Month: June 2023

South Koreans Become a Little Younger Under New Law

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South Korea is changing the way it calculates a person’s age. Under a new law that takes effect Wednesday, South Korea is adopting the international method that uses a person’s actual date of birth to determine their age. Under its traditional method, South Koreans are considered to be one year old at birth, including their months in the womb, and become a year older every January 1 regardless of their actual date of birth. The new law that takes effect Wednesday means all South Koreans will officially become a year…

Monk killed in Myanmar junta air raid on Sagaing region monastery

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Junta air raids on two Sagaing region villages killed 12 civilians including a monk, locals told RFA Wednesday. They said 11 people from Pale township’s Nyaung Kone and one from Pi Tauk Kone village died in Tuesday’s attack. A school teacher from Nyaung Kone, who didn’t want to be named for security reasons, told RFA the air force dropped three 500-pound bombs around the village monastery, killing one monk and 10 locals. “It happened when I was teaching children at school,” the teacher said. “I used to hear the plane…

Tencent’s WeChat Pay to accept Visa cards to help foreign tourists survive in cashless China

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The move will allow travellers to use their smartphones to pay tens of millions of merchants across China, from shops to hotels to transport providers, that already accept the domestic version of WeChat Pay. “Tencent has been working hard to provide greater access to China’s online and offline merchants for overseas visitors under the guidance of relevant regulatory bodies and policies,” Chen said at the event held in the Chinese port city Tianjin, also known as Summer Davos. Advertisement It comes after Alipay, operated by Alibaba Group Holding affiliate Ant,…

Five Eyes Security Partners Meet in New Zealand

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Sydney —  Politicians from the Five Eyes alliance are meeting in the New Zealand capital, Wellington, where migration and security are top of the agenda. The grouping includes the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The Five Eyes alliance is an intelligence-sharing accord among five English-speaking democracies. British Home Secretary Suella Braverman is among those attending meetings in Wellington, New Zealand. War and China likely on agenda The war in Ukraine and China’s growing assertiveness are expected to be discussed at the five-country ministerial talks Wednesday in Wellington.…

Chinese Workers Confront the Curse of 35

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When Sean Liang turned 30, he started thinking of the Curse of 35 — the widespread belief in China that white-collar workers like him confront unavoidable job insecurity after they hit that age. In the eyes of employers, the Curse goes, they’re more expensive than new graduates and not as willing to work overtime. Mr. Liang, now 38, is a technology support professional turned personal trainer. He has been unemployed for much of the past three years, partly because of the pandemic and China’s sagging economy. But he believes the…

Can China Export Its Way Out of Its Economic Slump?

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China dominates the global sale of solar panels and has caught up with Japan as the world’s largest car exporter. ‌It is even gaining in ‌the worldwide ‌sale of low-tech products like shoes. Now Beijing is weighing whether to deploy its considerable power as an exporter to try to stabilize an economy laboring under distinctly homegrown problems — a real estate crisis and weak spending by consumers still cautious after nearly three years of stringent pandemic restrictions. The decision could reverberate throughout the global economy and provoke a backlash among…

Chinese military conjures world war Z scenario of all-out conflict to test and evaluate new navy weapons

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Fang’s unit is responsible for the sea tests of some of China’s newest and most powerful naval weapons, according to openly available information. The Z-war scenario was declassified for the first time in their peer-reviewed paper published in the Chinese Journal of Ship Research this month. Fang and his colleagues did not name any country but the enemy hardware that appeared in the paper, such as the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, belongs to the US Navy and its allies. They were tagged the “blue alliance”. There is increasing concern about the…

German Defense Minister Vows Stronger Geopolitical Role Ahead of U.S. Visit

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BERLIN — In an interview before his first official visit to Washington, Germany’s defense minister staked out a broad geopolitical vision, taking pains to indicate that his country is ready to assume a more assertive stance in the face of growing international instability. The defense minister, Boris Pistorius, laid out plans for Germany to increase its arms deliveries and take a more robust role in both the Indo-Pacific region and in military leadership in Europe. He spoke to The New York Times before traveling to meet his U.S. counterpart, Secretary of…

China affords Nigeria ‘super’ target status

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Receive free Chinese business & finance updates We’ll send you a myFT Daily Digest email rounding up the latest Chinese business & finance news every morning. The dream of establishing smartphone “super apps” that can operate across Africa’s markets is galvanising Chinese investment into Nigeria. Nigeria, with about 220mn people, is the continent’s most populous country and its biggest economy. So, when two Chinese-backed fintech companies hatched ambitions to build African versions of Chinese mobile payment giants Alipay or WeChat Pay, they decided to start in Lagos. “[We are building]…