Month: December 2025

China has unveiled new legislation to promote ethnic unity and the use of standard Chinese, warning of legal penalties for those who obstruct the use of the national language and linking its approach with national security policy. A draft Law on Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress underwent its second review by the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPC), the country’s top legislative body, last week and will be open for public consultation until January 25. Meanwhile, the first changes to the Law on the Standard Spoken and Written…

China cannot merely chase the technological frontier – it must seize ownership of it, a prominent economist has warned, urging Beijing to accelerate basic research and master core technologies to gain leverage against Washington’s targeted restrictions. “China can no longer play follower. The US won’t let it,” said Wang Yiming, vice-chairman of the China Centre for International Economic Exchanges, a Beijing-based governmental think tank, noting that the United States’ “small yard, high fence” policy leaves China no choice but to take the lead. Speaking at a seminar held by Peking…

A China-founded start-up that specialises in artificial intelligence agents was acquired by US tech giant Meta Platforms for billions of dollars, marking a landmark deal amid US-China competition in AI technology. The acquisition of Singapore-based Manus just nine months after its public launch in March underlines China’s AI competitiveness despite Washington’s efforts to deprive its rival of access to advanced US chips and funding. According to announcements from both sides, Manus would integrate its technology into Meta’s platforms and continue operating from Singapore, where it relocated to in July in…

“Our nation’s beautiful clean coal resources will be critical to meeting the rise in electricity demand due to the resurgence of domestic manufacturing and the construction of artificial intelligence data processing centres,” Trump said in an executive order signed on April 8. But China has upped its game. In Pingdingshan, a once-struggling coal city in the central province of Henan, coal is no longer just mined and burned – it’s being chemically transformed into nylon, one of the most important and widely used synthetic polymers in the world. Advertisement Nylon…

Washington is securing bilateral health deals with countries across Africa to ensure direct access to critical pathogen data and specimens following the United States’ withdrawal from the World Health Organization (WHO). Analysts say the US’ strategic retreat from multilateral organisations has created a vacuum that China is likely to exploit to deepen its influence within global health bodies and position itself as the main partner for the developing world. Under the “America First Global Health Strategy”, more than a dozen African countries – including Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, Ethiopia and Rwanda…

A customs scheme covering the entirety of Hainan, China’s southern island province, appears to have triggered a surge in consumption since its inception last week, with the province’s tourism hub Sanya recording more than 500 million yuan (US$71.25 million) in duty-free sales over five days. Analysts cautioned, however, that the greater significance of the policy lies less in short-term spending boosts than in whether Hainan can diversify its economy beyond its previous reliance on real estate and establish higher-value growth drivers to rival established consumption hubs Singapore and Hong Kong.…

“Biotechnology is a high-risk field like a ‘molecular casino’,” said founder Alex Zhavoronkov. “Even with artificial intelligence, you can lose 90 per cent of the time.” The 11-year-old company was training and testing an AI-powered drug-discovery tool, Pharma.AI, to “enable faster, cheaper and more successful drug discovery with higher novelty and confidence”, he said. Zhavoronkov likened it to an “Einstein” capable of mastering fields from mathematics and physics to chemistry, biology and writing, pushing drug discovery to “new frontiers”. Advertisement He expected Insilico to begin opening some of its AI…