China News

US Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth was in a belligerently high mood after the Pentagon’s successful operation to abduct Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife in the dead of night. After all, the guy managed not to leak the US war plan in unsecure chat groups before the raid in Caracas, as he did with the US bombing of Houthi militias in Yemen in March. Remember that one? Maybe I have a warped sense of humour, but I still find this passage from the chief editor of the Atlantic,...

From China - South China Morning Post via This RSS Feed.

The Communist Party and Taiwan’s Kuomintang (KMT) appear to be in the final stages of talks to revive an inter-party forum suspended nine years ago. The three-day forum, designed to facilitate party-to-party communication and promote cross-strait exchanges, was scheduled to start in Beijing on January 27, Taiwan’s China Times newspaper reported on Friday. If it takes place, it will be the first time the event has been held since 2016, when it was suspended because of tensions between the...

From China - South China Morning Post via This RSS Feed.

Shanghai-based AgiBot topped global humanoid robot shipments in 2025, with nearly a 38 per cent share, as China’s robotics firms dominated the market, leaving in the dust major US players like Elon Musk’s Tesla. According to data released on Thursday by Omdia, AgiBot shipped 5,168 humanoid robots last year to lead five other Chinese companies in the research firm’s top 10 list. Unitree Robotics, headquartered in Hangzhou, ranked second with 4,200 humanoids shipped last year, which accounted for...

From China - South China Morning Post via This RSS Feed.

Cainiao, the logistics arm of Alibaba Group Holding, is stepping up its overseas push with a new service crossing the US-Mexico border. The cross-border logistics service, a first for Cainiao in the Americas, was designed to handle parcel flow between the two countries, which was one of the region’s high-traffic corridors, the Alibaba unit said on Friday. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post. The service was expected to reach 99 per cent of the Mexico market and would be priced at around 60...

From China - South China Morning Post via This RSS Feed.

China released an official report on Thursday stating that Japan “may already have produced weapons-grade plutonium in secret” and “has the technological and economic capabilities to achieve nuclear armament in a short period of time”. The report assessing Japan’s nuclear threat cited former US president Joe Biden’s direct message to Chinese President Xi Jinping that Japan had the capacity to have nuclear weapons “virtually overnight”. Biden first disclosed the information in an interview with...

From China - South China Morning Post via This RSS Feed.

Morgan Stanley has revised its outlook for the yuan, now forecasting it to strengthen to about 6.85 per US dollar in the first quarter of 2026 from a previous call of 7.05, before weakening slightly to about 7.0 by the end of the year. The bank said it expects China’s “robust” exports through 2026 to 2027 to provide “a steady tailwind to nominal yuan”, with volumes projected to grow 5 to 6 per cent as the recovery in global demand broadens beyond tech and the country’s price competitiveness...

From China - South China Morning Post via This RSS Feed.

A Chinese defence giant has flexed its production muscle early in the new year by releasing a video of its star product, the J-35 stealth fighter, and pledging to double its warplane production over the next three to five years. On Tuesday, a green-coated J-35 fighter roared down the runway at the Shenyang Aircraft Corporation (SAC) airfield in China’s northern Liaoning province, making its first flight of the year, according to a video released by the manufacturer, a subsidiary of Aviation...

From China - South China Morning Post via This RSS Feed.

China has launched an investigation and market competition assessment for its food delivery platforms, the State Council announced on Friday. “Recently, issues such as excessive subsidies, price wars, and control over traffic flow in the online food delivery platform service industry have become prominent,” according to an official statement issued by the Anti-Monopoly Commission of the council, China’s cabinet. “These practices have squeezed the real economy and intensified ‘involutionary’...

From China - South China Morning Post via This RSS Feed.

US President Donald Trump has revived his ambition to take control of Greenland, whether by buying it or military action, arguing that it would be in the interests of his nation’s security. Greenland is a semi-autonomous territory of US Nato ally Denmark and the idea of buying it was widely dismissed as absurd when Trump first suggested it in 2019. This time, in the aftermath of the weekend abduction of Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro, the proposition sent shock waves across Europe and triggered a...

From China - South China Morning Post via This RSS Feed.

China and the African Union issued a joint call for the upholding of an international law-based order, with particular respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, in a display of unity against Washington’s raid on Venezuela. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and African Union chief Mahmoud Ali Youssouf expressed concerns over the events in Venezuela in a statement released after their meeting in Ethiopia on Thursday. The United States raided Venezuela on Saturday and abducted its leader...

From China - South China Morning Post via This RSS Feed.

We have selected seven stories from this week’s news across Hong Kong, mainland China, the wider Asia region and beyond that resonated with our readers and shed light on topical issues. If you would like to see more of our reporting, please consider subscribing.

1. China’s Hurricane 3000 microwave weapon can ‘sweep and kill’ drone swarms at 3km The truck-mounted Hurricane 3000 was showcased during China’s huge military parade in September. This week its developer – state-owned defence contractor...

From China - South China Morning Post via This RSS Feed.

Led by only the second civilian the country has sent into space, China had started a series of experiments on board its Tiangong space station that could lead to the development of safer and more powerful space batteries, state media reported on Wednesday. The tests on lithium-ion batteries run by Zhang Hongzhang, a professor at the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, could help scientists better understand how gravity affects the workings of the batteries. Zhang, 39, is one of the three...

From China - South China Morning Post via This RSS Feed.

A senior Trump administration official has defended exports of advanced chips to China, arguing that the US was building its own “digital silk road” to counteract concerns that Washington was eroding the competitiveness of top US models. The comments, at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on Thursday, came amid questions from Chinese observers over why the US government would make certain advanced integrated circuits, such as Nvidia’s H200 artificial intelligence chips, available to the...

