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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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The US Congress is readying votes on a sprawling bill that would restrict US outbound investment to China in sensitive sectors as well as federal government contracting with Chinese biotechnology companies, two controversial measures that were left out of similar legislation last year. The provisions were included in a compromise defence bill released on Sunday after months of negotiation. Votes on the annual bill, known as the National Defence Authorisation Act (NDAA), could happen this week....

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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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The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) said on Monday it may bar three major Chinese telecoms companies from connecting to US networks over efforts to prevent robocalls, the latest in a series of actions Washington has taken against Beijing. The FCC issued orders saying China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom must address issues with their certifications in the agency’s robocall mitigation database, and raised concerns about their presence in the database. If the FCC removes them,...

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US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth met their Australian counterparts on Monday in Washington for annual talks focused on Indo-Pacific security and countering mainland China’s increasing assertiveness in the region, including in the South China Sea and directed at Taiwan. Rubio, Hegseth, Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong and Defence Minister Richard Marles gathered at the State Department, with many eyes also on the Russia-Ukraine war, a fragile ceasefire in...

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A Chinese court has ordered Malaysia Airlines to pay over 2.9 million yuan (US$410,240) per victim to family members who filed suit over missing flight MH370, 11 years after it disappeared over the Indian Ocean, state broadcaster CCTV said on Monday. The order, issued on Friday by the Chaoyang District People’s Court in Beijing, covers eight missing passengers. It is the first formal compensation ruling by a Chinese court on flight MH370. It includes death compensation, funeral expenses and...

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Ant International, the Singapore-based affiliate of Chinese fintech giant Ant Group, has named US basketball star Sabrina Ionescu as its global brand ambassador in a fresh partnership between sports and tech. The four-time all-star in the US Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) was chosen as part of an effort to expand access to financial tools via innovative technology, the digital payments provider said on Tuesday. The 28-year-old point guard – an Olympic gold medallist and the top...

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Scientists from Northwest A&F University in China have developed an innovative technology to extract and collect boron from seawater. Boron is a lightweight element used as solid fuel in scramjet engines on some advanced Chinese hypersonic weapons. Neodymium-iron-boron rare earth magnets – used extensively in industrial and military applications – have drawn particular attention amid ongoing trade tensions over critical minerals. These high-performance rare-earth magnets not only rely on...

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Chinese scientists have genetically modified a fungus commonly used in the production of meat substitutes to make it an even more environmentally friendly source of protein than chicken – one of the farmed animals that has the least impact on the environment. The team used CRISPR-based gene editing to modify Fusarium venenatum, improving its production efficiency and reducing its environmental impact without introducing foreign DNA, according to a paper published in the peer-reviewed Trends in...

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China’s tax authorities have told internet platforms to avoid passing tax obligations onto gig workers, tightening industry oversight while stepping up a crackdown on tax-dodging internet influencers. “Platforms should not disguise additional fees during tax withholding and remittance processes, nor should they use such processes to shift tax obligations and increase gig workers’ burdens,” officials from the State Taxation Administration said at a press conference on Monday. As regulation of the...

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Few leaders travel to China seeking gravitas and return with only a couple of pandas, but French President Emmanuel Macron managed to do just that. After surrendering sovereignty to US President Donald Trump, Macron visited China seeking a validation that his citizens no longer grant. His authority at home has been eroded through cabinet implosions, collapsing support, stalled budgets and demands for his resignation. China could see that before he even stepped off the plane. Beijing handled a...

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China’s deliveries of rare earths, semiconductors and other commodities to Germany dominated the talks between German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul and Chinese Commerce Minister Wang Wentao on Monday. “In all of these areas, there has been uncertainty, and that needs to be eliminated,” Wadephul said as he kicked off a trip to China aimed at addressing Berlin’s trade and geopolitical concerns. According to Reuters, Beijing was far from being persuaded to grant general export licences for rare...

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Beijing pressed German carmakers to help resolve disputes over the European Union’s anti-subsidy tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles and the Nexperia semiconductor saga, in separate video meetings on Monday. Vice-Minister of Commerce Ling Ji made the appeal to German industry leaders, seeking to leverage their influence in Brussels. Ling spoke with Hildegard Mueller, president of the German Association of the Automotive Industry (VDA), and Ola Kallenius, president of the European Automobile...

