Day: May 15, 2025

Nissan says it could share global plants with Chinese state firm

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Car maker Nissan says it is open to sharing factories around the world with its Chinese state-owned partner Dongfeng as it shakes up its business. The Japanese firm, which employs thousands of people in the UK, told the BBC it could bring Dongfeng “into the Nissan production eco-system globally.” This week, the struggling company said it would lay off 11,000 workers and shut seven factories but did not say where the cuts would be made. Speaking about Nissan’s UK plant on Thursday at a conference organised by the Financial Times,…

China’s defence chief forges Europe ties in Paris, Berlin plus UN peace pledge

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In the first visit to Europe by a Chinese defence minister in more than four years, Dong Jun said Beijing would intensify security exchanges with European countries and boost its role in United Nations peacekeeping operations. Advertisement Dong’s visit to France and Germany – ahead of his address to the sixth UN Peacekeeping Ministerial in Berlin on Wednesday – was not announced in advance by Beijing, and the defence ministry issued only brief statements about the meetings held with his counterparts in Paris and Berlin. Each statement said that Dong…

Green Tea Group makes tepid debut in Hong Kong as traders gird for CATL’s IPO next week

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Green Tea Group had a tepid trading debut in Hong Kong on Friday, as traders sidestepped its small stock sale in anticipation of the world’s largest initial public offering (IPO) so far this year next week. Advertisement Shares of the Hangzhou-based restaurant chain fell to end their first trading day at HK$6.29, a decline of 12.5 per cent from the HK$7.19 offer price. The company raised HK$1.21 billion (US$154.7 million) by selling 168 million shares. Traders are looking forward to the trading debut on Tuesday of Contemporary Amperex Technology (CATL),…

China has world’s fastest rise in dementia with up to 115 million cases forecast by 2050

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Advertisement In 1990 the country had about 4 million patients with dementia, a number that rose to 17 million by 2021 and is projected to reach 115 million by 2050, according to the research published in PLOS One earlier this month. “Alzheimer’s and other dementias (ADD) are one of the diseases with the heaviest global disease burden. The disease burden of ADD in China and globally has increased year by year from 1990 to 2021,” said co-authors Siyu Liu and Geng Daoying, from Fudan University. Geng’s research team used data…

Horses were running between Asia, North America 50,000 years ago: study

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Ancient horses repeatedly migrated between North America and Eurasia, reaching today’s Russian Far East near China, during the late Pleistocene when sea levels dropped and a land bridge connected the two continents, a new study found. Advertisement Among the studied fossils are Dalianensis horses, named after the northeastern Chinese city of Dalian, near where they were unearthed. They are shown to have a mixed ancestry from both Eurasian and American populations. Dalianensis lived 17,000 years ago and were slightly bigger than existing wild horses. In the latest study, the scientists…

India’s quick commerce is popular but not profitable

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This article is an on-site version of the India Business Briefing newsletter. To receive it in your inbox regularly, sign up if you’re a premium subscriber, or upgrade your subscription here. Good morning. Trade will be back in the headlines next week, with commerce minister Piyush Goyal visiting Washington for further talks on the bilateral trade agreement. US President Donald Trump’s statement yesterday that he is unhappy with Apple manufacturing in India will not help make things easier for Goyal. Not a dull day in 2025, that much is certain. In…

China announces new military academies as part of PLA modernisation drive

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China is reorganising its military education system and establishing academies for new service branches, as the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) pushes hard for modernisation. Advertisement According to the Ministry of Defence, the PLA Ground Force Service Academy will be based in Hefei, Anhui province; the PLA Information Support Force Engineering University in Wuhan, Hubei province; and the PLA Joint Logistics Support Force Engineering University in Chongqing. These academies will open recruitment for high school graduate applicants, with admission programmes and student enrolment to be announced in follow-up notices, ministry spokesman…

Thai building collapse exposes flaws in its migrant-heavy construction sector

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BANGKOK – A month after a deadly earthquake triggered the collapse of a high-rise construction site in Bangkok, labor rights groups say the disaster has exposed long-standing flaws in Thailand’s construction sector – particularly its failure to protect the migrant workers who keep it running. On the day of the quake, more than 100 workers were inside a 32-story unfinished tower when tremors from a 7.7-magnitude earthquake in neighboring Myanmar shook the Thai capital, causing the building to crumble. Many of those trapped were migrant workers from Myanmar, drawn to…

Legal advisers optimistic about recovery in Chinese M&A activity

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Reading headlines about business in China in the past five years, foreign observers might be forgiven for thinking the country of 1.4bn people is no longer worth considering as an investment destination. From the crushing Covid lockdowns and property sector meltdown to US-led sanctions on Chinese tech companies and now President Donald Trump’s trade war, negative sentiment has abounded. And yet, on the ground in the world’s second-biggest economy that is also a high-tech manufacturing powerhouse, some lawyers and other advisers still consider China to be a land of opportunity…

Hong Kong’s fintech ambitions keep lawyers busy on policymaking and deals

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Hong Kong has been stepping up its attempts to become Asia’s prime hub for trading digital assets, including a series of new regulations to achieve its ambition of attracting global investors. The move comes as competition from the US and other countries in the Asia-Pacific region, led by Singapore, intensifies. Law practices in the Chinese territory have been supporting lenders in the rollout of pioneering products, including digital bonds and tokenised gold, that are designed to grab the territory a slice of this global digital asset market with an estimated…