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News - South China Morning Post

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Starmer stresses Hong Kong’s stability as key to...

News - South China Morning Post ·

2026/01/29

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has told Chinese President Xi Jinping that Hong Kong’s prosperity and stability are in the shared interests of both China and the United Kingdom in a high-profile meeting during his four-day trip to Beijing. Starmer, the first British leader to visit China since 2018, confirmed after the meeting, when asked by the media, that he had mentioned the landmark national security trial of jailed former media boss Jimmy Lai Chee-ying with Xi. According to the state...

Hong Kong cracks down on alleged HK$700 million...

News - South China Morning Post ·

2026/01/29

Hong Kong’s competition watchdog has cracked down on a new syndicate suspected of bid-rigging in tenders for building maintenance projects across 17 estates and buildings, with the total value of contracts hitting HK$700 million (US$89.7 million). The two-day operation is the first major enforcement action led by the Competition Commission following the deadly Tai Po blaze last November, which renewed scrutiny over the years-long malpractice in the city’s construction sector. Code-named...

Alibaba’s T-Head unit unveils details of AI chip...

News - South China Morning Post ·

2026/01/29

Alibaba Group Holding’s semiconductor design arm, T-Head, on Thursday unveiled details of its advanced artificial intelligence chip with capabilities said to be on par with Nvidia’s H20, days after the unit was reportedly being prepared for a potential spin-off and public listing. According to information on T-Head’s website, the Zhenwu 810E was a “fully self-developed” parallel processing unit (PPU), an application-specific integrated circuit designed for both AI training and inference

EU overtakes US as China’s top source of trade...

News - South China Morning Post ·

2026/01/29

The European Union has surpassed the United States as the economy with the most serious trade disputes with China, driven by conflicts over semiconductor materials, rare earth magnets and other strategic sectors, according to a Chinese trade body. A monthly index released on Wednesday by the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade (CCPIT), a semi-official Beijing-based organisation, found that in November 2025 – the last month tracked – the EU ranked as China’s top source of

China woman’s online fame from slaughtering pigs...

News - South China Morning Post ·

2026/01/29

Clumps of earth dug up from the front of a Chinese woman’s rural dwelling are being sold for up to 18 yuan (US$3) as a “lucky charm” after she shot to online fame by inviting people to slaughter pigs at her home. The 23-year-old from southwestern China’s Chongqing municipality, nicknamed Daidai, posted an online invitation on January 9, asking people to help kill two pigs in preparation for a traditional pork feast. The event on January 11 attracted more than 1,000 visitors. Their cars formed

Hong Kong workers lag regional peers in AI use, lose...

News - South China Morning Post ·

2026/01/29

Hong Kong’s workforce lags behind regional peers in the frequent use of artificial intelligence, a sluggish adoption rate that experts say are limiting pay rewards and job security even as companies prepare to trim entry-level roles. A 2025 survey conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) released on Thursday found that half of Hong Kong respondents were infrequent users of generative AI at work in the past 12 months, compared with 34 per cent for the Asia-Pacific region. The data showed only

Are China’s J-20A stealth fighters now updated with...

News - South China Morning Post ·

2026/01/29

Beijing has released footage of flight tests of an upgraded J-20A stealth fighter, with signs that the jets have been equipped with long-awaited high-thrust WS-15 engines and better avionics. Chengdu Aircraft Corporation – the Aviation Industry Corporation of China subsidiary manufacturer of the J-20 stealth fighter – released new imagery and flight footage of its latest test aircraft on Saturday. According to a social media post by state news agency Xinhua on Wednesday, these aircraft are

Hong Kong regains lustre as stocks rally, property...

News - South China Morning Post ·

2026/01/29

Hong Kong’s financial war chest increased its earnings by 51 per cent to a record last year, fuelled by a rally in local and global stocks as well as bonds. The Exchange Fund’s investment income surged to HK$331 billion (US$42 billion), the most since its creation in 1993, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) said on Wednesday. Hong Kong’s de facto central bank uses the fund’s holdings to help defend the city’s currency peg to the US dollar. All of the fund’s main investment categories

Hong Kong’s first dog-friendly restaurants could be...

News - South China Morning Post ·

2026/01/29

Hong Kong’s environment minister has said that the city’s first batch of dog-friendly restaurants is expected to be approved by the middle of 2026, marking a significant shift in local dining regulations to bolster the “pet economy”. Appearing before the Legislative Council’s food safety and environmental hygiene panel on Thursday, Secretary for Environment and Ecology Tse Chin-wan outlined a series of measures from the latest policy address that aim to revitalise the catering sector. Under

Why Trump’s Georgia election raid escalates his 2020...

News - South China Morning Post ·

2026/01/29

Donald Trump lost his bid for re-election in 2020. But for more than five years, he has been trying to convince Americans the opposite is true by falsely saying the election was marred by widespread fraud. Now that he is president again, Trump is pushing the federal government to back up those bogus claims. On Wednesday, the FBI served a search warrant at the election headquarters of Fulton County, Georgia, which includes most of Atlanta, seeking ballots from the 2020 election. That follows...

