China News

China should prepare for stricter US-EU regulations on global rules of origin – as signalled in their recent trade deal – potentially weighing on its export sector by redefining global trade patterns, according to a Chinese economist. “Trump’s current measures are temporary – tariffs can be imposed today and rolled back or even eliminated tomorrow. The real question for us is what the future global trade framework looks like,” said Zhang Yuyan, an academician at the Chinese Academy of Social...

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China has accused the United States of trying to undermine its relations with Greece after the US ambassador Kimberly Guilfoyle urged Athens to sell the Chinese-operated port of Piraeus. Guilfoyle called the presence of China’s state-owned shipping giant Cosco at the port in the south of Greece “unfortunate”, in an interview last week with Greek broadcaster Antenna TV. “But I think there are ways around it, that something could be worked out, whether you pursue a path of enhancing output in...

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China Evergrande Group’s famous log-cabin hotel in Quebec, Canada, has been placed in receivership after the defaulted real estate developer failed to make payments on its debt. Fairmont Le Chateau Montebello, which has hosted luminaries including Grace Kelly and Margaret Thatcher, would be put up for sale by PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, the court-appointed receiver, according to documents filed this week on the accounting firm’s website. Evergrande’s collapse was by far the biggest in a property...

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Dozens of senior officials and diplomats from across Asia, Africa and the Pacific will touch down in Brussels on Thursday, as the European Union tries to convince them it is a more reliable partner than the United States and China. More than 70 delegations will attend the bloc’s fourth Indo-Pacific forum, with more than 50 ministers or vice-ministers expected at talks on Friday, EU officials said. Crucially, neither Beijing or Washington are invited. “There was no invitation to special guests –...

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There have again been calls in Chinese state media for more research into “historical justice” and legal claims around Ryukyu, as a diplomatic row over Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s comments on Taiwan drags on. On Wednesday, state-run Global Times in an editorial called for further studies to be done on the Ryukyu island chain, arguing that it was an important issue that was much more than academic. “The geopolitical position, strategic choices and future trajectory of the Ryukyu...

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China’s airlines are stuck in a difficult paradox, according to a new industry report: while their passenger numbers have risen, they are struggling to secure profits as competition intensifies on the most common routes and a world-leading high-speed rail network offers an appealing alternative for many of the country’s travellers. In its report, Brazilian planemaker Embraer said that passenger volumes have surged past pre-pandemic levels – putting the government’s official goal of 1.5 billion...

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The Japanese comedy Cells at Work! was expected to be released in Chinese cinemas on Saturday. The live-action movie is adapted from a popular manga series and follows the slapstick adventures of cells inside the body of a Japanese teenager. However, the movie’s launch date in China has been pushed back. Also postponed is the release of Crayon Shinchan the Movie: Super Hot! The Spicy Kasukabe Dancers, an animated film that was scheduled to hit Chinese screens in early December. The delays come...

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China’s growing pipeline of novel drug candidates is expected to draw increased attention from global pharmaceutical companies and investors scouting for licensing opportunities, as the country’s clinical trial capacity has expanded to match those in the US. That assessment was made by Shanghai-based Helen Chen, Greater China managing partner at L.E.K. Consulting, one of the most respected analysts in the mainland’s life sciences industry. “There is increased interest from multinational...

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Soybeans are more than just a crop – they have become a litmus test of Beijing’s evolving food security strategy and sit at the heart of the US-China trade war. As a crucial source of animal feed and cooking oil, soybeans have remained a flashpoint throughout the ebbs and flows of the two nations’ trade disputes, from the tariff war during US President Donald Trump’s first term to the current one. Less well known is China’s transformation from soybean exporter to the world’s leading importer....

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US lawmakers on Wednesday called for a change in Washington’s strategy to evade China’s chokehold on rare earth mineral supplies, arguing that new approaches are needed in parallel with President Donald Trump’s efforts to speed up domestic production. Proposals to dismantle the chokepoint – including new technologies and development of components that do not require the critical minerals as inputs – were presented during a hearing of the US House Select Committee on China. The suggestions came...

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A senior US Democrat is urging the Commerce Department to investigate four Chinese semiconductor firms potentially tied to Dutch chipmaker Nexperia, warning they could threaten the safety and reliability of components used in cars across the US and its allies. The request marks the latest twist in the turmoil surrounding the Chinese-owned firm, which has become a flashpoint in broader disputes involving China, Europe, and the US, following months of internal conflicts, regulatory intervention...

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The days when Silicon Valley and leading American universities led the way in shaping the future of science may be ending, as China overtakes the United States not only in research output but in some cutting-edge fields, according to one of the world’s leading academic publishers. “When I looked into data from Digital Science’s Dimensions database, I can see a widening gap between China and the United States in research output. “By 2024, Chinese researchers had published 1.1 million articles,...

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China slightly increased its US Treasury holdings in August and September – though the uptick did little to offset an overall downward trend – as persistent worries over US debt sustainability and the Federal Reserve’s independence deepened doubts about the safety of assets backed by the US dollar. The country’s stockpile rose to US$701 billion in August, up from July’s multi-year low of US$696.9 billion, but it again trimmed the total to US$700.5 billion in September, according to data from the...

