China Executive Insights
Egypt is building its first nuclear power plant, with help from Russia. © Reuters LONDON -- The 79 nuclear reactors under construction worldwide represent the most in 40 years, as rising fossil fuel prices and the spread of energy-hungry artificial intelligence accelerate plans for new plants.
$490m Georgia factory expansion intended to serve data center construction rush Mitsubishi Heavy manufactures gas turbines, a key component at power plants that generate electricity using natural gas. (Mitsubishi Heavy Industries) TOKYO -- Mitsubishi Heavy Industries will increase its gas turbine manufacturing and maintenance capabilities in the U.S., with plans to invest $490 million for adding capacity to its factory in Georgia, Nikkei has learned.
Fulfilling potential requires stronger links to global ecosystem Hirofumi Yoshimura, the governor of Osaka Prefecture, attends the opening ceremony of Global Start-Up Expo 2026 in Osaka, Japan, on Oct. 5. (Photo by Katsuyuki Tanimoto) Hinza Asif is founder and president of Asia Web3 Alliance Japan (AWAJ)
Party members to face more scrutiny of online activities for evidence of bribery, nepotism Chinese President Xi Jinping, who is also secretary-general of the Chinese Communist Party, called for comprehensive and strict party governance at the fifth plenary session of the party's Central Committee in October. (Xinhua via Kyodo) BEIJING -- The Chinese Communist Party will create a computer system that uses big data to monitor the online activities of members to find corruption, intensifying President Xi Jinping's crackdown on graft, Nikkei has learned.
MSCI announced in October that it was launching a consultation to propose reclassifying Indonesia as a standalone market. © Reuters Strong concerns on opaque transactions persist despite official efforts JAKARTA -- Since global index provider Morgan Stanley Capital International warned early this year that it might downgrade the Indonesian stock market, authorities have been implementing reforms to restore investor confidence - while also maneuvering in ways that worried market participants.
Halal-certified coffee chain eyes Indonesia, Japan and other overseas markets Calvin Chan, founder of Oriental Kopi, stands in front of one of the chain's outlets in Kuala Lumpur. The Malaysia-based company plans to expand into Indonesia and other overseas markets. (Photo by Norman Goh) KUALA LUMPUR -- When Calvin Chan, an entrepreneur from Malaysia, traveled across China, Taiwan and Hong Kong for his mobile phone business, he rarely struggled to find Japanese, Thai or Vietnamese food. What he could not easily encounter was cuisine from his homeland.
Thailand-Cambodia border conflict creates opportunity for those living in camps Myanmar refugees working at a data center construction site in Thailand's Chonburi province. (Photo by Keigo Iwamoto) BANGKOK -- Myanmar refugees living in Thailand are emerging as a new source of workers for the country's labor-strapped industries, helping to fill gaps left by Cambodians who returned home amid its border conflict with Thailand.
Across China, a growing number of middle-aged working mothers are quietly checking into hotel rooms alone, desperate to get a few hours of uninterrupted sleep. Caught between demanding daytime jobs and an exhausting “second shift” of housework and parenting, many women see these solo hotel stays as their only real escape, according to multiple mainland reports. One 34-year-old mother, who lives with her husband, in-laws, and kindergarten-age daughter, shared on RedNote that she had no personal...
China’s stocks rebounded from a brutal sell-off in October on speculation that Beijing would double down on efforts to stem a rout that sent its benchmark into a bear market. The CSI 300 Index rose 0.3 per cent to 3,997.76 as of 9.36am local time. The Star Market 50 Index, which is dominated by the nation’s biggest chipmakers, gained 0.6 per cent. Speculation was mounting that China would bolster a 300 billion yuan (US$45.1 billion) relending facility, introduced in 2024 as part of a package to...
CASIA's IROS 2026 paper pairs imitation learning for reaching with tactile-augmented RL for insertion, lifting 0.05 mm success from 52% to 67% and cutting peak contact force 60%.
President Lee Jae Myung’s overseas trips have again drawn attention to South Korea’s shifting political standards, adding to a familiar cycle of disputes over presidential golf and the presidential plane whenever power passes between conservative and liberal administrations. The controversies centre on taxpayer money and the public’s attitudes towards presidential privilege, with governing parties defending certain activities as necessary for diplomacy or official duties and the opposition...
Qwen AI Glasses gain real-time call translation for phone calls and meetings, media translation shown in the companion app, and better speech recognition in noisy places.
CCID says AI inference data in China has overtaken training data for the first time, with daily token calls above 175 trillion as of June, more than 1,000 times the early-2024 level.
Meituan's LongCat-2.5 is a 1.6T native multimodal model with about 48B active per token, trained with long-horizon RL for agentic coding and optimized for W4A4 inference on domestic compute.
Strong government-industry partnership and interdisciplinary education are what make a university town financially viable and successful, the head of a University of Cambridge college has said, sharing the UK’s experience as Hong Kong develops its Northern Metropolis plan. In an interview with the South China Morning Post, Professor Girish Menon, president of Lucy Cavendish College, said Hong Kong’s cosmopolitan character made it “best placed” to place young people at the heart of its university...
Construction workers have been working late into the night in downtown Shenzhen as the city makes its final preparations for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in two weeks’ time. On a weekday night, a South China Morning Post reporter saw at least 50 construction workers gathered at an intersection about 1km (just over half a mile) from the Apec venues in the central district of Futian, laying down pebbles and planting trees along the pavements. The main road that leads up to the...
Michael Mann, the acclaimed director of crime classics Heat and Collateral, accidentally shot himself at a gun range in Los Angeles, resulting in minor injuries, a statement released on Sunday said. “On Saturday, at a gun range, a weapon accidentally discharged while holstered resulting in a superficial injury to film director Michael Mann. He was treated and is being released,” a representative of the filmmaker said in a statement. The Los Angeles Police Department confirmed that they had...
