Day: September 23, 2025

Alibaba Group Holding plans to increase its capital expenditures on artificial intelligence infrastructure from the original 380 billion yuan (US$53 billion) over the next three years, the group’s CEO said on Wednesday. Advertisement Eddie Wu Yongming, also the chairman of Alibaba Cloud, said at the Apsara Conference in Hangzhou, in China’s eastern Zhejiang province, that Alibaba’s cloud unit aimed to become “the world’s leading full-stack AI service provider” from computing power to models. Wu did not, however, disclose the additional budget for AI infrastructure spending. Alibaba’s shares gained 7.8 per…

The military parade in Beijing to mark the 80th anniversary of the victory in the Chinese people’s war of resistance against Japanese aggression drew global attention. In Hong Kong and Macau, where the ceremony was broadcast live, the emotions and reflections inspired were unique – admiration and pride mingling with questions and contemplation. Advertisement Some ask, as decennial parades have become routine, does this “muscle flexing” carry practical significance, given that China’s rise is now an established global consensus? To address such doubts, one must move beyond a Western-centric lens…

This story has been made freely available as a public service to our readers. Please consider supporting SCMP’s journalism by subscribing now for 50 per cent off during our two-day flash sale. Residents and officials in southern China are bracing for the full force of Super Typhoon Ragasa, the most powerful typhoon to hit the region in recent years. By Tuesday, Guangdong province had upgraded its typhoon alert to Level 1, the highest in a four-tier warning system, as officials declared a “combat-ready” status. China’s National Meteorological Centre said the…

Though China moved away from a command economy decades ago, its successive five-year plans have remained a pillar of macroeconomic policymaking. Advertisement Despite that seeming contradiction, under the 14 plans implemented since 1953, Beijing has turned what was a limited industrial capacity into a scale of mass production that has earned China a reputation as the “world’s factory.” Beijing is now endeavouring to move higher in the value chain and become a global hub for innovation in cutting-edge sectors – and the next five-year plan, the 15th, is expected to…

Jerome Cohen, a pioneering scholar of Chinese law who shaped global debates on the country’s legal system, trade, and human rights for over six decades, has died at 95. Advertisement Cohen, who died on Monday, was professor emeritus at New York University’s School of Law and the founder of its US-Asia Law Institute, as well as a senior fellow for Asia studies at the Council on Foreign Relations think tank. The author and editor of over a dozen books and dozens of journal articles, Cohen began his career in Chinese…

As China drafts its 15th five-year plan – the next entry in a line of expansive blueprints that have set the tone for the country’s development over more than seven decades – we examine how these documents inform and reflect high-level policy priorities, and what to expect in the coming iteration, such as how it could help alleviate local-level financial woes. Advertisement For more entries in this ongoing series, click here. In late March, an announcement by the central Hubei province sent a shiver down the spines of wealthy individuals…

China endorsed Brazil’s $125 billion Tropical Forests Forever Facility at a sideline event in New York on Tuesday, lending weight to a flagship fund that rewards nations for preserving tropical forests and injecting fresh momentum into one of the main initiatives set to debut at COP30 in Belem this November. Advertisement The TFFF, devised by Brazil with support from the World Bank and international partners, will invest in low-risk assets and channel part of the returns to tropical countries at up to $4 per hectare of standing forest. Payments will…

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva used the UN rostrum on Tuesday to excoriate Washington over tariffs and military actions, promote closer ties with China, and call for reform of global institutions – only to be met moments later by an unexpected olive branch from US President Donald Trump, who proposed meeting the Brazilian leader next week. Advertisement Lula’s address came against the backdrop of sharp tensions with the United States, including 50 per cent tariffs on imports from Brazil, which Trump has imposed in response to “unfair barriers”…