Category: Pl

French utility group Suez is reviewing its Chinese water-infrastructure assets, people familiar with the matter said, as the company looks at potential ways to streamline its global operations. Advertisement The BlackRock-backed company is working with HSBC Holdings to study options for the business, the people said, asking not to be identified because the deliberations are private. It has approached a select group of potential buyers to gauge their interest, according to the people. A transaction could value the China water business at more than US$1 billion, some of the people…

US President Donald Trump says there is “a very good chance” of reaching a trade deal with China, even as his own trade envoy acknowledged just hours earlier that no tariff discussions are taking place between Washington and Beijing. Advertisement “Will we make a deal? There’s a very good chance we’re going to make a deal … and it [is] got to be fair,” Trump told US cable channel NewsNation on Wednesday. “We were ripped off by China, we were ripped off by everybody, but really by China. They were…

One in four non-Asian Americans regard Chinese-Americans as a potential threat, especially related to national security, while four in 10 fear that Asian-Americans have greater allegiance to their countries of origin than to the United States, according to a poll released on Thursday. Advertisement The results from an Asian American Foundation survey come as US-China relations plummet and add to concerns in the diverse community about the ability to assimilate at a time of growing social tension. “The poll underscores a troubling and ongoing disconnect between how Asian-Americans are perceived…

China will hold off on entering serious trade talks with the US while it waits to see which of Donald Trump’s advisers will have his ear and how other countries will respond to the 90-day pause on tariffs, according to sources. Advertisement The Trump administration was “too divided” and China was in no rush to negotiate an end to the tariff deadlock that Washington initiated, according to a source familiar with the situation. “There is no clear sign which clique will win,” the source said, referring to the various camps…

Advertisement “China boasts abundant data resources, a comprehensive industrial system, and vast market potential, providing a promising outlook for the development of AI,” Xi was quoted as saying by state news agency Xinhua during his visit on Tuesday. Launched in September 2023 after just 38 days of construction, the SMC – located in Shanghai’s Xuhui district, near the Huangpu River – is focused on enterprises involved in the development of foundational AI models. More than 100 companies have joined since the centre commenced operations, according to the SMC, showing the…

Advertisement Hangzhou-based Alibaba’s cloud computing unit on Tuesday unveiled its much-anticipated Qwen3 family, consisting of eight enhanced models that range from 600 million to 235 billion parameters. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post. In machine learning, parameters are the variables present in an AI system during training, which helps establish how data prompts yield the desired output. Alibaba’s latest AI models showed that Chinese companies have significantly closed the gap with US firms, while the pace of innovation is expected to continue in spite of US export restrictions on…

Potential Philippine interactions with Taiwan would be a “dangerous step” that would be seen as support for Taiwanese independence and could trigger economic retaliation from Beijing, according to a Chinese academic. Advertisement China’s foreign ministry summoned Jaime FlorCruz, Manila’s envoy to Beijing, on Tuesday to lodge “solemn representations over a series of negative moves recently made by the Philippines concerning Taiwan and security-related issues”, the ministry said. The ministry did not elaborate but on the same day the Chinese embassy in Manila warned against remarks by Philippine Navy Rear Admiral…

More than half of mainland Chinese citizens oppose the use of force to unify with Taiwan under any circumstances, according to a survey released on Wednesday. Advertisement The study, designed jointly by the Atlanta-based Carter Center and Emory University, found that 55.1 per cent of respondents agreed or somewhat agreed with the statement that “the Taiwan problem should not be resolved using force under any circumstances”, while 24.5 per cent disagreed or somewhat disagreed. A fifth of respondents were neutral. Yet on Russia respondents expressed more hawkish views: 66.1 per…

Amid US-Japan trade talks under way in Washington, Japanese lawmakers have warned that Donald Trump’s tariffs posed a threat to not just economic partnership but broader strategic cooperation, leaving space for regional rivals like China to expand their clout. Advertisement Itsunori Onodera, a former Japanese defence minister who served while the first Trump administration was in office, framed ongoing efforts to come to a trade agreement as a national security challenge. “We have to think about the linkage of the problem … [The] economy, national security, food security and economic…

China has lifted sanctions on members of the European Parliament and their families, in the first firm concession of a charm offensive aimed at prising Europe away from Washington’s orbit. Advertisement Beijing will hope its gambit will thaw out a bilateral investment pact, the ratification of which the parliament froze following a tit-for-tat exchange of sanctions over EU human rights concerns in 2021. The announcement was made by European Parliament President Roberta Metsola to a closed-door meeting of the chamber’s senior leadership on Wednesday, but had been telegraphed through a…