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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. Chinese consumers are snapping up Apple’s new iPhones, with a flashy “Hermès orange” premium model going viral and helping reverse a lengthy sales decline in one of the Silicon Valley company’s largest markets. Chief executive Tim Cook recently touted Apple’s record-breaking iPhone sales in China in the fourth quarter, when revenue jumped 38 per cent year-on-year to $26bn, contributing nearly a fifth of total sales. Analysts said a design refresh…

A global race for Brazil’s vast deposits of rare earths is heating up, with the US, China and EU all vying for access to the minerals that are vital for an array of 21st-century technologies. The Latin American nation’s reserves of the metals, the second-largest in the world, are in the crosshairs of both Washington and Brussels as they try to reduce dependence on China, the dominant producer which has a chokehold on supplies. The EU is in talks to reach an agreement with Brazil for joint investments into critical…

Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for free Your guide to what Trump’s second term means for Washington, business and the world The US is compiling a large arms sale of Patriot missiles and other weapons for Taiwan that Beijing has privately warned could jeopardise President Donald Trump’s state visit to China in April. The Trump administration is developing a package of four systems for Taiwan to purchase on the heels of the record $11.1bn arms package it unveiled in December, according to eight people familiar with the situation. China…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Residents living next to China’s proposed “mega” embassy in London have taken the first formal step in pursuit of a judicial review of the UK government’s approval for the diplomatic complex. Residents of Royal Mint Court have written to the UK government legal department on Thursday night, issuing a pre-application letter setting out grounds for the embassy to be reviewed by a judge. In 2018 when the Chinese government bought…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Volatility, claims Xu Xudong, is the key to making money in the gold business. And for this wholesaler, the past year has been an embarrassment of riches. “It takes volatility to heat the market up, otherwise it’s just flat,” he said, sipping tea in the Shuibei gold wholesale district of Shenzhen in southern China. The future, he added, was bright, at least for the remaining three years of US President…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Volatility, claims Xu Xudong, is the key to making money in the gold business. And for this wholesaler, the past year has been an embarrassment of riches. “It takes volatility to heat the market up, otherwise it’s just flat,” he said, sipping tea in the Shuibei gold wholesale district of Shenzhen in southern China. The future, he added, was bright, at least for the remaining three years of US President…

This article is part of FT Globetrotter’s guide to Hong Kong At some point it became customary to refer to The Peninsula as the grande dame of Hong Kong hotels. To the extent that grande damerie is a matter of longevity, this is fair enough. It’s no secret that it is pushing 100 — it will celebrate its 98th birthday at the end of this year. Which is getting on a bit by hotel standards anywhere, and positively ancient by the standards of Hong Kong. But in other respects the…

Stay informed with free updates Simply sign up to the Chinese economy myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox. Most Chinese provinces are targeting lower economic growth this year, in what many economists believe is a signal Beijing will set a historically low range of 4.5-5 per cent for its official goal in 2026. Of the 29 out of China’s 31 province-level areas that have so far announced growth targets, 19 have cut them compared with 2025, according to a tally by the FT. The central government is scheduled…