On December 18, China made a bold move on the global economic chessboard. It launched a massive free-trade experiment by turning the entire island province of Hainan – an area, comparable in size to Belgium, whose gross domestic product was US$113 billion last year – into a duty-free customs zone. A new narrative has now…
W&H Law Firm opens a Foshan office, marking its 56th branch worldwide, which aims to further integrate the firm into the development of the Greater Bay Area. The Foshan office is led by founding partner Meng Lifeng, who has 27 years of experience in real estate and construction, corporate governance and criminal defence. The new…
China’s trade surplus – the difference between the value of goods it imports and exports – has hit $1 trillion for the first time, a significant yardstick in the country’s role as “factory of the world”, making everything from socks and curtains to electric cars. For the first 11 months of this year, China’s exports…
File picture showing workers making clothes to be exported to Germany at a clothing factory in Huaibei, Anhui province, China. (EPA Images pic) BEIJING: China’s factory activity shrank for an eighth straight month in November, official data showed Sunday, suggesting the world’s second-largest economy remains subdued despite a trade truce with the United States. The…
UPDATE: Demetrius Norwood III, the 21-year-old man involved in a hit-and-run, died on November 2, 2025. Norwood served in the U.S. Air Force and was awarded an Air and Space Achievement Medal, the National Defense Service Medal, and the Air and Space Training Ribbon. Norwood was born in Birmingham, Alabama, and died in Dade County,…
High Fashion vs. Fast Fashion For some time, France’s fashion industry and regulators have been agonising over whether to fight the rapid rise of Shein, Temu and other ultra-fast-fashion competitors — and how to do so if they do. That tension came to a head when Shein opened its first permanent store in Paris earlier…
Subscribe to The Frayed Edge by Sarah Kent, a weekly newsletter on how to build a cleaner, fairer fashion system. Happy Friday. It’s going to be the last working one for me for a little while; this is my final dispatch before heading out on maternity leave for the next few months. For regular readers,…
The European automotive sector is entering a new era—one where robots assemble cars, AI predicts failures before they happen, and smart factories set record efficiency benchmarks. According to Renub Research, the Europe Automotive Robotics market is forecasted to surge from US$ 2.95 billion in 2024 to US$ 7.37 billion by 2033, expanding at a strong…
A dispute between Amsterdam and Beijing over technology transfer has held up chip supplies to car manufacturers. Published On 4 Nov 20254 Nov 2025 Click here to share on social media share2 Share The Chinese government has slammed the Netherlands over its seizure of chipmaker Nexperia, blaming it for jamming up a resolution to a…
China’s State Council has called for the faster development and wider rollout of large-scale testing and application environments for new technologies, as Beijing pushes to boost commercialisation and build a world-leading industrial base. The country should “focus on the frontiers of industrial development and key technological challenges, and prioritise the layout of new application scenarios…