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• Mainland Chinese Olympic stars urge Hongkongers to pursue dreams after sports showcase
• Australia’s ‘political win’ in the Pacific gets ‘mild’ response from China
• [Sport] China and Philippines trade blame as ships collide
• Chinese table tennis stars win hearts in Hong Kong with coaching, showcase of skills
• 2,500-year-old blacksmith technique brings China’s mammoth machine to life: engineers
• South China Sea: China warns Philippines again after third collision at Sabina Shoal
• China places former chairman of top aircraft maker AVIC under investigation for corruption
• Could Japan’s ruling party election revamp relations with China?
• China approves 117 video games in August, the most in 2024, amid Black Myth: Wukong mania
• Glycine fiends: how the internet made an obscure Chinese company into a sensation
• Mainland Chinese divers, swimmers make a splash with Hong Kong crowd amid city visit
• US general urges China to report space debris as G60 satellite network launches
• Hong Kong must better sync up policies with Macau, mainland China: city delegate
• China woman fakes miscarriages to claim US$9,300 insurance cash with forged medical papers
• Black Myth: Wukong is a good omen for some, but small Chinese game developers see obstacles
• China ‘smart ladies’ swimming club in hot water for only admitting educated women under 45
• Philippines seeks naval self-reliance as South China Sea threats grow: ‘we wasted 6 years’
• China’s factory activity remains in contraction amid weak economic momentum
• Avocados and honey imports a sign of China’s growing agricultural engagement with Africa
• China’s Olympic stars to replay their gold medal talents on final day of Hong Kong visit
• China’s birth rate unlikely to benefit from influx of Filipino helpers, analysts say
• Malaysia’s ‘China plus one’ gold rush stumbles over a US tariff threat
• Pacific Islands Forum communique taken down after Chinese envoy calls Taiwan reference ‘unacceptable’
• China-born neuroscientist Jane Wu lost her US lab. Then she lost her life

Mainland Chinese Olympic stars urge Hongkongers to pursue dreams after sports showcase

https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/society/article/3276710/chinese-olympic-stars-urge-hongkongers-pursue-dreams-after-dazzling-sports-showcase?utm_source=rss_feed

Mainland China’s Olympic champions wrapped up a three-day whirlwind trip to Hong Kong, leaving a lasting impression on fans with their acrobatic moves and heartfelt messages on chasing dreams and perseverance.

The 65-strong delegation bid farewell to the city on Saturday afternoon after taking part in two sports showcase events that lasted two hours as well as a sharing session with more than 100 young people at the Hong Kong Metropolitan University.

Table tennis top seed Sun Yingsha, one of the 10 Olympians who showed up at the sharing session, encouraged the young audience to have faith and keep pursuing their dreams.

“As a professional athlete, I have to face winning and losing every day, which I think is also the charm of competitive sports,” she said in her speech.

“Life is about being able to take up and let go ... Victory and defeat are ordinary and temporary. Only the path to pursue your dreams is eternal.

“When we are in the most pain, it may also be the time when we grow the fastest. What doesn’t kill us will eventually make us stronger. Hopefully we can always hold faith in ourselves and persist a little longer even in the most painful times,” she added.

The world No 1 said she was aware the national flag on her uniform bore more importance than her name printed at the back, and shared that she observed that the standards of Hong Kong athletes had improved a lot, although she did not play against them during the trip.

She added she was impressed by the facilities and logistical support of the Hong Kong Sports Institute and hoped athletes from the city and the mainland could play with the common goal of representing the country.

Another fan favourite, diving gold medallist Quan Hongchan, made two flawless plunges from the 10-metre-high (33 feet) platform board at the Victoria Park swimming pool in Causeway Bay as she joined other aquatic stars in the morning demonstration session.

But the diving queen lamented in a poolside interview that she did not have enough time to explore Hong Kong on her own.

“I think [Hong Kong] is very fun,” she said. “Everywhere is fun!”

Asked by the event’s host if she herself had enjoyed the city, Quan replied: “Not yet.”

The athletes had been in the spotlight since landing at Hong Kong’s airport on Thursday and receiving a red-carpet welcome.

During the three-day visit, the delegation met local athletes, pupils and disciplined services personnel, and took part in a sightseeing harbour cruise, toured the Peak and showed off their music talent at a gala show held on Friday evening.

The Olympic athletes were met with enthusiasm in the city from start to finish, with large numbers of mainland and local fans waiting outside the delegation’s hotel and event venues, hoping to catch a glimpse of their idols outside the competition venues.

Enthusiastic cheering was heaped on the biggest stars as they dazzled with their skills, and Quan was again showered with her favourite turtle stuffed toys on the poolside.

Quan thanked her fans for their warm welcome and shared her tip for keeping a cool head despite her celebrity status.

“Mentality is the most important thing. Take it easy, be happy and don’t think too much,” the 17-year-old said. “Crowds are very passionate; many fans waited under the hot sun to see us, so I’m very grateful.”

Weightlifter Li Fabin, who defended his men’s 61kg gold medal title at the Paris Games, revealed that the experience in the French capital made him rethink his retirement.

“I felt a strong Olympic spirit at the Paris Games, which gave me the desire to continue participating in the next Olympics,” he said, adding that he would train again after recovering from his knee injury.

Badminton mixed doubles gold medallist Zheng Siwei said he found young Hong Kong players he met during the trip to be passionate and skilled.

“I hope they can pursue their dreams with all their might and wish them all the best,” he said. “Find a badminton player that you like and learn from them.”

Zheng shared a viral moment with shooting champion Sheng Lihao at a showcase event held earlier on the day at the Queen Elizabeth Stadium in Wan Chai, as the latter’s awkward attempt to play badminton became a hot topic on mainland Chinese social media.

The session also included gymnastic demonstrations and table tennis games, including one between mainland legend Ma Long and Hong Kong’s Wong Chun-ting.

The two exhibition events held on Saturday morning were among the three occasions where the public could watch the visiting Chinese athletes in action. The authorities said earlier that a total of about 5,300 tickets were up for grabs for the gala show and the two showcases.

Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu, who attended a closed-door farewell lunch for the delegation, said in a social media post that the sports stars had brought Hong Kong an unforgettable experience and filled the city with a strong sports vibe.

The city leader also pledged to promote sports development in the city and encouraged sports associations to collaborate with their mainland counterparts.

“I hope the mainland and Hong Kong will continue to cooperate closely, thereby improving the technical level of athletes and bringing glory to the country,” Lee added.

The delegation crossed the Hong Kong-Macau-Zhuhai Bridge on Saturday afternoon to begin their three-day tour in Macau, where they were received by 150 primary and secondary students. The athletes were expected to perform at a showcase event at the casino hub on Sunday.

Australia’s ‘political win’ in the Pacific gets ‘mild’ response from China

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3276628/australias-political-win-pacific-gets-mild-response-china?utm_source=rss_feed

Beijing has been restrained in response to Pacific island leaders backing Canberra’s regional policing plan – a move seen as a “diplomatic coup” for Australia as it tries to counter China’s security presence in the region.

Pacific island leaders endorsed the A$400 million (US$271 million) Pacific Policing Initiative at a summit in Tonga on Wednesday.

Under the plan, up to four training centres will be set up across the Pacific and a multinational crisis reaction force of around 200 officers will be established.

China’s foreign ministry did not comment on the specifics of the plan but on Thursday said Beijing supported “all parties to make joint efforts for the development and revitalisation of Pacific island countries”.

According to Melissa Conley Tyler, executive director of the Asia-Pacific Development, Diplomacy and Defence Dialogue, a foreign policy platform in Canberra, the plan is a collaborative effort to tackle regional security concerns, including an increase in drug trafficking and transnational crime.

“While Australia will provide most of the funding, Tonga’s prime minister announced it as a ‘Pacific-led, Pacific-owned’ initiative that reinforces the existing regional security architecture,” Conley Tyler said. “It builds on the Australian Federal Police’s long engagement in the region.”

She noted that the plan was designed by the Pacific Islands Chiefs of Police, a regional body that brings together police chiefs to exchange information and drive regional policing agreements.

It comes as Beijing has strengthened its strategic toehold in the region, including through a police cooperation pact signed in 2022 with the Solomon Islands – one of China’s most vocal supporters in the region.

In July, Solomon Islands Prime Minister Jeremiah Manele secured US$20 million in funds for his government during a visit to Beijing, while the leaders of Fiji and Vanuatu have also visited China this year.

According to Conley Tyler, Australia’s move is a “political win” for the Anthony Albanese government as it tries to “show that its approach of building relationships and positioning Australia as a partner of choice for Pacific islands has been successful”.

Elena Collinson, head of analysis at the University of Technology Sydney’s Australia-China Relations Institute, called it a “strategic accomplishment” for Canberra.

“Endorsement of the policing plan is a diplomatic coup for Canberra, symbolising as it does a seeming regional lean towards Australia as the preferred security partner, helping stave off the potential for a regional security agreement with China,” Collinson said.

“It is clear that balancing relations with Beijing remains an important consideration for a number of Pacific island nations,” she added, noting that some leaders – such as Vanuatu Prime Minister Charlot Salwai – had been “swift to emphasise” the plan should not be used to suit the “geostrategic interests” of their big partners.

Collinson said it was still in question whether the plan could be successfully embedded in regional architecture since some leaders remained hesitant about it.

Ties between Beijing and Canberra have thawed since Albanese was elected in 2022 and he has had several discussions with Chinese President Xi Jinping since then, leading to the removal of many trade restrictions.

In addition, Chinese Premier Li Qiang’s visit to Australia in June resulted in expanded cooperation on new energy vehicles, visa waivers for Australians and a pair of giant pandas.

Collinson said Australia’s policing pact with its neighbours was unlikely to have any major impact on bilateral ties.

“Beijing has been well aware of Australian efforts in the region and has proceeded with steps towards a tentative rapprochement while equipped with that knowledge,” she said.

“Indeed, Beijing’s response thus far has been fairly restrained.”

Conley Tyler said Beijing’s reaction had been “mild”. “Australia’s aims in the Pacific are very clear to Beijing and the existence of ongoing low-level friction is built into the stabilised relationship,” she added.

Edward Chan Sing-yue, a postdoctoral fellow in China studies at the Australian National University, said Pacific island states were generally welcoming of cooperation with both Beijing and Canberra.

“As they are small recipient states, they are not particularly interested in regional politics or Australia-China relations [and] tend to be more pragmatic,” he said.

