Swiss President arrives in Beijing as trade ties take center stage
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...
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...
A Hong Kong man believed to have accidentally fallen from a height struck a domestic helper on the podium of a luxury housing estate in West Kowloon on Saturday, with the pair sent to hospital. Police said they received a report at 7.43pm that the man had fallen at 1 Austin Road West and landed on the podium, hitting the woman. A police spokesman said both were conscious at the scene, with the man taken to Queen Elizabeth Hospital and the woman sent to Kwong Wah Hospital. He added that...
A leading Hong Kong telecommunications carrier has confirmed that an order requiring it to justify its operation in the United States has been 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...
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 the 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 beverage...
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...
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...
Revellers packed Lan Kwai Fong dressed as golden Buddhas, Lipton tea drink cartons and bottles of ketchup and mustard, with bars expecting a business bump of more than 50 per cent as Hong Kong’s first “Halloween Month” roared to a close on Saturday. By 7.30pm police were urging revellers to celebrate elsewhere as the area in Central was packed. There was a 45-minute wait for visitors inside the departure hall at Huanggang, according to the Security Bureau. Party-goers travelling from mainland...
