News - South China Morning Post

The brave new world of artificial intelligence (AI) is going to be a mixed and divisive blessing for governments – not least those of key Asian countries – as well as for financial markets. The AI revolution points to higher economic growth for economies linked to the tech supply chain, with others being left behind. It also signals the potential for financial crises. Balancing these risks will be...

A 19-year-old Chinese student recently made a will bequeathing his personal wealth of 20 million yuan (US$2.9 million) to his childhood friend, sparking heated discussion online. The teenager from Shanghai, surnamed Li, recently set up a notarised will to bequeath the property under his name, including a flat and savings of millions of yuan, to his childhood friend. Li claimed that his parents had...

Tolls at Hong Kong’s cross-harbour tunnels could be adjusted in the future to better control the flow of vehicles as traffic volume has exceeded levels recorded before fees were overhauled in late 2023, transport authorities have said. A Transport Department paper submitted to the Legislative Council said tolls would need to remain flexible in the future because queues during some peak periods wer...

US-imposed sanctions targeting other countries and a growing list of Chinese laws aimed at countering the measures are creating a compliance minefield for African businesses dealing with the world’s top two economies. At risk is a broad range of industries including mining, banking, telecommunications, technology, energy, infrastructure and others in which African businesses are simultaneously exp...

Pan Sok still remembers his relative screaming as a tiger dragged him away one night, deep inside the Cambodian rainforest where they were tapping trees for resin. So he is “not happy” about a plan to reintroduce the big cats, a decade after they were declared extinct in Cambodia. “I saw the tiger take him with my own eyes,” he said, describing the attack that took place over 30 years ago. “He was...

No government subsidies will be needed to build the long-awaited Pak Shek Kok station on the East Rail line, Hong Kong’s minister has said, after authorities agreed to grant the MTR Corporation development rights at two sites. Secretary for Development Bernadette Linn Hon-ho said on Saturday that the “rail-plus-property” model would fully cover construction costs, even though a detailed estimate h...

Three-legged dogs and one-eyed cats are common sights at a veterinary clinic opened by an animal welfare group in the Fo Tan area of Hong Kong’s Sha Tin district, with some of the creatures having been there so long that the centre has become their home. While their injuries or illnesses vary, they share the same painful experience of being displaced by the Northern Metropolis, a government projec...

Footage of the punishment quickly went viral: an unmarried couple each receiving 21 lashes of the cane in Indonesia’s Aceh province after being accused of kissing in a car and live-streaming it on TikTok. As each blow landed on their backs, the unnamed man, 22, and woman, 25, visibly grimaced. The woman later burst into tears, wailing in pain as the public punishment continued. The caning was carr...

US President Donald Trump threatened Iran on Saturday after the funeral of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei saw open calls for his killing, further underlining the tensions gripping the Middle East, as an interim deal to end the war buckles under repeated crossfire in the region. Trump made the comments on social media after senior US officials demanded that Iran make a public statement sayin...

For a man sanctioned by Beijing, barred from visiting China and accused of damaging bilateral ties, Gilberto Teodoro Jnr sounded remarkably composed. Composed, that is, until the conversation turned to the South China Sea – the very subject that landed him in hot water in the first place. In an interview this week, the Philippines’ defence chief said that Manila would keep only limited military co...

Shanghai raised its local typhoon warning on Saturday afternoon as eastern China braced for the arrival of Typhoon Bavi, cancelling flights and ferry services and evacuating thousands of people. As of 6pm, Shanghai transport authorities had limited the speed on the overground sections of four subway lines, and warned it may impose further limits or partially suspend services on the rest of the net...

Russia’s decision to ban diesel exports this week has roiled global energy markets, exacerbating shortages of the industrial fuel and sending prices soaring, even in countries that no longer buy the fuel from Moscow. Diesel accounts for the largest share of global oil consumption and soaring prices can ripple through the global economy given its wide range ‌of uses, from industrial machinery and f...

