Days after the operation that abducted then Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro, President Donald Trump’s nominee to command US forces in Latin America dodged pressure from senators to endorse a military-first plan to counter China’s growing influen...

An 82-year-old woman from eastern China, affectionately known as the “hardcore grandma,” has captivated many with her remarkable skills in operating field fertilisation drones and her success as a live-streamer selling rice. Born in 1943, Dai Shu...

Hong Kong’s corporate landscape expanded to unprecedented levels last year, with the total number of local registered companies reaching a record of nearly 1.56 million by the end of 2025. “By the end of 2025, the total number of local companies ...

HSBC Holdings’ exploration of options for its insurance business in Singapore may lead to a sale of the unit as the group reallocates resources to its insurance business in Hong Kong and mainland China, according to analysts. “It makes sense for ...

Chinese President Xi Jinping has refocused national anti-corruption efforts on illegal villas and “private resorts”, luxury developments that have come to symbolise excess and graft over the past two decades. According to newly released excerpts ...

Canada will remove the additional 100 per cent in tariffs it had imposed on Chinese electric vehicle (EV) imports, Prime Minister Mark Carney said on Friday during a state visit in Beijing. In place of the higher duties, Carney said, Canada will cap ...

China accounted for more than four out of five humanoid robot installations globally in 2025, driven by domestic start-ups AgiBot and Unitree Robotics, as mass production and commercialisation accelerated, according to a report by Counterpoint Resear...

A controversial church facing possible disbandment over religious-political collusion in South Korea is aggressively expanding its presence across Australia by targeting young people at universities and shopping centres, according to a former member ...

How to beat the United States in gene editing? A research team from Peking University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences had struggled with this question for three years, with no results. Then they decided to draw inspiration from an ancient woodwor...

The 15-year-old male student accused of murdering his schoolmate at a school in Malaysia’s Selangor state has been declared fit to stand trial, following a psychiatric evaluation. His lawyer, Kitson Foong, informed the press that he conveyed the re...

Hong Kong’s capital market is likely to experience significant fluctuations this year owing to intensifying geopolitical risks, the city’s finance chief has warned, stressing the need for caution in financial management. Six weeks before the gove...

Chinese state security authorities recently warned of “honey trap” risks in the defence and technology sectors, citing a case in which a public official was blackmailed into surrendering state secrets following a trip abroad. A social media accou...

The Standard Chartered Hong Kong Marathon attracts tens of thousands of people from all over the world every year but the sporting event had humble beginnings in the city. When Hong Kong held its first international marathon in 1969, there were only ...

As tensions between the United States and Iran threaten to plunge the Middle East into chaos again, regional military powers Turkey and Pakistan have revealed they are planning a tripartite defence partnership with Saudi Arabia. Thursday’s disclosu...

The Hong Kong government has launched a digital logistics platform offering real-time cargo tracking, with some 2,300 companies registered on the system. Secretary for Transport and Logistics Mable Chan said on Friday the new Port Community System wo...

A Malaysian man previously convicted of child abuse has been arrested again on suspicion of forcing his son, 10, to shoplift daily necessities. Police in Bahau, in Negeri Sembilan state’s Jempol district, were alerted to what initially appeared to ...

Impeached former South Korean president Yoon Seok-yeol was sentenced on Friday to five years in prison after being found guilty of resisting arrest and other offences linked to his botched martial law declaration in 2024. The ruling marks the first c...

China’s top diplomat in the United States delivered a sharply worded rebuke on Thursday over US President Donald Trump’s tumultuous approach to global relations, laying out a stark choice between a world informed by China-led stability and one ba...

A woman from eastern China ended up in the intensive care unit (ICU) hours after swallowing a raw fish gallbladder, believing it would cure her headache. The 50-year-old woman, surnamed Liu, from Jiangsu province, adhered to the folk remedy that clai...

Hong Kong’s security chief has defended police’s “difficult decision” to shoot dead a man who brandished a knife and took a woman hostage in a shopping centre, but a relative of the deceased said officers could have aimed for his limbs to avo...

China and Canada should build a new strategic partnership based on mutual respect and shared interests, Chinese President Xi Jinping said on Friday as both sides sought to turn the page on years of diplomatic friction. In talks with visiting Canadian...

We have selected seven stories from this week’s news across Hong Kong, mainland China, the wider Asia region and beyond that resonated with our readers and shed light on topical issues. If you would like to see more of our reporting, please conside...

Shares of Chinese electricity and grid equipment makers surged after State Grid unveiled a 4 trillion yuan (US$574 billion) plan to upgrade the country’s power networks, as surging demand and the global race in artificial intelligence drive investm...

Chinese scientists have unlocked a revolutionary supercooling innovation in semiconductor technology, paving the way for a 40 per cent leap in the performance of gallium nitride-based radar systems, which are widely used in China’s most advanced st...

The defence chiefs of Japan and the United States on Thursday agreed that the bilateral alliance is “unshaken” and pledged to reinforce its deterrence capabilities amid concerns in Asia that Washington’s focus is shifting from the region. Follo...

