The Chinese military is pushing for stricter rules on equipment purchases, including its pricing system, to stem corruption. According to a set of “professional ethics” released on Friday, the Central Military Commission’s (CMC) Equipment Devel...

A mysterious and ancient tradition in China involves practitioners who try to predict the future and communicate with the spirit world via a ritual known as rice divination, or mun mai, in the south of the country. Its origins can be traced back to t...

China’s military build-up “could have a serious impact” on Japan’s security, Tokyo’s defence ministry has warned amid spiralling tensions with Beijing. Japan has closely monitored People’s Liberation Army (PLA) activities stretching acros...

The Hong Kong government will exempt 90 per cent of households from the year-long population census in 2026, opting instead for a “re-engineered” model that uses existing data to track the city’s demographics – a major break from decades of s...

The Bank of Japan (BOJ) raised interest rates on Friday to levels unseen in three decades and signalled its readiness for further hikes, taking another landmark step in ending decades of huge monetary support and near-zero borrowing costs. It also re...

A Malaysian police officer’s superhero moment has gone viral after dashcam footage showed him wrenching open a suspect’s car door with his bare hands during a chase. The two-minute clip, widely shared on social media, shows a car being driven aga...

This week, exactly six years ago, as we were gliding cheerfully into the 2019 festive Christmas season, the Covid-19 virus was spreading in Wuhan, China. I was preparing for an important meeting in Australia in February (the last overseas trip I woul...

More Chinese artificial intelligence firms and chipmakers are turning to Hong Kong for fundraising, testing the appetite of global investors following stellar onshore debuts of graphics processing unit (GPU) developers Moore Threads Technology and Me...

Hong Kong authorities took market rates into account before setting a two-year annual subsidy of HK$150,000 (US$19,278) for flat owners displaced by the Tai Po fire, the city’s home affairs minister has said, amid calls for the government to monito...

Hong Kong police have arrested five men on suspicion of posing as Mandatory Provident Fund (MPF) account holders to withdraw HK$1.8 million (US$231,300) from the city’s new online pension fund platform. The scam also prompted the Mandatory Providen...

A Hong Kong court has ordered a trial to determine the compensation an employer must pay to a dancer who was paralysed from the neck down in an accident at a concert featuring the popular boy band Mirror. District Court judge Phillis Loh Lai-ping sai...

US President Donald Trump’s ‌administration has launched a review that could result in the first shipments to China of Nvidia’s H200 chips, five sources said, making good on his pledge to allow the controversial sales. Trump this month said he ...

Russia has dismissed reports of its nationals fighting for Cambodia in the escalating border clash with Thailand, saying the “unfounded assertions undermine” the traditionally friendly ties between Moscow and Bangkok. The Russian embassy in the S...

More than 1,000 civilians were killed in a three-day attack by the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group earlier this year on the largest displacement camp in western Sudan, the UN Human Rights Office said in a report released on Thursday. RSF stor...

China is no longer using American software to run its power grid. The Southern Regional Electricity Market (SREM) – the world’s largest unified power market – has switched fully to Tianquan, a solver developed by Chinese engineers with speeds 1...

China is still trying to recruit US-based researchers despite years of heightened scrutiny, members of Congress were told on Thursday at a hearing where multiple science agencies warned that tighter security measures must go hand in hand with efforts...

Catch up on some of SCMP’s biggest stories about overtourism in Asia. If you would like to see more of our reporting, please consider subscribing. 1. Bali fumes at frugal tourists who spend time but less money Locals in the Indonesian holiday hotsp...

Extremist movements in the Philippines have come under scrutiny since it was revealed that two suspected terrorists had visited the country weeks before they killed 15 people in Australia, but observers argue that such threats have waned and official...

The Philippines is lagging behind its Southeast Asian peers in winning back Chinese tourists, with arrivals still only a fraction of pre-pandemic levels, according to new regional research. Just over 312,000 Chinese tourists visited the Philippines i...

Dressed in festive outfits, nearly 140 people dashed through Hong Kong’s streets on Sunday for the annual Santa Hash charity run, raising vital funds in the process. The event began at Lockhart Road Playground in Wan Chai and covered a 6km (4 miles...

US President Donald Trump suspended the green card lottery programme on Thursday that allowed the suspect in the Brown University and MIT shootings to come to the United States. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a post on the social pla...

A Shanghai police officer who looks uncannily like the famous Taiwan actor Eddie Peng Yu-yan has trended on social media. A video clip of the officer, who only joined the force quite recently, has racked up over one million likes. Officer Gu Chenhan,...

US President Donald Trump’s “blockade” of sanctioned oil tankers off Venezuela’s coast was raising new questions about the legality of his military campaign in Latin America, while fuelling concerns that the US could be edging closer to war. ...

Hong Kong customs has arrested two party room operators on suspicion of providing pirated karaoke songs to customers after raiding eight properties across the city. The Customs and Excise Department said on Friday that officers launched an operation ...

