What does China's next economic chapter mean for the world?
Four seriously ill Chinese boys who would almost certainly have died in their twenties from a rare inherited disease received the same highly anticipated gene-editing drug. More than a year later, a set of cruel and contradictory data emerged. Two boys gained the strength to walk farther. One boy showed no improvement in gait and subsequently withdrew from the trial. And the fourth boy’s heart stopped beating 81 hours after receiving the medication intravenously, owing to a severe systemic...
A police officer investigating the alleged murder of Hong Kong socialite Abby Choi Tin-fung has denied tampering with the evidence he collected from a rural village flat where her dismembered remains were found. Detective Constable Chan Wai-hung on Wednesday rejected a defence contention that the alleged crime scene in Tai Po’s Lung Mei village had been contaminated because investigating officers failed to follow proper procedures. Testifying under cross-examination in the High Court, Chan...
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s trip to the Chinese border city of Dandong on Saturday echoed the intense coordination that preceded his previous summits with US President Donald Trump. Between March 2018 and June 2019, Kim met Chinese President Xi Jinping five times across Beijing, Dalian and Pyongyang, and three of those occasions happened not long before his summits with Trump. Yet, while Saturday’s unannounced visit appeared superficially similar, analysts said the strategic focus had...
Hong Kong authorities will give public transport priority at Huanggang Port this Halloween weekend, warning that cross-border private car travellers could face wait times exceeding an hour during late-night peak hours. Chief Secretary Eric Chan Kwok-ki said that the peak departure window for outbound passengers and vehicles at the 24-hour control point would be 11pm to 2am across the three nights from Friday to Sunday. He urged residents and visitors to avoid peak-hour crossings and use public...
A rare satellite image of China’s secretive spaceplane has appeared in a new US intelligence report that warned Beijing was expanding its ability to track American forces and could deploy space-based directed-energy weapons by the late 2020s. The US Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) report published on Sunday included an image of the reusable spacecraft, credited to satellite imagery firm Maxar in 2024, showing its shuttle-like design and apparent solar arrays. A spaceplane is a spacecraft...
The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has held defence strategy consultations with France and Germany over the past week despite mounting trade tensions between Beijing and Europe. A PLA strategy consultation delegation visited France and Germany from October 21 to 28 for the talks, according to a statement released by China’s defence ministry on Wednesday. The Chinese delegation engaged in in-depth exchanges of views with the two countries separately on bilateral and military-to-military...
Soft skills and deep domain knowledge will decide how far young workers go in the age of artificial intelligence, Hong Kong’s labour chief has said, predicting that demand for AI practitioners with both technical capability and professional expertise will grow three- to fourfold. Rejecting fears that automation will replace the human workforce, Secretary for Labour and Welfare Chris Sun Yuk-han dismissed the claim as a “zero-sum game”, stressing that the future lay in close collaboration between...
Hong Kong authorities are searching for an elderly man who went missing in a remote rural area of Tai Po three days ago. Tung Chung-yin, 80, was last seen at Wu Kau Tang in Plover Cove Country Park on Sunday. His family reported him missing to police on Tuesday. A search was launched on Tuesday night and continued on Wednesday. Police have appealed to the public for information on his whereabouts. Tung, who has short grey hair, is about 1.7 metres tall (5 feet, 7 inches), weighs about 75kg and...
About 70 per cent of subdivided flats in Hong Kong have been registered for a grace period under a new law aimed at eradicating substandard homes, with most submissions coming from landlords in Kowloon’s Yau Tsim Mong district, according to the Housing Bureau. The bureau told the Legislative Council on Wednesday that 75,070 subdivided homes across about 21,000 whole flats had been registered for the three-year grace period since applications opened in March under the new Basic Housing Units...
Former Chinese vice-premier Liu Yandong died of illness on Wednesday at the age of 80. She was one of China’s most prominent female leaders, playing a pivotal role in the country’s united front work and education sector. Xinhua, which announced her death on Wednesday afternoon, described Liu as an “outstanding leader in the [Communist] Party’s united front work, in China’s education, science and technology, healthcare, and women and children’s affairs”. Liu was vice-premier from 2013 to 2018....
China said it would seek India’s help to “maintain peace and stability in the border areas” after new stand-offs in a long-disputed region threatened to undermine improved relations. “We hope that India will work with China in the same direction by jointly implementing the common understandings between the two sides,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun said at a daily media briefing on Monday. China “strictly abides by the relevant agreements”, he said. Guo also said that China...
Hong Kong’s third medical school has dismissed allegations of talent poaching after recruiting a veteran haematologist with nearly three decades of service at the University of Hong Kong (HKU). Professor Anskar Leung Yu-hung met the press at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) on Wednesday in his capacity as the senior associate dean of medicine at the new school, which is expected to open in the 2028-29 academic year. “The opportunity to be part of a team to [build] a new...
