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The iconic wrapper of White Rabbit, a six-decade-old Chinese milk confectionery, has recently gone viral in the West. Shared this month in a post on X, formerly Twitter, the retro packaging was hailed as an “absolute masterstroke of graphic design”. Its distinctive waxy paper – featuring a white rabbit against a red circle, with blue-and-white rabbit motifs lining both edges – has since racked up more than 6 million views and 260,000 likes. In the comments section, online users from around the...

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Taiwan has signed a deal with US defence start-up Vatn Systems to develop autonomous underwater vehicles and strengthen its asymmetric warfare capabilities amid growing military pressure from Beijing. The agreement with the National Chung-Shan Institute of Science and Technology (NCSIST) – the island’s government-funded top weapons developer – is the latest in a series of moves to expand Taiwan’s unmanned underwater capabilities. Under the memorandum of understanding signed last week, NCSIST and...

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Last month, two Chinese companies released artificial intelligence models most people outside the industry know little about: Kimi K3 by Moonshot AI and Qwen3.8-Max by Alibaba Group Holding (which owns the South China Morning Post). The markets reacted even before publicly auditable evidence about the performance claims – detailed benchmark table, model card and licence – was made fully available. In the weeks that followed, global chip stocks shed about US$3 trillion in market value. That...

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Chinese researchers have engineered a probiotic that could make diabetes care as simple as drinking a cup of yogurt or swallowing a capsule. The “smart” bacterium, designed to sense high blood sugar and automatically release a glucose-lowering hormone, performed on par with the blockbuster drug Ozempic in animal tests, according to a study published in Nature last week. The team at East China Normal University in Shanghai has already filed patents and is now scaling up production to meet...

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China’s ability to set its own technological course in the face of sustained US export restrictions may be the key factor in the two countries’ contest over artificial intelligence, a prominent analyst has argued. Zheng Yongnian, dean of the school of public policy at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (Shenzhen), made the case in his preface to The Rise of Atlas, a new book about the development of Huawei Technologies’ Atlas 950 SuperPoD computing system. The system, which Huawei showcased at...

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China’s retail sales growth trailed expectations, the pace of industrial output expansion slowed and a drop in investment worsened as its economy struggled to regain pace at the start of the second half of the year. July retail sales rose by 0.6 per cent, missing the 1.3 per cent expectation among economists polled by financial data provider Wind, and slowing from June’s 1 per cent rate. Industrial output rose by 4.5 per cent, trailing the 4.9 per cent forecast and June’s 5.3 per cent pace,...

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A Chinese research team has unveiled an aerodynamic model for a massive flying-wing passenger aircraft that could carry more than 800 people, marking a bold new entry in the country’s large aircraft programme. Unlike conventional aircraft that have separate fuselage, wings and tail, a flying wing merges most of the structure into a single broad lifting body. The proposed design is 85 metres (280 feet) wide and 43 metres long, with a wingspan roughly 1.6 times that of the B-2 Spirit stealth...

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Monday 17 August marks the centenary of the birth of Jiang Zemin, General Secretary of the Communist Party of China from 1989 to 2002 and President of the country from 1993 to 2003 – the leader of the People’s Republic whom much of the Western left finds it easiest to write off as a “capitalist …

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We have put together stories from our coverage last weekend to help you stay informed about news across Asia and beyond. If you would like to see more of our reporting, please consider subscribing.

1. Why Chinese youth are turning to an 84-year-old Cambridge professor for support
2. Chinese officials rattled by White House chaos weeks ahead of Xi-Trump summit
3. How Southeast Asia’s monarchies stay relevant in a volatile region
4. Hong Kong policewoman facing probe over viral video of her...

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President Xi Jinping presides over a grand ceremony in Beijing on Monday to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the birth of former state leader Jiang Zemin, who served as the country’s top leader between 1989 and the early 2000s and died in 2022. Xi is addressing thousands of officials and delegates from various sectors at the ceremony, held in the Great Hall of the People, delivering a speech that highlights Jiang’s contribution to the party and the country.

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Welcome to Open Dialogue, a series from the South China Morning Post where we bring together leading voices to discuss the stories and subjects occupying international headlines. In this edition, we invited a leading Chinese scholar of South Asian affairs and a former Indian foreign secretary and ambassador to China to reflect on the deep fault lines in India-China relations. They debate whether the biggest barrier is history or politics, clash over the border, Pakistan and India’s ties with the...

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Former Chinese premier Zhu Rongji will be cremated in Beijing on Tuesday, with flags across the country – including in Hong Kong and Macau – flown at half-mast, state media reported on Sunday. Zhu, who served as premier from 1998 to 2003 and played a pivotal role in transitioning China towards a market-based economy, died of an illness in Beijing on Wednesday at age 97. According to state news agency Xinhua, national flags will fly at half-mast on Tuesday at sites in Beijing, including Tiananmen...

