News - South China Morning Post

Retail businesses in Shenzhen are gearing up for the imminent opening of the revamped Huanggang Port at the border Hong Kong shares with mainland China, but some fear the area still lacks commercial appeal to make travellers stay. After six years of redevelopment, the expanded checkpoint is due to open on October 12, according to a source. It will adopt the “joint inspection” model for immigration...

Washington and Beijing may have signed an agreement built around “reciprocity”. But a more consequential question remains unresolved: does it mean equal status for Beijing? Countries without a seat at the table are watching that ambiguity closely. The spectacle of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s state visit to Washington – the tarmac greeting, the flyovers, the state dinner – has been interpreted l...

Hong Kong firefighters have rescued a 13-year-old boy who climbed out a window onto the air-conditioning unit to escape a fire that broke out in his flat, while his mother has been arrested on suspicion of child neglect. Police received reports at 7.54pm on Wednesday that a fire had broken out in a flat at Tsui To House, one of the blocks of Tsui Ping (North) Estate in Kwun Tong. Online footage sh...

Saudi authorities said Wednesday that three people were killed in attacks on two of the kingdom’s international airports, including in the capital Riyadh, after Yemen’s Houthis claimed to have fired on both transport hubs. The Iran-backed fighters earlier took responsibility for a flurry of attacks that included firing a ballistic missile at Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport as the confli...

As households across Southeast Asia face rising prices, higher borrowing costs and insecure jobs, analysts say governments should do more to protect a middle class that drives consumer spending but can fall between the cracks of social protection systems designed primarily for poorer households. The issue has come into sharper focus in the Philippines, where the Asian Development Bank Institute (A...

Elon Musk accused unnamed rivals of blocking SpaceX’s Starlink satellite broadband network in India, an apparent swipe at billionaires Mukesh Ambani and Sunil Bharti Mittal. SpaceX has been awaiting approval from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government to offer Starlink service in India, where companies controlled by Ambani’s Reliance Industries and Mittal’s Bharti Airtel have spent years buildi...

This year’s Chinese National Day reception in Washington felt noticeably jollier than those I have attended in recent years. The mood was more relaxed and Chinese Ambassador Xie Feng’s opening speech was upbeat. He even joked about the panda ambassadors at his own expense. The cheerful tone followed President Xi Jinping’s short but successful state visit to the US, during which his counterpart, Pr...

The United States should engage with Chinese carmakers and battery manufacturers “strategically”, using targeted safeguards instead of the current “wholesale restrictions”, which could lead US carmakers to lose global market share, according to experts. “We need to consider strategic partnerships,” said John Helveston, an associate professor at George Washington University, during a discussion on...

Mainland Chinese visitor arrivals in Hong Kong exceeded the government’s forecast for the entire National Day “golden week” holiday in the first six days, as major shopping centres and hotel operators reported brisk business. The city recorded 1.3 million mainland visitor arrivals over the first six days of the week-long break, up by 11.6 per cent from the same period last year and surpassing the...

Japan is expected to float the idea of acquiring a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines in revised security documents to be released later this year, with analysts suggesting that Tokyo’s initial aim is to promote discussion of the issue and overcome the public’s concerns. Analysts acknowledge there will inevitably be pushback from some sectors of Japan – the only nation to have suffered a nuclear...

Former Anthropic and OpenAI researcher Jacob Coxon said he was 90 per cent certain that China already had spies inside both US artificial intelligence (AI) companies, without providing evidence. Coxon made the allegation in an interview with entrepreneur Patrick Bet-David on the PBD Podcast, arguing that China could steal advances from leading US AI labs and quickly close any technological gap. “R...

US President ⁠Donald Trump, who waged war ⁠with Iran and has ⁠yet to broker peace in Ukraine, said on Wednesday that he should win the Nobel Peace Prize but acknowledged doubt about his chances. “I don’t know what their decision is going to be,” Trump said of the ‌2026 award, which the Norwegian Nobel Committee will announce on Friday. “They have a reputation for maybe not giving it to people like...