“The initiative signifies Australia’s growing commitment to the South Pacific through security cooperation, rethinking its role as a dominant power in the region and what else it can do to enhance the relationship with South Pacific countries apart from regime building and foreign aid.”

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[Sport] China and Philippines trade blame as ships collide

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2erwedxz5o

Chinese table tennis stars win hearts in Hong Kong with coaching, showcase of skills

https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/society/article/3276706/chinese-table-tennis-stars-win-hearts-hong-kong-coaching-showcase-skills?utm_source=rss_feed

Some lucky Hong Kong fans received personal coaching by table tennis champion Chen Meng during a match against legend Ma Long and teamed up with shooting medallist Sheng Lihao for a badminton challenge as part of an event where Chinese Olympians showcased their skills.

The team of visiting Olympic champions turned up to a full Queen Elizabeth Stadium in Wan Chai on Saturday, where they put on a show in a variety of sports such as table tennis, badminton and gymnastics.

Their flawless moves, techniques and skills prompted frequent applause and cheering from fans who were eager to see the stars in person.

The table tennis medallists received the loudest applause and shout-outs. Legend Ma Long, who has bagged a total of six Olympic gold medals so far, was the fan favourite.

The captain of the Chinese table tennis team took the stage with Hong Kong Olympian Wong Chun-ting to play in a five-point game, with the pair performing a lighthearted showcase of trick shots that thrilled the crowd.

A lucky spectator was invited to try a few shots with Ma. The woman, who said she never played table tennis, was given a step-by-step tutorial by women’s singles champion Chen Meng.

Ma said he enjoyed the three-day trip to the city and appreciated the enthusiasm from Hongkongers, while encouraging young players to keep going and enjoy the sport.

“I hope they will keep going and enjoy the happiness that table tennis brings to them,” he said.

Teammates Chen and Wang Manyu, both women’s team champions, and gold medallists Wang Chuqin and Fan Zhendong, also participated in fun matchups against local athletes.

“The result of the Paris Olympics is perfect. Now I want to enjoy the time visiting Hong Kong,” Fan told the audience.

Besides the table tennis champions, other Olympians also won the hearts of spectators with their techniques as well as their efforts to interact and engage with fans.

Two spectators were selected from the audience to team up with badminton mixed doubles champions Zheng Siwei and Huang Yaqiong, before shooting medallist Sheng Lihao replaced Zheng to try his hand at badminton.

Sheng, who won men’s 10m air rifle gold and also mixed 10m air rifle team gold at this year’s Games, drew applause and laughter from the audience with this awkward footwork that even became a trending topic on the mainland Chinese social media platform Weibo.

“He is like a glitching robot,” joked one internet user. “His four limbs are busy in their own ways.”

Gymnastics champions Liu Yang and Zou Jingyuan represented their sport during the event. Zou praised and encouraged local young athletes who showed their gymnastic skills in front of the Olympians.

Zou described his Hong Kong trip as similar to a homecoming: “It’s like returning home, unlike during the pandemic when there was a distance.”

Weightlifter Li Fabin, men’s 61kg champion in Paris, said constantly improving kept him happy in his two-decade career.

“Doing one thing for such a long time can be boring, but when I push my limits, I improve my performance, break records and win the championship. It gives me great happiness, and happiness is my motivation,” he said.

Sports fans and enthusiasts said they were impressed and inspired by the Olympians’ performance and their words of encouragement.

Engineer Keith Cheung, 50, and his nine-year-old son, Karson, said they were amazed by the athletes’ skills.

“I love the lively atmosphere and the athletic performances are encouraging,” said Cheung, a fan of Ma Long and Fan Zhendong.

His son Karson said he had been learning to play table tennis and badminton, and watching the champions like Ma and Zheng Siwei playing at the stadium served as motivation.

“I have learned about perseverance from the champions,” the boy added.

Yan Yuqing, a sports fan from Shenzhen, said: “I am impressed by Ma Long’s backhand shot and I really like the moment when Chen Meng instructed the fan to play. Performances by Hong Kong young gymnasts are also impressive.”

Athletes who were absent from the demonstrations, including table tennis world No 1 Sun Yingsha, butterfly queen Zhang Yufei and weightlifter Li Wenwen, attended a separate event at the Hong Kong Metropolitan University on Saturday morning.

“Wearing my national team jersey, I realise the national flag on the chest is more important than my name printed at the back,” Sun said in a speech.

Additional reporting by Leopold Chen

2,500-year-old blacksmith technique brings China’s mammoth machine to life: engineers

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3276498/2500-year-old-blacksmith-technique-brings-chinas-mammoth-machine-life-engineers?utm_source=rss_feed

An ancient technique, famously used 2,500 years ago to make a sword for a legendary Chinese king, has now been used for a tunnel boring machine known as the “king of construction machinery”.

While trying to create the world’s largest piece of equipment for tunnel construction, scientists and engineers on the project had to overcome one major hurdle: no country had ever been able to create steel strong enough for the massive machine.

The tunnel boring machine (TBM) has a main bearing with a diameter of 8.61 metres (28 feet) – as tall as a three-storey building. This bearing drives the giant machine that weighs over 10,000 tonnes – about as heavy as the Eiffel Tower.

All this load is borne by the surface layer of the bearing which is less than 1cm (0.4 inch) thick.

The main problem with manufacturing a bearing of that size is that the temperatures of the different areas change at different speeds during the process, and this lack of uniformity can make the steel weak.

For an answer to this modern problem, the project team had to look to the past.

A technique used in making the 2,500-year-old “Sword of Goujian” offered a solution, according to a report from the state-run Science and Technology Daily on Tuesday.

Known for its unusual sharpness and intricate design, the bronze sword was excavated from an ancient tomb in Hubei province in 1965. It is believed the original owner of the sword was Goujian, king of Yue from 496BC to 465BC, during the late Spring and Autumn period.

To create his bronze sword, the ancient blacksmiths hardened it using a process called “quenching”. This is where metal is heated to high temperatures, then rapidly cooled in water, gas or other fluids to achieve certain material properties, such as increased hardness.

While quenching is common in sword making, the Chinese blacksmiths employed one major difference while forging the Sword of Goujian: they covered it with clay during the quenching process so that the temperature of each part of the sword changed uniformly.

Using clay as a medium for the TBM bearing “perfectly solved” the problem of uneven quenching temperatures, according to the project team.

Tunnel boring machines are widely used in underground construction. They are capable of cutting through all kinds of materials and terrains, from soft clay to the hardest granite – but this depends on the main bearing.

Previously, the largest TBM main bearing had a diameter of just under 8 metres, and set a world record when it was built in 2021. It was manufactured by Liebherr, a German-Swiss multinational equipment manufacturer based in Bulle, Switzerland.

Now that record has been eclipsed by the bearing built by the China Railway Construction Heavy Industry Corporation Limited (CRCHI) last October.

And on Tuesday, the project team led by Xie Jindong told Science and Technology Daily how they overcame their major technological challenges to build the “king of construction machinery”.

With more than 30,000 parts and components, the TBM can be seen as a benchmark for measuring a country’s strength in producing underground construction machinery.

While such equipment has been developed and used in the West for more than 100 years, China still relied on imports until the beginning of the 21st century – with high purchase and maintenance costs.

China produced its first domestic machine in 2008, and since then has continued to make technological breakthroughs while rapidly gaining global market share.

Back in 2009, almost 95 per cent of the machines in China were imported, but by 2017, the production and sales of Chinese-built TBMs had already topped the global market.

TBMs combine multiple technologies including machinery, electronics, information technology, and artificial intelligence.

In 2019, the Communist Party-run newspaper Guangming Daily praised TBMs as another major accomplishment for China’s high-end intelligent manufacturing equipment.

However, despite these successes, China had yet to achieve self-reliance in making the main bearings for TBMs.

In July 2019, CRCHI decided to establish a research and design institute to address this issue. The following year, the Chinese Academy of Sciences also launched a joint R&D project to achieve independent manufacturing of high-end bearings.

With the debut of this record-sized bearing, CRCHI said China can stake its claim as a world leader in extra-large-diameter main bearings.

In a statement, the company said that the project team had “finally overcome manufacturing difficulties through hundreds of experiments with various processes and materials, enabling the bearing to have a long service life and high manufacturing precision”.

South China Sea: China warns Philippines again after third collision at Sabina Shoal

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3276707/south-china-sea-china-warns-philippines-again-after-third-collision-sabina-shoal?utm_source=rss_feed

The Chinese coastguard on Saturday issued its fourth warning in a week against Philippine vessel movements near the contested Sabina Shoal in the South China Sea, as both sides accused the other of yet another “deliberate collision”.

According to China Coast Guard (CCG) spokesman Liu Dejun, the Philippine coastguard ship BRP Teresa Magbanua (MRRV-9701) “deliberately collided with the Chinese CCG 5205” around noon on Saturday, after “continuous manoeuvres and … provocations” since the morning.

The Chinese side had issued warnings and followed the Philippine coastguard vessel before the collision, he said.

Saturday’s was the third collision between the two sides in two weeks, as tensions grow over rival territorial claims in the vast, resource-rich South China Sea.

“We once again warn the Philippines to face up to reality and give up on illusions, and that withdrawing [the BRP Teresa Magbanua] immediately on its own is the only correct way,” Liu said.

“Refrain from miscalculating the situation, creating hotspots, and escalating the situation, or else the Philippine side will bear all the consequences arising therefrom.”

Jay Tarriela, a spokesman for the Philippines coastguard, put the blame on the Chinese coastguard.

“This afternoon, the Chinese Coast Guard vessel deliberately rammed and collided with the BRP Teresa Magbanua three times, despite no provocation from the Philippine Coast Guard,” he wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

According to three videos posted by Tarriela, at least three collisions took place, with the CCG 5205 ramming the port bow and the midships of the Teresa Magbanua, and the two vessels coming together in a V-shape.

Watermarks on the videos showed they were taken on Saturday between 12.07pm and 12:22pm.

Manila has stationed the Teresa Magbanua, one of its biggest coastguard cutters, at the Sabina Shoal since April to assert its territorial claims, sparking protest and regular patrols by China.

The coral atoll – called Xianbin Reef by China and Escoda Shoal by the Philippines – is part of the resource-rich Spratly Islands, called Nansha Islands by Beijing, which claims most of the South China Sea.

The Philippines, Vietnam and Malaysia are among the rival claimants to the Spratlys.

Sabina Shoal lies east of another hotly contested Spratly reef, the Manila-controlled Second Thomas Shoal – called Renai Jiao by China and Ayungin Shoal by the Philippines.

