Month: September 2025

Marco Rubio marks China’s National Day with message of peace, prosperity from US

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US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has sent a congratulatory message for China’s National Day, reinstating a tradition to mark the occasion before October 1 arrives in the United States. Advertisement The message, dated September 30, was published on the State Department’s website at about 9am Beijing time on Wednesday. “On behalf of the United States of America, I congratulate the people of China on the 76th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China on October 1,” the brief statement read. “The United States wishes the people…

Top Japanese Marxism expert joins Wuhan University in China

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A top Chinese university has hired a prominent Marxism expert from Japan to take up a role in its School of Philosophy. Advertisement Wuhan University on Thursday said it had appointed Japanese scholar Kenji Mori as a full-time professor at the school. Marxist theory is a compulsory subject for all undergraduates at Chinese universities, and it is also part of the entrance exam for postgraduate study. Mori is an expert in the subject – among his research areas is the unpublished economic writing of Karl Marx, including a collaborative project…

China’s ‘super golden week’ forecast to spark travel boom at home and abroad

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Visa-free travel abroad and free toll roads at home are expected to fuel a surge in travel by Chinese citizens during an extra-long holiday starting this week, in what analysts call a boon for the service economy. Advertisement Total trips outside mainland China are forecast to reach between 8 million and 8.4 million – more than double the 3.8 million recorded for the holiday in 2024 – according to travel marketing and technology company China Trading Desk on Monday. Demand is “surging” for visa-free destinations such as Malaysia, Singapore and…

Regional banks in Japan bet bigger will be better

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Stay informed with free updates Simply sign up to the Japanese business & finance myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox. A deal inked between two of Japan’s 100-plus regional banks in April was barely noticed outside Japan, but the merger creates one of the country’s biggest second-tier banks. It is also an important signpost for investors trying to work out how Japan’s banking system will evolve in the coming years. Gunma Bank and Daishi Hokuetsu Financial’s combined total in assets of ¥21.4tn ($145bn) sets a new benchmark. Some…

Rout in Japanese bonds heralds ‘pivotal change’

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Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. For much of the past decade, Japanese government bond yields were rooted near zero. Negligible inflation and ultra-loose monetary policy — which included vast asset purchases by the central bank — confounded any bets that yields would rise. But the return of inflation, which allowed the central bank last year to call time on eight years of negative interest rates, has flipped the market on its head. The Japanese government…

You can read Japan’s runes in the price of its prized curry and rice

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Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Over the course of July, Japan recorded a small month-on-month fall in one of the country’s most sensitive — and too often overlooked — economic benchmarks: the curry rice price index (CRPI). The dip was a cause for temporary relief, perhaps, following a steep rise over the previous two years, but not yet a licence for gluttony. The July shift in the CRPI catches the mass of Japanese households in…

Investors sense this time is different for Japan

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The number of babies born to Japanese parents fell below 700,000 in 2024 for the first time since records began at the end of the 19th century. The number had high shock value in itself, but for would-be investors the statistic came with two bigger surprises. The first was how fast the decline in Japanese births is now accelerating compared with median projections. Government demographers had not forecast Japan’s annual supply of newborns to break below the 700,000 line until at least 2039. The second, more counterintuitive, surprise was when…

Buyout firms play the long game beyond Tokyo

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One of the three deals Bain Capital has ever completed in Osaka, Japan’s third largest city, took a number of years to get over the line. The takeover of drugstore chain Kirindo had all the hallmarks of a classic Japanese private equity transaction, and included negotiating with the 96-year-old founder. “Of course, there is a problem with succession, with a lot of companies coming out of the drugstore business . . . so we have been suggesting that we can help both the succession and the growth strategy,” says Makoto Ono, private equity managing…

Race to the bottom? China thwarted as US moves on deep-sea mining

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Beneath the vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean lie small, black, potato-sized treasures – polymetallic nodules rich in valuable metals and rare earth elements – waiting to be unearthed. Advertisement Strewn across the sea floor of the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian oceans, the coveted nodules and other forms of ocean deposits are gaining widespread attention. Yet for all their vast potential, deep-sea mining remains off-limits for now. The obstacle is not merely technological feasibility but a lack of legal clarity. Under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the…

How China’s robotics push is clearing path to tech independence

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Factories in China installed nearly 300,000 new robots last year, more than the rest of the world combined. This figure suggests that China is building leadership in robotics not merely for industrial efficiency, but as a direct path to achieving independence in core artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. Advertisement The prioritisation of embodied intelligence, or AI-powered robots, at events such as last week’s AI Computing Conference in Beijing signals that the country views robotics as critical infrastructure for future resilience, far beyond stand-alone technological products. This aligns with global trends, such…