This story has been made freely available as a public service to our readers. Please consider supporting SCMP’s journalism by subscribing. Get faster notifications on the latest updates by downloading our app. Temperatures in Hong Kong are expected...

A garbage landslide that killed 19 people and left more than 20 missing in the central Philippines last week has prompted outrage from civic and green groups over poor enforcement of environmental laws for contributing to the disaster. The deadly ava...

America’s ambassador to China, David Perdue, will visit Hong Kong at the end of January to speak at a business conference, according to sources. Perdue will address the Goldman Sachs Global Macro Conference Asia-Pacific 2026 on January 27, several ...

United States President Donald Trump’s “America first” agenda is helping to make China great again and ushering in a “truly multipolar world”, according to a survey by the European Council on Foreign Relations. “A year on from Trump’s r...

Concerns about China’s slowing economic growth and “strained” Beijing-Washington relations rank as the top two concerns among members of the American Chamber of Commerce in China this year, according to a chamber survey released on Friday. The ...

The constant threat of genital mutilation of her daughter and son-in-law by loan sharks was so harrowing that a woman in Malaysia has resorted to disowning her own flesh and blood. “The loan sharks are vile. They threatened to sever the private par...

One of China’s latest Earth observation satellites operating in low orbit could feature an optical aperture at a two-metre scale with “global leading” remote sensing capabilities, according to a China Science Daily report on Thursday last week....

A Japanese ramen restaurant has ignited controversy by slapping a ban on Chinese customers, accusing them of being troublemakers. Iekei restaurant in the western city of Osaka announced on social media on January 4 that it had banned all Chinese peop...

Scroll through Tam Jai International’s mobile apps and you will encounter a wave of perks, menu offerings and other choices laid out to tempt you to the Hong Kong restaurant group’s staple offering, noodles. The apps are among several strategies,...

China’s move to raise margin requirements for leveraged stock trading signalled regulators’ push to steer clear of boom-and-bust cycles, while strengthening the stock market’s role in funding the country’s tech self-sufficiency efforts, accor...

Japan’s Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP), its next-generation fighter project in collaboration with the United Kingdom and Italy, may be given a boost now that the development of a similar aircraft has been put on hold. Germany, France and Spain ...

Brazil’s former president Jair Bolsonaro was on Thursday transferred to prison, where he will serve his sentence for orchestrating a failed coup in “more favourable” conditions, according to a court order. The 70-year-old former leader was sent...

No pursuit of nuclear weapons. Confronting drug trafficking. An immediate recognition of the state of Israel. Exporting copious amounts of oil and gas. Exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi laid out his aspirations on Thursday for Iran if its theocracy is...

Hong Kong’s banking and finance sector is tipped to lead retail property leasing activity, with massive uptake by firms like Forthright Securities, Futu Holdings and HSBC providing support to landlords struggling through a multi-year real estate sl...

Blending economic nationalism with geopolitical leverage, US President Donald Trump’s top trade official delivered a pointed message to Taiwan shortly after Washington announced an ambitious deal on Thursday to bring critical technology manufacturi...

A US spending bill approving US$300 million in cash assistance for Taiwan’s military has passed the House of Representatives and is expected to become law. On Wednesday, the House passed a two-bill government spending package that would fund the De...

Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado said she presented her Nobel Peace Prize medal to US President Donald Trump at the White House on Thursday even as he has questioned her credibility to take over her country after the US ousted leader...

China’s eastern tech powerhouse Zhejiang, home to giants like Alibaba and the humanoid robotics start-up Unitree, has set clear targets to develop cutting-chips and chipmaking equipment over the next five years. The province is the latest locality ...

If you were asked which middle-income country has one of the lowest levels of educational attainment, very few would say China. We continually hear stories about mass university expansion, record numbers of annual graduates and elite institutions tha...

A bipartisan group of lawmakers has proposed creating a new agency with US$2.5 billion to spur production of rare earths and the other critical minerals, while the Trump administration has already taken aggressive actions to break China’s grip on t...

A hacker group with links to China recently used Venezuela-themed phishing emails in a malware campaign targeting US government-related entities, as cyberattack campaigns increasingly leverage geopolitical materials, according to Swiss cybersecurity ...

The United States on Thursday said Iran halted 800 executions of protesters under pressure from President Donald Trump, after Gulf allies appeared to pull him back from military action over Tehran’s deadly crackdown on demonstrations. Iran was shak...

The United States has finalised a sale of Venezuelan oil – the first since Washington took control of the sector following the toppling of Nicolas Maduro, a US official told Agence France-Presse on Thursday. According to the official, who did not i...

Britain’s former ‍Conservative Party leadership candidate Robert Jenrick became the biggest-name defector to Nigel Farage’s right-wing Reform UK on Thursday, saying the nation was broken and its two mainstream political parties rotten. Sacked b...

Pennsylvania federal prosecutors on Thursday announced charges against 26 people for allegedly rigging bets on college and Chinese professional basketball games, the latest case to accuse athletes of cheating at legalised sports betting that ⁠has e...