Category: Pl

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…

There has been growing debate about whether US President Donald Trump’s tariff strategy will drive a wedge between China and other Global South nations. Analysts say the opposite is happening. Advertisement One example is China, facing duties of up to 245 per cent, and Brazil, where Trump’s global baseline 10 per cent tariff has been imposed. The two nations have stepped up high-level engagement since the tariff chaos started. On Tuesday, China’s top diplomat Wang Yi called for Brasilia and Beijing to oppose “the law of the jungle” together and…

The trade war between the United States and China has put more than US$140 billion worth of American exports and thousands of jobs at risk, according to a new report by a US business lobby group. Advertisement It said the tit-for-tat tariffs imposed by the two countries are affecting a wide range of industries that support employment in the US – including agriculture, semiconductors, education, travel and aerospace. The report by the US-China Business Council, released in Washington on Tuesday, said the “precipitous decline in US exports to China” was…

Catch up on some of SCMP’s biggest China stories of the day. If you would like to see more of our reporting, please consider subscribing. 1. China passes private sector law, addressing gripes of beleaguered businesses China passed a much-anticipated law to shore up the country’s private economy on Wednesday, as Beijing delivers on its oft-repeated promise to protect and promote the non-state sector at a time when the Chinese economy looks to hinge more on domestic dynamism to ensure growth amid a trade war with the United States. 2.…