Repeated stand-offs between the two countries this month have further worsened tensions around Sabina Shoal, after a string of confrontations in contested areas of the South China Sea over the past year.

The recent clashes include collisions on August 19 and on Sunday, with both sides exchanging blame each time.

In Sunday’s face-off, the Philippines accused the Chinese coastguard of “ramming, blasting horns, and deploying water cannons” against its fisheries bureau vessel, the BRP Datu Sanday (MMOV 3002), eventually leading to engine failure and forcing an “early termination” of its “humanitarian mission” to supply fishermen at Sabina shoal with fuel, food and medical supplies.

In another confrontation on Monday, China said it “took control measures” after two Philippine coastguard vessels approached the Teresa Magbanua in an “illegal intrusion”.

Manila eventually used a helicopter to resupply the ship on Thursday, resulting in the third warning of the week to the Philippines to “immediately withdraw” the Teresa Magbanua.

The Philippines has also accused China of launching flares “dangerously close” to its aircraft patrolling near the Beijing-controlled Scarborough Shoal and Subi Reef on at least two occasions this month.

Beijing says the “illegal” anchoring of the Teresa Magbanua at Sabina Shoal “seriously violates China’s sovereignty”.

Defence ministry spokesman Wu Qian said on Thursday that the Philippine move had “opened a ‘Pandora’s box’” in the disputed South China Sea while China had “lodged solemn representations multiple times”.

“The Philippine side should withdraw its ship and personnel as soon as possible, and restore the unoccupied status of Xianbin Jiao with no infrastructure,” he said, adding that the “Chinese side will continue to take resolute and strong measures to safeguard our territorial integrity and maritime rights and interests”.

The two countries are also involved in a dispute over allegedly damaged coral reefs at Sabina Shoal, with each side blaming the other.

China places former chairman of top aircraft maker AVIC under investigation for corruption

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3276687/china-places-former-chairman-top-aircraft-maker-avic-under-investigation-corruption?utm_source=rss_feed

A former head of China’s leading aircraft manufacturer has been placed under investigation as Beijing pushes ahead with anti-corruption efforts in sectors crucial to its military capacity.

Tan Ruisong, chairman of the Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC) from 2018 to 2023, is suspected to have committed “severe violations” of the law and Communist Party discipline.

He is being investigated by the party’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) and the National Commission of Supervision, according to a statement released on Friday.

The country’s top anti-corruption watchdogs did not provide details of the alleged “severe violations”, a euphemism for corruption.

Tan, 62, was removed from his post at state-owned giant AVIC in March 2023 for age reasons, according to the party’s personnel management arm.

Tan, a native of Hunan province, is a technocrat trained in aviation engine design, manufacturing and engineering. He had spent two decades with AVIC, a conglomerate with over 100 subsidiaries and 450,000 employees worldwide – more than America’s Boeing and Europe’s Airbus combined.

AVIC was the sixth largest defence contractor globally as of 2022 and second largest Chinese defence contractor by annual revenue after China North Industries Group, according to data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

In 2022, Tan vowed to turn AVIC into a world-class military equipment supplier.

The company aimed to become an industry champion like “the national ping pong team”, he told the China International Aviation & Aerospace Exhibition, the country’s premier air show held in the southern city of Zhuhai every two years.

AVIC is at the forefront of China’s drive to become more technologically self-reliant, and makes products for military use as well as for the civil aviation market.

Through its many subsidiaries, it manufactures some of China’s leading fighter aircraft such as the J-10, J-11, and J-20.

The company is also a major supplier of components for China’s small regional jet ARJ-21 and the C919, a narrowbody medium-haul aircraft. Its exports include the regional turboprop MA60 series and Y12s, and the AC series helicopters.

The aerospace and defence industry sector is a major source of technocrats favoured by Chinese President Xi Jinping to become part of the political elite. However, it has become a key target of Beijing’s anti-graft campaign since nine generals including previous and serving commanders from the rocket and air forces were dismissed from the top legislature in December, after several of them were placed under investigation.

The shake-up exposed rampant irregularities in bidding and procurement processes for military equipment.

Months later, in June, former defence minister Li Shangfu and his predecessor Wei Fenghe were both expelled from the party as Beijing confirmed they were being investigated on suspicion of corruption.

The announcement of the unprecedented move came eight months after the abrupt dismissal of Li, making him China’s shortest-serving defence minister.

Li, 66, previously oversaw military procurement. He was accused of accepting “large sums of money” to seek benefits for others, and allegedly bribing others.

Wei was accused of accepting a huge amount of money and helping others to gain improper benefits.

AVIC and other eight state-owned enterprises operating in key sectors including nuclear, aerospace and shipbuilding promised in July to tighten their bidding and procurement rules as well as look at areas such as hiring and quality control, following a series of inspections by the CCDI.

A number of senior defence company executives have already been caught up in the anti-corruption campaign. China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), a main contractor for the country’s space programme, said 36 employees had been the subject of the party’s disciplinary action and seven had been handed over to judicial authorities.

Former CASC chairman Wu Yansheng was among three senior aerospace-defence executives stripped of their seats on the country’s top political advisory body, the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), in December.

Could Japan’s ruling party election revamp relations with China?

https://www.scmp.com/opinion/asia-opinion/article/3276428/could-japans-ruling-party-election-revamp-relations-china?utm_source=rss_feed

It may be an exaggeration to say that the future of East Asia hangs on the outcome of Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) leadership election next month, which will decide who Japan’s next prime minister will be, but a great deal more is at stake for the region than meets the outside eye.

In particular, Japan needs to stem the erosion of its economic, political and diplomatic relations with China, a relationship that some fear is drifting dangerously towards friction or even open conflict as Japan binds itself ever closer to the United States and its allies.

It is clear that the political tide has turned against the long-ruling LDP to the point where some senior members have warned of it possibly losing power. Such are the politics of power that the party may have to support former defence minister Shigeru Ishiba, who is considered more pro-China than the party’s other leadership candidates. Ishiba is also popular with voters.

At 67, Ishiba is older than some of the other candidates seeking to make their mark in a leadership election that is becoming more of a beauty contest. But he also has a mature view of Japan-China relations, which is needed badly at this time.

He has indicated that he wants cooperation rather than confrontation with China where it is in Japan’s interest, and has gone so far as to suggest the need for a Nato-like pact among Asian powers. Programmes such as China’s Belt and Road Initiative would also be likely to receive a more sympathetic hearing under Ishiba.

The incumbent Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s “new capitalism” vision is very much oriented towards market capitalism and making Japan a nation of portfolio investors. This would align Japan more closely with the US, as opposed to financial systems elsewhere in Asia.

It is difficult to overstate the importance of changing the overall mindset among Japanese leaders that has seen Tokyo drawn willingly into a kind of automatic agreement with Washington on everything from military and economic security to financial system and market development.

Meanwhile, Ishiba has argued not only for keeping “China’s adventurist inclination in check with a certain level of military power, while reflecting on what is effective deterrence” but also for pursuing “diplomatic engagement, while reflecting on what a mutually beneficial relationship actually is”.

What is equally interesting is that Japan’s main opposition party, the Constitutional Democratic Party, is likely to undergo a leadership change soon, amid the efforts of political heavyweight Ichiro Ozawa, who has also long sought stronger Japan-China relations.

All this has significance beyond the realms of politics. For Japan itself, the outgoing prime minister’s plan to increase defence spending threatens an unfunded leap in government spending, with adverse implications for both the yen and domestic interest rates.

For China, an easing of what it sees as the “containment” policy engineered largely by the United States would enable the world’s second largest economy, as measured by gross domestic product, to pursue closer collaboration with a Japanese economy which could be a major source of capital investment and technology.

As for the wider Asian region, some kind of Sino-Japanese detente would ease the pressure on nations to take sides with one of the world’s two biggest economies – the US or China – and allow them to pursue trade and investment policies more aligned with their own interests, both individually and as a group.

Against this background, Ishiba’s recent comments come as a relief from the growing drumbeat of warnings from other policymakers in and beyond Japan about the dangers of China’s increasing “assertiveness” in Asia and the supposed need for pre-emptive alliances against this.

According to a report by the Japan Times, in his recently published book, whose title loosely translates as A Conservative Politician – My Policies, My Fate, Ishiba offers a “different take on Japan’s national security challenges”.

While acknowledging the deterioration of the regional security environment, Ishiba also laments the lack of perspective behind recent decisions concerning national security and calls for greater transparency and accountability from Japan’s government.

He argues for a big-picture approach, underscoring the need to avoid fearmongering and instead to pursue a balance between diplomacy and deterrence. Ishiba stresses the limits of a deterrence-only strategy, as opposed to how others frame deterrence and diplomacy as mutually exclusive options.

“Nowadays some sections of public opinion even attack politicians who are earnestly trying to foster dialogue between Japan and China and call them ‘China flatterers’,” Ishiba wrote, likely in a veiled reference to the criticisms of himself and others.

There is no doubt that the political status quo in Japan has been upset by recent events including the assassination of former prime minister Shinzo Abe and the LDP fundraising scandal, which dealt a blow to factions of the party that has dominated Japanese politics in the post-war period.

Adding to all of this, the uncertainty surrounding the outcome of the US presidential election in November means that the nature of the US-Japan alliance could change too, with clear implications for China and other countries in Asia. The LDP leadership election may turn out to be a watershed moment rather than just a platform for one more revolving-door Japanese premier.

China approves 117 video games in August, the most in 2024, amid Black Myth: Wukong mania

https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3276681/china-approves-117-video-games-august-most-2024-amid-black-myth-wukong-mania?utm_source=rss_feed

China’s publication authority this month approved 117 video games – the biggest batch of titles licensed so far this year – as the industry remains all agog over the blockbuster success of , released just last week.

Tencent Holdings’ action game Yirenzhixia, NetEase-operated Jiewai Kuangchao and Huangyuan Shuguang from Alibaba Group Holding subsidiary Lingxi Games were among the latest titles to get licensed for domestic release, according to a statement released on Friday by the National Press and Publication Administration (NPPA). Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.

Other major video gaming firms whose new titles also made the cut in August include Perfect World and Yoozoo Games. Multiple titles submitted by state-owned telecommunications network operators China Mobile and China Telecom, both of which operate app stores and game studios, were also granted licences.

The NPPA has licensed a total of 850 domestic titles in the first eight months of this year, compared with 609 in the same period in 2023.

The large number of titles approved in August reflects the significant recovery in China’s video gaming market since April 2022, when Beijing resumed licensing titles for the domestic market after an eight-month regulatory freeze.

