News - South China Morning Post

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...

King Charles hosted Prince Harry and met his family for the first time in years on Friday, as they try to repair a rift that has persisted since his youngest son and wife quit royal life and moved to America six years ago. Harry, Meghan and their two children, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet, met the king and Queen Camilla at Highgrove House, a country estate west of London. The Duke of Sussex...

A new round of US-China dialogue on the risks of artificial intelligence, even just for the sake of dialogue, will be important for furthering US national security, according to former senior US officials responsible for China affairs. The assessment comes after the world’s two leading AI superpowers agreed to a new round of intergovernmental talks on AI safety following the Trump-Xi summit in Bei...

A woman who authorities say married more than a dozen men in Las Vegas to fund her gambling has agreed to plead guilty to two felonies. Jiaying Chen, 33, waived her right to a preliminary hearing during an appearance before Las Vegas Justice of the Peace Rebecca Saxe on Tuesday. Chen’s lawyer, Thomas Wells, said she plans to plead guilty later this week to one count each of bigamy and obtaining mo...

The absence of Iran’s Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei from the funeral ceremonies of Ali Khamenei raised questions about his health and fear of assassination, as well as indicating he may perform a quite different function as No 1 compared with his all-powerful father. The marathon funeral ceremonies for Ali Khamenei, killed on February 28 in an air strike on the first day of the US-Israeli war wi...

It’s not yet the winter holiday season, but Christmas trees are back in the spotlight, caught in the geopolitical tug of war between Washington and Beijing. As the United States and China work to stabilise ties through a newly proposed bilateral trade mechanism, one of the most vocal groups weighing in is not the technology industry or manufacturers, but American Christmas tree growers determined...

US President Donald Trump said on Friday that Washington had agreed to resume discussions with Iran despite declaring an end to the fragile truce that had halted months of conflict between the two countries. “The Islamic Republic of Iran has asked us to continue ‘talks’. We have agreed to do so, but the United States has stated to them, in no uncertain terms, that the Cease Fire is OVER!” Trump wr...

Hong Kong’s role as the exclusive Asian host of the Middle East’s flagship LEAP East exhibition affirms its status as a global hub for innovation and technology (I&T), the Tourism Board has said. The Asian debut of the expo wrapped up in Hong Kong on Friday, drawing more than 25,000 visitors over three days. The city will serve as the event’s sole Asian host for the next three years. “This signifi...

An infusion tube delivering medicine to a premature baby at a Hong Kong public hospital was closed for unknown reasons shortly before her death three years ago, an inquest has heard. Two nurses testified at the Coroner’s Court on Friday about the circumstances of what Prince of Wales Hospital in Sha Tin acknowledged as a “serious untoward event” on June 13, 2023. Both witnesses said they had no id...

Hong Kong authorities have relaxed a recent proposal requiring mandatory annual medical check-ups for commercial vehicle drivers aged 65 to 69, reducing the frequency to twice in five years following an industry backlash. The proposal, set to take effect in mid-2027, will reduce the age threshold for mandatory medical certification for commercial vehicle drivers from 70 to 65. In a policy paper su...

US President ⁠Donald Trump said ⁠on Friday he would ⁠not sign a bipartisan housing affordability bill that he had called “a big yawn”, but the measure can become law without his signature. Trump said in a social ‌media post that he was withholding his signature “in PROTEST over the fact that the United States Senate is not capable of passing THE SAVE AMERICA ACT”. The housing bill was a rare insta...

Prominent economist Jeffrey Sachs says he chose Hong Kong and Shenzhen as the final stop on an overland journey retracing the footsteps of Marco Polo because of their significant role in powering the world’s green and digital age. The Columbia University professor set off from Rome on June 13 for a 43-day, 15,000km (9,300-mile) journey, the Marco Polo Drive of Peace, Culture and Sustainable Develo...

OpenAI’s latest GPT-5.6 release marks a growing emphasis on cost-efficiency, a move welcomed by some users in China who continue to access the blocked service via virtual private networks (VPNs) and third-party proxies, even as the artificial intelligence model remains more expensive than local rivals. The launch on Thursday introduced a trio of models tailored to different capabilities, speeds an...

China has made income growth and the reform of its wage-distribution system a priority within broader efforts to cushion the domestic job market against the impact of artificial intelligence over the next five years. A new blueprint released by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security on Thursday laid out a detailed road map for the strategy, vowing to promote collective wage bargaining...

US scientists have carried out keyhole surgery with a Chinese-made robot taking the place of the lead surgeon. The general-purpose humanoid robot made by Unitree Robotics was remotely controlled by two human surgeons as it successfully removed a pig’s gallbladder at the University of California San Diego (UCSD). Another robot also played a support role during the procedure, controlling the endosco...

After a rendition of My Way and a saxophone accompaniment that felt closer to crooning uncles at a wedding party than high-stakes diplomacy, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim and his Thai counterpart Anutin Charnvirakul announced the serious business of squashing a damaging trade row and bringing greater security to the porous border between the nations. The pair, long-standing friends, also...