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Chinese entrepreneur Liang Wenfeng, the founder and CEO of DeepSeek, appears to have made a big score from the initial public offering of chip designer Moore Threads Technology, whose shares surged more than fivefold in its trading debut in Shanghai. High-Flyer Quantitative Fund, a hedge fund co-founded by Liang, had subscribed to a total of 82,244 shares of Moore Threads, at 114.28 yuan per share, via two entities: Zhejiang High-Flyer Asset Management and Ningbo High-Flyer Quant Investment...

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China’s securities regulator has called on the country’s 160 mutual fund houses to establish a performance-based salary mechanism, as part of efforts to uproot elitism from the industry. The China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) has drawn up guidelines governing asset managers’ pay perks, suggesting that the performance of the funds they run should factor up to 80 per cent in determining their annual salaries, according to a report on Monday by the official Securities Times. The...

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China’s Liaoning aircraft carrier continued its military drill in waters near Japan’s Okinawa on Sunday, Tokyo said, after a rare military stand-off between Chinese and Japanese fighter jets the previous day. The Liaoning and three guided missile destroyers were sailing northeast in the waters between Okinawa and Minami-Daito islands, and in waters around 190km (118 miles) east of Kikai Island, Japan’s defence ministry said on Sunday night. Furthermore, around 50 take-offs and landings by...

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China’s commerce minister has urged the country to push forward with opening-up policies over the next five years to reshape China’s role in the global economy while bolstering domestic consumption, as Beijing gears up for one of its most important economic planning meetings of the year. Commerce Minister Wang Wentao highlighted China’s commitment to open markets and multilateral trade in an article published in the Communist Party’s flagship newspaper, People’s Daily, on Monday. His remarks...

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Emmanuel Macron has warned Beijing that Europe would be forced to retaliate with “strong measures” against Chinese goods – including punitive tariffs modelled after US policy – if a trade imbalance between the two sides remains unaddressed well into 2026. Back in Paris, fresh from a diplomatic visit to China that ended on Friday, the French president told business newspaper Les Echos that China was “effectively killing their own customers” by running unsustainable surpluses while curbing...

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China’s top espionage official has identified Taiwanese independence, technology theft, subversion and the defence of strategically important sea lanes as top priorities for the next five years. State Security Minister Chen Yixin identified the issues as his main priorities in an article published in Study Times, the mouthpiece of the Central Party School, which is used for ideological and administrative training. In his assessment of international affairs, Chen noted the decline of a “unipolar...

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Shanghai-based chip firm MetaX Integrated Circuits has emerged as the latest star in mainland China’s stock market, with the graphics processing unit (GPU) maker proving to be even more popular among retail investors than peer Moore Threads ahead of its trading debut. MetaX attracted 5.17 million retail investors for its online subscription, giving it a final allotment rate of 0.033 per cent, according to a stock exchange filing on Monday. Beijing-based Moore Threads drew 4.82 million retail...

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A passenger ferry named after an ancient monk seen as a symbol of Sino-Japanese cultural exchange has suspended its service as Beijing continues its retaliation for Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s remarks on Taiwan. The Jian Zhen Hao ferry from Shanghai to Japan’s Osaka and Kobe has been suspended since Saturday “due to a request from the Chinese side” over concerns that the safety of travel between the two countries could not be guaranteed, according to the operator, Japan-China...

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The US defence chief touted a message of peace, communication and “flexible realism” with China in a speech over the weekend, foreshadowing an American national defence strategy that is expected to be released soon. In his keynote address at the annual Reagan National Defence Forum on Saturday, US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said Washington was committed to putting “America first” and avoiding involvement in foreign entanglements as it prioritised domestic security. Yet in drawing comparisons...

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China has pledged to continue to exert a “more proactive” fiscal policy and “moderately loose” monetary policy next year as it seeks to promote “effective qualitative improvement and reasonable quantitative growth” in its economy. After a meeting of the 24-member Politburo on Monday, the major decision-making body of the ruling Communist Party said the country would “seek progress while maintaining stability and pursue higher quality and greater efficiency in next year’s economic work.” “[We...

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