In the end, it was Winnie Ho Wing-yin, housing secretary at the time of the Wang Fuk Court fire in Tai Po, who took the rap. Her resignation came after weeks of talk within political circles suggesting that bureau chiefs would not have to bear responsibility for the tragedy that killed 168 people and displaced 1,984 families. These suggestions were met with shock. Some spoke out against such talk, including Andrew Fung Wai-kwong, former information coordinator for the Chief Executive’s Office,...
Hong Kong’s initial public offering (IPO) momentum has cooled sharply in the fourth quarter amid market volatility and tighter regulatory scrutiny, but industry players say a year-end rush of listings could still help the city secure a top-three global ranking for 2026. The market has slowed significantly since October, with only three new listings, all of which closed below their offer prices on debut. Two other IPO candidates shelved their listings after completing procedures, testing Hong...
An analysis by Japan’s GMO Internet Group found that a North Korea-linked hacking group was likely behind the cyberattack on the company last month, sources close to the matter said, citing characteristics of the malware used and other traces left by the perpetrators. The company appears to have already reported the matter to the government and will now focus on determining the full circumstances. Kyodo News, working with security experts, also found that five IP addresses used to access a...
Top university research, cross-border data exchanges and access to mainland China’s large market have attracted Japanese firm Rohto Pharmaceutical to conduct clinical trials in Hong Kong, making it the first company from the country to partner with the city’s government under a flagship investment initiative. Rohto, known for its over-the-counter eye care and skincare products, is among the latest batch of 18 firms recruited by the Office for Attracting Strategic Enterprises (OASES), a...
Tuesday’s US midterm election is both hugely consequential and not so consequential even as the world waits to see the American voters’ verdict on Donald Trump’s presidency – and the impact that verdict will have on his temperament, plans and possible petulant response, analysts and former government officials said. On the one hand, an expected strong showing by opposition Democrats could bring more Congressional scrutiny over some of the most unconventional, maximalist and disruptive policies...
Video game companies have long been at the vanguard of artificial intelligence, using it in its more nascent form to dictate non-player character behaviour, simulate crowds and adjust game difficulty on the fly years before the advent of chatbots like ChatGPT. Today, the technology is increasingly being deployed to write code, create visual assets and even synthesise real-time voice-overs, supplanting humans who would have otherwise done the work. Yet studios do still pay people to animate their...
When hundreds of global finance leaders converge in Hong Kong this week, the question on their minds will be whether traditional investment strategies remain viable against escalating geopolitical friction and the rapid ascent of artificial intelligence. Investors have been keen for an answer – or at least clear clues – given that US President Donald Trump has been threatening a new round of strikes on Iran, and after Friday’s sharp sell-off in technology stocks elevated concerns about the...
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[The content of this article has been produced by our advertising partner.] Hong Kong has been a home market for HSBC since the bank was founded 161 years ago. It is now also a base for the bank’s AI investment and delivery, with capabilities developed in the city intended for use across other markets. The city is also expanding the regulatory and market infrastructure needed to support digital finance at scale. HSBC returns as a Strategic Partner of Hong Kong FinTech Week x StartmeupHK for the...
Joshua Cooper Ramo is chairman and CEO of Sornay, an investment and advisory firm. Previously he was CEO of Kissinger Associates. Ramo is the author of the new book Darwin’s Lock: America, China and the Shared Future of Nations. His 2004 analysis of “the Beijing consensus” contrasted the Western and Chinese economic development models. He is the author of two New York Times best-selling books and now lives in Shanghai with his family. For other interviews in the Open Questions series, click...
Nine people were killed on Sunday when the Learjet they were travelling in plummeted into a neighbourhood in southern Florida, just miles from US President Donald Trump’s resort home of Mar-a-Lago, officials said. Several unverified clips depicting the deadly crash and posted to social media show an aircraft nearly vertical slamming at high speed into the ground and triggering a large fireball, leaving a flaming crater near a busy roadside. “Today’s plane crash in Palm Beach County, Florida is a...
When Chinese leader Mao Zedong and then US president Richard Nixon ended more than two decades of hostility in the early 1970s and began restoring ties, one powerful force pulling them together was a shared adversary in the form of the Soviet Union. Fast forward to today. The United States and China, the world’s two largest economies, have spent eight years locked in competition and confrontation, from trade and investment to technology, amid mounting fears that they are on a path to inevitable...
A Democratic congresswoman in Michigan broke ranks with her party on Sunday to endorse the Republican candidate in her state’s key US Senate race against left-wing progressive candidate Abdul El-Sayed. In a startling display of party infighting just two days before the November 3 midterm election, Haley Stevens, who lost a bruising primary to El-Sayed in August despite being backed by the Democratic establishment, said she was endorsing Republican Mike Rogers. “This is a very close election, we...
Binance customers pulled US$3.64 billion, or 2.1 per cent of its assets, as the world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange went back online on Sunday after hackers the FBI links to North Korea stole billions from the platform last week. Binance said withdrawals were stabilising after an initial spike and deposit volumes had remained “substantial”. The exchange said it had now covered 95 per cent of the US$6.3 billion of stolen assets. The theft, which analysts believe may be the biggest financial...
China’s ruling Communist Party will step up “party building” across the country’s tech sector and deploy digital tools to fight corruption, according to a landmark document adopted at a key political plenum. These tools include a digital discipline inspection platform and a big-data supervision platform. The party will also crack down on corruption involving the internet, virtual currency, cross-border funds and blockchain technology, according to the document formally approved on Thursday at...
