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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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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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