China News

As dwindling domestic profits push more Chinese firms onto the global stage, industry titans – forerunners who know what such a shift entails – are offering crucial advice for navigating challenges abroad. “The most important thing is to become a local company,” said Zhu Lei, chief marketing officer for air conditioner giant Gree Electric Appliances, which was among the first Chinese companies to enter the Latin American market. The advice comes as Chinese firms are expected to ramp up their...

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As of January, Zambia has begun collecting taxes and royalties from Chinese mining firms in yuan, and will cycle the currency directly back to Beijing to fund imports and service loans. Experts said the shift reflected the southern African country’s urgent need to ease a US dollar shortage and manage debt, rather than geopolitical alignment, but also a quiet advance for China’s long-term strategy to internationalise its currency. It had also created a tangible blueprint for other resource-rich,...

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Cambodia has carried out a massive raid on scammer gangs, detaining more than 2,000 people amid pressure from China to crack down on its online fraud industry. Nearly 1,800 Chinese nationals were among those held, according to the Cambodian interior ministry. A ministry statement said that Cambodian police had conducted a large-scale enforcement operation on Saturday morning at an online fraud compound in Bavet, the largest city in the southeastern province of Svay Rieng, which borders...

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Israel’s ambassador to China has hailed the historical connections between the two countries and called for closer socioeconomic ties in a rare column for Chinese state media. Eli Belotserkovsky’s signed Chinese-language article for state news agency Xinhua comes amid global conversation over the Board of Peace, US President Donald Trump’s newly created body to tackle the Palestinian issue. The Jewish and Chinese civilisations had amassed rich historical wisdom and knowledge over millennia,...

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State media has released rare footage of one of the PLA Navy’s most advanced destroyers warning off foreign aircraft near Taiwan with electronic jamming missiles. The footage, part of a series by Chinese state broadcaster CCTV on the country’s naval power, involved the Yanan, a Type 055 guided-missile destroyer. CCTV said it was the first time the Yanan had been shown using “electronic countermeasures” in “waters near Taiwan island” to warn off foreign aircraft. The report did not specify where...

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In its latest efforts to reinforce the Communist Party line in China’s armed forces, the PLA Daily took aim at one particular invasive species: “big rats”. The rats were eating away at the PLA’s budget and undermining combat readiness, the military mouthpiece said, and had to be eradicated. “[We] must take strong and forceful measures to crack down on corrupt practices that undermine the building of combat abilities, and thoroughly investigate and root out those ‘big rats’ who tamper with...

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China did not slip into outright deflation last year and that in itself matters. When weak global demand, geopolitical frictions and a prolonged property correction weighed heavily on sentiment, consumer prices stayed marginally positive. The latest data suggests an economy not in free fall but navigating a transition towards more balanced and sustainable growth, albeit at a subdued pace. December’s inflation figures underline this point. Consumer prices rose by 0.8 per cent year on year, the...

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It started out as a family reunion story but soon took a darker turn. A 45-year-old woman identified only by her surname Bu, had lost contact with her family for more than a decade and was found in late 2024 in a rural area in Heshun county in the central Chinese province of Shanxi, more than 100km (62 miles) from her home. Bu had an advanced university education but she also had a history of mental illness, and the discovery that she had given birth to several children with a villager raised...

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Chinese scientists have unveiled a cooling technology that can plunge a liquid cooling medium from room temperature to sub-zero levels in less than half a minute. This leap in thermal engineering offered a promising heat management solution for energy-hungry data centres that were mushrooming across China and the United States, they said. By harnessing the unique behaviour of ammonium thiocyanate in water under pressure, the team created a liquid cooling system that mimics squeezing a “wet...

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More foreign companies have rolled out instant delivery services exclusively for China or upgraded to more comprehensive offerings in the country, as they vie to stand out in the highly digitalised market and cater to consumers’ strong demand for instant services. Multinationals offering instant delivery now include Swedish furniture retailer Ikea, German tyre manufacturer Continental, US warehouse-style retailer Sam’s Club and German discount supermarket chain Aldi Nord. “China leads the world...

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Xia Xian, a virologist who was formerly a project scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, has left the United States to take up a position studying highly pathogenic viruses – which have a strong ability to cause severe disease or illness in infected hosts – at his alma mater, Wuhan University, in central China. According to the university’s website, Xia became a full-time research professor and principal investigator in November at the College of Life Sciences and the State Key...

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For Choi Yu-jin, a 31-year-old Seoul-based fashion designer, the perfect getaway requires three elements: value, spotless streetscapes and unforgettable flavours. And Shanghai, she says, delivers on all counts. Three visits since 2024, with a fourth planned for April, are testament to a city that is increasingly capturing the imagination – and wallets – of South Korean travellers, buoyed by visa-free access and a burgeoning reputation for cosmopolitan appeal. “Restaurants and streets were...

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A new PLA missile could provide a cheap and widely deployable option to knock out fragile US sea-lifting capabilities in an attrition war, a Chinese military magazine has suggested. The YJ-18C, a subsonic land-attack cruise missile first revealed in Beijing’s September 3 Victory Day military parade, has the potential to be repurposed for anti-ship use, according to an analysis in Shipborne Weapons Defence Review. This was because it bore similarities to the US AGM-158C LRASM (long-range...