Two years until post-Trump presidential race mark crossroads for growing global divisions Supporters cheer on U.S. President Donald Trump at an Oct. 27 rally in Lubbock, Texas. © Reuters TOKYO -- In Tuesday's midterm elections, U.S. voters will give their verdict on the first half of President Donald Trump's second term, 10 years after Trump was first elected and the U.K. voted to leave the European Union.
Islamabad introduces cap on refinery margins as retail prices hit consumers hard Cnergyico Pk's refinery plant in Balochistan province, Pakistan. The country's refineries are enjoying unusually strong profits, but the industry faces big hurdles ahead. © Reuters ISLAMABAD -- Pakistan's major oil refineries reported a nearly twentyfold surge in combined profit for the latest quarter through September, benefiting from increasing refining margins amid global energy disruptions.
Your weekly lineup of Asia's biggest business and political events Indonesia, including the capital Jakarta, has been wrestling with the health and economic impacts of fires and haze. © Getty Images Indonesia reports its latest gross domestic product figure as it wrestles with the health and economic impacts of fires and haze, as well as market pressures from a potential MSCI downgrade. The country has also experienced fuel shortages amid the fallout from the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran. The U.S. holds midterm elections that are set to have implications for Asia, as voters across the political spectrum have signaled their opposition to the massive data center projects that have boosted Asian tech suppliers' bottom lines. The outcome might also influence U.S.-China relations: While Republicans and Democrats both support Taipei, if the Democrats take over one or both houses of Congress, they could be more eager to pressure U.S. President Donald Trump into moving ahead with a $14 billion arms package for Taiwan. Get the best of our coverage of Asia and much more by following us on X, where our handle is @NikkeiAsia. We are also on Bluesky with the handle @asia.nikkei.com.
New Zealand's Arbitr gives execs multilingual voice, accelerates disclosures David Sowerby, co-CEO of Arbitr Group, says traditional dubbing has not always captured a speaker's passion and nuance. (Photo by Minako Yamashita) TOKYO -- A New Zealand investor information services provider has developed a dubbing service using artificial intelligence that instantly translates videos of company executives into multiple languages.
Hong Kong tour groups returning from Japan have praised a smooth roll-out of the country’s new tax refund arrangement that requires travellers to complete refund procedures at airports or ports rather than at shops. Under the “pay first, refund later” scheme, which took effect on Sunday to curb illicit domestic reselling and tax evasion, international tourists must now pay the 10 per cent consumption tax upfront at the counter. Travellers are now required to complete customs verification before...
A potential lame-duck phase may not deter US President Donald Trump from pursuing more “transactional” or “risky” foreign policy moves after the midterm elections, Chinese experts warn, while casting doubt on expectations of a powerful Democratic wave. Amid a season of high-stakes contests that could reshape global politics, the US vote on Tuesday stands out. The election, which will determine who takes control of the US Congress, could result in Trump and his fellow Republicans no longer...
Chinese President Xi Jinping has mounted a direct defence of the campaign for strong Communist Party governance and internal discipline, describing them as a “fundamental guarantee” for China’s rise and warning against any easing of scrutiny, according to state media. Xi took the floor as the party’s 20th Central Committee closed its fifth plenum on Thursday, to directly address the scepticism over the sweeping campaign, state news agency Xinhua reported on Sunday. According to “side notes”...
Tens of thousands of volunteers helped raise 108 Buddhist stupas in Bhutan on Sunday, marking the Himalayan kingdom’s ambitious plans for a “mindfulness” city aimed at driving economic growth. The 15-metre tall solid towers – sacred Buddhist monuments found across the Himalayas – stretch along 12 kilometres (7.5 miles) of riverbank near the Indian border, at the site of the future Gelephu Mindfulness City. More than 40,000 volunteers took part in building the structures as “a physical form of...
The Hong Kong Bar Association has called on the government to clearly define criminal thresholds and resolve whistle-blower immunity rules under its plan to outlaw bid-rigging following the deadly Tai Po inferno. A task force formed by the association, which represents the city’s barristers, spent 10 months reviewing four key areas of law and released a 140-page report on Sunday in the hope of providing direction to address the shortcomings that led to the deadly Wang Fuk Court blaze last...
Last week, the United Nations General Assembly called for the 34th time for an end to the US embargo on Cuba. The resolution passed by 130 votes to 17, with 25 abstentions. It came as Cuba struggles with a severe energy crisis, mainly caused by a US fuel embargo, imposed after the abduction of Venezuela’s president to New York. The energy blockade is only the latest of America’s crimes against the Cuban people. Sergio Vigoa de la Uz, Cuba’s ambassador to Namibia, laid out the human costs of US...
The Hong Kong Bar Association has warned that a proposed phased redevelopment of the High Court, which could span more than a decade, is “not workable” and risks deterring legal practitioners from joining the bench. The association, the professional body for barristers, urged the government to consider faster alternatives, such as repurposing the existing District Court building. In an exclusive interview with the South China Morning Post on Sunday, association chairman Jose-Antonio Maurellet SC...
US first lady Melania Trump is unlikely to travel to China with the president for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Shenzhen this month. “First lady Melania Trump is not scheduled to attend the events in person,” her office said in response to a query about her travel plans. President Donald Trump is scheduled to visit the Philippines for this year’s Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit before travelling to the November 18-19 Apec event, where he will meet his Chinese...
Using artificial intelligence to build even smarter systems will make artificial general intelligence (AGI) more achievable, though it would need to be done safely, leading Chinese computer scientist Tang Jie said at an event in Shanghai on Saturday. The remarks underscore how AI companies in the US and China are both chasing the holy grail of recursive self-improvement (RSI), where increasingly powerful AI systems also become better at improving themselves in an ever-accelerating...
