Day: December 13, 2025

With temperatures falling and holidays approaching, ski resorts across northern China are experiencing a surge in visitors from the south, a trend that is cheering airlines as well as resort operators including Malaysia-based Genting Group. Since the ski season opened on November 15, the Changbai Beautiful China Resort in the northeast province of Jilin, a complex owned by China Green Development Group, has welcomed more than 110,000 visitors, marking a nearly 40 per cent year-on-year increase. More than 80 per cent of these tourists came from southern China, significantly higher…

Mounting US pressure on allies to bolster the first island chain’s defence in the western Pacific Ocean is raising concerns about South Korea’s possible but reluctant involvement in a conflict over Taiwan, analysts have said. In its recently released National Security Strategy (NSS), US President Donald Trump’s administration highlighted the importance of a “favourable conventional military balance” as an “essential component of strategic competition”, focusing on deterring conflict over Taiwan by preserving “military overmatch”. While the latest NSS pledged to build a military “capable of denying aggression anywhere in the…

Mary Roettger was just one of millions of Americans seeking a social media life raft when she warily logged onto China’s RedNote platform for the first time in January. As fears loomed over a threatened US ban on TikTok, the Florida writer braced for a clumsy, spam-filled experience full of “negative people”. Instead, she was struck by a starkly different culture. Roettger was “blown away with the amount of tenderness and excitement” of the online community suddenly before her. Advertisement “That was new,” said the 27-year-old, who shared on RedNote…

While China continues to produce many young self-made billionaires, showcasing its economic dynamism, observers have urged the creation of a more supportive environment, saying that innovation is still being held back. About 98 per cent of the super-rich in mainland China, with assets valued at US$1 billion or more, are relatively young first-generation entrepreneurs, reflecting the vitality and wealth-creation power of its economy, Swiss bank UBS said in a recent report. However, Beijing’s tendency to strengthen state ownership and the lack of a loss-proof mechanism – which would shield innovative…

In October, as Simon Li finished speaking at an international conference about embracing technological innovation in education, several Chinese history educators approached him with a potent, pressing question: could a virtual reality (VR) project about the 1937 Nanking massacre become the next pedagogical frontier? Li, executive director of the Hong Kong Holocaust and Tolerance Centre, recalled it as an electrifying moment. “They were genuinely energised, saying that such a programme could help students feel history without being flooded by it,” he said of the educators. He added that the concept…

Chinese government authorities sent urgent requests to various experts, including professors from Tsinghua University, to provide briefings on the implications of generative AI technology, according to people with knowledge of the matter. China’s Big Tech firms and ambitious start-ups rushed to roll out their own versions of AI chatbots and large language models (LLMs), as well as register them with the government, as part of efforts to keep American AI services away from the country’s more than 1 billion internet users. Advertisement In the first few months after ChatGPT’s release,…

When Elyn MacInnis first moved to Nanjing in the late 1980s, she was greeted by a wholly unexpected connection. Local elderly residents would look at the American newcomer, pause and tell her she resembled Minnie Vautrin: a middle-aged woman with round glasses and centre-parted hair often pinned up. MacInnis, who goes by the Chinese name Mu Yanling, knew the name only vaguely then. Advertisement Vautrin was an American missionary who led Jinling Women’s College during the Nanking massacre, in the city now called Nanjing. Vautrin sheltered and saved thousands of…

China is looking to the United Arab Emirates to help speed up negotiations for a free-trade agreement with the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), according to Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi. Wang met his Emirati counterpart in Abu Dhabi on Friday, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement on its website. He told Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan that China supported the UAE’s “measures to safeguard national security and development” and its “increased role in international and regional affairs”, Saturday’s ministry statement said. Advertisement Wang also called for…