A US immigration judge has granted asylum to a Chinese national who he said had a “well founded fear” of persecution if sent back to China after exposing alleged human rights abuses against Uyghurs there. Guan Heng applied for asylum after arriving in the US illegally in 2021. He has been in custody since being swept up in an immigration enforcement operation in August last year as part of a mass deportation campaign by the Trump administration. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) initially sought to deport Guan to Uganda…
Day: January 28, 2026
Chinese AI goes next level in geometry at a top US maths Olympiad
A Chinese AI system has outperformed its US competitors in solving geometry problems at the International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) level, taking less than half the time and using simpler computational resources, according to its developers. Unlike existing models confined to problem-solving, the Chinese system can also generate mathematical problems – three of which appeared in a Chinese national team qualifying exam and a top Olympiad in the United States in 2024. “We present TongGeometry, a neuro-symbolic system that discovers, proposes and proves IMO-level geometry problems through principled tree search,” researchers…
How Singapore Inc became a safe place for investors
Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. At first glance, Singapore may appear an odd winner from the disruption to global trade brought on by Donald Trump’s “reciprocal” tariff regime. As a major beneficiary of the postwar era of globalisation, the city-state’s entire economy is structured upon being a linchpin for international commerce. But after a year dominated by trade shocks and geopolitical tension, international investors are flocking to Singapore. The country’s stock market had its best…
Tale of 2 megacities: how did Beijing and Shanghai’s GDPs surpass 5 trillion yuan?
As China’s two largest cities by economic output, Beijing and Shanghai are widely seen as barometers for the country’s broader economic performance. In 2025, Beijing’s gross domestic product reached 5.2 trillion yuan (US$748 billion), making it the second Chinese city to cross the 5-trillion-yuan mark after Shanghai, which breached the threshold in 2024 and did so again in 2025 with a GDP of 5.67 trillion yuan. Based on last year’s figures, each city’s economic size is comparable to that of a smaller European country, such as Sweden or Belgium. In…
Rise in Republicans wary of China as bipartisan agreement lessens, new survey says
Republicans in the United States increasingly oppose friendly cooperation with China, according to a new survey released on Wednesday, marking a major break with past decades. The report titled “The Growing Partisan Divide on US Foreign Policy”, published by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and drawing on 50 years of comparative data, found that respondents in the increasingly partisan US are sharply split on how Washington should deal with Beijing. Bipartisan agreement on the topic has sharply declined, the analysis found, with a 16-point gap now separating Republicans and…
Keir Starmer to hold talks with Xi to bolster economic ties with China
Keir Starmer will meet the Chinese president Xi Jinping on Thursday for historic talks he hopes will deepen economic ties at a time when some inside government fear the US is no longer a reliable partner. The prime minister – the first UK leader to visit China in eight years – will hold a 40-minute meeting with Xi at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing before a number of cultural and business receptions. On the flight to Beijing, Starmer told journalists he wanted to bring “stability and clarity”…
UK and China to share intelligence over people traffickers in the Channel
Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer will on Thursday sign a pact with China’s President Xi Jinping to share intelligence to tackle people-trafficking gangs, in a sign of a significant warming of relations. After a spell of what Starmer called “Ice Age” diplomacy, Britain and China have agreed to work together to curtail the supply of the Chinese-made small boat engines used in Channel crossings. Chinese state media have given…
Francisco Urdinez on how Venezuela tests China’s economic advance in Latin America
One of the leading scholars of China-Latin America relations, Francisco Urdinez is known for coining the concept of “economic displacement”, a theory that also gives its name to his Cambridge University Press book title published in November. The idea holds that China’s rise has reduced US relevance in the region by making partnerships with Beijing more consequential and ties with Washington less essential for many governments. Now, in the wake of US attacks on Caracas and the abduction of Nicolas Maduro, Urdinez examines how Venezuela could upend that framework and…
US’ Rubio says China profited from Venezuela’s collapse through cut-price oil
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio accused China of profiting from Venezuela’s long-running economic collapse by securing discounted oil, telling senators that removing Nicolas Maduro was necessary to end energy arrangements that he said “favoured Beijing at the expense of the Venezuelan people”. During a hearing of the US Senate Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday, Rubio portrayed China as a central beneficiary of the Maduro government, arguing that Beijing had taken advantage of sanctions and economic isolation to secure access to heavily discounted crude while expanding its influence in the…
Burner phones and lead-lined bags: a history of UK security tactics in China
When prime ministers travel to China, heightened security arrangements are a given – as is the quiet game of cat and mouse that takes place behind the scenes as each country tests out each other’s tradecraft and capabilities. Keir Starmer’s team has been issued with burner phones and fresh sim cards, and is using temporary email addresses, to prevent devices being loaded with spyware or UK government servers being hacked into. The employment of such tactics may sound dramatic but they are par for the course in an age of…