Day: December 16, 2025

Chile’s election of an ultraconservative leader has created another vocal ally for US President Donald Trump in a lithium-rich region where China has emerged as the dominant economic partner, positioning the South American country at the centre of an intensifying superpower rivalry. In what was probably Chile’s sharpest rightward shift since the end of its military dictatorship in 1990, José Antonio Kast, a right-wing former lawmaker who campaigned on Trump-style hardline positions on crime and immigration, won Sunday’s presidential run-off election, defeating the government-backed communist candidate Jeannette Jara. While Kast’s…

Catch up on some of SCMP’s biggest China stories of the day. If you would like to see more of our reporting, please consider subscribing. 1. ‘Testing the waters’? US reported to have seized Chinese cargo bound for Iran The reported US seizure of a ship allegedly carrying Chinese-made dual-use components to Iran might signal Washington was “testing the waters” on reviving an old tactic to pressure Beijing’s ties with its adversaries, but such moves risked breaching international law, analysts said. 2. Why ‘relative stability’ in US-China ties is unlikely…

Mainland Chinese state media has called for the demolition of a wartime monument in Japan, rekindling a long-standing source of bilateral tension as Beijing and Tokyo remain locked in a diplomatic row over Taiwan. Yuyuan Tantian, a social media account run by Chinese state broadcaster CCTV, said on Saturday that Japan seized more than 370 stones from the countries it invaded during the second world war – mostly from China – and used them to build Hakko Ichiu Tower, which the account described as “a tower of sin” promoting militarist…

China has accused Japan of attempting to “mislead the public and hope that somehow the issue would resolve itself” after its foreign minister selectively quoted its position on Taiwan from a joint communique that was the foundation of establishing their diplomatic ties in 1972. During a parliamentary session on Monday, Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi repeated Tokyo’s position on Taiwan as stated in the document that established and normalised ties with Beijing, although he did not read out parts of that document and others that reflected China’s stance on the Taiwan…

Biren, which designs high-performance graphics processing units (GPUs), received regulatory approval to list on the Hong Kong stock exchange, according to a China Securities Regulatory Commission filing on Monday. This was expected to put the company on track to become the first GPU developer to go public in Hong Kong. Co-founded by Wall Street veteran and entrepreneur Michael Zhang Wen in 2019, Biren planned to float about 372 million shares, but has not yet disclosed its fundraising target. According to mainland Chinese reports, the company could raise about US$300 million…

A prominent Chinese expert on US affairs says the competitive relationship between Washington and Beijing is likely to remain stable for the rest of Donald Trump’s presidential term – a prospect crucial for China’s strategic planning. The China-US rivalry has achieved a “resilient balance”, Ni Feng, researcher and former director of the Institute of American Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), said at a symposium held in Shenzhen on Sunday. Unlike the competition of the past six years – which was driven by a cold war mindset…

Founded in Shanghai in September 2020 by former engineers at Advanced Micro Devices, MetaX priced its initial public offering at 104.66 yuan per share, which was expected to raise 4.2 billion yuan (US$596 million) from the sale of 40.1 million shares, with net proceeds estimated to reach 3.9 billion. That was the second-highest share price offer this year on the Nasdaq-style Star Market, behind Moore Threads’ 114.28 yuan. Based on its offer price, MetaX’s implied market capitalisation stood at about 37.7 billion yuan. That was nearly 79 per cent higher…