Day: November 14, 2025

China has told its citizens to avoid travelling to Japan, upping the ante in its row with Tokyo after Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi suggested her country could deploy its military forces in the event of a cross-strait conflict. Advertisement In a notice late on Friday night, China’s foreign ministry said the safety of its citizens in Japan had “continued to deteriorate”, citing a series of targeted attacks this year. The ministry said the Japanese leader had made provocative remarks on Taiwan-related issues, severely undermining the atmosphere for Sino-Japanese exchanges…

Grass-roots enthusiasm has played the main role in shaping China’s online nationalist narrative and has pushed celebrities to follow, according to a study published in the American peer-reviewed journal Science Advances last week. Advertisement Contrary to the common perception that nationalism on Chinese social media space functions more top down and that Beijing uses social media to influence or control public opinion, the study jointly done by researchers from leading universities in the United States and Britain offered a different story. “Our findings reveal that fans exert a stronger influence…

The Nexperia factory in Dongguan, in the heart of southern China’s Pearl River Delta, has long been a poster child for successful globalisation. Since its launch in 2000, the plant, which covers an area the size of 10 football fields, has operated 24 hours a day, seven days a week, non-stop. Advertisement Following its most recent upgrade in 2018, its annual production capacity surged to 90 billion units, making it the largest assembly site in the Chinese-owned Dutch chipmaker’s global network. Yet, this symbol of seamless global manufacturing suddenly became…

China has discovered a rare gold deposit in the Kunlun Mountains near the western border of Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, according to government geologists involved in the survey. Advertisement Initial estimates suggest its total gold reserves could exceed 1,000 tonnes. “The outline of a thousand-tonne-scale gold belt in West Kunlun, Xinjiang, is now taking shape,” wrote He Fubao, a senior engineer with the Kashgar Geological Team, and his colleagues in a paper published on November 4 in the peer-reviewed journal Acta Geoscientica Sinica. This discovery marks the third gold deposit…

Southeast Asian economies have a “transformative” opportunity to enter the world’s critical mineral supply chain amid China-US trade tensions, a senior Asian economist said. Advertisement Critical minerals – essential raw materials for the production of hi-tech gadgets, cars and aerospace equipment – will make the 11-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ (Asean) supply chain “more resilient and sustainable”, said Yasuto Watanabe, director of the Asean+3 Macroeconomic Research Office (AMRO). The office was set up by the finance ministers of the Asean member states and the “plus three” – China, Japan…

As China’s global influence grows, the landscape of China studies is undergoing a profound transformation. Scholars both within China and internationally are confronting new challenges, from escalating geopolitical tensions and mutual distrust – especially between Washington and Beijing – to increasingly limited access, making research and academic collaboration more difficult than ever. Some have also urged a shift beyond Western-centric frameworks towards more field-based research and a truly… South China Morning Post