Category: China

Heavy rain, severe flooding and landslides in Vietnam have killed at least 90 people in the last week, authorities said on Sunday, leaving others stranded on rooftops and mountain roadways blocked. Relentless rain has lashed south-central Vietnam since late October, and popular holiday destinations have been hit by several rounds of flooding, with economic losses estimated in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Whole sections of coastal Nha Trang city were flooded last week, while deadly… Source link

Israel targeted the chief of staff of Lebanon’s Iran-aligned Hezbollah group in a strike in the capital Beirut’s southern suburbs, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said on Sunday. The strike is the first on the capital’s southern suburbs in months and is known for housing Hezbollah officials. The target of the strike was military official Ali Tabtabai, according to an Israeli source briefed on the strike and a Lebanese security source. Netanyahu’s office did not say whether… Source link

The G20 summit in Johannesburg delivered major wins for African countries on debt, climate and critical minerals processing, but the progress was undercut by an unprecedented US boycott. The United States will host the event next year when it takes over the rotating Group of 20 presidency. But when the summit ended on Sunday, there was no US leader present for the ceremonial handover. With the US a no-show, China and its allies drove the consensus on a Global South agenda that has dominated G20… Source link

The diplomatic crisis between Tokyo and Beijing is the result of a years-long fundamental shift to the right in Japan – and part of a “long-term struggle” that China must prepare for, according to analysts. The assessment comes as relations between the two countries nosedive, prompted by Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s suggestion earlier this month that a hypothetical conflict in the Taiwan Strait would trigger a military response from Tokyo. For Beijing, the comments ventured into a… Source link

Standoff between China and EU over supply of chips for car industry underlines value of sector requiring huge financial investment Keir Starmer has announced a critical minerals and rare earths strategy to build resilience against China, which has a stranglehold on supplies of materials including magnets critical to everything from car doors to fridges. “For too long, Britain has been dependent on a handful of overseas suppliers, leaving our economy and national security exposed to global shocks,” the prime minister said. Continue reading… Source link

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said the world can make progress on a range of issues without the US, and that consensus reached at a Group of 20 leaders’ meeting in Johannesburg this weekend carries weight despite a boycott by President Donald Trump’s administration. South Africa, the G20 host this year, defied the US by releasing a declaration from the meeting. Trump ordered the stay away after repeating a debunked claim that White Afrikaner farmers in South Africa are being subjected to a… Source link

On November 16, the USS Gerald R. Ford, the world’s most advanced aircraft carrier, sailed into the Caribbean to join Operation Southern Spear – the largest US military deployment in the Caribbean since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. Donald Trump is, however, a very different president from John F. Kennedy. Whereas Kennedy endorsed the burden of American exceptionalism to “assure the survival and the success of liberty” at “any price” or “hardship”, Trump promises to prioritise “America… Source link

Chinese scientists have reduced the production time of dielectric energy storage capacitor components to just one second, enabling scalable, temperature-stable storage for hybrid electric vehicles, radar systems and high-power lasers. Unlike other methods that can take from three minutes to an hour depending on the product quality, the team’s flash annealing technique heats and cools at a rate of 1,000 degrees Celsius per second, allowing for rapid synthesis of crystal films on a silicon wafer… Source link

From Finland opening diplomatic outposts in Senegal to Czech instructors training Mauritanian security forces, a group of smaller European nations has joined a global scramble for influence in Africa. Estonia, Romania and Malta are among European Union countries that have sought to boost their presence on the continent over the past five years, revamping diplomatic and trade links. “There is a wave of second-generation Africa policy refreshes completed and … under way,” said Alex Vines of the… Source link

Politburo member Wang Yi has become the most senior Chinese official to wade into the war of words over the new Japanese prime minister’s comments on the Taiwan Strait, saying her remarks “crossed a red line”. Wang, who is China’s foreign minister, said China must “resolutely respond” to the comments to safeguard the country’s sovereignty and defend its post-war achievements. “It is shocking that Japan’s current leader has publicly sent the wrong signal of attempting military intervention in the… Source link

Despite the US’s economic success, income inequality remains breathtaking. But this is no glitch – it’s the system The Chinese did rather well in the age of globalization. In 1990, 943 million people there lived on less than $3 a day measured in 2021 dollars – 83% of the population, according to the World Bank. By 2019, the number was brought down to zero. Unfortunately, the United States was not as successful. More than 4 million Americans – 1.25% of the population – must make ends meet with less than $3 a day, more than three times as many…

