Day: September 17, 2026

At the heart of Hong Kong’s first five-year plan lies the Northern Metropolis – a massive tract of land spanning roughly a third of our entire city. Much ink has been spilled over what this project represents and why it matters, but if I had to summarise it in a single sentence, I would call it the “Shenzhen of Hong Kong”. To me, Shenzhen stands as the most miraculous growth story on Earth. Forty-eight years ago, it was a sleepy fishing village with a single muddy main road and just…

Nestled between the Tianshan Mountains and the Gobi Desert, the Hami oasis in Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region is a land of little rain, battered by wind and sand year-round. It is also home to the region’s oldest known burial site, the Tianshanbeilu cemetery, located around 500km (310 miles) east of Urumqi, the regional capital. More than 700 Bronze Age tombs have been unearthed here, long assumed to belong to Eurasian nomads who migrated eastward from the steppes. But a study published on Friday in the journal Science upends that view,…

Chen Youlin, a Chinese-American scientist, travelled back to China in October 2024 for a month-long holiday, including to celebrate his mother’s 80th birthday. As he prepared to leave, authorities arrested him at the airport in Beijing. For more than 670 days, his wife, Rong Yufang, and other family members have not been able to see or speak with him. “Sometimes I realise I can no longer clearly remember the sound of his voice, and that breaks my heart,” Rong told the South China Morning Post. “Our home feels empty without…

US Trade Representative (USTR) Jamieson Greer asked Brazil to review the sale of Anglo American’s nickel mines to a Chinese state-controlled miner in exchange for tariff relief, two people familiar with the negotiations told the South China Morning Post. Washington made the request during talks to lift the 50 per cent tariffs US President Donald Trump imposed on Brazilian goods last year. First reported by Brazilian newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo and CNN Brazil on Thursday, the proposal would have given Washington advance notice of mining asset sales before…

US-sanctioned Chinese companies are increasingly turning to open-source research to innovate and reverse-engineer restricted foreign technology, with a 72 per cent surge in scientific literature citations in their patent applications, according to a new study. While the United States said it expanded its Entity List to safeguard national security and preserve its technological edge, an analysis of Chinese patent filings over the 12 years until 2022 showed that US restrictions on access to technology had driven Chinese firms to widely source publicly available scientific knowledge and conduct more of their…

US President Donald Trump will personally greet Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping on the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews when Xi lands in Washington next Wednesday, a rare airport reception, a US official confirmed on background. Trump will attend Xi’s arrival ceremony at Andrews, where the Chinese president’s aircraft is expected around 4:00 p.m. local time on September 23. The president almost never meets visiting heads of state at the airfield. He typically waits at the White House. The gesture is not a perfect mirror of what Trump received in Beijing…

“Wang Yi stressed that the two sides should act in the spirit of equality, respect and mutual benefit” and “make good preparations for high-level engagement in the next stage,” said Mao Ning, a spokesperson for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs on social media. He also called on the two sides to “send a positive message that China and the United States are committed to advancing a constructive relationship of strategic stability and jointly promoting world peace and development”. The call is expected to have locked down final details of Xi’s…