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1. China reveals radio clip heard before mid-air stand-off with Japan fighter jets 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.
2. How China pulled off a critical mineral tech revolution in just 10...

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Alibaba Group Holding named its cloud unit’s technology officer Zhou Jingren, who also leads its artificial intelligence lab Tongyi and the development of its Qwen AI models, as a new member of the group in charge of steering the business empire, according to people briefed about the decision. Alibaba has not updated the information on its official website. The Alibaba Partnership had 17 members before the addition, including co-founders Jack Ma and Joe Tsai as permanent ones. Alibaba did not...

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French President Emmanuel Macron’s three-day visit to China last week signals a recalibration in how China and Europe engage at a moment when technological competition, trade disputes, climate imperatives and geopolitical fragmentation threaten global stability. Macron met enthusiastic students at Sichuan University; French first lady Brigitte Macron visited the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding. The trip fostered economic collaboration between the two countries and deliberately...

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A joint patrol by Chinese and Russian nuclear-capable bombers near Japanese airspace is a serious national security concern, the country’s Defence Minister Shinjiro Koizumi has said. In a social media post on Tuesday, Koizumi wrote that two Russian Tu-95 bombers had rendezvoused with two Chinese H-6 bombers over the East China Sea. These aircraft then conducted a joint flight around Japan from the airspace between Okinawa’s main island and Miyako Island in the Ryukyu chain to the waters off...

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China is willing to work with Southeast Asian countries to manage maritime disputes in the South China Sea and build a fair and just maritime order, a senior Chinese diplomat said. Speaking in Sanya on the southern island province of Hainan, Sun Weidong, the vice-minister of foreign affairs, also hit out at the recent remarks by Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, who suggested last month that an attack on Taiwan by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) might qualify as a “survival-threatening...

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There are few truly global hubs in the world. London is one. New York is another. But neither of them connect East and West quite like Hong Kong. I visited the city last week as part of the inaugural UK Investment Conference and saw first-hand the energy and resilience that define this city. That makes the recent tragedy in Tai Po all the more heartbreaking. My message to the people of Hong Kong after this deadly fire is this: we offer our profound sympathy to all those whose lives and...

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China’s economy is projected to grow by 5 per cent in 2025 before slowing to 4.5 per cent in 2026, the International Monetary Fund said on Wednesday, offering a slightly more upbeat outlook that underscores its view of resilience despite trade frictions. The annual assessment released on Wednesday showed an upwards revision of 0.2 and 0.3 percentage points from the IMF’s October forecast, as the world’s second-largest economy rolled out stimulus measures and faced lower-than-expected tariffs on...

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At least 12 people have died in a fire at a residential building in southern China, the first major incident of its kind in the mainland since last month’s Hong Kong blaze. The fire broke out at around 9.20pm on Tuesday in Shantou in Guangdong province and was put out about 40 minutes later, according to state news agency Xinhua. The building was a four-storey reinforced concrete structure and about 150 square metres (1,600 square ft) were affected by the fire, local authorities said. An...

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Chinese who came of age during the country’s economic boom are less supportive of liberal democratic values than older generations, contradicting the predictions of Western policymakers and academics. A study by scholars based in China and Britain found that Chinese people born after 1990 were “less likely to support democratic values than the older generation”, despite greater economic security and “a higher level of post-materialist values”. The paper, published online by the Journal of...

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China has activated what may be the world’s largest distributed AI computing pool alongside a high-speed data network that has been planned for more than a decade, according to an official state newspaper. It said this optical network linked computing centres separated by distance so they could work together almost as efficiently as a single giant computer. The computational efficiency of a 2,000km (1,243-mile) wide computing power pool formed via this network could reach 98 per cent of that of...

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US pharmaceutical behemoth Pfizer has agreed to pay up to US$2.1 billion to Shanghai-based Fosun Pharma’s unit Yao Pharma for an experimental oral obesity drug, underscoring the growing trend of Chinese drug makers selling early-stage assets to global multinationals. Under the licensing agreement, Yao Pharma would grant Pfizer an exclusive worldwide licence for the development, use, manufacturing and commercialisation of oral small-molecule drugs known as GLP-1 receptor agonists, including...

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China’s consumer prices rose for a second straight month in November, with inflation hitting its highest level in nearly two years, in a tentative sign that the country’s persistent deflationary pressure may be starting to ease. The national consumer price index (CPI), a major gauge of inflation, rose 0.7 per cent year on year last month, the largest increase recorded since early 2024, according to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics on Wednesday. The reading was slightly above...

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A new report recommends European companies diversify away from overreliance on China and the US, as companies find themselves squeezed between Beijing’s preferential policies for local companies and Washington’s trade volatility. The European Union Chamber of Commerce in China advised companies to “eliminate single-source dependencies on both China and the United States where possible” in a report on supply chain dependencies released on Wednesday. “We are probably only seeing the very tip of...

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Alibaba Group Holding said on Tuesday that it will set up a new division to push the consumer use of artificial intelligence applications based on its Qwen family of large language models. The new business unit, Qwen Consumer Business Group, led by Alibaba vice-president Wu Jia, will oversee the Qwen chatbot app, the Quark AI assistant and cloud drive, AI hardware products, the UC Browser and the online reading platform Shuqi. The move marked a significant organisational change at Alibaba to...

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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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