The potential cancer-fighting effects of the antioxidant quercetin – found in a variety of foods including onions, apples and durian – are partly dependent on the presence of microbes in our gut, a Chinese research team has found. Quercetin has shown promise in preventing tumour metastasis and growth in various studies, though the exact mechanism behind how the compound may inhibit cancer growth remains elusive. Through experiments in mice, the team from Shandong University found that a… Source link

A UN wildlife trade body decided on Sunday not to restrict India from importing endangered animals after many countries supported reversing an earlier stringent recommendation that had embroiled the private zoo run by Asia’s richest family. Vantara, a 3,500-acre zoo in Gujarat run by the philanthropic arm of the Reliance conglomerate led by Mukesh Ambani and his family, faced allegations from non-profit and wildlife groups of improper imports of some animals, triggering higher scrutiny by… Source link

Chinese education giant New Oriental has ignited online controversy after its founder posted an internal message from his holiday in Antarctica while employees were reportedly frustrated with long working hours. The message from Yu Minhong, which was designed to mark the company’s 32nd anniversary, has been slammed as self-serving and tone deaf. New Oriental was founded in 1993 in Beijing and began as a provider of Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) and Graduate Record Examinations… Source link

Chinese Premier Li Qiang has taken Beijing’s push for multilateralism to the Group of 20 summit in South Africa, calling for solidarity and free trade at an event boycotted by the world’s biggest economy. Addressing the gathering of leaders in Johannesburg on Saturday, Li pointed to challenges faced by various international institutions. “We have to advance with time and take the lead to uphold multilateralism” in the face of difficulties of governance, he said, according to state news agency… Source link

China’s third most senior official and top legislator pledged “sincere” friendship with New Zealand and called for tighter economic links between the two countries during a four-day trip to the Pacific nation. Zhao Leji, chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPC), wrapped up his trip to New Zealand on Saturday, the first in two decades by the head of China’s top legislative body. The trip included a meeting with New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon in… Source link

The trial of the alleged murderer of Chinese student Jiang Ge began at 10 am on Monday in Tokyo. It will last seven days and the verdict is expected on Dec 20. Source link

Italy’s centre-left opposition is testing out a big-tent alliance, guessing it’s the best way to unseat Giorgia Meloni at the next general election. The rest is still being worked out. The alliance pulls together parties with disparate political beliefs – the centre-left Democrats, the populist Five Star Movement, the left-wing Greens and Left Alliance and several smaller groups. The goal is to rally behind single, strategically chosen candidates and consolidate the anti-Meloni vote. The plan… Source link

President Xi Jinping and his Algerian counterpart Abdelaziz Bouteflika exchanged congratulatory messages on the successful launch of Alcomsat-1 in the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in China’s southwestern province of Sichuan early Monday. Source link

A tentative thaw in India–China ties is rekindling hopes that the two Asian giants could move from strategic rivalry to clean-energy cooperation at a moment when the Global South is searching for leverage in climate negotiations. This cautious warming, after four years of strained relations, has unfolded alongside renewed trade in green-energy components and their increasingly aligned push at Cop30 in Brazil for more climate finance and fairer rules, a convergence that analysts say could subtly… Source link

China launched Algeria’s first communication satellite, Alcomsat-1, into a preset orbit from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in the southwestern province of Sichuan early Monday. Source link

Hong Kong has become a “safe haven for capital” with bank deposits reaching over HK$19 trillion (US$2.4 trillion) this year, while the city’s goods exports have remained resilient despite the tariff war, according to the financial chief. Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po on Sunday highlighted Hong Kong’s financial market performance, noting that the city’s bank deposits rose by 7 per cent last year and another 10 per cent in 2025. “Influenced by the geopolitical landscape, global investors are… Source link

As part of the Shanghai Free Trade Zone, the system can operate completely unmanned. Source link

Brazil’s former president Jair Bolsonaro damaged his electronic ankle bracelet with a soldering iron hours before his arrest, according to video released by the Supreme Court. The footage shows Bolsonaro telling an officer he had applied “hot iron” to the device “out of curiosity”. The plastic casing around the device appears to be scorched, though the officer said the core mechanism seemed intact. Asked whether he used an iron, he replies: “No, a soldering iron.” Bolsonaro insisted he had not… Source link