President Donald Trump will present close ally Elon Musk and other tech bosses with the top US scientific award at a ceremony on Thursday, the White House said. Google co-founder Sergei Brin, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and AMD chief Lisa Su will also receive the National Medal of Science at the “Science: A New Golden Age” summit. Computer mogul Michael Dell and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella will get th...

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday flexed American power and called on Europe to shake off its “long slumber” in a rousing speech delivered beneath the Acropolis in Athens. “We believe that Europe can awaken from its long slumber and rekindle the fire that was lit here millennia ago,” Rubio said in a speech attended by senior Greek officials at Pnyx hill, praising ancient Greece’s civi...

US President Donald Trump pressed his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping to roll back China’s export curbs on Japan during their meeting in the US, urging talks between the Chinese and Japanese leaders as Tokyo seeks to manage mounting pressure from Beijing. People familiar with the discussions told the South China Morning Post that Xi also warned Trump about the growing risks of Japanese militarism d...

For decades, the Gulf superhubs of Dubai, Doha and Abu Dhabi performed an improbable trick. They redirected millions of people travelling between the West and Asia to connect through their airports. Last year, the three airports handled about 182 million passengers, three times the traffic at Hong Kong airport. Dubai alone handled 95.2 million, the highest ever recorded by an airport. The Gulf’s h...

Ousted Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, ‌are expected to face new criminal charges in the US over the alleged torture of Americans held in the South American ⁠country, a US official said on Wednesday. The ‌announcement could come as soon as Thursday, the official said. Maduro ‌and Flores were captured by ⁠the ⁠US military from their homes in Caracas on ‌January 3 and...

Maricarmen ⁠Abascal, the 87-year-old woman whose ⁠dramatic eviction last month sparked mass ⁠housing protests in Spain that ultimately led to an early election, has died, Madrid’s tenants’ union said on Wednesday, provoking an outpouring of grief and anger on the streets of the capital. Abascal had been in hospital since her eviction on ‌September 23 from her home of more than 70 years, when polic...

A US real estate firm announced on Wednesday it is buying the Chrysler Building and will undertake a vast makeover of the art deco landmark that dominates New York’s skyline. The Chrysler Building, which was opened in 1930 as a symbol of exuberance and modernity, had faced several years of uncertainty over its ownership. Tishman Speyer, a commercial landlord, said it and other investors will injec...

The US Treasury on Wednesday announced its first penalty under rules governing American investment in sensitive Chinese technologies, revealing a US$200,000 fine against the parent of Plug and Play Tech Centre for failing to report an investment in a Shanghai robotics AI company. The Treasury said on Wednesday that Amidi, LLC failed to submit a required notification after its Chinese fund subsidia...

Canada will not allow medically assisted suicide for people whose only condition is mental illness, the justice minister said on Wednesday, seeking to close debate on one of the country’s most controversial healthcare issues. Canada legalised assisted dying for those at the end of life in 2016. The right was extended to those suffering from serious and incurable illnesses in 2021, even if death wa...

Donald Trump wants to turn his luxury Florida golf course into retreat for future US presidents modelled on the historic Camp David getaway, the White House said Wednesday. The plan would make the Trump International Club in West Palm Beach – where the 80-year-old billionaire often spends weekends on the fairway – into an official sanctuary for his successors. “The United States government has ask...

The United States has proposed requiring universities and other certified schools to pay US$70,000 for each foreign student entering a post-graduation work programme, a measure that could sharply raise the cost for thousands of Chinese graduates seeking employment experience in the country. The Department of Homeland Security announced on Wednesday that the proposed fee would apply to initial part...

The French government said on Wednesday it was pausing the use of stun grenades in its policing of student protests, after a 15-year-old boy’s hand was blown off during a clash with riot police, fuelling protesters’ accusations of police brutality. Protests showed no sign of easing, with more than 500 schools closed a day after demonstrations swept across the country, and unions representing high-...

Singapore’s air pollution worsened to the highest in the world as haze from Indonesia wildfires blankets the region days before the city state’s annual Formula One weekend. Air quality levels in Singapore were in the “very unhealthy” range as of Wednesday afternoon, according to data from IQAir. Nearby Kuala Lumpur, which was earlier in the top spot, ranked as the second-most polluted city globall...