Day: June 13, 2024

“My government is pro-panda,” said Australia’s prime minister, Anthony Albanese, as he prepared to host the highest-ranking Chinese visitor to his country in seven years. Mr Albanese was simply referring to the bears that China has lent to Australia’s Adelaide Zoo. Still, such sound-bites had long been rare before he was elected in 2022. Relations between China and Australia had suffered years of acrimony. The mood is now much changed. During his four-day trip to Australia, beginning on June 15th, China’s prime minister, Li Qiang, will be keen to show…

IT IS AN unusual arrangement, to be sure. Since its establishment in 1997, the Court of Final Appeal in Hong Kong has had both local and foreign judges on its bench. The set-up was part of the deal that handed the territory from Britain to China that year. The foreigners, who hold non-permanent seats, tend to have impressive legal backgrounds and come from other common-law jurisdictions, such as Britain, Australia and Canada. So they are accustomed to exercising judicial power “independently and free from any interference”, as laid out in…

ERIC CHAN has long sold durians, a pungent fruit, to South-East Asians. Now he is eyeing a bigger prize. The Musang King variety that he cultivates in Malaysia is beloved by Chinese consumers. But at the moment his country only has permission to export frozen durians to China, where many want them fresh. In total, Chinese foodies gobbled up $6.7bn-worth of imported fresh durians last year, up from $4bn in 2022 and $1.6bn in 2019, the year durians overtook cherries as China’s largest fresh-fruit import by value. The Economist

AN AIR OF quiet piety hangs over Rongwo Monastery in the western province of Qinghai. The streets near this ancient complex draw pilgrims and Tibetan Buddhist monks in dark red robes. Local believers make circuits around the monastery’s yellow walls, turning a line of wooden prayer-wheels as they walk. The Economist