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Nestled between the Tianshan Mountains and the Gobi Desert, the Hami oasis in Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region is a land of little rain, battered by wind and sand year-round. It is also home to the region’s oldest known burial site, the Tianshanbeilu cemetery, located around 500km (310 miles) east of Urumqi, the regional capital. More than 700 Bronze Age tombs have been unearthed here, long assume...
This is the first part of a Factsheet series on Hong Kong’s debut five-year plan and the 2026 policy address, click here for part two. The series was produced with support from the Hong Kong SAR government. To see the South China Morning Post’s coverage of the five-year plan, click here. This Factsheet will be available in the SCMP print edition on September 21. You can find it at newsstands and c...
Hong Kong police will establish a high level of security for this weekend’s state funeral of the city’s first chief executive, Tung Chee-hwa, including guarding the three top Beijing officials attending the event, the South China Morning Post has learned. However, the original public memorial service will instead be limited to invitation-only due to venue constraints, the Office of Former Chief Ex...
Poland’s delivery of Black Hawk helicopters to the Philippines has given Warsaw a foothold in Manila’s defence market as it seeks to expand exports from its growing defence industry, with analysts saying drones, air defence and potentially co-production could pave the way for a broader partnership. Polish deputy foreign minister Wladyslaw Bartoszewski said on Tuesday that Warsaw was keen to pursue...
Britain’s King Charles sounded “like a lottery winner” after the death of his late first wife Diana, her brother writes in his forthcoming book, new extracts of which were published on Thursday. Diana’s brother Charles Spencer said the then-Prince Charles was “giddily elated” in the immediate aftermath of Diana’s death in 1997, possibly because he felt it meant he was freer to marry again, acco...
The White House on Thursday withdrew its nominee to head US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency tasked with carrying out President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown. Lance Schroyer, a former US Marine and Oklahoma state trooper, was named by Trump earlier this year to be the next ICE director, a post subject to Senate confirmation. In a brief statement on its website, the White Hous...
Hong Kong shopping mall operators are extending a strategy used during this year’s Fifa World Cup into the Asian Games, leveraging major sporting events to draw visitors and support tenant sales as retailers face competition from Shenzhen, overseas shopping and online spending. Sino Group is among the landlords expanding the strategy beyond tournament broadcasts. It expects foot traffic across fou...
As technological developments augur an era of renewed space exploration, China is aiming to become a major player. In the second part of this two-part series, Wency Chen and Ben Jiang examine the country’s strategy and progress on reusable rockets – a field where the US has a tremendous lead. US commercial space firm SpaceX has been eager to tout its deployment of reusable first-stage rocket boost...
Chen Youlin, a Chinese-American scientist, travelled back to China in October 2024 for a month-long holiday, including to celebrate his mother’s 80th birthday. As he prepared to leave, authorities arrested him at the airport in Beijing. For more than 670 days, his wife, Rong Yufang, and other family members have not been able to see or speak with him. “Sometimes I realise I can no longer clearly r...
The Himalayan disaster that tore through the China-Nepal border last month was a human calamity before it became a media story. A torrent of ice, rock, mud and debris swept through valleys, destroying key infrastructure, severing roads and communications, and leaving families desperate for news. In Gyirong county in the Tibet autonomous region, the disaster hit a major border crossing and created ...
US Trade Representative (USTR) Jamieson Greer asked Brazil to review the sale of Anglo American’s nickel mines to a Chinese state-controlled miner in exchange for tariff relief, two people familiar with the negotiations told the South China Morning Post. Washington made the request during talks to lift the 50 per cent tariffs US President Donald Trump imposed on Brazilian goods last year. First re...
The US has approved a US$24.3 billion sale of 48 F-35 stealth warplanes to Saudi Arabia, the State Department said Thursday, the kingdom’s latest major arms purchase since the start of the Iran war. Saudi Arabia has long sought to buy F-35s, but officials from Israel – currently the only country in the Middle East to operate the jets – have voiced concern about their sale to Riyadh despite a push ...
US President Donald Trump said on Thursday that there had been “major progress” towards establishing an American military base in Poland, after Warsaw said it was holding talks with Washington on the issue. “Thanks to the bold leadership of my friend, Karol Nawrocki, President of Poland, major progress is being made toward establishing a U.S. Army base in Poland,” Trump said on social media. “If t...
Sanctioned Chinese companies are increasingly turning to open-source research to innovate and reverse-engineer restricted foreign technology, with a 72 per cent surge in scientific literature citations in their patent applications, according to a new study. While the United States said it expanded its Entity List to safeguard national security and preserve its technological edge, an analysis of Ch...
