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Zhou Bo is a retired senior colonel in the People’s Liberation Army, a senior fellow at Tsinghua University’s Centre for International Security and Strategy, and the author of the book Should the World Fear China? SCMP Plus readers get early access to articles in the Open Questions series. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is approaching its 2027 centenary, a major benchmark set by Beijing to ach...
Electric vehicle giant BYD plans to unveil its first humanoid robots within the next few weeks, as China’s electric car makers accelerate their push into the embodied artificial intelligence market. The Shenzhen-based company told the South China Morning Post in a statement that its long-anticipated first humanoid robots would debut in August at the firm’s Di Space experience centres. The robots w...
A Chinese-led team has analysed a 240 million-year-old fossil with the oldest known preserved stomach, liver and intestinal soft tissue in reptiles. The complete skeleton fossil has highly specialised body features that indicate it lived in the water, suggesting the marine colonisation of archosaurs was earlier and more extensive than previously believed. The fossil of the Austronaga minuta from t...
India’s West Bengal state will bring back eggs to free school meals after a backlash against a decision by its Hindu nationalist government to replace them with vegetarian alternatives, officials have said. The reversal follows criticism from teachers, nutritionists and parents who argued that removing eggs from school lunches could deprive children from poor families of a key source of protein. T...
India’s West Bengal state will bring back eggs to free school meals after a backlash against a decision by its Hindu nationalist government to replace them with vegetarian alternatives, officials have said. The reversal follows criticism from teachers, nutritionists and parents who argued that removing eggs from school lunches could deprive children from poor families of a key source of protein. T...
East Timor has become the unlikely venue for a war crimes case against Myanmar’s military leadership, as proceedings advance in Dili’s courts and test Asean’s uneasy approach to the junta. Brought by the Chin Human Rights Organisation (CHRO), the case is expected to shed light on whether a small nation with its own history of occupation and atrocity can use its courts to examine grave allegations ...
East Timor has become an unlikely venue for a case alleging war crimes and crimes against humanity by Myanmar’s military leadership, as it moves deeper into Dili’s courts and tests Asean’s uneasy approach to the country’s junta. Brought by the Chin Human Rights Organisation (CHRO), the case is expected to shed light on whether a small, newly admitted Asean member with its own history of occupation...
A Taiwanese man has been jailed for more than 12 years for trafficking cocaine into Hong Kong seven years ago in a case that marks an embattled judge’s final public appearance as a member of the bench. Judge Wilson Chan Ka-shun delivered the sentence at the High Court on Thursday, his last working day after he was told to retire early in light of concerns sparked by his repeated judicial plagiaris...
A Taiwanese man has been jailed for more than 12 years for trafficking cocaine into Hong Kong seven years ago – a case that marks an embattled judge’s final public appearance as a member of the bench. Judge Wilson Chan Ka-shun delivered the sentence at the High Court on Thursday, his last working day after he was told to retire early in light of public concern sparked by his repeated judicial plag...
China’s top leadership has made party governance the focus of a coming key conclave, signalling the significance of a clean record in the selection process ahead of next year’s national congress. The Politburo, China’s top decision-making body, announced on Thursday that the fifth plenary session of the Communist Party’s 20th Central Committee would be held in October, state news agency Xinhua rep...
China’s top leaders will gather in Beijing in October for their most important meeting ahead of next year’s Communist Party congress, when a major reshuffle is expected and Xi Jinping is due to begin a fourth term as leader. After a meeting of the Politburo on Thursday, the nation’s top decision-making body said the fifth plenary session of the 20th Central Committee would be held in October, stat...
Hong Kong taxi and minibus drivers have called for a two-month liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) subsidy scheme to be extended amid uncertainty over the war in the Middle East, and warned monthly operating costs could rise by up to 33 per cent when the policy ends this week. A government task force rolled out the subsidy on May 31, which offers a 50 HK cent (6 US cent) per litre rebate on LPG at the p...
Hong Kong taxi and minibus drivers have called for a two-month liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) subsidy scheme to be extended amid uncertainty over war in the Middle East, and warned monthly operating costs could rise by up to 33 per cent when the policy ends. A government task force rolled out the subsidy on May 31, which offers a 50 HK cents per litre rebate on LPG at the pump for taxis, minibuses ...
Hong Kong taxi and light bus drivers have called for a two-month liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) subsidy to be extended amid uncertainty over wars in the Middle East, and warned monthly operating costs could rise by up to 33 per cent when the scheme ends. A government task force rolled out the subsidy on May 31, which offers a 50 HK cents per litre rebate on LPG at the pump for taxis and public and ...
A barbecue chef in northwest China has become an internet sensation after users noticed his striking resemblance to Elon Musk, prompting a wave of memes and jokes online. Ma Jianping, 48, from Tongchuan in Shaanxi province, co-owns and operates Yilan Restaurant, where he showcases his culinary skills. Originally from Gansu province, Ma spent years working as an electrician before transitioning to ...