The increased pace of approvals also comes amid the resounding success of action role-playing game Black Myth: Wukong – developed by Tencent-backed studio Game Science and based on the classic Chinese novel – which is a huge hit for both domestic and overseas gamers.

Black Myth: Wukong – available on Sony Interactive Entertainment’s PlayStation 5 console and Windows-based personal computers, as well as digital gaming service Steam – sold more than 10 million copies in the first three days of its release, according to data from Game Science. The release of Black Myth: Wukong for Microsoft’s Xbox Series X and Series S consoles is yet to be announced.

That strong demand for the game augurs well for the prospect of consumer spending in China’s video gaming market this year, which industry research firm Newzoo has projected to reach US$45 billion.

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Glycine fiends: how the internet made an obscure Chinese company into a sensation

https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3276608/glycine-fiends-how-internet-made-obscure-chinese-company-sensation?utm_source=rss_feed

It was April, and TikTok had no clue what was coming.

At some point along the endless scroll through the kinds of short videos one would expect to drive traffic on the social media platform – recipes, animals, political invective – users began to latch onto an unlikely sensation: a little-known Chinese company touting the virtues of an industrial-grade food additive.

Donghua Jinlong, a chemicals concern in the northern province of Hebei, had put out a one-minute video to promote glycine, its headline product. One of many Chinese firms looking to break into overseas markets, the company was taking an unusual approach to advertise the compound – an amino acid mostly used in pharmaceutical manufacturing and only occasionally as a dietary supplement.

But four months later, orders have more than tripled, causing a shortage due to the unexpected barrage of attention, administrative director Chen Liya said. “In April we had no idea,” Chen said. The results, they thought, were “strange and puzzling.”

The video has received more than 100 million views, and led to countless spin-offs and memes extolling – with, perhaps, a touch of irony – the product’s many wonders, according to an August 13 report by the Chinese radio and television producer Yi Shi Yi Se Cultural Communication.

This isn’t the first time a Chinese social media phenomenon has piqued interest from across the sea.

Content creator Li Ziqi, a Sichuan-based internet personality famous for her cinematic videos of farm life, holds the Guinness World Record for most YouTube subscribers on a Chinese-language channel.

Initially starting as an online agricultural shop, Li’s intricately produced shorts proved meteorically popular in the West, providing an escapist outlet for city dwellers and an idyllic glimpse into Chinese culture.

Donghua Jinlong’s management assumed influential TikTok users were crucial in spreading the video around the site, creating a multiplier effect through the platform’s algorithms that helped rocket the company to its present level of prominence, Chen said.

This case, though rare, shows how quickly even the most esoteric Chinese brand can catapult to fame overseas through a combination of sympathetic internet users, a willing market and a spark of luck, analysts said.

“I’m not surprised it happens,” said Liang Yan, an economist at Willamette University in the US state of Oregon. “Some of it is deliberate – companies get influencers to pass things on.”

Part of the formula relies on an experimental market such as youth in the US, said Albert Ma, who graduated last year with a political economy degree from UC Berkeley.

“Donghua Jinlong is a perfect target for Gen Z and Gen Alpha in the US, who may have no idea what industrial-grade glycine is, but are willing to mindlessly echo ‘Donghua Jinlong’ for laughs,” Ma said. “The most intriguing part is, this could have happened with any other obscure Chinese company.”

One video shows a man about to unbox what’s presumed to be glycine. Another shows someone composing song lyrics about the product, which is sometimes taken as a supplement to treat conditions like diabetes or insomnia – though research is limited on its efficacy in this regard.

Diana Regan is an influencer whose Donghua Jinlong parody videos garnered from 200,000 to 1.2 million views on Instagram.

“I loved the absurdity of a company whose target audience was other businesses accidentally going viral on TikTok,” Regan said. “The style was so honest and authentic, coming from an industrial manufacturing company posting to an app whose user base is primarily consumers.”

The glycine phenomenon prompted clothing manufacturers to capitalise on the trend with unofficial merchandise, with Donghua Jinlong itself eventually coming up with their own range of official apparel, featuring clip art Regan created on graphic design platform Canva.

Robb Marrocco, a TikTok user specialising in food and beverage content with 726,500 followers, got in on the craze with a video showing him making and drinking a cup of “espresso” with a purported infusion of Donghua Jinlong glycine.

“I love that it advertises an incredibly niche, industrial product to an audience that would never possibly need it and would never have otherwise known it existed,” he said.

But viral fame of this nature is rare and seldom lasts, said Lu Xiang, a research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Most sustainably successful Chinese companies use social media to push products that are backed by strong research and development, he said, pointing to consumer electronics brands Huawei and Xiaomi as examples.

In the meantime, executives at the 45-year-old company are riding the wave. The first hint that they had happened upon a phenomenon came when Chinese university students started visiting the campus to “check in” to the location online, Chen said, and the notoriety only grew from there.

Whether that new-found renown has resulted in higher sales for the glycine itself remains an open question. Chen would not disclose a dollar figure for orders received since April, citing tough competition in the domestic market.

Mainland Chinese divers, swimmers make a splash with Hong Kong crowd amid city visit

https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/society/article/3276705/mainland-chinese-divers-swimmers-make-splash-hong-kong-crowd-amid-city-visit?utm_source=rss_feed

Hongkongers were treated to a watersports showcase by mainland Chinese Olympians on Saturday, with divers performing all manners of special flips and tricks unseen at the Games as swimmers wowed the crowd with a relay event.

Among the audience were two past national diving queens, Olympic gold medallists Fu Mingxia and Guo Jingjing. The pair were later seen taking pictures with the visiting athletes after the fully booked 2,500-seat event at Victoria Park Swimming Pool.

The demonstration was one of three public events held to welcome the mainland athletes during their three-day stay in the city, including a gala show, with all 5,300 tickets selling out at HK$20 (US$2.60) each.

During Saturday’s showcase, the mainland diving team took the opportunity to perform special moves typically not seen at competitive events.

One such manoeuvre saw each member of the team dive from a platform in swift succession and gracefully navigate every landing.

Asked about her experience performing to the crowd, fan favourite diver Quan Hongchan said: “I think it was really fun”.

The athlete also attracted cheers from the audience when she performed her renowned “water splash disappearance” technique up close.

“I thought the entire event was really good. I thought that two hours might have been a really long time, but it went by really quickly,” audience member Elma Lui said.

“Every section came one after another, there were interviews, there were performances. It ended quite quickly actually.”

The 40-year-old clerk’s daughter Mavis Li said her favourite athletes were Quan and Chen Yuxi thanks to their water splash disappearance technique.

“I am really emotional as I got their actual autographs,” the 12-year-old said as she held up two home-made posters and showed an autographed swim cap that she won at the event.

Diver Lian Junjie also contributed to the playful atmosphere, drawing laughter from the crowd as he was left out of the lift to the diving platform and rushed up the stairs to catch up.

Fellow athletes Yang Hao and Long Daoyi managed to wow spectators as they dived between teammate Cao Yuan while he performed a headstand at the end of the diving platform.

Not ones to be outperformed, the swimming team invited spectators to take part in a relay event that also involved local athletes and saw audience members swim their leg of the event using a video game that tracked their arm movements.

The mainland swim team included Pan Zhanle, Qin Haiyang, Sun Jiajun and Wang Changhao.

The athletes appeared to be enjoying themselves at the event, with diver Chen Yiwen all smiles throughout the two-hour event.

The happy atmosphere continued even after the showcase wrapped up as some audience came away with priceless prizes from a game held during the event.

US general urges China to report space debris as G60 satellite network launches

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/military/article/3276684/us-general-urges-china-report-space-debris-g60-satellite-network-launches?utm_source=rss_feed

The head of the US Space Command has called on Beijing to step up notification about space debris as China increases rocket launches to build a satellite network rivalling SpaceX’s Starlink.

Speaking at a panel in Colorado this week, General Stephen Whiting identified two occasions when Chinese satellite launches left behind loads of debris in orbit in the past two years.

“I hope next time there’s a rocket like that that leaves a lot of debris, it’s not our sensors that are the first to detect that, but we’re getting communications that help us to understand that, just like we communicate with others,” said the space command chief.

China has increased the frequency of its rocket launches as it seeks to expand its low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites, including building the massive Qianfan Constellation, also known as the G60 Constellation, to rival SpaceX’s Starlink network.

The first launch of the constellation’s satellites this month created a cloud of “over 300 pieces of trackable debris in low-Earth orbit”, according to the US Space Command.

On August 6, 18 satellites were delivered by a Long March 6A rocket, which took off from Taiyuan Satellite Launch Centre in central China. But the upper stage of the launch vehicle broke apart soon after delivery.

According to media reports, US space-tracking firms estimated the event created over 700 fragments, making it one of the biggest rocket break-ups in history.

A similar event happened in November 2022, when another Long March 6A rocket disintegrated in orbit and dispersed more than 530 pieces of trackable debris, according to a report by Nasa.

At the panel hosted by the US Space Command at its Peterson Space Force Base on Wednesday, Whiting said the US had “made available the vast majority of the tracking data that we have” and provided notifications about space junk to Beijing.

Whiting added that in the past year, “we’ve seen a couple of times that they’ve given us a few notifications back”. He called this a “positive” move, but noted there were still occasions when the US was not informed.

On the subject of the Chinese rocket’s upper stage explosion, panel moderator Kevin Chilton, a senior fellow with the National Defence University, said the US “used to have that problem as well”, but it began venting fuel and gases from rocket stages before they entered orbit.

While the US was not certain whether China had been doing the same, Whiting said “we certainly don’t want to see that kind of debris going up there”.

The Long March 6A rocket, a two-stage medium launch vehicle powered by liquid-oxygen kerosene engines with four bundled solid-fuel boosters, has frequently been used to launch satellites.

But its history of leaving behind debris has drawn international attention, as space debris increases the risk of collisions and threatens space sustainability.

The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs has confirmed the two major debris incidents.

Ministry spokesman Lin Jian said on August 14 that “China has taken necessary measures and is closely monitoring relevant orbit areas and conducting data analysis” after the first launch of the Qianfan Constellation.

“We’ve made it a rule to always take space debris mitigation measures after satellites and carrier rockets complete their missions, in order to help protect the environment of outer space and ensure the long-term sustainability of outer space activities.”

In response to the November 2022 incident, the ministry said it would “not affect the Chinese space station or the International Space Station”.

