Hong Kong’s economy grew 7.9 per cent in the first quarter of 2021, according to finalised data confirming the highest jump for 11 years and building momentum for the city’s recovery from the coronavirus pandemic.The official year-on-year figure ...

Retired judge Henry Litton has defended Hong Kong’s sweeping national security law, saying it was reasonable to include a provision allowing Beijing to exercise jurisdiction in exceptional cases. Litton, a judge at the Hong Kong Court of Final App...

The Hong Kong government will set up a new task force to explore opportunities in green hydrogen to achieve “deeper decarbonisation”, environment minister Wong Kam-sing said.This includes learning from the experience of the Greater Bay Area city ...

A petition to cancel the Tokyo Olympics with more than 351,000 signatures was on Friday submitted to the city’s governor on Friday, with its organiser urging officials to “prioritise life” in light of the coronavirus pandemic.The online petitio...

Members of the public helping to handle complaints against Hong Kong judges under a new disciplinary system will not have any political affiliations and will be appointed by the city’s top jurist, a senior official has told lawmakers.Esther Leung Y...

More than a century after its ill-fated maiden voyage, the Titanic is being brought back from the deep at a landlocked Chinese theme park where tourists can soon splash out for a night on a full-scale replica.The project’s main backer was inspired ...

China on Thursday said its family planning policy never targeted any ethnic minority in Xinjiang as it responded to accusations that it had coercively reduced the birth rate of Uygurs.A report published by think tank the Australian Strategic Policy I...

Singapore on Friday announced further tightening of social distancing measures to combat an increased number of local Covid-19 cases, reimposing bans on dining at restaurants, urging people to work from home and restricting gatherings to two people r...

Taiwan reported a record rise in domestic Covid-19 cases on Friday with 29 new cases, as community transmissions in part of central Taipei spread and the government called for people to be tested.While Taiwan, with a population of some 24 million, ha...

Hong Kong’s long-awaited travel bubble with Singapore is unlikely to launch on May 26 as planned amid a recent surge in coronavirus cases in the city state, a top official has said.Edward Yau Tang-wah, Hong Kong’s secretary for commerce and econo...

Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC), the world’s fourth-largest foundry and China’s most advanced chip maker, said it may face delays at its new plant in Shenzhen due to US restrictions, co-CEO Zhao Haijun said at a confe...

A Chinese student planning to study in the US has been denied a visa, with the embassy saying it was because the applicant’s father works for the police, according to the education company handling it.The letter informing the student of the refusal...

Travellers from Taiwan to Hong Kong will be required to quarantine for 14 days in designated hotels, the city’s health minister has said, amid a recent surge of locally transmitted coronavirus cases on the island.The measure marks a shift from exis...

As India’s hospitals filled up and long queues emerged outside crematoriums last month, local journalist Anuj Awasthi had a big scoop. Oxygen supplies were being diverted away from his district in Uttar Pradesh to a larger city in the country’s ...

Human rights activist Aung Myo Min, 53, has many firsts under his belt.Three decades ago, he became the first openly gay person to become involved in Myanmar’s pro-democracy movement, when the bloody 1988 students’ uprising led him to dedicate hi...

A 10-year-old boy in southwestern China called the police when he decided a new haircut was far from satisfactory.The boy looked repeatedly into the mirror and became angry after the barber finished his work on the boy earlier this week in Anshun, Gu...

Is the idea of simply not wanting to have any relationship with men extremism? In most parts of the world, the answer should be “no”, but apparently not in China.In April, Douban, a Chinese social media platform favoured by liberal internet users...

In the second of a two-part series, the Post looks at the impact of the government’s moves to ease restrictions on restaurants and bars, depending on the Covid-19 vaccination status of staff and patrons. Read part one here.As soon as the Hong Kong ...

The number of Chinese companies listed on US equity markets have risen 14 per cent in the past seven months despite Washington’s intensifying efforts to limit market access to businesses it deems a security threat.As of May 5, as many as 248 Chines...

The United States needs new trade law tools to head off anticompetitive threats from China against key American high-technology industries, rather than reacting once harm is done, US Trade Representative Katherine Tai said on Thursday.Tai told a US H...

This is the sixth in a series of stories about China’s once-a-decade census, which was conducted in 2020. The world’s most populous nation released its national demographic data on Tuesday, and the figures will have far-reaching social policy and...

China launched a new national disease control bureau with more power on Thursday, according to state media, in a move aimed at improving the system to better prevent future outbreaks and safeguard public health.Wang Hesheng – an official who was la...

The pilot of an aeroplane that collided with another mid-air near Denver requested emergency landing for engine failure, not knowing that his plane was nearly ripped in half, according to air traffic control audio. Miraculously, both planes landed an...

This is the third in the South China Morning Post’s series of explainers about China’s Communist Party, in the lead-up to the party’s 100th anniversary in July. In this piece, Josephine Ma looks into the relationship between the party and the m...