A profound demographic and economic shift is sweeping through Asia, quietly rewriting the rules of national development. The traditional paradigm of treating population ageing as a passive fiscal burden is being dismantled as Beijing makes the “silver economy” and proactive ageing strategies the pillars of national security and economic growth. China’s population aged 60 and above reached 320 mill...

The Philippine consulate in Hong Kong is investigating allegations that domestic helpers are being recruited in the city to become surrogate mothers for couples in other countries for up to 1 million pesos (US$16,220). At least five Filipino domestic helpers recruited in Hong Kong said they were not paid the promised amount despite carrying babies to full term, with one woman told that the child b...

Polling stations across Malaysia’s Johor state closed at 6pm on Saturday, with the voter turnout nearing the expected 70 per cent of a more than 2.7 million electorate. All eyes are now on the results – set to determine the stability of Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s coalition government. Johor has become a battleground between federal partners – Pakatan Harapan (PH), led by Anwar, and Barisan Nas...

A young woman from southeastern China who once posed with her father outside Tsinghua University as a child has fulfilled a long-held dream by graduating from the elite Beijing institution. Wu Han, from Guangdong province, recently drew widespread attention on mainland social media after sharing two photos taken 17 years apart. In June, she received a master’s degree from Tsinghua University’s Aca...

As residents of eastern China brace for Typhoon Bavi to make landfall, bloggers have turned to AI weather models to post forecasts on social media, prompting criticism from state media, which warned that the amateur predictions could fall foul of the law. State broadcaster China Media Group reported on Thursday that some bloggers claiming to be “weather enthusiasts” were issuing forecasts using da...

There is a bogus version of Singapore’s prime minister that exists only to steal money. It connected to a Zoom call, thanked a stranger for his time and helped relieve him of US$3.8 million – with the real Lawrence Wong, for a time, none the wiser about what had happened. The victim had received a WhatsApp message purporting to be from the secretary to the cabinet, inviting him to a private meetin...

China on Friday accused the United States of misusing its national power by blacklisting more than 60 Chinese companies, alleging that Washington has “disregarded the consensus” reached between US President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Beijing in May. In early June, the Pentagon blacklisted dozens of Chinese companies – including Alibaba, Baidu and BYD – as “Chinese military compa...

Apple on Friday sued OpenAI, accusing the artificial intelligence company of orchestrating a campaign to steal the iPhone maker’s trade secrets as it tries to develop its own consumer hardware device. The lawsuit – filed in a federal court in San Jose, California – paints a picture of an aggressive effort by OpenAI to poach Apple employees and extract confidential information to build its own devi...

Wu Shicun is the founding president of China’s National Institute for South China Sea Studies and chairman of the Huayang Centre for Maritime Cooperation and Ocean Governance. In this interview he discusses ways Beijing can respond to rival claimants in the disputed waters. SCMP Plus readers get early access to articles in the Open Questions series. With Manila intensifying its “transparency” camp...

As the United States marks the 250th anniversary of its founding, it confronts a new world order dominated by its relationship with China. In this wide-ranging series, we examine the pressure points and possibilities in those ties, from hard tech to soft power. Here, Xinyi Wu examines how changes to Washington’s trade policy have reverberated through the formerly secure international economic orde...

We are all used to Western assessments of Deng Xiaoping. You may even be convinced by them, as I was for a long time. Ezra Vogel, for example, wrote in Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China: “It was [Deng] who would finally realise the mission that others had tried for almost two centuries to achieve, of finding a path that would make China rich and powerful.” And, according to Orville Sch...

US President Donald Trump faces questions about the security of his new Air Force One plane gifted by Qatar, after he took an older jet home from a Nato summit this week. The billionaire president has barely been able to contain his excitement over the retrofitted Boeing 747-8 aircraft, which took him to Ankara on its maiden trip outside the United States. But then Trump abruptly announced in Turk...

British police arrested a man on Friday on suspicion of murdering Ann Widdecombe, after the 78-year-old former government minister and Reform UK politician was found dead having “sustained serious injuries”. Police said a 26-year-old, white ‌British man had been arrested in Newton Abbot, a town about 15km (nine miles) from Widdecombe’s home in rural southwest England. Devon and Cornwall police ass...