Nvidia wins approval for Taiwan headquarters to...

News - South China Morning Post ·

2026/01/29

The Taiwan government has cleared Nvidia to establish a NT$3.3 billion (US$105 million) headquarters on the island that produces most of the world’s advanced semiconductors, which the Silicon Valley chip designer will need to feed the red-hot global artificial intelligence sector. Nvidia would use the Taipei site for a “commercial office” building and the acquisition of land for a “comprehensive business park”, the island’s Ministry of Economic Affairs announced on Wednesday. The approval came

What ruptured globalisation means for international...

News - South China Morning Post ·

2026/01/29

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney does not mince his words. Writing for The Economist last November, Carney argued the post-Cold War had collapsed and said the world was “entering an era of ‘variable geometry’” involving “pragmatic coalitions, built around shared interests, and occasionally shared values, rather than shared institutions”. The essay, it turns out, was the prelude to a hard-hitting speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on January 20. Carney told attendees...

Hong Kong teachers required to renew practising...

News - South China Morning Post ·

2026/01/29

All teachers in Hong Kong will be required to renew a newly proposed practising certificate every three years to continue teaching, with the plan to take effect as early as the 2027-28 academic year, the South China Morning Post has learned. Sources also said on Thursday that substitute teachers would have to obtain these certificates through special arrangements. The measure is expected to affect more than 70,000 teachers in Hong Kong. According to the Education Bureau, the move is to ensure...

Tussles over furniture at China Ikea clearance sale...

News - South China Morning Post ·

2026/01/29

A widely shared video on Chinese social media shows customers scrambling to get furniture and even fighting over items during what appears to be a clearance sale at an Ikea outlet in the country. The multinational furniture retailer has announced plans to close seven of its stores in China from February 2. The move is part of a strategy to shift Ikea’s focus from scale expansion to targeted growth. China’s weak property market and sluggish consumer spending have dampened demand for Ikea goods.

As ICE cracks down, some of America’s biggest names...

News - South China Morning Post ·

2026/01/29

No longer confined to the partisans and activists, the fierce backlash against Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown has begun to break out across American culture, spanning the worlds of business, sports and entertainment. Bruce Springsteen released a new song on Wednesday that slammed “Trump’s federal thugs”. OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman told employees that “what’s happening with ICE is going too far”, referring to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. And lifestyle icon Martha Stewart...

How China’s 5,100-year-old dams challenge Western...

News - South China Morning Post ·

2026/01/29

While some Western scholars have maintained that the development of large-scale water projects fostered what they called “Oriental despotism”, new archaeological evidence from China has presented a different story. According to the Key Laboratory of Archaeological Science and Cultural Heritage Protection at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the study has pushed the history of large-scale water conservancy in China back by nearly 3,000 years. Researcher Liu Jianguo said in Beijing on...

Hong Kong customs seizes 14,080 smuggled slimming...

News - South China Morning Post ·

2026/01/29

Hong Kong customs has seized more than 14,000 weight-loss injections bound for Macau. The results of last week’s operation were revealed on Thursday, days after the South China Morning Post exclusively reported on the suspected illegal sale of such medication without prescriptions in Hong Kong. The Department of Health also said that it was investigating an illegal online sale of a slimming product containing controlled drug ingredients and would take appropriate follow-up action. Authorities...

Why tech billionaires like Jensen Huang and Elon Musk...

News - South China Morning Post ·

2026/01/29

Not long ago, a humble fruit stall in Shanghai saw its sales skyrocket when Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia, dropped by for some food. Meanwhile, a once-obscure village in southern China has become a tourist hotspot, drawing over 10,000 visitors daily, simply for being the hometown of Liang Wenfeng, the founder of the Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) company DeepSeek. During Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s 44-hour visit to China in 2023, the buzz surrounding his meals and itinerary on mainland

Citybus to contact police after commuter stuck in...

News - South China Morning Post ·

2026/01/29

A Hong Kong bus operator has said it will contact police after discovering a piece of foil lodged inside a seat belt buckle, leaving a passenger trapped for 45 minutes before he was freed by firefighters. The incident came to light on Thursday as authorities face a backlash over new regulations introduced last Sunday that require passengers on public or private buses to wear seat belts where available. A Fire Services Department spokesman said firefighters and paramedics were called to a 795X...

China’s ‘gold fever’ sparks US$1 billion scandal as...

News - South China Morning Post ·

2026/01/29

The sudden demise of a major gold trading platform has rocked the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen, leaving tens of thousands of retail investors with combined losses totalling more than 10 billion yuan (US$1.4 billion), according to investors and domestic media reports. Chinese retail investors have rushed to capitalise on the unprecedented rally in global gold prices in recent months, leading many to put their funds into the online metals trading platform JWR. But as the gold spot price...

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