From China - South China Morning Post via This RSS Feed.

China’s consumer prices stayed unchanged from the previous year in 2025 while factory-gate prices fell by 2.6 per cent, suggesting lingering deflationary pressures and underscoring the need for further efforts to boost prices in 2026. The flat annual reading of the consumer price index (CPI), a major inflation indicator, missed the official 2 per cent growth target for the metric unveiled in March and slowed from the 0.2 per cent increase in 2024, according to data released by the National...

From China - South China Morning Post via This RSS Feed.

US President Donald Trump has said the Taiwan issue was “up to” Chinese leader Xi Jinping, as he sought to draw a sharp distinction between the self-ruled island and Washington’s recent military action in Venezuela. In an interview with The New York Times published on Thursday, Trump rejected suggestions that his audacious operation targeting the Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro could set a precedent that Beijing might apply to Taiwan. Maduro’s government posed a direct threat to the United...

From China - South China Morning Post via This RSS Feed.

I attended a memorial service last month for victims of the Nanking massacre, held at the Hong Kong government offices in Admiralty. Such occasions are solemn reminders of history’s darkest moments, forcing us to pause and reflect on the scale of the tragedy that unfolded after the city was seized on December 13, 1937, and the broader suffering inflicted on China during World War II. Government figures estimate that military and civilian casualties exceeded 35 million, with 21 million lives...

From China - South China Morning Post via This RSS Feed.

Chinese household appliances maker Dreame Technology unveiled more than 20 new artificial intelligence-embedded products at this year’s CES trade show in Las Vegas, showing a glimpse of the future when smart devices would run almost all chores in a house. Those formed part of more than 150 products that Dreame, one of the world’s top five vendors of robot vacuum cleaners, exhibited at the four-day trade show that concludes this Friday. Dreame’s new “AI-powered whole-home smart ecosystem”...

From China - South China Morning Post via This RSS Feed.

Washington’s further retreat from multilateral institutions has dealt “a heavy blow” to an already fractured global governance system, presenting both opportunities and challenges for Beijing, according to analysts. Observers said US President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw the US from 66 international organisations would have lasting consequences for American leadership around the world, accentuating power gaps in critical areas such as climate and security. On Thursday, Chinese foreign...

From China - South China Morning Post via This RSS Feed.

US Energy Secretary Chris Wright said there was room ‌to balance roles for both the United States ‍and China in Venezuela to allow for commerce but that Washington would not allow Beijing to have major control over the Latin ⁠American country. In an interview on Fox Business Network, Wright also said he expected to see Chevron quickly grow its activities in Venezuela, with ConocoPhillips and ExxonMobil also looking to play ‍a constructive role. “I think you will probably see some ‍long-term...

From China - South China Morning Post via This RSS Feed.

US President Donald Trump’s proposal to boost next year’s military budget to US$1.5 trillion aims to blunt China’s global influence, a move analysts said could push Beijing to speed up its own military build-up with “greater urgency”. On Wednesday, Trump wrote on social media that the US military budget for the 2027 financial year should be raised in the face of “very troubled and dangerous times”. “This will allow us to build the ‘Dream Military’ that we have long been entitled to and, more...

From China - South China Morning Post via This RSS Feed.

The People’s Liberation Army has released footage of exercises countering swarms of suicide drones, a key element of Taiwan’s asymmetric defence strategy. Mainland state broadcaster CCTV showed a video on Sunday of a naval unit conducting anti-drone and uncrewed target drills as the PLA launched its 2026 training cycle. During the drills, the “blue force”, acting as the adversary, deployed multiple suicide drones to simulate ultra-low-altitude penetration strikes against maritime targets. In...

From China - South China Morning Post via This RSS Feed.

Trade, particularly in energy, is expected to dominate Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s talks in China next week as his country looks to reduce its economic reliance on the United States. Carney’s five-day trip starts on Tuesday and will be the first by a Canadian leader to China since 2017. Carney said on Wednesday that his trip was part of a broader effort to bolster Canada’s economic resilience. “We’re forging new partnerships around the world to transform our economy from one that has...

From China - South China Morning Post via This RSS Feed.

China has criticised the US seizure of a Russian-flagged oil tanker on the high seas, describing it as a serious breach of international law. US European Command announced via social media that it had seized the tanker in the North Atlantic on Wednesday due to “violations of US sanctions” on Venezuela. It was swiftly followed by the seizure of a second vessel in the Caribbean. The first ship, formerly the Bella 1, was followed across the Atlantic for two weeks after it tried to evade a US...

From China - South China Morning Post via This RSS Feed.

Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) manufacturers are gearing up to go public in Hong Kong, aiming to tap the market for international expansion. TCM firms have joined the queue for initial public offerings (IPOs) in the city to test foreign investors’ appetite for their shares. The latest to join the queue are Sichuan Neautus Traditional Chinese Medicine and Hong Kong-based Herb Standard. “Hong Kong will serve as our hub for capital, research and development, as well as international...

From China - South China Morning Post via This RSS Feed.

Influential Chinese semiconductor expert Wei Shaojun urged caution for mainland companies that place orders for Nvidia’s H200 artificial intelligence chips, as it remained a puzzle why the US government would make these advanced integrated circuits available to the country. “The US’ inconsistent stance on advanced chips – alternating between limited easing and renewed pressure – has left users struggling to discern its true strategic intent,” Wei, vice-president at the China Semiconductor...

From China - South China Morning Post via This RSS Feed.