Month: January 2026

Indonesian stocks crash for second day

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Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Indonesian stocks extended their losses on Thursday after index provider MSCI warned on the market’s investability and of a potential reclassification that could threaten investor flows to the country. The Jakarta Composite index fell as much as 10 per cent on Thursday after sliding 7.3 per cent on Wednesday. The declines triggered 30-minute trading halts on Wednesday and Thursday. The index is down more than 15 per cent since Tuesday,…

Tesla’s Japan victory is more retail than revolution

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Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. The most noteworthy thing about Tesla’s car sales is that they are shrinking. Elon Musk’s electric vehicle giant on Wednesday reported an 11 per cent decline in revenue from automobiles in the fourth quarter of 2025. Yet drill down, and there is at least one place the company is turning itself around. That is Japan. Set against 1.6mn car deliveries globally, the 10,600 units Tesla shifted in Japan last year,…

Chinese man who filmed evidence of Xinjiang rights abuses is granted asylum in US

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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…

Chinese AI goes next level in geometry at a top US maths Olympiad

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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…

China vows to help find man who allegedly burned baby with hot coffee in Brisbane — video

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A Chinese team will visit Australia to help search for a man who allegedly randomly attacked a baby with hot coffee before fleeing the country. China’s ambassador to Australia, Xiao Qian, announced on Wednesday that investigators will travel to Queensland to work with police to investigate the 33-year-old accused attacker. The stranger allegedly dumped a Thermos of coffee on a nine-month-old boy, Luka, at a Brisbane park on 27 August 2024 before fleeing to his home country, China, with which Australia has no extradition arrangement The Guardian

UK probably needs large new factory to meet target of 1.3m cars a year, say industry boss

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A target of building 1.3m cars a year is likely to be missed unless a large new UK factory is built in the coming years, an industry group has said, as Keir Starmer prepares to hold trade talks in China. Labour aims to have 1.3m vehicles rolling off production lines by 2035, a central ambition of its industrial strategy. That would nearly double the 764,715 cars and vans made in 2025, according to new data from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT). UK vehicle production slumped 15.5% in…

How Singapore Inc became a safe place for investors

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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?

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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

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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

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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”…