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Dressed like 1970s rock stars evoking bands like Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Velvet Sundown look the part of a real band – with one key difference: despite millions of listeners, they do not exist. The group is generated by artificial intelligence. AI-generated music is exploding, with the rapid expansion of platforms like the United States’ Suno and Udio, as well as China’s Mureka. From creation to copyright, the technology is making waves globally. But the US and China are approaching it...

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China’s unrelenting anti-corruption drive will improve – not compromise – the military’s fighting strength, two signed commentaries published in the PLA Daily have argued. The articles – one on Friday and the other on Saturday – in the People’s Liberation Army mouthpiece called corruption the “number one killer” of battle effectiveness and cautioned against both “unrealistic optimism” and “harmful pessimism” about the anti-graft campaign – suggesting the crackdown on corruption will not end any...

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The People’s Liberation Army has moved to tighten control over fuel supplies as part of its latest efforts to improve logistics – a cornerstone of combat readiness. New regulations issued “recently” aimed to standardise the process of military fuel management in areas such as procurement, transport, storage and disposal, the official PLA Daily said on Tuesday. The rules were also designed to introduce strict controls and joint military-civilian oversight to prevent misuse and to ensure...

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China carried out naval and air patrols around Scarborough Shoal on Saturday – just days after joint US-Philippine drills nearby – underscoring tensions in the disputed South China Sea waters. The PLA Southern Theatre Command issued a statement on the “combat readiness patrols” near the shoal, which China calls Huangyan Island. They were aimed at countering “infringement and provocative actions by individual countries”, it said, in a thinly veiled reference to the United States and rival...

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Labubu toymaker Pop Mart plans to establish its European headquarters in London, as UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer met the company’s founder during a high-profile China visit aimed at rebuilding Britain’s economic ties with the world’s second largest economy. That plan was revealed at a closed-door CEO round table on Friday during the UK-China Business Forum, where Starmer met a group of Chinese business leaders that included Pop Mart founder and CEO Wang Ning. “London stands at the heart of the...

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Flight routes between Europe and China are suddenly crowded with prime ministers and presidents, giving the impression of a continent pivoting eastward. A flurry that began late last year with visits to Beijing by the Spanish king and French president has continued with leaders of Britain, Ireland and Finland, with Germany’s chancellor to follow next month. The frenzied outreach comes with the transatlantic relationship on the rocks. US President Donald Trump’s designs on Greenland have even...

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Chinese regulators have slapped a 26 million yuan (US$3.7 million) fine on a unit of Kuaishou Technology, operator of the country’s No 2 short video platform, over multiple violations and misconduct in its live-streaming e-commerce operations, signalling tighter oversight of this market segment. Chengdu Kuaigou Technology, a unit of Beijing-based Kuaishou, was found to have committed seven breaches including failure to disclose information in accordance with the law, charging unreasonable fees...

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Wingtech Technology, the Chinese owner of chipmaker Nexperia, is expected to post a loss of between 9 billion yuan (US$1.3 billion) and 13.5 billion yuan in 2025, owing to the Dutch government’s takeover of the semiconductor firm, the Shanghai-listed company said in a statement on Friday. Wingtech said that its authority over the chipmaker continues to be “temporarily restricted” since the October 7 ruling of the Dutch Enterprise Chamber, a special division of the Amsterdam Court of Appeal,...

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Enterprises across China’s semiconductor industry recorded hefty profit growth last year, according to their unaudited financial results, driven by the country’s artificial intelligence infrastructure buildout and Beijing’s push for tech self-reliance. Graphics processing unit (GPU) designer Cambricon Technologies on Friday reported a net profit of 2.2 billion yuan (US$316 million) in 2025, its first profitable year, on the back of “the continuous rise in computing power demand within the AI...

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China’s factory activity faltered in January as weak domestic demand dragged down production at the start of the new ‍year, an official survey showed on Saturday. The official purchasing managers’ index (PMI) dropped to 49.3 in January, from 50.1 in December, below the 50-mark separating growth from contraction. It missed a forecast of 50 in a Reuters poll of analysts. Sub-indexes of new orders and new export orders also saw declines, respectively, down to 49.2 from 50.8 ⁠in December and 47.8...

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Taiwan’s absence from the United States’ newly released 2026 National Defence Strategy has fuelled fresh debate on the island over whether Washington is deliberately sidestepping the island as it prioritises bigger interests with Beijing. The omission is in sharp contrast with earlier editions of the Pentagon’s quadrennial flagship strategy, which had explicitly referred to Beijing’s pressure on Taiwan and pledged support for the island’s asymmetric defence. The 2022 iteration mentioned the...

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In the first few weeks of this year alone, the leaders of two of the five “eyes” in the world’s oldest intelligence-sharing alliance signalled they were ready to rethink their relationship with China. First came Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and then this week it was the turn of his British counterpart, Keir Starmer. As Western economies grapple with the unpredictability and at times hostility of the White House’s policies, Canada and Britain have both sought to find a new way to work with...

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