On November 4 last year, Zohran Mamdani won the New York mayoral election on a promise to make the city more affordable, with expanded social programmes funded in part by raising taxes on the city’s wealthiest residents and most profitable corporations. Nearly a year since his upset victory, he has secured one major piece of that agenda: a surcharge on high-end second homes. He also continues to push for higher corporate and income taxes. The proposals have intensified criticism of Mamdani, a...
The UAE is hoping for a breakthrough in negotiations between Iran and the United States while being prepared for the worst, a senior official said on Sunday, following threats of a resumption of the Middle East war. “We’re hoping that there is a diplomatic breakthrough,” diplomatic adviser to the UAE president Anwar Gargash said during a conference in Manama, Bahrain. “It is not the interest of the region to go through another round … But I think we’re also, as we’ve shown before, braced for the...
China’s central bank and securities regulator are expected to meet with financial institutions on Monday to discuss measures to bolster the country’s stock market, following a sell-off in October that heightened concerns over market stability, according to mainland media reports. The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) will meet representatives from major banks alongside the National Financial Regulatory Administration and the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) to discuss measures to...
In the third of a four-part Health Matters wellness series on frontier medicine in Hong Kong, Fiona Sun examines how a local start-up is testing a gene-editing therapy that could tackle a group of inherited eye diseases at their genetic source and what it will take to turn it into a treatment patients can access. For 15 years, Professor Zheng Zongli has worked to make gene-editing therapies safe enough to treat diseases with limited treatment options. His path has taken him from a PhD in medical...
Chinese artificial intelligence start-up DeepSeek has previewed a plan for a more autonomous AI agent that can handle multiple tasks with minimal human intervention, as it steps up competition with US rivals OpenAI and Anthropic in developing coding assistants. The proposed system, dubbed super agent, aimed to reduce the need for humans to coordinate multiple AI agents and monitor their progress, addressing a key bottleneck in managing today’s increasingly complex workflows, according to a...
China’s first female conductor, Zheng Xiaoying, is 97 years old, but she continues to give outstanding performances to audiences. In August, the nonagenarian conducted the Chinese-language version of the opera Carmen in Xiamen, in southeastern China’s Fujian province, where she lives. Tickets for the performance were like gold dust, and audiences marvelled, as always, at her elegant, expressive conducting. Zheng has led a remarkable life. Born in Shanghai in 1929, she began studying piano at age...
For decades, China has supplied African militaries with small arms and land-based equipment such as armoured vehicles, trucks and artillery. Now, it is selling them more specialised weapons, including armed drones and electronic warfare systems. Analysts noted that China’s African arms sales were shifting qualitatively to air-defence systems, armed drones and electronic warfare gear once dominated by Russia and the West. In April, four vehicles identified by defence analysis group Janes as...
The 2026 Global Governance Forum in Xiongan, Hebei province, wrapped up on October 25. Against a backdrop of acute strains on multilateralism and a widening global governance deficit, the forum galvanised a shared sense of urgency across the international community for reform and solidarity. More than a century ago, Karl Marx noted that, “Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.” That insight strikes at the very heart of today’s global...
Beijing has stepped up its maritime presence around Taiwan, deploying coastguard patrols from the island’s eastern approaches to waters near Quemoy and remote Dongsha Island. China Coast Guard spokesman Jiang Lue said that a formation led by the vessel Hushi had carried out routine law enforcement patrols east of Taiwan on Saturday to reinforce administrative control and safeguard maritime navigation. “Since October, the Hushi task group has been strengthening control over the relevant waters to...
An expected 0.25 percentage point rate increase by the US Federal Reserve in December is unlikely to dampen Hong Kong family offices’ interest in European, US and Japanese property investments, according to industry insiders. Ken Peng, chief investment officer at Raffles Family Office, said there were currently no signs of a large-scale sell-off in the US real estate market, with some local markets in the US even seeing supply shortages. “I believe the Federal Reserve’s current rate-hiking cycle...
Huawei Qiankun ADS has logged more than 17.3 billion km of assisted driving and avoided over 6.91 million potential collisions, about 1.3 billion km more than in early October.
Tencent Cloud says agents now create over 20,000 TDSQL-C database instances a day, with over 1 million active. WorkBuddy user Li Ning runs about 50 agents and plans to reach 200 within a year.
CXMT says its sixth-gen DRAM platform is built on 4F² and has passed engineering-sample checks, and responds to Micron's argument that capacitor pitch, not cell layout, limits density.
Taipei Mayor Wayne Chiang Wan-an faces an unexpectedly tough re-election fight in a race closely watched for its potential to damage the main opposition party Kuomintang and further strain the island’s relations with Beijing. Just five months ago, Chiang appeared comfortably positioned for a second term in a city where the KMT has traditionally enjoyed an advantage over the ruling Democratic Progressive Party. A poll by local cable news network TVBS in late May put him 28 percentage points ahead...
Driving along the wide boulevards of Astana during a recent trip to the Kazakh capital, signs of China’s growing commercial footprint were everywhere. Chinese cars were becoming a common sight on the streets here, as brands from BYD to Changan made aggressive inroads in a market once dominated by South Korea’s Hyundai and Kia, said the driver who picked me up from the airport in a gleaming Changan electric vehicle. But it was not the rise of Chinese tech that had brought me to this energy-rich...
Argentina is the latest country seeking to lure investors with an investment-for-citizenship programme, providing another residency and diversification option for the wealthy, including those from mainland China and Hong Kong, according to analysts. Buenos Aires in October announced two principal investment routes for applicants. One is a US$350,000 non-refundable contribution to the National Treasury and a subscription to a US$800,000 government bond created specifically for the programme,...
