China’s Central Rural Work Conference, an annual gathering for the nation’s leaders to discuss agriculture and areas where many of the country’s poorest residents live, has sent a consistent message over the last quarter century: Beijing values...

Retail sales in Hong Kong fell by the most on record during the first 11 months of last year as the coronavirus pandemic kept big-spending tourists away and local consumers tightened their purse strings.The health crisis would continue to pose challe...

The former head of China’s aircraft carrier programme has been expelled from the Communist Party and placed under formal investigation on suspicion of abusing his powers and taking bribes, according to the top anti-corruption watchdog.Hu Wenming, w...

Police in Japan are calling on the Chinese community to beware of a new spike in telephone fraud cases targeting Chinese nationals. Authorities in the Kanto region, which encompasses Tokyo and the surrounding prefectures, are investigating automated...

Donald Trump and Joe Biden head to Georgia on Monday to rally their party faithful ahead of twin run-offs that will decide who controls the US Senate, one day after the release of a bombshell recording of the outgoing president that rocked Washington...

The 5.7 million citizens and long-term residents of Singapore eligible for a free Covid-19 vaccination will not be able to choose which shot they take, as this would “unnecessarily complicate the already complex vaccination programme”, the countr...

A Mercedes-Benz knocked down a cyclist at an intersection and travelled about 200 metres before being intercepted by a motorcycle in northern Hong Kong on Sunday evening.Dash camera footage showed the car made a brief stop after the collision at the ...

The United States aims to end its trade war with European allies and work with them to deal with China’s trade practices, a key official in the upcoming administration of Joe Biden said following the conclusion of a major investment deal between Be...

A Chinese court ruled that a local ratings firm should help compensate some creditors for a construction firm’s 1.4 billion yuan (US$216 million) bond defaults three years ago, a first in the country as Beijing raises pressure on agencies to improv...

Chen Yafei, a manager of a specialty cheese retail store in Shanghai, has for years been drinking the popular Australian wine, Penfolds, and buying it as gifts for family and customers to pair with his dairy products, mainly because of its auspicious...

Business owners in Tokyo said on Monday they were resigned to the possible return to a state of emergency as coronavirus cases reached record highs in Japan over the year-end period.Masako Nemoto-Deacon, managing director of the Miyabe Consultant exe...

In an extraordinary rebuke of Donald Trump, all 10 living former secretaries of defence have cautioned against any move to involve the military in pursuing the US president’s claims of election fraud, arguing that it would take the country into “...

South Korea’s population shrank last year for the first time in its history, according to new figures, revealing a worrying trend that is only expected to worsen in 2021 amid the coronavirus pandemic.There were 20,838 fewer people living in South K...

Social-distancing measures including a ban on public gatherings of more than two people and restaurant dine-in services after 6pm will continue for two more weeks, officials revealed, as Hong Kong recorded 53 new coronavirus cases on Monday.The suspe...

A mainland Chinese lawyer who helped one of the 10 Hong Kong fugitives jailed last week in Shenzhen for illegally crossing the border has been informed by authorities that his licence could be revoked for “making inappropriate remarks on the intern...

Convoy Global Holdings ushered in the new year the same way it closed the old one, with yet another boardroom manoeuvre as two shareholders with razor thin difference in stakes between them jostled for control of one of Hong Kong’s largest financia...

China’s manufacturing engine cooled slightly in December, even as various survey data suggested industrial growth in other Asian powerhouse economies hit the highest levels for years.China’s Caixin/Markit manufacturing purchasing managers’ inde...

Australia is moving to boost ties with small island nations off its eastern coastline, pushing back against China’s growing influence in the Pacific Ocean as the coronavirus pandemic hinders travel.Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s government has p...

The Operation Santa Claus (OSC) coffers became richer by HK$100,000 (US$12,900) this year, thanks to a generous donation by veteran radio DJ “Uncle Ray” Cordeiro. This came as the 96-year-old announced he would take a break from his radio shows,...

I GUESS YOU GUYS AREN’T READY FOR THAT YET, BUT YOUR KIDS ARE GONNA LOVE IT Today is my parents’ 63rd wedding anniversary, and if all goes to plan, they will soon get the Christmas present the family planned but could not deliver on time – a b...

China’s securities regulator on Sunday said New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) plans to delist three Chinese telecoms firms are “political” and that the impact will be “limited”.The NYSE on Thursday said it would delist China Mobile, China Unic...

The year 2020 is one that all would like to forget in a hurry. The coronavirus pandemic created a global crisis with no parallels in living memory. Governments around the world were forced to deal simultaneously with a catastrophic health emergency, ...

Singapore’s Changi Airport, routinely voted the world’s best and a key part of the city state’s psyche, is reinventing itself for the Covid-19 era and beyond.In a bid to keep people engaged until life returns to normal, it is offering glamping ...

The Hong Kong government made a U-turn on Monday, deciding it will continue conducting its daily Covid-19 press conferences with reporters present after an outcry followed its late-night decision to move the briefings online, sources have said.But th...

Researchers in Hong Kong say they have developed a world-first method to detect autism in children by scanning and analysing the back of their eyes using cameras and computer technology.The quick, non-invasive process can identify children at risk of...

