Month: July 2025

Chinese construction crews have completed encircling the Tarim Basin – one of the most forbidding places on Earth – with an extra-high voltage “energy ring”. Advertisement The project, which has taken 15 years to build, transforms the vast inland basin – home to China’s largest desert – into a massive new-energy transmission hub. The 4,197km (2,608-mile) power transmission and transformation project in an area of the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region known as the “sea of death” was completed on Sunday, state broadcaster CCTV reported. The final section of the 750-kilovolt…

China’s antitrust regulator on Monday approved American chip design software giant Synopsys’ US$35 billion acquisition of Ansys, weeks after the administration of US President Donald Trump lifted export controls on electronic design automation (EDA) products to the mainland. Advertisement In a statement, the State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) said it gave the green light to Synopsys’ deal for Ansys, a computer-aided engineering software vendor, under the condition that the two firms honour their contractual obligations to Chinese clients. Synopsys and Ansys were also required to not terminate existing agreements…

Alibaba Group Holding tied its own record of 80 million on-demand deliveries on Saturday, the e-commerce giant reported on Monday, as it wages an all-out battle against rivals Meituan and JD.com in China’s quick-delivery market – with freebies and eye-popping discounts as the ammunition. Advertisement Alibaba’s new instant commerce brand Taobao Shangou said its daily active users last week jumped 15 per cent from the previous week, which would put number at around 230 million, though the company did not specify the total. The firm also hit 80 million deliveries…

The relationship between Beijing and Moscow shows great stability, maturity and strategic values, China’s top diplomat Wang Yi told his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov in Beijing ahead of a Eurasian grouping summit. Advertisement The Russian foreign minister arrived in Beijing on Saturday following a working visit to North Korea, where he met leader Kim Jong-un in Pyongyang and held the second round of strategic dialogue with North Korean Foreign Minister Choe Son-hui. Emphasising the depth and uniqueness of their bilateral ties, Wang also said Russian President Vladimir Putin’s coming visit…

China’s top leaders have raised concerns about excessive competition in the domestic market in recent weeks, signalling a shift in policy priorities. Advertisement In a meeting chaired by President Xi Jinping on July 1, the Central Finance and Economic Affairs Commission said Beijing needs to “focus on key and difficult issues, regulate enterprises’ disorderly and low-price competition” and “guide enterprises to improve product quality and promote the orderly exit of outdated production capacity”. The rhetoric has brought back memories of Beijing’s 2015 “supply-side structural reform” initiative, which aimed to eliminate…

If a week is a long time in politics, after a bruising fortnight of wrestling with the world’s two superpowers, the European Union could be forgiven for thinking it has aged several decades. Advertisement The bad news for the bloc’s bureaucrats is that they may have an even trickier few weeks to navigate before they are sipping chilled rosé among the lavender fields of Provence on their notoriously long August holidays. On Monday, trade ministers will meet in Brussels to hash out a response to US President Donald Trump’s weekend…