Day: July 18, 2025

It was a sprawling cultural and tourism project that completely went off the rails, and now Beijing is using it as evidence of grass-roots government mismanagement – one of three high-profile examples of wastefulness newly flagged by China’s disciplinary authorities. Advertisement Following an investigation, the project – dubbed “Yaohan Longevity City” and located in Gongcheng Yao autonomous county of Guilin – was condemned as a “severe waste of resources”. Initially hailed in 2018 as a key initiative in the county’s 30th-anniversary celebration, the undertaking intended to position Gongcheng as a…

The Chinese navy’s rail gun has shocked the world. It was mounted on a ship as early as 2018 – the first ever on the planet – and was widely viewed as a coup for China’s future weapon technology. Advertisement But power has become its curse. When the current is too strong, metal liquefies. Shells are capped at 15kg (33lbs). It is too light to sink a ship. Too weak for war. Now the army has stepped in. Their solution: cross-stacking two rail guns into one. This will nearly double…

July 9, 2024, may be remembered as a day of humiliation for China’s artificial intelligence community. On that day, US start-up OpenAI, the global leader in AI model development, blocked developers in China – including Hong Kong and Macau – from using its GPT models. Advertisement In contrast, developers from countries ranging from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe were given access, reflecting OpenAI’s unspoken belief that its valuable models must be safeguarded against misuse by China, along with Iran, Russia and North Korea. Now the tide has turned. With the December 2024…

The worldwide financial system needs to rewrite its rules for a future of tokens, as the rise of stablecoins poses new challenges to the global infrastructure for instant payment, clearing and settlement, according to the gatekeeper of the world’s central banks. Advertisement Stablecoins, which are digital tokens backed by fiat currencies or other reserve assets, could make anti-money-laundering (AML) work and banks’ task of knowing their customers more difficult because of their cross-border, pseudonymous transactions, said the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the organisation that is often dubbed the “central…

A month after US President Donald Trump cancelled talks with Anthony Albanese, China rolled out the red carpet for the Australian leader this week. Advertisement In Beijing, he had a two-hour meeting with President Xi Jinping at the Great Hall of the People. Albanese’s fiancee, Jodie Haydon, joined the lunch that followed. He held separate talks with Premier Li Qiang, and they co-chaired a CEO round table attended by nearly 30 Chinese and Australian business executives. At the banquet hosted by Li that evening, a band played iconic Australian anthems…

When a 90-day tariff-free grace period expired this month, Taiwan escaped letters US President Donald Trump to two dozen other governments fixing new rates, including a 25 per cent duty on goods from Japan and South Korea. Advertisement Is Taiwan’s letter still in the mail? The Trump administration announced worldwide tariffs on April 2, including double-digit rates for a list of exporters in Asia and 32 per cent slated for Taiwan. The US later paused most tariffs, including Taiwan’s, for 90 days to negotiate the tariff rates with major trading…