Move targets rising number of foreigners who acquire property to rent An increasing number of property owners rent out homes while living overseas. (Photo by Hazuma Urushiyama) TOKYO -- The Japanese government is considering taxing the income of overseas residents who operate real estate rental or parking lot businesses in Japan, seeking to address unfair taxation as foreign property ownership rises.
Alphabet raises funds in May, followed by Hon Hai and Zurich Insurance Hyperscalers are conducting global fundraising to finance AI buildouts. (Source photos Nikkei and Reuters) TOKYO -- Overseas companies and institutions are starting to tap Japanese investors' money as they join a global fundraising blitz triggered by AI hyperscalers, with the amount of yen-denominated debt issuances by foreign entities reaching a record in the April-September half.
More than 80% of overseas sales pocketed by foreign distributors Toho is the producer and distributor of the movie "Godzilla Minus Zero" in the U.S. and Japan, which opens in November. (Toho) Douglas Montgomery is CEO of Global Connects Media and an adjunct professor at Temple University Japan.
Nation faces challenges in shifting to consumption-led growth An illustration of the new complex comes with a message that it will "meet all consumer needs from eating and drinking to entertainment and shopping." (Image obtained by Nikkei) DALIAN, China -- Construction of a massive commercial complex has begun in the Chinese city of Dalian, complete with promotional materials promising to "meet all consumer needs from eating and drinking to entertainment and shopping."
Marine biologists identify and document sea creatures at low tide in Visakhapatnam, India. A local conservation group has recorded more than 500 species of marine life off the city's coast over the past six years. (All photos by Anita Rao Kashi) Biologists lead shoreline walks to reveal Visakhapatnam's rich coastal ecosystem VISAKHAPATNAM, India -- On a mildly humid evening in early winter, the beach adjoining Tenneti Park in Visakhapatnam, on India's eastern seaboard, is quiet. The receding tide has exposed a broad stretch of dark rocky outcrops covered with algae and dotted with pools of seawater. A few people linger on the sand and at the water's edge, but the outcrops are deserted. The steady sound of waves fills the background.
Yamachiku's chopsticks are made from natural bamboo grown in Kumamoto prefecture. (Yamachiku) FUKUOKA, Japan -- Bamboo chopsticks made in Japan have gained something of a following in South Korea, with one maker selling more than 100,000 pairs in a little more than half an hour on a TV shopping program.
Banned figure leaves door open to political comeback 'if people still want me' Pita Limjaroenrat, a former leader of the dissolved Move Forward Party, speaks during an interview in Kuala Lumpur. (Photo by Ahmad Mustakim) BANGKOK -- Thailand's reformist movement tried too hard to show it was ready to govern and lost touch with voters, said Pita Limjaroenrat, who led the movement in a general election three years ago but failed to form a government.
A Chinese photographer is facing fierce public backlash for charging middle-aged women inflated fees while allegedly subjecting them to sexually suggestive remarks during photo shoots. Known online as “Duan Gongzi,” 48-year-old army veteran Duan Xiaozhou has amassed nearly 400,000 followers on Douyin. At his Wuhan studio, he charges 16,800 yuan (US$2,500) for 36 unedited portraits. Duan promotes his sessions as empathetic exchanges intended to capture clients’ authentic selves. But...
Russia’s influence has surged among young people across Africa in recent years, leaping over former colonial power France while still trailing China, a survey of African youths has found. Many young Africans now perceive Russia to be an ally, observers said, warning its rivals to take the shift seriously as the continent becomes increasingly critical to both Moscow and Beijing. According to the African Youth Survey commissioned by the South Africa-based Ichikowitz Family Foundation, 54 per cent...
A little-known South Korean music act has climbed the charts with a viral hit that has caught listeners off guard – not just for its sudden popularity, but because its vocals were generated entirely by artificial intelligence. Meomuru’s single, “Have You Become the Adult You Dreamed Of?”, climbed to No 2 on Melon’s Top 100 – South Korea’s flagship streaming chart – earlier this week. The track’s popularity has turned Meomuru into one of the country’s most-talked-about acts. The song was created...
SenseTime's open-source SenseNova-Loop-9B-Preview runs a shared 24-layer block twice, giving 56 layer passes from 32 layers, and adds two-stream mHC. Weights are Apache 2.0.
Westlake University opened a world model research center at its Yungu Campus on October 31, directed by Yu Kaicheng with Jin Yaochu as chief scientist, to focus on physical intelligence.
A Peking University team ported DFT package ABACUS to Huawei's Kunpeng 920 and tuned 19 core operators, reporting 1.3x to 3.9x speedups over a mainstream x86 CPU at 28 cores.
DeepSeek's Harness team released an MIT-licensed Super-agent prototype: a resident Router dispatches work to isolated Workers that react to GitHub and chat events, fix bugs and open PRs.
A Vincent van Gogh painting not shown publicly for more than 60 years recently drew hundreds of people to Sotheby’s Hong Kong. Painted in May 1890, Châtaigniers en fleurs (Chestnut Trees in Flower) is a major work from his Auvers-sur-Oise period and could set an auction record. For three days, Sotheby’s opened the private collection to public viewing in Hong Kong. Its brief stay raises a question about the city’s art hub ambitions: what lasting expertise can be built around a masterpiece that...
Van driver Wong Siu-po, 48, felt life was becoming more difficult than ever as mounting fuel prices cost him an additional HK$5,000 (US$640) a month, about a third of his monthly income. With an 11-year-old daughter and an unemployed wife to support, he feels the pressure mounting. “I need to work three hours longer per day to make up for the loss of income,” he said. “I will cut down on air conditioning to save costs.” Wong’s plight echoed survey findings showing that nearly 98 per cent of...
