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China’s diplomatic divide: red carpet for South...

News - South China Morning Post ·

2026/01/02

As a diplomatic row sees Japanese company executives put visits to China on hold, Beijing is preparing to roll out the red carpet for South Korean business leaders accompanying President Lee Jae-myung on a state visit starting Sunday. The contrasting receptions highlight how geopolitics is reshaping corporate ties in East Asia. Analysts expect continued friction between Beijing and Tokyo in 2026 to accelerate Japanese efforts to de-risk from the Chinese market. Conversely, Beijing’s warming...

China state visit by South Korea’s Lee will ‘push...

News - South China Morning Post ·

2026/01/02

President Lee Jae-myung of South Korea will seek Beijing’s support on denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula and press to lift an unofficial cultural content ban when he travels to China for a state visit next week, according to Seoul. Lee’s four-day trip from Sunday will make him the first sitting South Korean president to visit China since 2019. Lee will first travel to Beijing, where he is due to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday afternoon, their second summit in two months.

China should intervene more decisively to shore up...

News - South China Morning Post ·

2026/01/02

China’s top party journal has called for a stronger package of policies implemented in one go – rather than through “piecemeal-style steps” – to stabilise the country’s struggling property sector, as the market remains vital to the domestic economy and consumer demand. The article published by Qiushi, the Communist Party’s leading theoretical journal, said policymakers should take concrete steps to stabilise the property market, urging them to implement measures that are “aligned with market...

Back to the Past film, starring Louis Koo and Raymond...

News - South China Morning Post ·

2026/01/02

Historical science fiction action film Back to the Past, starring actors Louis Koo Tin-lok and Raymond Lam Fung, has broken the opening-day record for a Chinese film despite a gloomy box office last year. Local takings sank to a 14-year low of HK$1.13 billion (US$145.2 million) in 2025 from a year earlier amid a wave of cinema shutdowns, according to data compiled by industry body Hong Kong Box Office Limited on Friday. Last year’s best performing films – both locally produced and from abroad

SpaceX will move more than 4,400 satellites to a...

News - South China Morning Post ·

2026/01/02

SpaceX has announced it will reconfigure its Starlink internet satellite constellation by lowering the orbit of more than 4,400 satellites throughout 2026, shortly after Beijing said the project posed “safety and security challenges”. The move aims to relocate the satellites to orbital regions less crowded by space debris and other planned satellite constellations, reducing the risk of collisions and allowing satellites to deorbit faster. It comes after an unnamed representative from Beijing...

Swiss investigators rush to identify victims of New...

News - South China Morning Post ·

2026/01/02

Investigators on Friday set about the ‌painful task of identifying the burned bodies from a blaze that engulfed a crowded bar and killed around 40 people at a New Year’s Eve party in the ‍Swiss ski resort of Crans-Montana. Emanuele Galeppini, a 16-year-old Italian international golfer who lived in Dubai, was named on Friday as the first of several possible victims from Italy to be identified. So severe were the burns suffered by the mostly young crowd of revellers in the Le Constellation bar...

Did a PLA stealth fighter approach a key Taiwan...

News - South China Morning Post ·

2026/01/02

A video released by the People’s Liberation Army during a military drill this week has sparked debate about whether Taiwan failed to detect a J-20 stealth fighter and how close the aircraft might have come to a key military airport on the island. The video was released by the PLA’s Eastern Theatre Command on Tuesday – the second day of the “Justice Mission 2025” joint military exercises around Taiwan. The footage shows a PLA J-20 flying near an unidentified landscape that some observers say...

Beijing pledges with ‘utmost sincerity’ to continue...

News - South China Morning Post ·

2026/01/02

Beijing will continue to push for peaceful reunification with Taiwan with the “utmost sincerity”, according to a new year’s message from a senior official delivered days after the People’s Liberation Army concluded large-scale drills around the island. Mainland China had strengthened its capacity to safeguard peace and security over the past year and would take more forceful action to oppose separatism and external interference this year, Song Tao, the head of Beijing’s Taiwan Affairs Office,...

Trump and Iran official exchange threats after...

News - South China Morning Post ·

2026/01/02

US President Donald Trump and top Iranian officials exchanged duelling threats on Friday as widening protests swept across parts of the Islamic Republic, further escalating tensions between the countries after America bombed Iranian nuclear sites in June. At least seven people have been killed so far in violence surrounding the demonstrations, which were sparked in part by the collapse of Iran’s rial currency but have increasingly seen crowds chanting anti-government slogans. The protests,

Hong Kong mortgage recovery holds in 2025 despite...

News - South China Morning Post ·

2026/01/02

Hong Kong’s mortgage market lost some momentum in November, official data showed, though activity over the first 11 months of 2025 still points to a full-year recovery from the previous year’s slump as borrowing costs eased, home prices stabilised and sentiment improved. Mortgage applications – a gauge of buyer interest – fell 2.9 per cent from October to 8,019, according to the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA). Mortgage approvals, representing loans banks agreed to provide, declined 7 per...