Hong Kong must better sync up policies with Macau, mainland China: city delegate

https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/politics/article/3276685/hong-kong-must-better-sync-policies-macau-mainland-china-city-delegate?utm_source=rss_feed

Hong Kong’s sole delegate on the nation’s top legislative body has called for greater policy coordination between the city, Macau and mainland China for crossing procedures for motorists travelling along a mega bridge that connects the three locations.

Starry Lee Wai-king, who sits on the National People’s Congress (NPC) Standing Committee, said on Saturday that enhancing “mechanisms for the alignment and implementation of plans” was covered in the resolution for the third plenary session of the Communist Party’s 20th Central Committee.

She also said that greater coordination between authorities within the Greater Bay Area would honour the spirit of the high-level meeting in July.

The bay area refers to Beijing’s ambitious plan to link Hong Kong, Macau and nine cities in Guangdong province into an integrated economic and business hub by 2035.

In the resolution from the third plenum, Beijing urged Hong Kong to contribute to national reform efforts and the opening up of the country.

It also called for the deepening of the country’s technology talent pool and the narrowing of the rural-urban livelihood gap to help uncover new sources of growth and address demographic challenges, which all fell under measures to boost economic resilience.

Lee on Saturday said that complicated requirements for use of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge, which opened in 2018, reflected a failure by authorities to align policies.

“The requirements for the vehicle examination in Hong Kong are different from those on the mainland. If you also want to go to Macau, then you have to get three vehicle examinations done and you have to buy three types of insurance,” she said.

“It shows that the rules are not connected. Why can’t the Greater Bay Area achieve institutional innovation?” she asked. “Can’t we establish a more convenient mechanism through consultation?”

The delegate also encouraged Hong Kong to bolster its innovation and technology sector as the city still lagged behind Shenzhen and America’s Silicon Valley.

“We must admit that although Hong Kong society has made progress, our pace in some aspects is slow, and some citizens have also expressed that they feel we are lagging behind,” she said.

Lee also touched on the resolution’s call for the public to “look up to heroes, and strive to become pioneers”, and suggested authorities promote the story of the Hong Kong Independent Battalion of the Dongjiang Column, a guerilla force that resisted Japan’s occupation of the city during the Second Sino-Japanese War of 1937 to 1945, through movies and short films.

She cited late tycoons Henry Fok Ying-tung and Tsang Hin-chi as other candidates who could be celebrated through such content.

“These films and short videos could be broadcast during morning assemblies and students’ sharing sessions,” Lee said.

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China woman fakes miscarriages to claim US$9,300 insurance cash with forged medical papers

https://www.scmp.com/news/people-culture/trending-china/article/3276484/china-woman-fakes-miscarriages-claim-us9300-insurance-cash-forged-medical-papers?utm_source=rss_feed

A woman from Shanghai faked miscarriages and forged medical papers to claim 66,200 yuan (US$9,300) in maternity insurance money has attracted widespread attention online.

Maternity indemnity is a key part of China’s social insurance system.

Funded by employers, it covers medical expenses related to pregnancy and childbirth, while also providing financial support to women during maternity leave.

The woman, 42, surnamed Xie, works for a foreign company in Shanghai.

Shanghai TV reported that she earns a monthly salary of more than 30,000 yuan (US$4,200), and studied telecommunications and computer science at university.

While on maternity leave last December, Xie remembered successfully claiming insurance after a miscarriage two years earlier, which inspired her to begin faking.

She used computer software to create false medical documents, including a maternity certificate and a discharge summary, claiming she had miscarried in hospital.

Shanghai Prosecutor Gong Xiaoting said China’s online insurance application system, designed for convenience, can be illegally exploited by criminals using photo-editing technology.

Xie twice submitted online insurance claims with forged medical papers, receiving a total of 66,200 yuan in maternity benefits.

After each claim, she destroyed the related paper documents and computer records.

Earlier this year, she attempted to use the same method again, fabricating another miscarriage report to apply for over 40,000 yuan (US$5,600) maternity insurance money, but the claim was rejected.

In February, she applied again, this time it was legitimate, following the hospital birth of her only child.

However, during a document review, officials discovered that she had filed five maternity insurance claims in four years, noticing several suspicious similarities in the documents. They reported the case to the police.

Later, Xie turned herself in and returned the fraudulently obtained money in full.

She said: “As an older pregnant woman with poor health, I worried about medical costs. In desperation, I impulsively faked miscarriages to get the insurance money.

“I have already resigned from my job and I deeply regret what I have done.”

On August 16, the court found Xie guilty of fraud and gave her a one -and-a-half-year suspended jail term due to her voluntary confession.

Judge Wang Xinyuan said her actions not only violated her company’s property rights but also posed a serious threat to the social insurance systems.

Xie’s story quickly made headlines on mainland social media.

One online observer wrote on WeChat: “For about 60,000 yuan, she has ruined her life and her children’s future.”

“Xie’s monthly salary of 30,000 yuan is not low in China, yet she still resorted to fraud. It seems greed knows no bounds,” said another.

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Black Myth: Wukong is a good omen for some, but small Chinese game developers see obstacles

https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3276611/black-myth-wukong-good-omen-some-small-chinese-game-developers-see-obstacles?utm_source=rss_feed

Tucked away in the southwest corner of the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou, security staff stand guard at a few nondescript four-storey villas to dissuade tourists from taking photos. The 24/7 security detail is tasked with an important mission: ensure the developers for the video gaming studio Game Science remain undisturbed.

Since the release of Black Myth: Wukong on August 20, the once little-known Tencent Holdings-backed start-up has become a national champion, attracting fans and news media to the ArtInno Town office park to catch a glimpse of the location where history was made in the form of China’s first AAA video game. Rebuffed by security, reporters were milling about a nearby cafe awaiting a chance to catch Game Science co-founder and art director Yang Qi, according to one staff member.

“A lot of fans came here and asked me which is the Game Science building,” said Wang Dan, a merchant in the town. “Before last week, I had no idea the company was that popular.”

Last week changed everything. In less than four days of release, more than 10 million copies of Black Myth were sold, according to Game Science, and the number of concurrent players on the digital game store Steam surpassed other popular AAA titles such as Cyberpunk 2077 and Elden Ring to become the hottest single-player game in the world.

The response has been so enthusiastic that it has raised the hopes of China’s video gaming industry about the prospects of pulling off another big-budget blockbuster game that takes years to produce – the typical features of titles that get the unofficial AAA designation. But the excitement belies the numerous challenges that remain for the industry, including strict government censorship, a conservative culture and a propensity to find the quickest route to monetisation.

Game Science’s 42-year-old CEO Feng Ji, the other co-founder, never expected his company to cause such a stir when the game designer left Tencent with Yang a decade ago to start the studio. Two years after its founding, the entrepreneur laid the seeds for a fateful decision that would go against the grain of China’s video gaming market.

“We had discussed this for a long time,” Feng told Chinese video gaming news outlet Chuapp. “The other day I was looking through the business plan written when we raised funds in 2016, one-third of which we wanted for making single-player games.”

China is best known for its online free-to-play games that derive most revenue by selling in-game items. These include Tencent’s PUBG Mobile and miHoYo’s Genshin Impact. Game Science was betting that there was a market for a sprawling single-player 3D action role-playing game that would ultimately be sold for US$38 a pop in China and US$60 in the US, the standard price for new AAA titles.

Over the course of six years of development, the team working on Black Myth grew from 13 to more than 140. The estimated budget was more than 300 million yuan (US$42 million), a big upfront investment in China but a figure that comes in well below development costs of major titles overseas, such as Cyberpunk 2077’s reported budget of more than US$400 million.

The bet has paid off, and Chinese gamers have been exuberant about the graphics and gameplay.

“What I like most so far is the art design and battle design,” said Eric Wu, a university sophomore in Guangzhou who has already spent more than 50 hours playing the game on Sony’s PlayStation 5. “When I see the beautiful Chinese scenery in the game, I feel like I am home, which is very cordial.”

Black Myth may also be benefiting from broader industry trends. It aligns with the “general popularity of Souls-like games in recent years”, according to Cui Chenyu, a senior analyst at research firm Omdia. Souls-like games are a subgenre of action role-playing games known for their difficulty and dark fantasy settings, and are named after FromSoftware’s Souls franchise.

“Its success is a mix of inevitable and accidental factors,” Cui said.

Another factor is the slowing growth in China’s 300 billion yuan video gaming industry. Sales in China, the world’s second-largest video game market by revenue, grew 2 per cent to 147 billion yuan in the first half of 2024. A decade ago, the industry saw 40 per cent annual growth when smartphones were bringing millions of people online.

In a way, Black Myth is a shot in the arm to an industry that has reached maturity and has recently been looking to cut costs, according to Cui.

The game has also acted as “a proof of concept for expansion beyond mobile gaming” in China, said Mio Kato, founder of Tokyo-based LightStream Research.

“From the data that I have seen, Black Myth: Wukong is a clear hit overseas as well as in China, but it is unlikely that it would have reached megahit status without the domestic Chinese market,” Kato said. “For a first title, the sales are extremely impressive and record-setting given that most [properties] tend to see sales grow for the first two to three iterations of a franchise.”

The success at home underscores how the stars aligned for the game, including getting the necessary license to be sold in China in the first place. A cloud has been hanging over the industry since Beijing initiated a crackdown three years ago that resulted in an eight-month freeze on issuing new licences and limiting minors to playing video games to just three hours per week.

“When I entered the gaming industry in 2017, it was relatively easy to get licences, as it usually took about two or three months. But around 2018, authorities suspended the process,” said Sherry Wang, who has been a game publishing manager in Shanghai for six years. “All of us were so panicked at that time.”

Wang was referring to a nine-month licensing freeze that preceded the one in 2021. In the months after the last freeze, as many as 14,000 video gaming firms were removed from company registries in China.

Censorship of game content has also intensified. “You don’t want to engage in historical nihilism, you don’t want to stir up politics, you don’t want to offend religion,” Wang said.

Censorship has traditionally covered supernatural elements such as ghosts. Final Fantasy XV replaced skeletons with other creatures to get a China release.

Black Myth is full of its own supernatural elements such as gods and a headless monk, but its ties to traditional Chinese culture may have benefited the game as Beijing tries to bolster its soft power overseas. The game is inspired by the 16th century novel Journey to the West, one of the most influential pieces of literature in East Asia.

“The country encourages game companies to go overseas and it also supports video games as a carrier to show China’s soft power to the world,” said Zhou Huaming, a Shanghai-based game developer who has worked in the industry for 18 years. “So for a game that can meet these two requirements, regulators are quite willing to issue a licence.”