A 21-year-old woman who posted on social media that she was planning to shoot US President Donald Trump at his rally in Florida’s Daytona Beach has been arrested, authorities said. Trump visited Daytona on Friday to help drum up the vote for Republican gubernatorial candidate Byron Donalds. But the night before, investigators said Allison Albro shared an online post showing a photo of herself captioned, “Going to the Trump rally in my city tmr so I can shoot him with my glock! Wish me luck...
Southeast Asia’s electric vehicle boom risks leaving the region’s smaller companies behind, as Chinese automotive giants bypass local part-makers in favour of imported components and locked-in supplier networks. Local manufacturers across Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia are facing a double squeeze: demand is weakening for parts used in petrol and diesel cars, collectively known as internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles, while steep barriers to entry also keep them out of EV supply...
The theft of billions of dollars from Binance within a matter of minutes, the biggest cryptocurrency heist in history, was orchestrated by North Korean hackers, the FBI said on Saturday. The Federal Bureau of Investigation said in a statement that this week’s attack was tied to “malicious cyber activity” by an entity known as TraderTraitor, the same actors behind a US$1.5 billion Bybit hack last year. The FBI asked cryptocurrency exchanges, blockchain analytics companies and others to block...
When Zhuhai hosted its inaugural air show in November 1996, the event showcased the J-8IIM fighter, a second-generation fighter equipped with Russian radar and weapons, alongside a limited line-up of home-made aircraft. Imported planes were the focus and Chinese audiences curiously studied the much more advanced foreign designs. They crowded around two Russian fourth-generation Su-27 fighters and were wowed as the jets performed their famous cobra manoeuvre, sharply braking in mid-air. At the...
What kind of living space can truly be called a “home”? That was the question on my mind when I visited United Court, a transitional housing estate in Tung Tau, Yuen Long, run by the Hong Kong Sheng Kung Hui Welfare Council. While there, I shared my thoughts on building a mental health-friendly community. Nine years ago, I took part in a community-based poverty study and interviewed residents in inadequate housing. I still remember families describing their living space as little more than a...
Saying the US president was “grasping at straws”, a federal judge on Saturday threw out Donald Trump’s US$10 billion lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal and media mogul Rupert Murdoch over a story reporting on his ties to wealthy financier Jeffrey Epstein. US District Judge Darrin Gayles in Miami dismissed the suit with prejudice, ruling that the president did not prove the defendants made defamatory statements with actual malice as required by law. The ruling said the lawsuit had attempted...
As Washington seeks to loosen China’s dominance over critical minerals, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio urged other members of the Group of 20 (G20) to strengthen supply chains and secure strategic trade routes as the group’s foreign ministers’ meeting drew to a close in Atlanta on Saturday. Rubio said there was a “universal recognition” among the G20 members over the importance of issues like critical minerals, supply chain security and freedom of navigation. “The first step is at least some...
Police fired tear gas and clashed with protesters in Paris and elsewhere on Saturday as hundreds of thousands marched across France against soaring living costs and police violence, with some demonstrators dressed as clowns and witches for Halloween. While the third consecutive weekend of nationwide protests was largely peaceful, tensions erupted in several cities later Saturday. After a march on the outskirts of Paris in bright sunshine, clashes broke out between police and some demonstrators...
German police fired water cannon to disperse firework-hurling protesters on Saturday and were also pelted with other projectiles, as tensions rose at the end of massive youth-led protests. In Berlin, Frankfurt, Cologne and dozens of other cities, demonstrators turned out for the protests organised by the group “GenZ regelt!” (GenZ has got this), the latest by disillusioned youth in Europe. Thousands of police were deployed across the country and, after mostly peaceful demonstrations, tensions...
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Saturday that the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or the Quad, was not an “anti-China” coalition, as the grouping’s top diplomats finalised preparations for the leaders’ summit in the Philippines next month. Rubio’s statement comes just weeks before US President Donald Trump is scheduled to meet Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Shenzhen, China. “It is not an anti-China or anti-anybody coalition,” Rubio said at a press conference on the sidelines of the...
Akha Ama Coffee focuses on sustainable farming in Golden Triangle Akha Ama Coffee founder Lee Ayu Chuepa in Tokyo. (Photo by Koji Nozawa) TOKYO -- Akha Ama Coffee serving brews from the mountains of northern Thailand has opened its third cafe in Japan, highlighting high-quality, sustainable beans grown by a hill tribe.
With industry's labor crunch worsening, government looks to create learning app Foreign nationals accounted for nearly 60% of the roughly 8,000 students who entered Japan's caregiver training schools in fiscal 2025. (Photo by Kosaku Mimura) TOKYO -- Japan plans to bolster support for foreigners seeking care worker certification by devising a test-preparation app, as a pass rate in the low 30% range for a national exam and the approaching end of a grace period spell trouble for an already labor-starved sector.
A leading Hong Kong telecommunications carrier has confirmed that an order requiring it to justify its operation in the United States has ceased, after the company reportedly agreed to wind down its business under pressure from a US regulatory agency over national security concerns. A spokeswoman for Hong Kong Telecom (HKT) told the South China Morning Post on Saturday that the Order to Show Cause issued by the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in October requiring it to justify why the...
Iran’s supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei on Saturday warned the United States and Israel against returning to war, according to a written statement, following threats from the Islamic republic’s foes of a possible resumption of strikes. “If the enemies once again launch military or terrorist attacks, it is the armed forces of the Islamic Republic and the Iranian nation that will determine the time and conditions for ending them,” said a statement attributed to Khamenei posted on his website. The...
