Day: June 9, 2026

Trump’s Sharp Turn on China: Embracing It as a Peer Power

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After meeting with China’s top diplomat in Malaysia last summer, Secretary of State Marco Rubio uttered a line that made few waves at the time but would later help pave the way for an abrupt change. The United States and China, Mr. Rubio said, had an “opportunity here to achieve some strategic stability” and find areas of cooperation. He used the phrase again in February while talking about China in the Caribbean, also to little notice. Chinese officials picked up on Mr. Rubio’s remarks and suggested to their U.S. counterparts…

Chinese pharmaceutical firms’ cost advantages trump Pentagon blacklist: analysts

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The Pentagon added Chinese pharmaceutical contractor WuXi AppTec to a list of entities it alleges are linked to the country’s military, but the blacklisting will not stop multinational drug makers from collaborating with China’s biopharmaceutical firms, according to analysts. “We view minimal impact given multinational [companies] in pharma still prefer made-in-China for cost efficiency,” said Cui Cui, head of healthcare research for Asia at Jefferies. “Meanwhile, Wuxi AppTec earnings visibility remains intact.” Cui said the global pharmaceutical industry sought “cost flexibility amid mounting pressure from drug pricing reforms and looming…

Being a woman in China is getting harder. But in Chengdu, female-only spaces are flourishing

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In a small, unassuming bookstore in south-west China, a discreet community of women dream of a more equal future. Here in Chengdu, 42-year-old Shen Shen runs one of the country’s leading feminist bookstores. “The world doesn’t lack bookstores for men,” she says, surrounded by piles of volumes by authors including Judith Butler, Simone de Beauvoir and Chizuko Ueno. But Shen Shen must tread carefully. Although “feminist” is not quite a dirty word in China, “gender antagonism” – behaviour or speech could be seen as stoking division between men and women…

Cheng Li-wun talks Trump, Taiwan and a future leadership run

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Taiwan’s main opposition leader hailed US President Donald Trump’s recent comments opposing the island’s independence as a “relatively positive first step” towards reducing tensions. Cheng Li-wun, chairwoman of the Kuomintang (KMT), told the South China Morning Post on Sunday in an exclusive interview: “The ‘one China’ principle and opposition to Taiwan independence have always been the Kuomintang’s stance. “On this political basis, the status quo across the Taiwan Strait can be maintained, and the likelihood of war can be minimised.” Advertisement Cheng, who is currently visiting the United States, said…

Why the new party academy role held by Xi Jinping’s chief of staff is important in China

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Last week, Chinese President Xi Jinping’s chief of staff Cai Qi, the fifth most senior official in the ruling Communist Party, was chosen to lead the Central Party School, Beijing’s leading academy for cadres. The Central Party School is not just any training site for Chinese officials, but part of a nationwide system that Xi considers key to the ideological purity of the party and important for the expertise needed by senior officials across the country. China’s technological self-reliance, Trump’s visit and the priority for this year’s ‘two sessions’ Who…

With no team in World Cup, China fans rally around a red card-happy referee

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With its national team failing to qualify again for the World Cup, China’s football fans have adopted a referee as the country’s star representative at the tournament, which begins on Thursday. Ma Ning, 46, has sparked viral memes and attracted sponsorships from major Chinese brands, including tech company Lenovo and electronics giant Hisense. Ma is known for his stern style. At a 2015 match in Shanghai, he dished out nine yellow cards and three red ones – a milestone in his refereeing career that earned him the nickname “card master”.…

US trade court to Trump administration: speed up tariff refunds

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The US Court of International Trade is pressing the Trump administration to speed up tariff refunds of billions of dollars to thousands of importers, following a partial roll-out after the US Supreme Court struck down its global tariffs in February. “The time has come to refund all the duties,” said Judge Richard Eaton on Tuesday, adding that the delay is leading to a “growing inequity” between big importers and small businesses. The judge did not issue any new order but noted that the government’s recent decision to challenge his earlier…

World’s largest chipmaker does not rule out price rises as costs increase

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The world’s largest chipmaker has told the BBC that inflation is pushing up the cost of doing business, and did not rule out price rises. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) makes the most advanced chips designed by companies such as Nvidia, AMD and Apple, so any increase in pricing could ripple through to the cost of AI infrastructure, and potentially over time, the prices customers pay for their electronic devices. However, the firm’s chief financial officer, Wendell Huang, said it would not introduce sudden “fourfold, fivefold” price rises. “We reflect…

What a US lawyer’s diaries show about prosecuting Japanese atrocities of Nanking massacre

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A US prosecutor’s newly revealed diaries from World War II have laid bare the gruelling effort to document Japanese wartime atrocities in China and the unlikely bond forged between him and the people he helped. The diaries belonged to David Nelson Sutton, an American assistant prosecutor at the Tokyo Trial, or the International Military Tribunal for the Far East – a landmark international judicial effort. The tribunal drew upon a vast “evidence wall” comprising nearly 50,000 pages of trial records to dismantle the legal foundations of Japanese militarism and establish…

Forget Weimar, it’s Japan’s Taisho period we need to talk about

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People always talk knowingly about Weimar, a period of extremes: artistic and social-sexual decadence, democratic liberalism and the radicalisation of the left and the right, before Germany’s descent into Hitlerian hell. The city as a symbol, close to the site of the former Buchenwald concentration camp, is back in the news, well, at least the op-ed pages of the Western press. That’s rarely a good sign. “The new crisis [in Germany] seems uncomfortably familiar because, in some respects, it resembles the one that engulfed the Weimar Republic a century ago,”…