Still, Game Science appears to have made some changes for the domestic market. The “wine” in the PC version sold on Steam is labelled “sweet dew” in the version sold through Tencent’s WeGame store.

The company has also been caught up in controversies stoked by concerns of regressive policies in China regarding gender equality, such as President Xi Jinping’s push to increase birth rates and crack down on feminist movements over the past several years.

Some video streamers who received advanced access to Black Myth were sent an email telling them to avoid topics including “feminist propaganda”, politics and Covid-19, according to screenshots shared online.

Yang had previously come under criticism for sexist remarks he allegedly made years ago, which include posts from social media claiming men and women are biologically driven to like different games. A report from video gaming news site IGN last year detailed a sexist culture inside the studio, which women in China had previously tried to draw attention to with calls for a boycott of Black Myth: Wukong.

The unprecedented nature of the game has overshadowed those concerns. It is one of the bestselling Chinese PC games ever and it has received critical acclaim around the world.

With all the challenges to producing such a game in the current environment, Black Myth’s success looks almost like a miracle, raising questions about when China might see another hit game on this scale.

“Even if I have the ability [to develop such big projects], I don’t dare to,” said Zhou, the Shanghai-based game developer, explaining the risks involved in China’s unpredictable video gaming industry. “The first thing we look at when starting a AAA project is the cost-benefit ratio.”

“Big companies that have other businesses may survive, but small game studios are not that lucky,” said Sherry Wang, the game publishing manager. “Sometimes when the studio finally got approval to launch the game, they have already run out of money to operate.”

Game Science may not have been able to pull this off without backing from Feng and Yang’s former employer, the world’s biggest gaming business by revenue. Tencent promised not to interfere in the start-up’s operations and offered technical support for Unreal Engine, the computer graphics game engine developed by Tencent-backed Epic Games, Feng said on the question-and-answer platform Zhihu.

While this and what industry insiders describe as a certain serendipity about Black Myth have made the game a hit, some remain optimistic about the industry seeing another AAA game within a few years.

“The success of Black Myth will definitely bring more funding into the sector, which will make more game developers willing to try to develop such big projects,” Zhou said.

Omdia’s Cui estimated that another Chinese AAA game would take at least two to three years.

“I’m not that positive because the development period and huge investment needed for AAA games are not something that ordinary developers can afford,” she said.

Feng, now enjoying the fruits of his labour 10 years after starting Game Science, has taken a more serene view.

“It is more important to embark on the journey to obtain scriptures than to arrive at Mount Lingshan,” he recently told state media Xinhua, referring to the destination of the characters in Journey to the West.

China ‘smart ladies’ swimming club in hot water for only admitting educated women under 45

https://www.scmp.com/news/people-culture/gender-diversity/article/3276480/china-smart-ladies-swimming-club-hot-water-only-admitting-educated-women-under-45?utm_source=rss_feed

A swimming club in China that only allows educated women under 45 to register as members because they have “a high IQ and personal qualities”, has sparked a heated discussion online.

The 2049 International Swimming and Diving Training Centre in eastern China’s Jiangsu province promoted its bimonthly membership for “knowledgeable ladies” on local listing app Dazhong Dianping.

The listing said only women under 45 who have a bachelor’s degree would be eligible for the membership priced at 576 yuan (US$80).

Management at the club told the mainland media outlet Modern Express on August 21 that they believe educated people “have a high IQ and certain personal qualities and understand social order”.

The member of staff, who did not reveal his name, said the lockers in the club’s changing rooms did not have locks.

Therefore, selecting members of a “high quality” would maintain the safety of all members and their belongings.

The club was opened in 2017, and was branded as a facility for ladies.

It provides women-only group swimming and diving classes, but offers one-on-one classes to men, according to a customer.

Women-only gyms have opened in China’s first and second-tier cities in recent years as workout environments where females are free from male gaze and harassment.

They have been well received, but the educational barrier, along with the affirmative gender action this club demands, has not.

“I cannot even swim without a bachelor’s degree?” one person said.

“Better education does not mean better moral quality,” another said on Weibo.

However, a third supported the club: “The business can select its customers just as the customer can select businesses. It is fine to make rules as long as they are legal,” he said.

A lawyer from Jiangsu Zhenyu Law Firm, Liu Jian, said the club may have violated the Law on Protection of the Rights and Interests of Consumers, which requires that customers have the right to obtain fair deals.

The local culture, sports and tourism bureau has asked the club to remove the membership rules.

A member of staff told Modern Express that the bureau suggested the club designs its activities and slogans “appropriately, without generating misunderstandings”.

Some suggested the club use a smart booking system to maintain its preferences without affecting other customers’ rights.

Philippines seeks naval self-reliance as South China Sea threats grow: ‘we wasted 6 years’

https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/3276602/philippines-seeks-naval-self-reliance-south-china-sea-threats-grow-we-wasted-6-years?utm_source=rss_feed

After years of inaction under a pro-Beijing administration, the Philippines is now focused on strengthening its presence in the South China Sea by reviving local shipbuilding – a strategic pivot many analysts argue is long overdue.

Initially announced in 2012, the Philippine Navy’s modernisation plan aimed to acquire a robust fleet, including six anti-air warfare frigates and three attack submarines. Yet, as of this year, it only operates two modern frigates – the BRP José Rizal and BRP Antonio Luna – alongside a handful of other vessels, leaving it vulnerable in a region fraught with tension.

“We wasted six years,” defence analyst Jose Antonio Custodio told local media on Tuesday, reflecting on former president Rodrigo Duterte’s tenure, during which Manila pivoted towards Beijing and steered away from military cooperation with the United States.

“Now, we have to catch up. It’s high time to mobilise our industries and people.”

With clashes between Philippine and Chinese vessels becoming more frequent in the South China Sea, rising tensions have sharpened Manila’s focus on defence.

In January, President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr allocated around US$35 billion towards military modernisation, approving the “Re-Horizon 3” initiative that prioritises upgrading naval forces over the next decade.

“It is better for the economy to build our own ships,” Philippine Navy spokesman Commodore Roy Vincent Trinidad told local media in May, emphasising that maintaining vessels bought from abroad “is more expensive than their cost”.

Custodio agrees. “We should invest,” he said. “When you are up against a major power like China, it’s not right to approach with half-hearted measures … China believes that our ships are limited.”

In addition to its two frigates, the Philippines has two amphibious transport ships, three corvettes, six offshore patrol vessels and nine fast-attack craft.

“The important thing is we don’t run out of assets,” said Custodio, who is also a fellow at the Consortium of Indo-Pacific Researchers think tank.

The situation in the South China Sea, he said, “is just going to get worse”.

The Philippines already has a robust civilian shipbuilding industry, making the development of even a limited naval sector a logical next step, said Greg Poling, director of the Southeast Asia programme at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies think tank in Washington.

Once fully operational, such an initiative could strengthen Manila’s ties with allies like the United States, Japan, and Australia, whose naval assets would be able to seek repairs and replenishment at local shipyards, Poling said.

“The Philippine Navy has made considerable strides” since the start of the military modernisation push, he said. While still “the smallest and least developed navy” among Southeast Asia’s major nations, “it is exponentially more capable than it was a decade ago”, thanks to the introduction of new corvettes and offshore patrol vessels.

“It is impossible to match China tonne-for-tonne or ship-for-ship,” Poling said, instead advising Manila’s naval forces to continue focusing on “both traditional and asymmetric capabilities, such as fast-attack missile boats”.

Over the past year and a half, “the Philippines successfully stood up to China’s grey-zone violence around Second Thomas Shoal and repaired the Sierra Madre in the face of Chinese opposition”, he said, referencing the World War II-era warship that Manila deliberately grounded on the disputed shoal in the late 1990s.

Poling argued this showed that the primary aim of Philippine efforts to develop external defence capabilities – countering China’s aggression in the South China Sea – “has shown considerable success”.

“But this will be a perennial challenge,” he added, citing recent tensions at Sabina and Scarborough Shoals.

Fortifying the Philippines’ external security requires a strong and self-reliant defence posture, according to analyst Chester Cabalza, president of the Manila-based International Development and Security Cooperation think tank.

The Philippine Navy once excelled in shipbuilding, leveraging the skills of Filipino seafarers and marine engineers, he said.

But a lack of government support and lingering mistrust of the military following the rule of the current president’s authoritarian father, Ferdinand Marcos Snr, caused these capabilities to lapse, according to Cabalza.

That was until “the aggressive rise of China”, he said. In the years since, substantial naval investments have been made, and maritime diplomacy expanded, “to strengthen collective deterrence as a clever countermeasure” to the increased Chinese presence in the South China Sea.

The Philippine Navy has made moderate gains in global military rankings, Cabalza noted, shedding its previous image as a regional weakling. While the addition of new corvettes and guided missile frigates has bolstered the naval arsenal, he emphasised the need for further acquisitions, particularly submarines and BrahMos missiles.

“The Philippine navy is almost on par now with Malaysia’s,” Cabalza said, though Indonesia, Vietnam, and Singapore still maintain larger naval assets.

By prioritising joint operations and interoperability with like-minded navies, the Philippine Navy is steadily learning from maritime technological advancements across the region and the globe, he said.

“Beijing may have an armada of naval and coastguard vessels,” Cabalza said, but Manila has the backing of influential international navies like those of the US, Australia and Europe. “This certainly multiplies the Philippines’ naval strength as these global navies support Manila’s adherence to maritime rules-based order,” he added.

In July, the Philippine Navy’s Commodore Trinidad suggested that its Chinese counterpart still “needs decades” before its carriers can operate effectively in global or regional conflicts.

US carriers, by contrast, have been battle tested and “can match China’s capabilities,” Cabalza said. This would allow Manila to leverage “a minilateral naval order” to bolster its maritime readiness and strengthen alliances, he said.

The real challenge for the Philippine Navy would be scaling up ship production, said Sherwin Ona, a former navy officer and current political-science professor at De La Salle University in Manila.

“The most cost-efficient approach is to engage the local shipbuilding industry for naval modernisation,” said Ona, who is also a non-resident fellow at independent strategic research organisation Stratbase-ADRI – citing successful projects such as the Multi-Purpose Attack Craft built by Propmech and the BRP Tagbanua landing craft by Philippine Iron Construction and Marine Works.

He also noted the potential for technology transfer when acquiring capital ships, which could facilitate in-country production.

However, he cautioned that the shift towards external defence under the Comprehensive Archipelagic Defence Concept – a new strategy aimed at safeguarding the nation’s entire exclusive economic zone – poses challenges for the Philippines.