China is further narrowing access to a key government recruitment programme for overseas-educated graduates, limiting their pathways into the country’s civil service and party-state system. More than a dozen provincial-level regions, including Beijing and Shanghai, opened applications for the 2027 xuandiaosheng recruitment rounds in September and October. Xuandiaosheng, or the “selected graduates” system, is designed to select and train university graduates to become elite cadres and officials...
Chinese archaeologists are set for a hi-tech turn, with the latest five-year blueprint aiming to deploy AI and deep-sea robots to trace Chinese history, decipher the origins of East Asian humans and expand the country’s cultural soft power. Scientists will develop technologies such as remote sensing, ancient DNA analysis, underwater archaeology robots and artificial intelligence (AI) models for virtual restoration of excavated artefacts, according to the 15th five-year work plan for...
Chinese first lady Peng Liyuan hosted her German counterpart, Elke Budenbender, in Beijing on Friday for a tea reception in a bid to showcase Beijing’s soft power and foster closer bilateral ties. Peng stressed the rich cooperation with Germany in areas including education and culture, according to official news agency Xinhua. She also expressed hope that people from the two countries would “visit each other more often, continuously deepen mutual understanding and foster closer people-to-people...
Vendors at Hong Kong’s Wine and Dine Festival reported a stronger turnout and signs of improving business on Saturday as the annual event entered its first weekend, coinciding with Halloween celebrations and extended opening hours until 1am. Some exhibitors said visitor numbers had increased noticeably compared with the first two days of the four-day festival, while others expressed cautious optimism about sales amid a challenging retail environment. Henry Leung, a staff member at food and...
With US President Donald Trump recently pushing the use of “superintelligence” (SI) instead of artificial intelligence (AI) in national discourse, the acronym has gained unprecedented attention. It is the right acronym but the wrong meaning. In my opinion, SI should stand for “self-intelligence”. It probably explains why academics, critics and even major AI companies are calling for a temporary pause in AI development. They must have realised the technology’s current trajectory is headed down...
Prime Minister Andy Burnham said on Saturday he was “open” to the UK issuing a formal apology for its role in the transatlantic slave trade, but ruled out financial reparations. The Labour leader made the remarks days before attending a Commonwealth leaders summit in Antigua and Barbuda, as King Charles III tours the Caribbean. “I want to express my sorrow and regret for the pain and suffering of so many millions and to recognise the way it still shapes our world today,” Burnham wrote in the...
America’s push for 2027 combat readiness in the Indo-Pacific is raising questions over whether a year that US military officials linked to a possible People’s Liberation Army attack on Taiwan has instead become a planning benchmark. The preparations come despite a US intelligence assessment published in March that mainland Chinese leaders “do not currently plan” to attack Taiwan in 2027, “nor do they have a fixed timeline for achieving unification”. General Ronald Clark, commander of US Army...
Nearly 200 nations have struck hard-fought agreements at a UN biodiversity summit, but the outcome was accompanied by disappointment over missed opportunities to address humanity’s destructive toll on nature. Delegates cheered on Friday as crucial texts were approved in overtime but the celebrations were tempered by acrimonious debates and regret over limited progress on some of the most contentious issues. The Cop17 summit in Armenia sought to revive a landmark commitment to halt and reverse...
Beijing and Washington have been urged to foster a new generation of talent to bridge gaps between the countries and strengthen people-to-people exchanges amid growing frictions and concerns about a lack of China expertise in the US. Academics and experts from the two countries gathered in Shanghai on Friday at the China-US Intergenerational Dialogue 2026. They were seeking a new crop of “bridge builders” like Henry Kissinger, the former US secretary of state who helped to engineer the historic...
Fu Chengyu, the former chairman of leading oil giants Sinopec and China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), is under investigation for corruption by the country’s top watchdogs. The Communist Party’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) was investigating Fu for alleged “serious violations of discipline and law”, a euphemism for corruption, state news agency Xinhua reported on Saturday, quoting a notice posted on the commission’s website. He is “currently undergoing...
Hong Kong’s inaugural “Halloween Month” has been a boon for businesses, with bar and restaurant operators in Lan Kwai Fong expecting big sales on Saturday, but by 7.30pm police were urging revellers to celebrate elsewhere as the area was packed. With Halloween falling on a weekend this year, businesses were expecting a bumper turnout as the Tourism Board’s inaugural campaign for the celebrations wrapped up. Operators noted a surge in visitors from mainland Chinese cities in the Greater Bay...
Hong Kong’s annual economic growth may hit a five-year high, the finance chief has said, raising the possibility of an upward revision to the current forecast of 3.5 to 4.5 per cent for 2026. Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po said on Saturday that coming third-quarter figures indicated sustained momentum, noting the economy grew by 5.1 per cent in the first half over a year earlier. “Although the third-quarter figures have not yet been released, I can share that exports remained very strong in...
Democracy and rights are declining in Africa as leaders take their cues from the rise of strongmen in other parts of the world, the head of a governance monitor told AFP. Mo Ibrahim, 80, is a Sudanese-British billionaire who made a fortune in telecoms and ploughed it into monitoring and encouraging better governance across Africa. The Mo Ibrahim Foundation’s latest report, finds broad progress on economic opportunity and human development over the past decade, but also steep declines in...
Apple’s long-awaited artificial intelligence features will be officially launched in China in December, ending two years of regulatory uncertainty as the US tech giant seeks to bring advanced technologies to its second-largest market with the help of Alibaba Group Holding. The first batch of Apple Intelligence services will roll out to Chinese iPhone users alongside the iOS 27.3 update in December, following an open beta test with developers starting November 4, the US company said in a...
