News - South China Morning Post

The PLA Navy’s Liaoning aircraft carrier has started its second drill series in the western Pacific this year, with the training likely to coincide with an expanded US-Japan military exercise that could have implications for a Taiwan contingency. The Liaoning carrier group was carrying out the drill in “relevant waters” of the western Pacific Ocean as part of the navy’s annual training plan, China...

Two leaders of India’s youth-led Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) were remanded in custody for five days on Wednesday, as police ratcheted up efforts to clamp down on anti-election commission protests. CJP activists and opposition parties have defied a security crackdown to demand the resignation of India’s chief election commissioner, accusing the poll body of manipulating voter rolls to benefit Prime...

Hong Kong should make better use of its public gyms by allowing online safety briefings and penalising no-shows, an industry leader and a lawmaker have urged after the ombudsman identified management loopholes. The Office of the Ombudsman launched the inquiry into public gym management on Tuesday, noting that rigid mandatory training requirements combined with a severe shortage of places were crea...

China’s integrated circuit (IC) exports surged 136 per cent year on year in September to US$45 billion, exceeding the 108 per cent growth rate in the first nine months of the year in a sign of the country’s rising influence in the global semiconductor supply chain. In September, China exported 32.7 billion units of ICs, according to customs data released on Wednesday, a 1 per cent year-on-year inc...

When news broke last week that three newly completed housing blocks were to be demolished without ever having been occupied, I suffered an immediate attack of deja vu. In early 1974, I was in the first wave of recruits to the Operations Department of the newly established Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC). As luck would have it, my first posting was to the team dealing with the old...

A Malaysian court on Wednesday rejected Najib Razak’s bid to suspend his 15-year jail sentence in the 1MDB scandal pending the jailed former prime minister’s appeals, ruling that his health and other grounds did not justify a stay. The decision means his sentence is set to begin after his current prison term ends in August 2028. Najib, 73, received a conditional royal pardon last month allowing hi...

China’s electric vehicle (EV) makers have been hit with a double blow as both Beijing and Brussels introduce measures that will affect their exports, leading analysts to revise down their earnings forecasts for the industry. The twin measures – combined with a sales decline in China’s domestic market – could create a “do-or-die moment” for some of the country’s 50-odd EV makers, ramping up financi...

A business delegation from northeastern China has visited a Russian-controlled, Japanese-claimed island off Hokkaido to explore joint economic projects, a move that has prompted protests from Tokyo. Officials and business leaders from Heilongjiang province, which borders Russia’s far east, travelled to Etorofu – known to Russians as Iturup – to survey potential investment opportunities, according...

Rescuers dragged 13 dead children out of India’s Ganges River after an overloaded boat capsized en route to a Hindu festival, officials said on Wednesday, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressing grief over the “deeply painful” tragedy. The boat overturned late on Tuesday in Vaishali district in eastern Bihar state, with locals rushing to pull people out of the water in the dark using mobile p...

We have put together stories from our coverage on electric and new energy vehicles from the past two weeks to help you stay informed. If you would like to see more of our reporting, please consider subscribing. 1. China carmakers eye record 12 million global sales in 2026 as EV demand surges Chinese automotive groups have cause to celebrate their go-global strategy amid breakneck export growth in...

Complaints about noisy and inconsiderate passengers on Hong Kong’s public transport have more than doubled over three years, with authorities recording a surge in reports of people playing loud music and putting their feet on seats. The Transport Department and Environmental Protection Department received 66 complaints about noise nuisance and improper or unhygienic behaviour in 2025, up from 31 i...

Japan’s prime minister said on Wednesday she probably spent “three or four more hours” than her male predecessors tackling household duties on top of her already packed daily schedule. “In the morning, I bathe, fix breakfast and then wash dishes, not to mention apply make-up,” Sanae Takaichi, elected last year as Japan’s first woman prime minister, told parliament. “I feel like I’m spending three...

A long-awaited code of conduct (COC) for the South China Sea risks becoming a toothless agreement, analysts have warned, as Beijing and Southeast Asian nations scramble to hammer out a deal by the end of 2026. More than three decades since it was mooted, the proposed pact has remained gridlocked over how to balance competing territorial claims among China and four rival claimant states – Malaysia,...

