China’s counter-espionage agency has caught a foreign spy trying to take photos of military facilities off the country’s coast, state broadcaster CCTV reported on Thursday. The spy and an assistant posed as tourists to visit an island to gather intelligence on sensitive military facilities, the report said, citing security authorities in the eastern province of … Read more
Fujian province has become a test bed for mainland China’s push for economic, social and political integration with Taiwan. In this story – the last in a four-part on-the-ground series – Amber Wang looks at the sea goddess revered on both sides of the Taiwan Strait. Chinese President Xi Jinping and Taiwanese leader William Lai … Read more
After a few years of belt-tightening, millions of Chinese civil servants are expected to bring home a much-delayed pay rise ahead of Lunar New Year later this month. Several civil servants and workers at public institutions in China said they had received notification from their finance or human resources departments about an increase in their … Read more
A slew of cadres in their early 50s clinched significant administrative positions with full ministerial rank this year, as China’s ruling Communist Party moves younger faces into mid-tier leadership positions. The latest to be promoted was Liu Jie, 54, who was made acting governor of Zhejiang in eastern China on December 18. Zhejiang is well-known … Read more
Ant Group, the fintech affiliate of Alibaba Group Holding, said it had no immediate plans to revive its initial public offering (IPO), dispelling market speculation it would soon go public. The Chinese company shocked investors in November 2020 by cancelling its US$39.7 billion IPO in Hong Kong and Shanghai less than 48 hours before market … Read more
The defence ministry said it had detected 47 mainland Chinese warplanes near Taiwan in the 24 hours to 6am on Tuesday – the largest number since the PLA simulated a blockade of the island on October 14 in an exercise dubbed Joint Sword-2024B. The PLA sent 153 warplanes for that drill. In the latest exercise, … Read more
Chinese technology companies are rushing to unveil reasoning models – advanced artificial intelligence (AI) models designed to take more time to “think and reflect” before generating responses – as they move to narrow China’s gap with the US in the field. Alibaba Cloud, the cloud computing arm of Alibaba Group Holding, was the latest to … Read more
Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba Group Holding, on Friday visited the company’s campus in Hangzhou, capital of eastern Zhejiang province, in a show of support for the e-commerce empire he created a quarter of a century ago, according to employees. Ma’s visit was his first known trip back to to his hometown since March 2023, … Read more
China has created a new specialist committee on artificial intelligence (AI), as part of the country’s vision for the development and governance of the technology, amid simmering tensions between Beijing and Washington. The AI Experts Committee will help spearhead efforts to promote the country’s perspective on how the fast-growing technology should be governed, according to … Read more
A report by prosecutors in China’s eastern province of Zhejiang has shed light on how entrepreneurs and private businesses can fall prey to the abuse of power by police. The report highlights a case dating back to May of last year, when two officials from the public security bureau of an unnamed province began extorting … Read more
