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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…