“I think the country has realised that modernising its armed forces requires a robust defence industry,” Ona said.

China’s factory activity remains in contraction amid weak economic momentum

https://www.scmp.com/economy/economic-indicators/article/3276675/chinas-factory-activity-remains-contraction-amid-weak-economic-momentum?utm_source=rss_feed

Factory activity in China remained in contraction for a fourth consecutive month in August, adding to the headwinds facing the world’s second-largest economy.

The official manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) – a survey of sentiment among factory owners – stood at 49.1 in August, down from a reading of 49.4 in July, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Saturday.

The reading fell short of a survey by Bloomberg, which had predicted a slight increase to 49.5.

A reading above 50 typically indicates an expansion of economic activity, whereas a reading below implies a contraction.

“China’s economic momentum likely weakened recently. The fiscal policy stance remains quite restrictive, which may have contributed to the subdued economic performance,” said Zhang Zhiwei, chief economist of Hong Kong and Shanghai-based Pinpoint Asset Management.

“To achieve an economic stabilisation, fiscal policy stance needs to be much more supportive,” he added.

Within the official manufacturing PMI, the new manufacturing export order subindex stood at 48.7 in August, compared with a reading of 48.5 in July.

But Zhang warned with the US economy slowing, exports may not be as reliable as a source for growth as they were in the first half of the year.

Elsewhere, the non-manufacturing PMI – a measure of sentiment in the service and construction sectors – stood at 50.3 in August compared to 50.2 in July.

The reading exceeded the Bloomberg survey, which had predicted a slight fall to 50.1.

The gauge remained in expansion territory for the 20th straight month.

Within the non-manufacturing PMI, the construction subindex stood at 50.6 from 51.2 in July, while the services subindex stood at 50.2 from 50 in July.

China is struggling with overall sluggish economic momentum, with its economy growing by a slower-than-expected 4.7 per cent in the second quarter.

And on Wednesday, UBS cut its growth forecast for China’s 2024 gross domestic product growth from 4.9 per cent to 4.6 per cent due to a weak property market and sluggish domestic demand.

“We expect policies to become more supportive in the rest of 2024. What could come next includes faster fiscal spending, slightly more government bond issuance, a modest expansion in equipment and durable goods upgrade and trade-in and a little more monetary easing,” said Wang Tao, chief China economist at UBS.

Meanwhile, China’s official composite PMI – which tracks both the services and manufacturing sectors – stood at 50.1 from 50.2 in July.

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Avocados and honey imports a sign of China’s growing agricultural engagement with Africa

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3276261/avocados-and-honey-imports-sign-chinas-growing-agricultural-engagement-africa?utm_source=rss_feed

South Africa is preparing to ship its first avocados to China and Tanzania has won a deal to export honey there as agriculture becomes a new focus of China-Africa engagement.

The deals come as Beijing prepares to host the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) Summit next week, with agricultural cooperation expected to be high on the agenda.

Apart from avocados, China’s food imports from Africa now include soybeans, pineapples, chillies, cashew nuts, sesame seeds and spices.

The September 4-6 FOCAC Summit is expected to see African countries seek duty-free access to China for their products.

In Beijing on Friday, Chinese foreign vice-minister Chen Xiaodong confirmed that “agricultural modernisation” would be part of the summit’s four high-level meetings.

According to observers, China plans to diversify its imports, cutting reliance on main suppliers such as the United States, the European Union or Latin American countries.

China’s General Administration of Customs has since approved a list of South African fresh avocado companies that meet the requirements for exports.

The deal to export South African avocados to China was sealed during President Xi Jinping’s visit to the country in August last year, which saw the signing of a bilateral protocol of related phytosanitary requirements.

“We now have the final go-ahead from the Chinese authorities to export avocados to China,” Derek Donkin, chief executive of the South African Subtropical Growers’ Association, said, adding that the first shipment was about to sail.

China has been seeking more avocado suppliers to meet a growing domestic appetite for the fruit.

South Africa is the third African country to meet the strict Chinese sanitary and phytosanitary requirements to export avocados to China, alongside Kenya, the continent’s largest producer of the fruit, and Tanzania.

Chen Mingjian, the Chinese ambassador to Tanzania, confirmed that China had signed a honey import deal with Tanzania. She said China required about 32 million tonnes of honey each year.

“Indeed a lucrative market. Hope the honey export will boost Tanzania’s beekeeping industry and increase investment in agriculture,” Chen posted on X.

Tanzania’s honey and bee product exports currently generate more than US$77 million annually.

Increased imports of African food products are part of Xi’s plan to support the continent’s agricultural modernisation – a promise he made in Johannesburg last August.

According to China’s foreign ministry, Beijing has promoted cultivation projects such as juncao grass and hybrid rice as part of its agricultural cooperation with Africa.

“Such cooperation provided quality rice and vegetables to the African people and helped modernise the agricultural sector in Africa,” ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said earlier this month. “Agricultural cooperation is the epitome of how China and Africa render each other help.”

According to Boston University’s Global Development Policy Centre, China advanced US$2.3 billion in loans to eight African countries – Angola, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Ghana, Mozambique, Mauritania, Namibia and Zambia – between 2000 and 2022.

Mandira Bagwandeen, lecturer in the political science department at Stellenbosch University in South Africa, said investing in African agriculture was part of China’s aims to diversify its imports and mitigate potential trade risks or disputes associated with geopolitical tensions.

Bagwandeen said with Chinese lenders declining to fund massive infrastructure projects amid financial issues at home, “diverting funding to the agricultural sector, which is a comparatively less capital-intensive investment sector, is a strategic move”.

“It allows China to still maintain a significant presence in investing in the continent’s development and grow its development portfolio in the region. But, it also creates new markets for its agricultural products – machinery, fertilisers and seeds.”

Lauren Johnston, a China-Africa specialist and an associate professor at the University of Sydney’s China Studies Centre, also said the plan to co-modernise Africa’s agriculture aimed to help diversify China’s food-related supply.

That process, in turn, contributes to addressing Africa’s hunger and rural poverty issues while creating parallel industry opportunities, such as in construction, agritechnology and China’s hybrid seeds, Johnston said.

“Ethiopia may be selling coffee, Tanzania exporting sesame seeds or Kenya and South Africa avocados, and coastal African countries seafood – [but] it does not appear to be the goal to transform all African countries into food exporters to China.”

Rather, the goal was also to help mobilise African agricultural productivity, to feed the continent’s growing population, to raise rural incomes and earn parallel international revenues – for both China as investor and Africa as exporter, Johnston said.

Wandile Sihlobo, chief economist at the Agricultural Business Chamber of South Africa, said African countries had a lot to learn from China and needed to import technologies to help boost domestic agriculture.

He said China could consider opening up its market more robustly to high quality products from Africa, particularly South Africa.

“Here the specifics are beef, wines and various fruits. South Africa enjoys access, but only for a select product. The hope is for wider and more ambitious access, and South African authorities will likely be eager for a deeper conversation on this issue with the Chinese authorities,” he said.

China imports a lot more agricultural products from Latin America and Asia, according to Linda Calabrese, senior research fellow and development economist at the Overseas Development Institute in London.

In the past decade, food products made up less than 3 per cent of China-Africa trade, Calabrese said, adding that China’s main imports from Africa were mainly oil seeds and nuts, soybeans and citrus fruit.

Nevertheless, in recent years, China has encouraged imports of African agriculture products in various ways, such as the Alibaba electronic World Trade Platform (eWTP), launched in 2016, allowing Ethiopia and Rwanda SMEs to sell niche products directly to Chinese consumers.

Last week, Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba’s online retail subsidiary AliExpress entered Ethiopia in collaboration with Ethiopian Airlines. It will enable traders to sell and buy products using the platform.

Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.

Another initiative is the “green lanes” for African produce set up at the 2021 FOCAC in Senegal, which allowed easier exports to China of products such as Kenyan avocados, South African citruses and Rwandan chillies, Calabrese said.

Dozens of African countries have since benefited from Beijing’s decision to waive tariffs on exports from the “least developed countries” in the continent.

However, “all these initiatives remain small-scale for the moment, and are more geared at supporting African agriculture thrive, rather than making Africa China’s food basket,” Calabrese said.

China’s Olympic stars to replay their gold medal talents on final day of Hong Kong visit

https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/society/article/3276655/chinas-olympic-stars-set-dazzle-hong-kong-sporting-displays-final-day-visit?utm_source=rss_feed

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Mainland Chinese Olympians are expected to put on spectacular sporting displays on Saturday morning following a gala show on Friday evening, which saw them entertain the Hong Kong audience with their athletic abilities and musical talents.

Athletes will head to two separate venues for a series of ticket-only demonstrations. Divers and swimmers will take part in an event at the Victoria Park Swimming Pool, while badminton players, gymnasts and table tennis stars will be at Queen Elizabeth Stadium.

Saturday’s events mark the end of a whirlwind three-day trip for the 65-strong delegation. The sports superstars are then expected to make their way to neighbouring Macau for another three-day visit.

China’s birth rate unlikely to benefit from influx of Filipino helpers, analysts say

https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3276600/chinas-birth-rate-unlikely-benefit-influx-filipino-helpers-analysts-say?utm_source=rss_feed

Though South Korea has taken a controversial step to address its declining birth rate – hiring domestic helpers from the Philippines en masse to curtail the costs of child care – analysts in China, a country facing a similar demographic dilemma, are unconvinced such a move would lead to an appreciable change.

Daniel Yang, a father of two in Shanghai, said for his part he wouldn’t consider hiring a Filipino helper, mentioning several areas of concern.

“There will be big cultural differences, which means all aspects of life need to be adjusted,” said Yang, who employs a Chinese nanny for 9,500 yuan (US$1,333) a month.

The minimum wage is 2,690 yuan a month in Shanghai, the highest in the country.

“I’m also concerned about the safety of my kids [in the care of a foreigner] – should any incident happen, it will draw international attention,” he added.

“The domestic market is developing quite well and sufficient to meet demand. China has enough labour, and I don’t see a gap there for Filipino nannies to fill.”

The notion of introducing skilled foreign nannies to alleviate parental stresses and encourage births is one of many proposed solutions to a persistent problem. China’s population is shrinking, and with the decline comes questions over what effect the phenomenon will have on the country’s shaky economic growth.

In 2023, China’s population dropped for the second year in a row, falling by 2.08 million to 1.4097 billion. Only 9.02 million births were reported for the same year, the lowest annual figure since records began in 1949.