Mainland Chinese businesses and their Asia-Pacific neighbours are increasingly directing their focus towards supply chains and investments closer to home as fears over trade disputes and protectionism rise, according to a poll by multinational law fi...

Israeli air and ground troops launched a blistering assault on the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, sweeping aside international appeals for de-escalation after four days of aerial bombardments failed to quell the heaviest militant rocket fire yet on Israeli co...

At least 192 Vancouver care home residents died of Covid-19, and more than 1,000 people were infected, at facilities that deliberately did not declare outbreaks when a “low risk” worker first contracted the virus, a South China Morning Post inves...

Xiaomi Corp scored a rare victory on Wednesday as it became one of the first Chinese tech giants to scrape its name off a US government trade blacklist and the smartphone maker’s success could give hope to others caught in the crosshairs of the US-...

The US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Thursday advised that fully vaccinated people do not need to wear masks outdoors and can avoid wearing them indoors in most places, updated guidance the agency said will allow life to begin t...

Colonial Pipeline Co. paid nearly US$5 million to Eastern European hackers last week, contradicting reports that the company had no intention of paying an extortion fee to help restore the country’s largest fuel pipeline, according to two people fa...

Former Hong Kong leader Leung Chun-ying has revived a controversial housing idea that was shot down by the current government and is pushing again for public flats to be built on the fringes of a protected country park, this time also suggesting they...

Taiwan is expected to roll out locally developed Covid-19 vaccines by the end of July, an announcement made as the island grapples with an outbreak of cases.President Tsai Ing-wen told reporters on Thursday night that phase 2 clinical trials of the v...

Vladimir Potanin, Russia’s richest man, faces one of the largest divorce fights the UK courts have ever seen after London appeal judges cleared the way for his former wife to renew her claim against him.The billionaire’s ex-wife Natalia Potanina ...

China plans to have a fully operational facility capable of extracting uranium from the ocean in about a decade’s time, according to the country’s nuclear authorities.Construction work could start as early as 2026, and once completed the plant wo...

An internet radio personality facing sedition and money-laundering charges failed to secure bail after a judge found he posed an “extremely high” risk of absconding given his connections in Taiwan, Hong Kong’s judiciary has revealed.In a judgme...

Chinese inflation is likely to rise moderately in the immediate future, but will avoid an unexpected spike like that seen last month in the United States, analysts said.Still, a sharp rise in raw material prices recently will put pressure on the prof...

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Thursday he was “anxious” about a rise in the UK of the coronavirus variant first identified in India, after a closely-monitored study of infections in England found the strain is becoming more prevale...

China’s foreign ministry has rejected the focus of a recent survey that found an increasing number of members of an influential American business group were considering leaving Hong Kong, saying it was a positive sign that more than half of those p...

Hong Kong police must be more transparent in investigating their No 2 national security officer after he was caught at an unlicensed massage parlour during a raid, legal experts have said, stressing the public deserved to know whether the force suspe...

Three-quarters of Hong Kong’s more than 1,000 kindergartens plan to freeze tuition fees next year despite the Covid-19 crisis driving up pupil withdrawals, while about 250 have applied to the government to raise the charges.“Under the current env...

Mixing doses of different Covid-19 vaccines could help tackle supply shortages, but more trials are needed to find the best combinations and dose intervals, experts say.The latest study, led by the University of Oxford, suggested that a vaccine cockt...

To analysts on South Asia, China’s warning to Bangladesh earlier this week against joining the four-member Quad alliance was surprising because Dhaka could hardly be considered a consequential player in Indo-Pacific security.Kanwal Sibal, who serve...

A Hong Kong caterer who supplied a government quarantine facility could face prosecution after health authorities confirmed a sample of one of their meals was tainted with bacteria following multiple complaints of food poisoning from people who had b...

China has described the military exercises in southern Japan involving troops and hardware from France, Japan, the United States and Australia as a waste of fuel, but observers say they may signal a tightening of the US alliance in the region.The wee...

Japanese billionaire entrepreneur Yusaku Maezawa and his assistant Yozo Hirano will be the next tourists to travel to the International Space Station (ISS), Russia’s space agency Roscosmos said on Thursday.Maezawa and Hirano will travel aboard a Ru...

An official with China’s top economic planning agency has told American company executives that they are “a quintessential part” of the country’s development, amid escalating tensions between the world’s two largest economies. Gao Jian, a ...

A Hong Kong university has said it will refuse to provide accommodation to unvaccinated students who do not undergo regular Covid-19 screening.Chinese University said on Thursday that dormitory residents who had not been inoculated must undergo coron...

Hong Kong’s international schools can apply for permission to resume full-time, on-campus learning this month, drawing complaints from their local counterparts which will only be allowed to operate on a half-day basis.The Education Bureau announced...

Japanese communities planning to welcome athletes from around the world – including Hong Kong – before the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics remain unsure whether the “host town” programme will proceed due to disruption caused by the coronavirus...