Month: July 2025

A new wave of Chinese consumer companies, led by toymaker Pop Mart, is seeking a greater global presence, reflecting China’s strategic pivot towards exporting its brands, and not just products. Advertisement “We originally hoped to become China’s Disney; now we hope to become the world’s Pop Mart,” the company’s founder and CEO, Wang Ning, said in an interview with state broadcaster China Central Television on Thursday. “We use China’s manufacturing industry and market to incubate artists from all over the world, and bring their creations back out to the world.”…

Polling stations in Taiwan are set to open on Saturday as the island holds a landmark vote in a sweeping recall campaign that could tilt control of its legislature back to the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and test whether anti-Beijing sentiment remains the defining force in Taiwanese politics. Advertisement The unprecedented mass recall vote – set to begin at 8am Saturday, primarily targeting lawmakers from the main opposition Kuomintang (KMT) – has triggered intense political debate and could shape the island’s trajectory ahead of next year’s local government polls…

China’s ambassador to the United Nations has called for a de-escalation in the conflict between Thailand and Cambodia and confirmed that Beijing is playing “a mediation role” after the sudden border clash on Thursday. Advertisement In an interview broadcast on state-owned CCTV on Friday, Fu Cong said that “China is playing a mediation role to facilitate communication between the two sides, and hopes the situation will stabilise as soon as possible”. Fu also urged the two nations to “exercise restraint” and “stabilise the situation” during the interview. “Cambodia and Thailand…

China and Europe should foster a “healthy” economic relationship characterised by both competition and cooperation, the Chinese premier told European Union leaders and businesses on Thursday. Advertisement At a business symposium held on the sidelines of the EU-China Summit on Thursday, Li Qiang urged both sides to find new grounds for collaboration. “China and the EU can further leverage their complementary economic strengths, focusing on areas such as services trade, technological innovation, the green economy, and third-party cooperation to cultivate more new growth drivers for collaboration,” Li said, according to…

Calls have been growing in Chinese state media and from the public for stricter safety measures and a thorough investigation into the deaths of six university students who fell into an industrial flotation tank on Wednesday. Advertisement The students, from Northeastern University in Liaoning province, were on a field trip to the China National Gold Group’s Wunugetushan copper-molybdenum mine in Inner Mongolia when the incident happened. A teacher was also injured. According to state news agency Xinhua, the government of the Inner Mongolia autonomous region has assembled an accident investigation…

A strange thing happened when a team of scientists folded a series of ultra-thin sheets of graphene in their laboratory in China. Advertisement The researchers from the Lanzhou Institute of Chemical Physics found that friction did not increase as the material got thicker. In fact, some of the thicker folds slid more easily. The revelation was a bonus for the team – not only had they become the first to directly observe friction between solid materials at the quantum level, they had seen something that could help with the development…

Advertisement The dam is being built on the Yarlung Tsangpo in Medog – a remote yet geopolitically significant county close to the disputed border with India. As well as becoming a major energy source, the dam is a key element in Beijing’s plans to develop the region and strengthen its border security. What is the location? Medog, also known as Motuo in Chinese, is a border county in the southeast of the Tibet autonomous region, which lies in the foothills of the Himalayas. Advertisement South China Morning Post

Chinese researchers have manufactured the world’s largest barium gallium selenide (BGSe) crystal, a breakthrough that could pave the way for ultra-high-power laser weapons capable of zapping satellites from the ground. Advertisement The synthetic crystal, measuring 60 millimetres (2.3 inches) in diameter, efficiently converts short-wave infrared lasers into mid- to far-infrared beams that can penetrate atmospheric windows for long-distance transmission. Crucially, it can withstand laser power as intense as 550 megawatts per square centimetre – exceeding the damage threshold of existing military-grade crystals by an order of magnitude. The resulting laser…