Year: 2025

China’s top diplomat Wang Yi is set to host the foreign ministers of Cambodia and Thailand to “consolidate” the new ceasefire deal between the Southeast Asian countries. The trilateral gathering, to be held Sunday and Monday, marks Beijing’s latest effort to cement its role as an international mediator and secure a lasting peace deal in the deadly border clash between the two neighbours. At Wang’s invitation, his Cambodian counterpart Prak Sokhonn and Thai Foreign Minister Sihasak Phuangketkeow will meet in the southwestern Chinese province of Yunnan, according to the Chinese…

On August 6 last year, atomic bomb survivors held their annual commemorative lantern-floating ceremony at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park in Japan. Two months later, their group, Nihon Hidankyo, won the Nobel Peace Prize for decades of campaigning against nuclear weapons. Fifteen years earlier, in Chongshan village in China’s eastern Zhejiang province, Wang Jinti took his last breath. Wang died in near-total obscurity, never having received an apology or compensation for the suffering he endured – not from the atomic bombings but from Japan’s biological warfare that destroyed his village…

With the first wave of commercial Chinese real estate investment trusts (REITs) set to launch in the next two years, Greater Bay Area assets are likely to be in strong demand, according to Deloitte China. “GBA assets will likely be oversubscribed,” according to Ryan Wu, deputy managing partner for Hong Kong Chinese enterprises services with Deloitte China. He was speaking at the recent APREA GBA Conference on the fast-growing C-Reits market, which has recently expanded to include commercial properties. On December 1, China’s top economic planning agency, the National Development…

Taiwanese leader William Lai Ching-te’s plan to push through a NT$1.2 trillion (US$37 billion) special military spending package has been thrown into limbo as political clashes escalate over fiscal reform and a controversial court ruling. Taiwan’s opposition-controlled legislature has blocked the cabinet-proposed “Special Act on Strengthening Defence Resilience and Asymmetric Warfare Capabilities” from committee review four times since Lai unveiled the plan in late November. The procedural blockade has effectively frozen Lai’s eight-year spending package, described by his administration as “critical to deterring intensifying military pressure” from mainland China. Advertisement…