DeepSeek proposes shift in AI model development with...

News - South China Morning Post ·

2026/01/02

DeepSeek’s latest technical paper, co-authored by the firm’s founder and CEO Liang Wenfeng, has been cited as a potential game changer in developing artificial intelligence models, as it could translate into improvements in the fundamental architecture of machine learning. The paper’s theme of Manifold-Constrained Hyper-Connections (mHC) marks an improvement to conventional hyper-connections in residual networks (ResNet), a fundamental mechanism underlying large language models (LLMs),...

Hong Kong trade office head picked to lead body...

News - South China Morning Post ·

2026/01/02

The director of the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office in Guangdong has been picked to lead the government body coordinating the Northern Metropolis, after authorities previously pledged to fast-track the megaproject’s development. The government announced on Friday that Linda So Wai-sze would become the director of the Northern Metropolis Coordination Office from Monday next week. The position has been vacant for nearly two months, with the office’s deputy director, Pecvin Yong Pui-wan,...

‘Repaid kindness’: Japan war orphan raised by...

News - South China Morning Post ·

2026/01/02

A Japanese war orphan raised by multiple Chinese families grew up to become a midwife, honouring the kindness she received from China. Her story, shared in the documentary series Beyond Blood and Borders, aired in December, on mainland streaming platforms and attracted widespread attention. The series follows the lives of 10 Japanese orphans left behind after Japan’s defeat in the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1945. More than 4,000 children were abandoned in China, primarily in the Northeast

Veteran Hong Kong lawmakers Starry Lee, Ronick Chan...

News - South China Morning Post ·

2026/01/02

Veteran Hong Kong lawmakers Starry Lee Wai-king and Ronick Chan Chun-ying have thrown their hats in the ring to be the Legislative Council’s next president, with a vote expected on January 8. The coming contest will mark the first time two hopefuls from the pro-government camp have vied for the position, with a scholar saying a president chosen through competition would command greater authority. Lee and Chan are running to succeed Andrew Leung Kwan-yuen, who stepped down after deciding not

China’s box office up 22% in 2025 to US$7.4 billion,...

News - South China Morning Post ·

2026/01/02

China’s box office revenue jumped nearly 22 per cent in 2025, driven by a record-breaking domestic animated hit that helped the market rebound from a soft patch. Total ticket sales reached 51.8 billion yuan (US$7.4 billion), the second-highest level in five years, according to data released by the China Film Administration on Thursday. While surpassing 2024’s haul, last year’s total trailed the 54.92 billion yuan recorded in 2023. Local films continued to dominate the world’s second-largest...

Hong Kong’s retail uptick extends into November with...

News - South China Morning Post ·

2026/01/02

Hong Kong’s retail uptick extended into November last year, with sales climbing by 6.5 per cent year on year as authorities pointed to improving local consumption, macroeconomic stability and growth in visitor numbers. But an industry leader warned against framing the trend as a “recovery” due to the low starting point set by past sales and increases being driven by temporary seasonal boosts, adding that the sector was feeling cautious and experiencing mixed results over the traditional...

US Navy aircraft crashes offer lessons for PLA...

News - South China Morning Post ·

2026/01/02

After two US Navy aircraft crashed into the South China Sea within 30 minutes of each other in October, analysts said there were lessons for the Chinese navy as it rapidly expands aircraft carrier operations. They said the People’s Liberation Army could learn from its rival’s strengths in search and rescue response, but also its weaknesses in maintenance and training. The US Navy said the aircraft – an MH-60R Sea Hawk helicopter and an F/A-18F Super Hornet fighter jet – went down in separate...

2025 was the year of denial. What now?

News - South China Morning Post ·

2026/01/02

As an undergraduate student of anthropology long ago, I remember studying the phenomenon of “compartmentalism” as a hallmark of primitive cultures or societies – their capacity to hold contradictory beliefs without inner conflict or even appearing to notice the contradictions. We well-educated rationalists in the rich West were supposed to be above this kind of schizophrenic inconsistency, seen as a symptom of a defective imagination or the shallowness of the masses. Think of street hawkers

Hong Kong’s IPO dominance in 2025 set to carry on...

News - South China Morning Post ·

2026/01/02

Hong Kong’s momentum as an initial public offering (IPO) venue is set to hurtle onwards in 2026 after funds raised from share sales more than tripled in 2025, placing the city’s exchange atop the global rankings for the first time since 2019. A total of 114 companies raised US$37.22 billion on the Hong Kong stock exchange’s main board in 2025, according to data released on Friday by the London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG). That translates to a 229 per cent increase from US$11.3 billion in...

Sai Kung campsite flooded with trash after New Year’s...

News - South China Morning Post ·

2026/01/02

Images widely circulating on social media showed the Ham Tin Wan Campsite in the Hong Kong neighbourhood of Sai Kung polluted with litter, including a public bathroom sink flooded with dirt and trash, following New Year’s Eve celebrations.

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