Day: September 5, 2025

Yi Huiman, the former regulator of China’s equities market, is being investigated for disciplinary breaches, as the country’s long-standing anti-graft campaign extends into all corners of the financial industry, from banking to the stock market. Advertisement Yi, the chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) from January 2019 to February 2024, has been detained by the Communist Party’s disciplinary unit for severe breaches in discipline, according to the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, which did not elaborate on the probe. In China, the official language of suspected disciplinary breaches…

The past week has been a flurry of not only state-level diplomacy but also party-to-party outreach, with President Xi Jinping receiving a series of leaders from the four remaining communist countries on a single day. Advertisement Xi held meetings with leaders from Cuba, North Korea, Laos and Vietnam, all of whom attended Wednesday’s military parade in Beijing marking the 80th anniversary of the victory in the war against Japanese aggression. While Beijing has no interest in promoting a communist international movement as the Soviet Union did during the Cold War,…

A recent rally in China’s yuan has been primarily fuelled by stronger guidance from its central bank rather than by market forces, analysts said, pointing to a mostly steady US dollar index. Advertisement However, they noted, this period of strengthening is likely to remain measured, as Beijing prefers to avoid harming the competitiveness of its exporters amid trade tensions with the United States. Over just five trading days last week, the People’s Bank of China pushed the yuan’s reference rate against the US dollar from 7.1321 to 7.1030 – a…

When my friend Lee first lost his job in 2023, he was terrified. From the moment he graduated in 2016, he had been working nonstop. He had changed jobs a couple of times, but always had a choice – he had never been kicked out of the job market like this. Advertisement Lee worked in the traditional publishing business, editing children’s books. The industry has been tanking, with the rise of digital books, and the post-pandemic slump doesn’t help. He was laid off with half of his colleagues, with a…

At the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in Tianjin this week, the choreography was striking. Chinese President Xi Jinping, flanked by Russian President Vladimir Putin and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, unveiled proposals for a development bank, expanded BeiDou satellite services, and cooperation in green technology, artificial intelligence and infrastructure. Advertisement The message was unmistakable: the SCO is no longer just a security forum. It is evolving into a platform offering economic and political alternatives to the Western-led order. The SCO’s roots lie in the mid-1990s, when China, Russia, Kazakhstan,…

In the summer of 2015, a time when China’s pharmaceutical market was in a phase of rapid expansion, a sudden regulatory change sent tremors through the industry: drug companies would need to audit the clinical trial data for all pending applications. Advertisement If withdrawn within a month of the announcement, firms could avoid penalties for submitting flawed applications, but hiding or falsifying data would court severe punishments, including multi-year filing bans. The response from the industry indicated the scale of the problem: 79 per cent of pending applications were withdrawn.…

US President Donald Trump suggested on Friday that India is drifting towards China’s orbit, even as his assertive tariffs and public rebukes have tested ties with New Delhi. Advertisement Aides are warning that India could soon regret its stance and even face new curbs. “Looks like we’ve lost India and Russia to deepest, darkest, China. May they have a long and prosperous future together,” the “America first” president wrote on social media. His remarks were posted alongside a photo of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Chinese President Xi Jinping and…