday. The potential...

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A US Navy fighter and a helicopter crashed into the South China Sea in separate incidents while operating off an aircraft carrier on Sunday. A Sea Hawk helicopter, assigned to the Helicopter Maritime Strike Squadron 73, went down while conducting routine operations from the USS Nimitz, the US Pacific Fleet said. Half an hour later, an F/A-18F Super Hornet from Strike Fighter Squadron 22, operating from the same carrier, also crashed. The US Navy did not give the location of the crashes. It said...

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Chinese industrial firms saw their highest earnings surge in nearly two years last month, as production revved up while declines in factory-gate prices eased amid a government campaign to rein in excess capacity. Industrial profits climbed for the second straight month in September, rising 21.6 per cent from a year earlier, their biggest gain since November 2023. That followed a 20.4 per cent jump in August. For the first nine months of the year, profits were up 3.2 per cent, according to data...

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Advanced manufacturing and the provision of services and entertainment – including pet and aged care and the production of short dramas – are powering pockets of growth in an otherwise sluggish Chinese job market, according to data from an online recruitment platform. A report looking at third-quarter employment trends published this week by the platform, Zhaopin, said the new materials sector led all employment categories with a 66.7 per cent year-on-year increase in job postings in the period...

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