An Indonesian domestic helper in Hong Kong has been remanded in custody after being charged with killing her 93-year-old employer at the weekend. Kharsina, 52, was brought to the Kwun Tong Court on Wednesday to face a count of murder. Police arrested her in the early hours of Monday after her 93-year-old employer was found unresponsive in her flat at Long Yiu House in Kai Tak’s Tak Long Estate on...

The operator of Hong Kong’s flagship San Tin Technopole has pledged to offer affordable land to attract tenants, while revealing plans to reclaim and redevelop fish ponds near the Shenzhen border to accommodate a client requiring substantial premises. Sunny Chai Ngai-chiu, chairman of San Tin Technopole Company Limited, the government-owned entity overseeing the technology cluster next to the main...

Chinese President Xi Jinping warned that Africa’s resources should not be used as a tool for geopolitical rivalry, as the United States steps up efforts to secure critical minerals on a continent where Chinese companies have major mining interests. “Africa’s resources belong to Africa,” Xi told Botswana’s President Duma Boko in Beijing on Tuesday, according to Chinese state news agency Xinhua. He...

A bridge between China and North Korea that was completed 12 years ago will finally open on Thursday. The two countries will hold an opening ceremony to mark the official opening of the New Yalu River Bridge, Chinese state news agency Xinhua reported on Wednesday morning. Last week, signs that the bridge would soon open were spotted, including vehicles crossing and traffic lights and bridge indica...

The former mother-in-law of slain Hong Kong socialite Abby Choi Tin-fung tried to prevent her family from reporting her disappearance to police by suggesting that they wait for her “kidnappers” to issue their demands, a court has heard. Choi’s partner, Chris Tam Fong-chun, told the High Court on Wednesday that Jenny Li Sui-heung had tried to paint the influencer’s disappearance as an abduction, sa...

China’s chief civilian aircraft builder will command 5 per cent of the world’s fleet allocation by 2045 as global demand for narrowbody jets and the domestic order book look strong, an aviation analytics firm has forecast. Airbus would have 47 per cent of the passenger fleet allocation and Boeing 39 per cent, both leading state-owned Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (Comac), analytics firm...

Four Hong Kong franchised bus operators have applied to raise fares by up to 17.7 per cent, citing “significant financial pressure” from soaring fuel prices driven by the Middle East conflict. Citybus has sought the steepest increase, at 17.7 per cent, followed by the KMB Company at 16 per cent. Long Win Bus and New Lantao Bus have applied for rises of 8.1 per cent and 9.8 per cent respectively, a...

About 300 Hong Kong students applied this year for roughly 30 places on an overseas programme to help children in need, up from about 50 applicants last year. Dream Compassioneers co-founder Chan Yik-yeung said the response also showed what students could achieve when trusted with responsibility. Founded in 2020, the organisation runs local and overseas service programmes and is a member of the In...

Heavy overnight Russian strikes killed at least six people in Ukraine and cut power to large parts of the capital Kyiv, authorities said on Wednesday. The attacks on multiple regions came after President Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukraine had received no advance warning from Western allies before a Russian strike on a Kyiv power plant. Ukraine relies heavily on Western intelligence to detect incoming...

Chinese researchers have built a self-propelled crawler robot that harvests iron from sand and tested the device in the dunes of the vast Taklamakan Desert – an area the size of Germany – in northwestern China’s Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region. In Frank Herbert’s classic science fiction novel Dune, mobile factories traverse the sands of the fictional planet Arrakis to extract the drug melange, al...

Participants in Hong Kong’s stock market may need to wait longer for shorter transaction settlement times, as market participants want more time to prepare for the change, according to two sources familiar with the matter. Bourse operator Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing (HKEX) said in a consultation paper in April that it aimed to implement a so-called T+1 system – under which trades would be set...

Asian countries must remind themselves about what happened during the region’s financial crisis in the late 1990s and guard against a recurrence of such shocks, the head of the Philippine central bank said ‌on Wednesday. Before the Asian financial crisis started in 1997, regional economies saw huge capital inflows that prompted the World Bank to describe it as the “East Asian miracle”, Eli Remolon...