Hong Kong private developers have built more than 8,500 nano flats that were each sold for millions of dollars over the past decade, according to a research group, which called for the government to impose a minimum size requirement on homes to impro...

Singapore’s economy contracted less sharply in the fourth quarter of 2020, as business activity continued to pick up and Covid-19 curbs were loosened amid declining infections in the community. The export-dependent city state saw GDP shrink by 3.8 ...

Japan’s largest opposition party is seeking to push forward a legal revision to enable married couples to have separate surnames by urging some members of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party to join hands with it.The development comes as a deep div...

When the Japanese energy firm Inpex in November settled a four-year legal battle against a Singaporean firm to retain its oil and gas concession with Vietnam in the South China Sea, it won the rights to drill in some of the world’s most fraught off...

Nancy Pelosi, the only female US Speaker of the House, was narrowly re-elected to the position Sunday in a deeply divided new Congress that convened in the final weeks of Donald Trump’s presidency.Pelosi, 80, faced a scare when five fellow Democrat...

75-year old Sang Xiuzhu applies make-up – such as mascara and lipstick – every day before venturing out. But this is a routine she found only recently.“I didn’t wear make-up when I was young. I didn’t have the financial resources for that,�...

A French-Irish teenager with learning difficulties died by “misadventure” after disappearing in the Malaysian jungle on a family holiday and no one else was involved, a coroner ruled on Monday.The body of Nora Quoirin, a 15-year-old with learning...

What is 2021 going to be like for Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor and her administration? I’m taking a wild guess here, but I’d say it’s going to be somewhat of an extension of 2020, and those chickens are going to come home to Gover...

When China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi visited Africa at the start of 2020, there was a lot of optimism. For ever-improving China-Africa relations, for growth and for more Chinese funding for the Belt and Road Initiative, Chinese President Xi Jinpin...

US President Donald Trump pressured Georgia’s top election official to “find” enough votes to overturn his defeat in the southern state, according to excerpts of a recording of the hour-long call released by The Washington Post on Sunday.The ca...

Gerry Marsden, lead singer of the British band Gerry and the Pacemakers whose version of You’ll Never Walk Alone became the thunderously sung anthem for Liverpool Football Club, has died at the age of 78, a friend announced on Sunday.“It’s with...

Rescuers have uncovered a seventh body from a landslide that buried homes in a village near Norway’s capital, police said Sunday, but hopes persist that three people still missing might yet be found alive.The tragedy occurred early on Wednesday whe...

Gunmen opened fire on a group of minority Shiite Hazara coal miners after abducting them, killing 11 in southwestern Balochistan province early on Sunday, a Pakistani official said.The Islamic State group later claimed responsibility for the attack.M...

The government will hear opinions from health experts soon on whether to declare a state of emergency in Tokyo and neighbouring prefectures hit by surging coronavirus cases, taking heed of a request by their governors, officials said Sunday.A panel o...

At least 19 people died when the roof of a shelter at a cremation facility in northern India collapsed on Sunday, police said.The roof at the site, in Uttar Pradesh’s Ghaziabad district, came down when people had taken shelter beneath the structure...

This story is published in a content partnership with POLITICO. It was originally reported by David Cohen on politico.com on January 3, 2021.US Surgeon General Jerome Adams declined to condemn Donald Trump on Sunday for calling Covid-19 death figures...

Operators of beauty salons and bars in Hong Kong have called on the government to urgently lift social-distancing restrictions, and warned that the livelihoods of thousands of workers have already been devastated after businesses were forced to close...

Many of Hong Kong’s young people are worried about contracting the coronavirus but two in five say they will not get the Covid-19 vaccine, a survey has found.Almost 90 per cent of the respondents were unhappy with the government’s handling of the...

Blame Covid-19 travel restrictions or Brexit but whatever the cause, some British citizens trying to return to their homes in Spain this weekend have been barred from boarding flights.Airlines are refusing documents that before Brexit had been valid ...

When Jose Manuel Barroso, former president of the European Commission, and Herman Van Rompuy, former European Council president, visited Beijing in November 2013, hopes were high that an investment treaty with China could be reached within 30 months....

Joe Biden faces historic challenges when he enters the White House on January 20: a raging pandemic, persistently high unemployment, simmering tensions with China and Russia – and a predecessor who won’t go away.Aware of the chaos and distraction...

A Chinese man has been jailed for more than six years over a medical equipment scam in the early days of the Covid-19 outbreak.The man from Jingzhou in Hubei province – just 200km (124 miles) from Wuhan, the initial epicentre of the coronavirus out...

Chinese internet users have marked the anniversary of the “wrong” done to Li Wenliang, the Chinese doctor who was reprimanded for warning colleagues about the coronavirus outbreak, with a fresh round of tributes.The Wuhan doctor died of the disea...

A major overhaul of Hong Kong’s compulsory pension system – the Mandatory Provident Fund (MPF) – could bring about savings of between HK$30 billion (US$3.9 billion) and HK$40 billion for millions of employees in the first 10 years after its lau...