Month: August 2025

Advertisement His comments, made during talks on the two countries’ border dispute with Indian national security adviser Ajit Doval on Tuesday, came in the wake of a series of reports in Indian media that the visit would go ahead. It will be Modi’s first trip to China in seven years and raises expectations he will meet Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the event. Wang also met Modi later on Tuesday. The SCO, a largely Eurasian security bloc that China chairs this year, will meet in the northern…

Denis Gagnon had long wanted to establish a manufacturing firm supplied only by American-made parts, a vision shaped by his experience in the international corporate world and his assessment of business risks offshore. Advertisement He was an outlier in an era of globalisation when businesspeople, including his US peers, waxed lyrical about outsourcing from Asia to minimise production costs. The Gagnons, including his son William, run a medium-sized company called Excel Dryer in the US state of Massachusetts. In 2018, the year US President Donald Trump raised tariffs on Chinese…

Few disputes in Asia are as enduring – and as polarising – as those over the South China Sea. For more than a decade, two sharply opposed narratives have dominated. In one, Beijing is seen as using force, or the threat of force, to change the status quo, undermining peace and stability. In the other, China is portrayed as exercising restraint, acting within its rights and working to safeguard regional stability. Advertisement These perspectives are not merely different; they are mutually exclusive. One side’s defensive action is interpreted as aggressive…

The Chinese social media platform Weibo has shut down several accounts for “inciting gender antagonism” and vowed to continue cracking down on such behaviour. Advertisement On Monday, the social media site announced via its official account that it had permanently closed an account named “Lilian Shuodao” for “continuously stigmatising the opposite sex and posting extreme anti-marriage remarks”. The term “opposite sex” referred to men. As of Tuesday, the banned account, which had 129,000 followers, was no longer accessible. However, posts previously shared by other users showed that it frequently raised…

Taiwan is moving to buy nearly 50,000 drones over the next two years as it seeks to bolster its asymmetric combat capabilities against mounting military pressure from Beijing. Advertisement The move comes as the island’s military prepares to classify unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) as consumables to accelerate procurement – a policy that mirrors a recent shift by the United States. According to a recent tender notice published on the Taiwanese government’s procurement website, the defence ministry’s Armaments Bureau plans to acquire 11,270 drones next year and 37,480 in 2027, across…

Pop Mart established itself as the world’s most valuable toy producer and exporter of China’s “soft power” after the global phenomenon of its Labubu plush toys and figurines drove overseas revenue to soar fivefold in the first half. Advertisement Online and in-store revenue outside China and Taiwan jumped to 5.59 billion yuan (US$778 million) in the first six months, making up about 40 per cent of the Beijing-based group’s total interim sales of 13.88 billion yuan, which beat analysts’ estimates, Pop Mart said on Tuesday. North and South America made…

There’s a new king atop China’s 2D animated box office, and it’s Nobody. Advertisement Shanghai Animation Film Studio’s movie has overtaken Makoto Shinkai’s Suzume as the highest-grossing 2D animated film in Chinese box office history while becoming a dark horse in the nation’s summer movie season. With its success, Nobody has dethroned the dominance of Japanese animated films in China. Before Nobody’s debut on August 2, the all-time top three such movies at the Chinese box office were Suzume, having generated 807 million yuan (US$112.2 million), followed by The Boy…

China is on its way to becoming a military superpower as the Peoples Liberation Army barrels ahead with an ambitious modernisation drive. Its progress will be seen during a huge military parade on September 3, when some of the PLA’s latest weaponry rolls through the heart of Beijing. In this series, we take a look at how far China’s military has come. Updated: 19 Aug, 2025 South China Morning Post