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A leading Communist Party research group has invoked the legacy of China’s former leader Jiang Zemin in a call to rally round President Xi Jinping. The article by the Institute of Party History and Literature, published on Sunday in the party’s mouthpiece People’s Daily, formed part of the commemorations of the centenary of Jiang’s birth and highlighted the importance of supporting the leadership in the face of economic or geopolitical difficulties. “Under the party’s third-generation leadership...

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Chinese scientists have developed an AI model they say could be used to predict the risk of depression up to four years in advance. Major Depressive Disorder affects over 332 million people worldwide, according to the researchers at Shenzhen University, and is notoriously difficult to treat. The ability to predict the risk of depression and take preventive measures could prove a significant public health benefit. The model was built using data from two clinical trials on adolescent depression...

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China should speed up plans to commandeer civilian ships for wartime operations, drawing lessons from Britain’s use of commercial vessels during the 1982 Falklands conflict, according to a defence researcher at Beijing’s top economic planning agency. As maritime security threats and great-power competition grow, Beijing should make greater use of civilian ships to support military operations, according to an article published last month in Defence Industry Conversion in China. “As China’s...

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A raw, handcrafted Chinese animation has become an unlikely box-office sensation despite being widely panned by critics and social media users. Niu Lai, or The Arrival of the Ox, has been criticised for its “rough” and “broken” style and a plot that many viewers found hard to follow. But the film has generated some of the loudest online discussion in recent days, despite the competition from two Hollywood blockbusters: Christopher Nolan’s epic version of The Odyssey and Spider-Man: Brand New...

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Africa is emerging as fertile ground for Beijing’s drive to make the yuan a major international currency and reduce reliance on the US dollar, as an increasing number of financial institutions deepen their integration with China’s payment network. Following talks in Beijing between Central Bank of Libya Governor Naji Issa and People’s Bank of China Governor Pan Gongsheng last month, the country’s banks are set to join China’s Cross-Border Interbank Payment System (CIPS), an alternative to the...

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During a crackdown on organised crime, Zeng Jianbin, a real estate developer in Mianyang, southwestern China’s Sichuan province, was sentenced to 20 years in prison for being a “gang leader”. In 2023, the Mianyang Intermediate People’s Court convicted Zeng of nine offences, including provoking trouble, illegal lending at high interest and intentional destruction of property. His sentence was particularly harsh because of the organised nature of the crimes. But two years later, during his appeal...

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Electric eels hunt in pitch-black, murky waters by generating electric fields around their bodies. Now, Chinese scientists have mimicked this natural radar, giving robots the ability to “feel” objects without making physical contact. “We want the machine to sense an approaching target – distinguish its material and surface condition – before any physical contact,” said Zhang Weiqiang, a professor at Xidian University, in a video interview last week. Their work was published last month in the...

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Tensions between Beijing and Manila appear to have spilled over from the South China Sea to immigration, just as Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr indicated he wanted to “reset” ties. Manila on Sunday dismissed Beijing’s criticism of Defence Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jnr over his role in the arrests of Chinese workers at a steel plant in Misamis Oriental in May. A Chinese embassy official in Manila late on Saturday accused Teodoro of carrying out “anti-China activities” to “disrupt”...

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A China-led team has cleared the last major hurdle in the race to commercialise the most promising alternative to conventional silicon solar technology, paving the way for the next generation of low-cost, high-efficiency panels to be made on an industrial scale. Researchers from China and Canada, led by Nanjing University, have developed a super-stable coating for perovskite – an ultra-thin, lightweight material that can be printed onto large surfaces – suitable for patching the tiny defects...

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Taiwan’s push to build a modern counter-drone shield has come under renewed scrutiny after an official audit uncovered technical shortcomings and a key procurement programme collapsed following repeated testing failures. The developments have fuelled concerns that Taipei’s efforts to match Beijing’s rapidly evolving drone technology are being undermined by capability gaps, procurement failures and delays in building an integrated counter-drone network. According to a recent report by Taiwan’s...

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China has published ecological assessment reports on nine disputed South China Sea features, amid an escalating row with Washington over Beijing’s establishment of a “national nature reserve” in the contested waters. On Friday, the Ministry of Natural Resources’ South China Sea Bureau issued its 2025 marine ecological early-warning and monitoring bulletin, alongside a separate marine ecological protection and restoration report for the region. The releases were announced via an article posted on...

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China has “strongly condemned” Japanese leaders for visiting the controversial Yasukuni Shrine and making an offering on the 81st anniversary of Japan’s announcement of surrender in World War II. Beijing lodged a formal protest after Japanese defence chief Shinjiro Koizumi visited the shrine on Saturday. China and many other countries in Asia view the site as a symbol of Japanese militarism. Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi did not visit the site in person but she sent a ritual offering to...

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A US appeal court on Friday gave Chinese drone maker DJI another chance to challenge its inclusion on a Pentagon blacklist of companies allegedly linked to the Chinese military. DJI, a Shenzhen-based drone maker, has been engaged in a years-long legal battle with the US Department of Defence to be removed from the list. The latest ruling from the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit did not remove DJI from the list, but sent the case back to the lower court to reconsider one...

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