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UBTech Robotics said it planned to expand its assembly of humanoid robots 10-fold next year to as many as 5,000 units and double that to 10,000 in 2027, as the scale economics of China’s advanced manufacturing prowess shaves a fifth off production costs every year. The Shenzhen-based company was on track to deliver 500 humanoid robots for industrial use by the end of this year, scaling up since delivering the first 10 droids last year, UBTech’s chief branding officer Michael Tam said during an...

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1. Beijing warns Tokyo of ‘further action’ if Takaichi doesn’t budge on Taiwan stand China will take “further measures” against Japan unless its prime minister retracts her controversial comments on Taiwan, the foreign ministry said as Beijing reportedly reimposed a ban on Japanese seafood imports.
2. Dutch government suspends invoking Goods Availability Act...

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The US-China rivalry has long been cast as a contest between two superpowers, with one rising and the other defending its primacy. This competition has been largely measured in GDP growth, military spending and the number of aircraft carriers and alliances each side could marshal. The central criteria is “who holds power” or “who has more power”. Yet today, the rivalry can no longer be understood by these conventional metrics. Rather, it is taking place within a complex web of technology,...

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China’s €4 billion (US$4.6 billion) euro-denominated bond sale has drawn record demand, highlighting robust investor confidence in its sovereign assets amid a global shift towards diversification. International and regional investors placed €100.1 billion in orders for the offering – 25 times the fundraising target – China’s Ministry of Finance said in a statement on Wednesday. The seven-year tranche, issued alongside an equal-sized four-year tranche, attracted demand 26.5 times its allocation,...

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The world’s largest “ghost particle” detector, located in southern China’s Guangdong province, has shattered expectations in just two months. Initial results from the vast new Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (Juno) have shown a record level of precision, surpassing decades of cumulative data from other global experiments on neutrinos. The immediate success has confirmed that the detector is ready to tackle fundamental questions, potentially uncovering new laws of physics and solving...

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Some of China’s cryptocurrency heavyweights have called off a US$500 million ether digital asset treasury (DAT) project, as the broader crypto market remains in a slump, according to people familiar with the matter. The project was initiated earlier this year by Huobi founder Leon Li Lin, HashKey Group chairman and CEO Xiao Feng, Meitu co-founder Mike Cai Wensheng and Fenbushi Capital founder Bo Shen, who aimed to raise US$500 million to launch a DAT firm that would invest in the world’s...

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Amid a heated diplomatic row between Beijing and Tokyo which has shown no signs of cooling off, several employees of China’s state-owned enterprises have been advised to scrap their immediate travel plans to Japan, they told the Post on condition of anonymity. One of them, an engineer at a state-owned firm in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, received an unexpected phone call on Tuesday. It was his company’s administrative office, urging him to cancel his coming holiday. Like employees at many...

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Alibaba Group Holding founder Jack Ma on Tuesday made a low-key visit to the Hangzhou campus of Ant Group that coincided with the Chinese fintech giant’s launch of LingGuang, a next-generation multimodal artificial intelligence assistant. Ma, who had relinquished his control of the fintech company and resigned from all corporate roles at Alibaba, was seen accompanied by Ant Group chairman Eric Jing Xiandong and CEO Cyril Han Xinyi during his tour of the campus. Ant Group is an affiliate of...

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China’s top anti-espionage agency said it had solved several infiltration and espionage cases involving Japanese spy agencies in recent years and vowed to step up counter-intelligence work amid serious diplomatic tensions between Beijing and Tokyo. On Wednesday, the Ministry of State Security said in a social media article that it had “cracked a series of espionage cases involving Japanese intelligence agencies infiltrating and stealing secrets from China”. It added that this had “effectively...

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The Dutch government has suspended its invocation of the Goods Availability Act, a Cold War-era law it used to effectively seize the European operations of Chinese-owned chipmaker Nexperia. In a statement on Wednesday, the Dutch economy minister said the government had held “constructive meetings with the Chinese authorities” in recent days and that he was “positive about the measures already taken by the Chinese authorities to ensure the supply of chips to Europe and the rest of the world”. “We...

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New Zealand’s top diplomat is set to visit China next week to mark a major deal with a state‑owned Chinese shipbuilder to upgrade interisland ferries serving the Pacific nation. New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters confirmed his trip on Wednesday, a month after Wellington said it had secured a deal to source two new ferries from Guangzhou Shipyard International to connect the country’s two main islands across Cook Strait. Peters told a press conference that he would travel to Guangzhou to...

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Family offices in Hong Kong, Singapore and Dubai are redrawing the global map of private capital. Each hub combines favourable tax and regulatory regimes with strong local networks of banks, advisers and deal makers. Together, they now rival Western centres in deploying private equity across the Global South. Drawing inspiration from family offices in the United States – where private equity has represented a major share of assets – these Asian hubs are scaling rapidly, positioning themselves as...

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