China reduced its US Treasury holdings in October to its lowest level in 17 years, as mounting concerns over US debt sustainability and the Federal Reserve’s independence further eroded confidence in dollar-backed assets. The country’s stockpile ...

The Myanmar junta’s recent air strikes on a hospital just days before a general election this month are aimed at securing more territory and “intimidating” voters while major powers look the other way due to their own economic and strategic int...

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...

The need for a flexible mindset, long-term investment and cooperation between Asian nations as the world embraces more sustainable ways to produce, distribute and consume energy were the key action points from top-level discussions involving policyma...

Hongkongers gathered on Friday to pay their last respects to the firefighter who died battling the Tai Po blaze, as his hearse passed the site of the inferno and the fire station he had served in en route to the cemetery in Gallant Garden, in a funer...

When the Indonesian island of Sumatra was struggling to recover from devastating floods last week, local authorities in Aceh turned to an unconventional form of help to clear debris: elephants. The move to deploy four trained elephants in Pidie Jaya ...

Singapore police have arrested a US-sanctioned man who operated a superyacht for the alleged mastermind of one of Asia’s largest scam networks. Nigel Tang Wan Bao Nabil was taken into custody on December 11 after he returned to Singapore, according...

EU leaders struck a deal Friday to provide Ukraine a loan of €90 billion (US$106 billion) to plug its looming budget shortfalls - but failed to agree on using frozen Russian assets to come up with the funds. The middle-of-the-night agreement reache...

As the United States undergoes a strategic shift in its global priorities, experts in China are pushing Beijing’s vision for a new world order – but they say the country must improve its messaging. Leading political scientist and government advis...

Hong Kong police have arrested a 62-year-old taxi driver after he allegedly knocked down a woman in Central, who later succumbed to her injuries. A taxi was travelling along Caine Road when it hit a 68-year-old female pedestrian near Elgin Street at ...

This month’s Legislative Council election once again put Hong Kong’s political participation in the spotlight. Despite official calls for civic engagement and a modest improvement over the previous election, voter turnout remained historically lo...

A city government in Japan has unveiled a bizarre yet impressively realistic pair of fully wearable boots modelled after Taiwan’s beloved dish, braised pork rice. The creation has sparked a lively discussion on social media and left netizens in Tai...

Taiwanese mortuary reconstruction specialist Kuo Chang-chen wasted no time starting work to restore the bodies of Wang Fuk Court’s fire victims upon arriving in Hong Kong on Thursday. Kuo, 62, is leading a team of five other specialists from Taiwan...

China is gaining a solid reputation as a pharmaceutical innovation hub, shifting from a copycat drug maker to one whose infrastructure and research and development capabilities rival global pharmaceutical behemoths, according to a global consultancy....

Chinese scientists have unveiled an optical computing chip that outperformed Nvidia’s leading AI hardware by over a hundredfold in speed and energy efficiency – particularly for generative tasks such as video production and image synthesis. The L...

More than a year after former South Korean president Yoon Suk-yeol’s failed attempt to impose martial law, the country’s top court has announced changes to how politically explosive cases are handled, as public anger over delays and alleged bias ...

US President Donald Trump on Thursday signed a sweeping defence bill that would restrict US outbound investment in Chinese technology and curb federal contracts with Chinese biotechnology companies, amid an uneasy trade truce between Washington and B...

In a landmark move that ends years of legal and political uncertainty, TikTok CEO Chew Shou Zi informed employees on Thursday that the company has signed a binding agreement to divest its US entity into a joint venture controlled by a consortium of A...

China is expected to remain the world’s biggest buyer of semiconductor manufacturing equipment through 2027, as domestic chipmakers keep expanding capacity under Beijing’s push for greater tech self-sufficiency, according to a new industry report...

Violence broke out in Bangladesh’s capital early on Friday after a youth leader of the country’s 2024 pro-democracy uprising who was injured in an assassination attempt died in a hospital in Singapore. Thousands of protesters took to the streets ...

The US State Department’s approval this week of a US$11.1 billion weapons package for Taiwan – reportedly the largest in the island’s history – dovetails with Taipei’s effort to show US President Donald Trump it is doing more to defend itse...

China is estimated to have secured more than half of the 12 million tonnes of soybeans that Washington says Beijing committed to purchase by early 2026, based on US government data and market conventions that analysts say usually indicate China, thou...

A frantic search for the suspect in last weekend’s mass shooting at Brown University ended at a New Hampshire storage facility where authorities discovered the man dead inside and then revealed he also was suspected of killing a Massachusetts Insti...

US President Donald Trump has signed an executive order that aims to return astronauts to the moon through Nasa’s Artemis space programme with an eye toward building a permanent lunar presence. The directive reinforces Nasa’s current plans for se...

Historians are likely to point to 2025 as the watershed in China’s 21st century ascent, a year in which the People’s Liberation Army’s power projection matured across all domains, resetting the global balance of power. This seismic shift is und...

The United States on Thursday underscored its maritime security partnership with Panama, as a high-stakes dispute involving China, US investors and a Hong Kong conglomerate continues to cloud the future ownership of key ports at the Panama Canal. US ...