China News

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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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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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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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 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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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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Chinese Premier Li Qiang will arrive in the Zambian capital Lusaka on Wednesday, with a US$1.4 billion railway modernisation deal high on his agenda. But Li could also face political fallout from a toxic spill at a copper mine in the country’s north. Two Chinese mining firms have been sued over the incident that has been described as an “ecological catastrophe” by farmers. It will be the first visit to Zambia by a top Chinese leader since 2007, and Li’s first trip to sub-Saharan Africa. He will...

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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 European Union is expected to launch an anti-dumping investigation into Chinese robotic lawnmowers as early as this week, two sources familiar with the matter told the Post on Tuesday, marking another potential escalation of China-European trade tensions. China has been selling more robotic lawnmowers to Europe, and at higher prices. More than 40 per cent of China’s robotic-lawnmower exports, by volume, are shipped to the 27-member bloc, according to Chinese customs data. And in the first...

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China has told Japan it will suspend imports of Japanese seafood, Kyodo News said on Wednesday, citing a government source, as the bilateral tensions continue to spiral downwards. The suspension comes less than five months after Beijing announced it would lift a nearly two-year import ban on some Japanese seafood. Beijing had cited worries over Japan’s release of treated waste water from the Fukushima nuclear power plant. The suspension, if confirmed by China, would mark another retaliation...

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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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We have put together stories from our coverage on science from the past two weeks to help you stay informed. If you would like to see more of our reporting, please consider subscribing.

1. Mathematician Qian Hong, son of top scientific clan, leaves US for China A renowned mathematician who is also part of China’s Qian clan – a surname linked in the annals of Chinese scientific history to national pioneers in science and engineering – has become the latest US-based scientist to return to...

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The king and queen of Thailand have become the first visiting heads of state to greet Chinese astronauts in orbit, in an unprecedented moment for China’s tightly controlled human space flight programme. The 73-year-old King Maha Vajiralongkorn – a trained military pilot and long-time aviation enthusiast – and Queen Suthida smiled and waved at the astronauts, who appeared via a large screen from the Tiangong, or “Heavenly Palace”, space station. The encounter, which took place on Sunday at the...

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The Japanese economy could lose about 1.49 trillion yen (US$9.59 billion) over the next year if travellers from mainland China continue to avoid Japan over a row that has derailed the growth in arrivals seen earlier this year, an economist at the Tokyo-based Nomura Research Institute has projected. Takahide Kiuchi, the institute’s executive economist, made the calculation after Beijing told Chinese citizens last week to refrain from travelling to Japan following comments about Taiwan by new...

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While failing to see eye to eye is hardly new to Beijing and Tokyo, Sino-Japanese relations have been especially strained this month and are at risk of worsening even further. The trigger for the downturn was Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s comments to the Japanese parliament on November 7 that the use of force against Taiwan could be perceived as a “survival-threatening situation”, which would permit Tokyo to deploy the Japan Self-Defence Forces. She has refused to retract her...

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China’s ambassador to the United Nations said Japan was “totally unqualified” to become a permanent member of the Security Council amid an ongoing row about the new prime minister’s comments about Taiwan. Fu Cong, China’s permanent representative to the UN, condemned Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s remarks as “highly dangerous” and “extremely mistaken” on Tuesday. “In light of Sanae Takaichi’s atrocious behaviour, how can the international community trust that Japan will adhere to its commitment...

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