A diminutive wild cat that inhabits Bolivia’s cloud forest has been identified as a previously unknown species, marking the first time a new living cat species has been formally named and described in more than a century. The cat, called Tilcayo by local communities, is part of a group called tiger cats found across much of South America. It was found in Bolivia’s lush Yungas forest, a mountaino...
Hong Kong authorities have hit out at a US congressional commission for colluding with “anti-China politicians” to hold a hearing on jailed former media boss Jimmy Lai Chee-ying and introducing a bill to “intimidate” local national security officials with sanctions. The government issued the condemnation on Thursday night after the US Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) held a heari...
A photo of US President Donald Trump examining a depiction of Washington’s Kennedy Centre apparently being demolished sparked widespread attention on Thursday after he threatened to tear down the revered arts venue because he has been blocked from renaming it after himself. In the image captured by Agence France-Presse photographer Brendan Smialowski late on Wednesday at Joint Base Andrews, the Re...
A photo of Donald Trump examining a depiction of Washington’s Kennedy Centre apparently being demolished sparked widespread attention on Thursday after the US president threatened to tear down the revered arts venue because he has been blocked from renaming it after himself. In the image captured by Agence France-Presse photographer Brendan Smialowski late on Wednesday at Joint Base Andrews, the R...
US President Donald Trump will personally greet Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping on the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews when Xi lands in Washington next Wednesday, a rare airport reception, a US official confirmed on background. Trump will attend Xi’s arrival ceremony at Andrews, where the Chinese president’s aircraft is expected around 4pm local time on September 23. The president almost never meets v...
US President Donald Trump will personally greet Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping on the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews when Xi lands in Washington next Wednesday, a rare airport reception, a US official confirmed on background. Trump will attend Xi’s arrival ceremony at Andrews, where the Chinese president’s aircraft is expected around 4:00 p.m. local time on September 23. The president almost never m...
Hong Kong authorities have said they will legislate against persistent sexual abuse of children and the act of sending images of genitals to others online without consent after consulting the public. In a consultation report published on Thursday, the Security Bureau stated that with the city’s two professional legal associations expressing broad support for a dedicated law targeting persistent ch...
Around 100 start-ups selected to join Hong Kong’s flagship border tech hub will undergo mentorship programmes ranging from five to eight years, backed by industry heavyweights, the operator has revealed. Vincent Ma, CEO of Loop Hong Kong Park Company, said in an interview on Thursday that the start-ups were chosen to join the Hong Kong-Shenzhen Innovation and Technology Park (HSITP) following a mo...
Tertiary institutions seeking to establish campuses in one of three university towns planned for the Northern Metropolis megaproject will be given “favourable consideration” if they do not require a government loan to build their facilities, Hong Kong’s education minister has said. The government has expanded all three university towns – formally named in Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu’s annual ...
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi held a phone call with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Thursday, just a week ahead of President Xi Jinping’s planned trip to the United States. Chinese state news agency Xinhua said in a brief report that the two diplomats held an in-depth discussion on “high-level exchanges” between the two countries. The call is expected to have locked down final details of ...
Callers to Hong Kong’s 999 hotline will be able to send real-time audio and visual information to emergency call centres using instant messaging apps in 2028, Secretary for Security Chris Tang Ping-keung has said. The security minister revealed the timeline for the upgrade on Thursday, a day after Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu announced in his latest policy address that three new functions were...
Callers to Hong Kong police’s 999 hotline will be able to send real-time audio and visual information to the emergency call centre using instant messaging apps in 2028, Secretary for Security Chris Tang Ping-keung has said. The security minister revealed the timeline for the upgrade on Thursday, a day after Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu announced in his latest policy address that three new func...
China and the United States are discussing possible announcements to strengthen military-to-military ties during Chinese President Xi Jinping’s state visit to Washington next week, multiple sources familiar with the discussions told the South China Morning Post. Another item that is being discussed, and a possible deliverable, is restarting the arms-control talks that were suspended in 2024 over U...
Amid rising tensions over artificial intelligence (AI) competition and global concerns about the technology, China appears to have an edge over the US and European Union (EU) in trust to regulate AI among mostly middle-income countries. A new Pew Research Centre report released on Thursday found that, on a median basis across 12 countries, more people trust China than the US or the EU to regulate ...
Sweden’s conservative Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson announced his resignation on Thursday after the left-wing opposition won a slim majority in parliament in the country’s general election. “It is now the speaker of parliament who will lead the next steps on the path towards forming a new government. In order for this work to begin immediately, I hereby request to be relieved of my duties as prim...
Hong Kong’s plan to raise its gold holdings will further cement the city’s status as an international financial centre, with the possibility of building vaults in the Northern Metropolis megadevelopment, according to authorities. Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po also said on Thursday the city was under “no pressure” to raise interest rates following a US rate hike, but stressed authorities woul...
