Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center — China was set to launch its Shenzhou-21 spacecraft on Friday, carrying a new three-person crew to man the country’s own Tiangong space station on a mission focused on scientific research. The replacement crew includes China’s youngest-ever taikonaut — as China’s space program calls its astronauts — and, for the first time…
US software company SAS Institute has withdrawn from mainland China and dismissed its local staff, according to a Beijing-based employee affected by the move, as the analytics specialist ended more than two decades of operations amid intense domestic competition and geopolitical tensions. The company on Thursday announced the lay-offs via an email and hosted a…
US President Donald Trump hailed his high-stakes meeting on Thursday with Chinese leader Xi Jinping as a “great success”, marked by progress on thorny trade issues. Trump agreed to reduce America’s fentanyl-related tariffs on China by 10 percentage points and cut the overall tariff rate on Chinese imports from 57 per cent to 47 per…
US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth met Chinese Defence Minister Dong Jun in person for the first time on Friday, with both sides saying they are pushing for peace a day after a summit between their presidents brought tensions down. The discussion on the sidelines of the Asean Defence Ministers’ Meeting Plus in Malaysia was the…
China’s factory activity slump worsened in October, reaching its longest decline in more than nine years as a deepening economic slowdown sets in during the final quarter. The official manufacturing purchasing managers’ index was 49, versus 49.8 in September, the National Bureau of Statistics said Friday. The median estimate of economists surveyed by Bloomberg was…
Power shifts begin in places most people never see – on assembly lines making batteries and robots, along transmission lines feeding data centre clusters, in local offices selling land and in labs training artificial intelligence models. The United States and China are using these quiet levers to construct different futures. The contest will be decided…
BUSAN, South Korea (AP) — Three-digit tariffs are off the table, but import duties on each other are higher than in January. Rare earth materials will flow more smoothly, but China has put in place an export permitting regime that it can tighten or loosen as needed. Port fees will go away, but only for…
The first in-person summit between Chinese and American leaders since US President Donald Trump’s return to office marked a symbolic reset in the balance of power between the two rivals, yielding a time-bound agreement to pause escalation in their intensifying trade conflict. From freezing new tariffs and rare earth export controls to resuming key US…
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. ‘Amazing’ Xi-Trump summit, as it happened – deals struck as trade war thaws Chinese President Xi Jinping has held talks with his American counterpart Donald Trump, their first in-person…
US President Donald Trump’s administration needs to reverse the destructive policies undercutting America’s ability to compete with China in strategic hi-tech sectors or see Beijing race ahead, a leading member of the hardline US House Select Committee on China said on Wednesday. China’s commitment to the progress of tech innovation has caused unease in the…