China’s social credit system, stereotypically imagined as an all-powerful numerical scoring project for authoritarian control, has gained notoriety in the West – although people inside the country actually feel little of its presence or practical influence. In a government-funded study, however, a Chinese legal scholar warned that deploying artificial intelligence (AI) risked turning the rating system into a “large-scale surveillance tool”. The paper was published in the Journal of Sichuan...
By continuing to browse our site you agree to our use of cookies, revised Privacy Policy and Terms of Use. You can change your cookie settings through your browser. Editor's note: Bao Shujun, a researcher at the International Cooperation Center of China's National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC). The article reflects the author's views, and not necessarily those of CGTN. The 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China convened its fifth plenary session in Beijing from October 26 to 29, 2026, where it deliberated and adopted the Resolution of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on Certain Major Issues concerning Persevering with Full and Rigorous Party Self-Governance. Issued at a pivotal moment, as the 14th Five-Year Plan draws to a successful close and the 15th Five-Year Plan gets off to a promising start, this important document not only provides a systematic account of the century-old Party's experience in self-reform, but also reveals the deeper economic rationale underpinning high-quality development. Full and rigorous Party self-governance is a vital source of momentum, rooted in integrity, for China's sustained and sound economic development.
Contemporary Amperex Technology Ltd (CATL) has doubled down on new businesses including battery swapping and energy storage as the world’s largest battery maker seeks new growth drivers amid intensifying price wars and mounting pressure on profitability. But the new path is far from straightforward. Established players like Nio have already built a strong presence in battery swapping, while BYD has reinforced its position in energy-storage systems. Lucas Zhang Liutong, director of Hong...
By continuing to browse our site you agree to our use of cookies, revised Privacy Policy and Terms of Use. You can change your cookie settings through your browser. As the Canton Fair marks its 70th anniversary, more than 30,000 exhibitors and around 340,000 overseas buyers are expected to attend the event. Over the years, the fair has witnessed the rapid upgrading of China's trade scale. CGTN reporter Zheng Songwu has been walking the exhibition halls since the 140th edition opened on October 15th. His mission is to find out why international buyers keep returning year after year.
Zhipu, DeepSeek, ModelBest, Moonshot AI, Alibaba, ByteDance and Xiaomi all show recursive self-improvement work, but each aims AI at the machinery around models, not the weights.
HarnessPro, from Tsinghua, Zhipu and partners, has agents study their own runs and rewrite their harness without reference answers, raising pass rates 2 points and cutting cost per task 26.1%.
China Southern Power Grid and Huawei signed a deeper strategic cooperation agreement on October 27 covering power-carbon-compute coordination, AI, the Dianhong power IoT OS and the industry ecosystem.
Mundo turns one to 12 photos of a real place into an editable 3D scene with physics, then renders robot navigation and manipulation in it. Code and weights are due by the end of November.
Tencent Map laid out its agent stack, opening route planning, place search and ride-hailing to developers via MCP, Agent Skills and connectors, and launched LBSwork, a desktop AI map workbench.
A Huawei post comparing five generations of Mate Pro phones lists the Mate 60 Pro processor as Kirin 9000S, the first time Huawei has named the chip in its own spec documents.
After spending three months in a coma following a brain haemorrhage, a patient in China has regained the ability to speak, eat and walk with support – part of an early clinical trial using targeted sound waves to help “wake up” severely damaged brains, according to state media. The technology, developed by a coalition including the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, used focused ultrasound waves to stimulate regions deep within the brain without requiring...
By continuing to browse our site you agree to our use of cookies, revised Privacy Policy and Terms of Use. You can change your cookie settings through your browser. China's purchasing managers' index (PMI) for the manufacturing sector came in at 49.3 in October, down 0.8 percentage points from the previous month, while the non-manufacturing PMI stood at 49.7, down 0.5 percentage points, according to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) and the China Federation of Logistics and Purchasing on Saturday. The manufacturing index slipped below the 50-point threshold separating expansion from contraction. Huo Lihui, chief statistician with the Service Industry Survey Center of the NBS attribute the decline mainly to seasonal factors, including a pullback in overseas orders following a surge in the previous month, moderating consumer demand after the holiday period and a seasonal slowdown in the basic raw materials sector. Despite the overall dip, new growth drivers continued to show resilience. Equipment manufacturing and high-tech manufacturing maintained expansion, helping cushion the impact of weakness in traditional industries.
China’s Ministry of Commerce has voiced firm opposition to a decision by the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to bar device testing in China by 2028. “This has seriously harmed the interests of China and other trading partners, seriously undermined the stability of China-US economic and trade relations, and seriously disrupted the stability of global industrial and supply chains,” it said in a statement on Friday night. “[We] hope the United States will face the calls of the industry,...
The co-founder of Chinese chip giant Cambricon Technologies urged the introduction of universal ethical requirements for leading Chinese and American artificial intelligence models on Friday to mitigate growing risks to society. Chen Yunji’s remarks at an event in Shanghai come as the rapid advance of AI systems globally has resulted in a string of high-profile cyberattacks that have threatened critical infrastructure and breached government servers. Predicting that AI advances would develop...
Prominent biologist Rao Yi is refusing to back down after Cell Press said it had found no evidence that top journal editor Steve Mao sought bribes from Chinese scientists. In a statement published on Thursday evening, Cell Press – one of the world’s leading scientific publishers, owned by Elsevier – said its investigation had “largely concluded” and “found no evidence to support the aforementioned allegations”. Nevertheless, Rao, a tenured chair professor at Peking University who stepped down as...
Lenovo released Tianxi AI 4.5 for AI PCs, adding a Super Mode that acts across apps, an AI note-taker that joins brainstorms, and remote task handoff from phones and tablets to a PC.