China has lodged formal diplomatic representations with New Zealand over “negative remarks” made in its parliament, after Foreign Minister Winston Peters told a Chinese-born opposition lawmaker to “go back to your own country”. The official protest on Thursday, accompanied by a rare social media statement from Beijing’s ambassador in Wellington, escalated a fiery domestic exchange over race and go...
A parliamentary clash in Wellington has elicited a subtle rebuke from Beijing after New Zealand’s Foreign Minister Winston Peters told a Chinese-born opposition lawmaker to “go back to your own country”. The comments on Wednesday prompted a rare social media response from Beijing’s envoy in Wellington, adding an international dimension to an already contentious domestic debate over governance and ...
A Hong Kong security guard who tied up a building resident’s missing cat in a plastic bag and dumped it in a rubbish bin has been sentenced to four months in prison, with the magistrate saying his actions had probably led to the animal’s death in a landfill site. Kwun Tong Court on Thursday sentenced Chou Wing-lok, a former security guard at a residential building in Ngau Tau Kok, for one count of...
A Hong Kong security guard who tied up a building resident’s missing cat in a plastic bag and dumped it in a rubbish bin has been sentenced to four months in prison, with the magistrate saying his actions had probably led to the animal’s death in a landfill site. Kwun Tong Court on Thursday sentenced Chou Wing-lok, a former security guard at a residential building in Ngau Tau Kok, for one count of...
Russia pounded Ukraine with dozens of missiles and hundreds of drones, killing eight people in overnight attacks on Thursday, President Volodymyr Zelensky said, decrying shortages of air defence supplies and urging allies to help. Russia launched more than 70 missiles and about 280 drones, Zelensky said in a statement on the Telegram app. The capital Kyiv and the western region of Lviv on Ukraine’...
Russian air strikes killed at least eight people in Ukraine on Thursday, including one in Kyiv, in attacks extending as far as the western city of Lviv, forcing neighbouring Poland to scramble fighter jets to secure its airspace. The attacks come as President Volodymyr Zelensky returns from the United States, where he said President Donald Trump agreed to give Ukraine licences for Patriot missile...
Russian air strikes killed at least 13 in Ukraine on Thursday, including one in Kyiv, in attacks extending as far as the western city of Lviv, forcing neighbouring Poland to scramble fighter jets to secure its airspace. The attacks come as President Volodymyr Zelensky returns from the United States, where he said President Donald Trump agreed to give Ukraine licences for Patriot missiles. Air rai...
A senior Hong Kong finance official has hit back at criticism of the city’s prospects as “bias against China”, following a recent commentary by a prominent US economist who asserted that “the Hong Kong of old is over”. The government’s rebuttal did not directly name any specific critic but was published after American economist Stephen Roach wrote an opinion article saying Hong Kong had become a m...
It was important enough to the framers of the US Constitution to be included in the first 10 amendments known as the Bill of Rights – that no person “shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself”. Today, that protection – famously known as “pleading the Fifth” – remains one of the most visible and politically charged safeguards in American law. It has seeped into the cul...
It was important enough to the framers of the US Constitution to be included in the first 10 amendments known as the Bill of Rights – that no person “shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself”. Today, that protection – famously known as “pleading the Fifth” – remains one of the most visible and politically charged safeguards in American law. It has seeped into the cul...
This article was first published on July 26, 2016. PLA, police ready as Pokemon Go arrives in city by Zen Soo and Naomi Ng (Additional reporting by Laura He) Pokemon Go, the augmented reality smartphone game that has taken the world by storm, launched in Hong Kong yesterday (July 25, 2016), prompting multiple warnings against trespassing and straying onto busy roads. The city was quickly abuzz wit...
The 7.1-magnitude earthquake that struck southern Japan toppled houses and split open streets in the small city of Yatsushiro, but town official Akio Matsushita is most worried about the invisible threats from the lack of water and power amid the punishing summer heat. Many of the port city’s roughly 58,000 households were still without running water or power on Thursday, two days since the quake...
Nearly three-quarters of Cuba’s hotels have been closed and the island’s tourism sector has been brought to “almost total paralysis” by US sanctions and fuel shortages, Prime Minister Manuel Marrero said on Wednesday. Detailing the scale of the tourism crisis for the first time, Marrero said seven international chains, responsible for about half of all hotel rooms, had left the island. Tourism had...
US President Donald Trump said he would be “quite disappointed” if his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping broke a personal promise not to arm Iran, even as he revived his accusation that long-time US health official Anthony Fauci helped shield Beijing from scrutiny over the origins of Covid-19. The comments came as Fauci, who led the US response to the pandemic, appeared before a Senate committee. Sep...
US President Donald Trump said he would be “quite disappointed” if his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping broke a personal promise not to arm Iran, even as he revived his accusation that long-time US health official Anthony Fauci helped shield Beijing from scrutiny over the origins of Covid-19. The comments came as Fauci, who led the US response to the pandemic, appeared before a Senate committee. Sep...