Despite a spate of government policies to boost births, young adults in China remain reluctant, citing the daunting cost of child-rearing, evolving social attitudes among younger generations that have also led to lower marriage rates, and the cutthroat living pressure faced by city dwellers in a difficult job market.

South Korea’s introduction of Filipino helpers to the workforce is part of a plan to address its own birth rates – the lowest in the world. There, an average 0.72 children is expected over a mother’s lifetime in 2023, down from 0.78 the previous year.

A replacement fertility rate of 2.1 children per woman has been estimated for a country’s population to remain constant.

China and South Korea are among the world’s most expensive places to raise children, according to a study by the YuWa Population Research Institute published last year.

However, demographers say that introducing foreign domestic helpers on a similar scale is unlikely to be feasible in China.

“Per-capita income in the Philippines is much lower than in South Korea, so bringing in [cheaper] Filipino domestic workers can help reduce childcare costs for young South Koreans,” said He Yafu, an independent demographer based in Guangdong province.

“Although China’s per-capita income is higher than that of the Philippines, it is still much lower than South Korea’s, and given the serious unemployment issues in China right now, I don’t think China will introduce Filipino domestic workers on a large scale.”

Working four to eight hours a day, domestic helpers could earn as much as 2.38 million Korean won a month (US$1,781), while the minimum monthly wage for foreign domestic workers in Hong Kong is 4,870 HKD (US$624).

But in mainland China’s largest cities like Beijing and Shanghai, domestic workers can cost 7,000 yuan (US$982) a month or more.

Expecting that Filipino helpers will be cheaper than those from China is unrealistic, said Yuan Xin, vice-president of the China Population Association and a professor of demography at Nankai University in Tianjin.

“Filipino helpers won’t lead to significantly lower costs, and it certainly won’t become widespread. It’s more of a luxury for the wealthy few.”

The cultural and socioeconomic challenges inherent in such human exchanges, already sizeable, seem harder to surmount as geopolitical frictions between China and the Philippines escalate over territorial disputes in the South China Sea.

“Language, customs, beliefs and rights are all complex factors,” Yuan said. “Bringing a foreigner into the family introduces an adaptation issue right from the start.”

In 2022, Chinese demographer Liang Jianzhang called for a relaxation of rules to allow foreign nannies, which he said could boost China’s ailing birth rate by as many as 200,000 a year and save a cumulative 200 billion yuan for families. The report by Liang, also co-founder of online travel services provider Trip.com, estimated a reduction in expenses by 60 per cent for the average family.

Malaysia’s ‘China plus one’ gold rush stumbles over a US tariff threat

https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/economics/article/3276605/malaysias-china-plus-one-gold-rush-stumbles-over-us-tariff-threat?utm_source=rss_feed

After six years working at a factory in Malaysia’s Penang state, Benny suddenly found himself on the unemployment line this year – caught in the crossfire of international trade tensions that are upending Chinese manufacturing across Southeast Asia.

Since February, Jinko Solar’s factory in Penang has slashed hundreds of jobs, retreating from the market as solar tech manufacturers in the United States clamour for government protection against imports from Chinese giants.

“Of course, we were all sad, but we just have to accept it as God’s will. It was a nice place to work and the salary was good,” said Benny, who asked that This Week in Asia withhold his full name due to confidentiality clauses tied to his lay-off.

The Shanghai-headquartered company’s pullback followed accusations from Washington that Chinese firms were evading tariffs by relocating operations to Southeast Asia and gaining an unfair advantage over US manufacturers. In a bid to close this loophole, the US Department of Commerce is ramping up taxes on solar panels and technology shipped from Malaysia, Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam: four countries that collectively exported nearly US$10 billion in solar products to the US in 2023 – nearly double the previous year’s trade figures.

On May 15, US authorities launched an anti-dumping investigation into solar panel exports from the four, responding to a petition from the American Alliance for Solar Manufacturing Trade Committee. A two-year exemption from anti-dumping scrutiny the countries had previously enjoyed expired on June 6.

Just weeks later, Benny’s employer – one of the world’s largest solar module suppliers – laid him off as part of a broader downsizing. Jinko Solar has not commented on the closure of its Penang facility after nine years. Yet in a June interview, Li Zhenguo, founder of rival Longi, which operates in Malaysia’s Selangor, voiced concerns about the industry’s future amid a “clearly determined” US strategy to safeguard its solar market. “The question is if we should shut down factories in Southeast Asia or keep them as a backup,” he said, as reported by the Beijing-based Green Energy Daily.

US tariffs could soar as high as 270 per cent after the investigation wraps up, potentially obliterating the competitive edge that Southeast Asian manufacturing once enjoyed, warns Huaiyan Sun, a senior consultant on solar supply chains at global energy transition consultancy Wood Mackenzie.

Manufacturers were on edge, he said. “They may pack up their production lines and move” to places “like Indonesia, Laos or even the Middle East”.

But for now, Southeast Asia remains a hotspot, buoyed by its abundant supply of chips that are crucial for solar technology.

Over the past five to six years, Southeast Asia has attracted billions in tech investments from both Chinese firms and Western multinationals looking to relocate. As US sanctions and tariffs increasingly squeeze access to high-end semiconductors in China, the neighbouring region has become an attractive alternative.

But Washington’s proposed tariffs on the four Southeast Asian markets, set to take effect by February next year, signal that the fallout from the trade and tech war is only just beginning. Analysts are now wary that Malaysia’s semiconductor sector could also come under scrutiny, particularly if new projects inadvertently enhance China’s access to sensitive technologies.

“For anything on national security … the US has shown it will not hesitate to take strict, appropriate action” to protect its interests, warned Wong Siew Hai, president of the Malaysian Semiconductor Industry Association (MSIA).

Data from the International Energy Agency reveals that over 80 per cent of global solar module production is concentrated in China, home to the world’s top 10 manufacturers. Chinese solar producers have heavily invested in Southeast Asia, which supplied about 10 per cent of global solar demand in 2023, according to the Asian Development Bank.

The US embassy in Malaysia did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and Malaysia’s Ministry of Trade and Investment declined to answer questions for this article.

Experts agree that Southeast Asian solar supply chains are now under intense scrutiny. “What we are seeing right now are efforts to reshore manufacturing to the US,” said Cheah Wen Chong, an Asia research analyst at the Economist Intelligence Unit.

In May, President Joe Biden announced that Chinese exports to the US would face levies of between 25 and 100 per cent in strategic sectors starting from next year. These new tariffs will target semiconductors, electric vehicles, solar modules and batteries, aimed at countering “unfair, non-market practices” that he said threaten American workers and businesses.

Last year, the US government further restricted the products chip maker Nvidia could ship to China, following a 2022 ban on exports of advanced chips and fabrication equipment. These sanctions align with efforts to revitalise the US chip industry, with US$52.7 billion allocated under the Chips Act to subsidise domestic production – under the condition that companies do not expand operations into nations deemed national security threats.

The competitive landscape is likely to remain unchanged, regardless of whether Kamala Harris wins November’s election or former president Donald Trump retakes the White House and resumes the trade war with China he began in 2016.

Amid that feud, Southeast Asia became a lucrative playground for both Chinese and US companies eager to safeguard their supply chains from tariffs. The region thrived under the “China plus one” strategy – adding a production base outside China – as supply chains were diversified to avoid damaging sanctions.

From Vietnam to Malaysia, and even in latecomers like Indonesia and Thailand, factories have flourished as the likes of Silicon Valley giant Intel and South Korean tech powerhouse Samsung vied for the best opportunities.

Malaysia, with its decades of tech experience, English-speaking workforce and strategic port access, had the advantage. Coupled with tax incentives and a welcoming government, the country positioned itself as a prime destination for tech investments.

Semiconductors are a cornerstone of Malaysia’s growth strategy under Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, who aims to secure at least 500 billion ringgit (US$114 billion) in new investments through a National Semiconductor Strategy launched in May.

Over the past three years, Malaysia has attracted more than US$20 billion in investments from major international firms like Intel, Infineon, Microsoft and Nvidia, encompassing everything from wafer fabrication to advanced packaging, testing facilities, data centres and AI development.

Chip makers are “all about derisking”, said MSIA’s Wong – particularly in light of global conflicts and climate-related disruptions that have strained supply chains.

The interest among investors remains strong and “is still increasing”, because Malaysia is seen as a conducive environment. “We have 50 years of experience in the semiconductor industry with a strong ecosystem and talent available, and a business friendly government,” he said.

Just last week, Amazon Web Services, a subsidiary of e-commerce behemoth Amazon, announced a massive US$6.2 billion investment to expand its presence in Malaysia, reinforcing the country’s appeal in the tech landscape.

Chinese companies are also eyeing Malaysia with growing interest. In April, three Chinese firms unveiled plans to invest US$100 million in Penang, which has been dubbed the “Silicon Valley of the East”. Their goal: to establish bases for semiconductor packaging, materials, and equipment manufacturing, alongside producing etching and film-processing tools essential for wafer fabrication.

Yet, analysts caution that Malaysia must tread carefully between Western and Chinese interests amid ongoing US sanctions and tariff escalations targeting China. “There is definitely some concern,” said Shazwan Mustafa Kamal, a director at Vriens & Partners, a government risk consultancy. “If Malaysia faces tariff hikes on solar panel exports, those could be extended to include other sectors down the line as well.”

The evolving tariff landscape presents a complex challenge for countries like Malaysia. Last year, the US emerged as the Southeast Asian nation’s third-largest investment partner, pumping in US$4.7 billion across 62 approved projects, according to the Malaysian Investment Development Agency. China followed closely behind, contributing US$3.2 billion through 122 projects.

Malaysia’s stance of geopolitical neutrality is crucial for avoiding the brunt of US sanctions, experts say. But maintaining this balance means ensuring the country isn’t perceived as a launch pad for Chinese access to high-end chips and technologies banned by Washington, such as Nvidia’s advanced processors and AI-modelling chips.

“If Malaysia were to become overly reliant on China in this sector, it could be flagged as a potential risk to US national security,” warned Doris Liew, an economist at the Institute of Democracy and Economic Affairs in Kuala Lumpur.

In a pivotal US election year, optics are crucial. Observers note that Prime Minister Anwar has been shifting his foreign policy stance increasingly towards China, openly criticising the US and the West, particularly regarding their support for Israel amid the devastating Gaza conflict, which has claimed more than 40,000 Palestinian lives, mostly civilians.

Anwar’s recent announcement of Malaysia’s intention to join Brics has fuelled speculation that the Southeast Asian nation is distancing itself from Western influences. “Many Brics members have expressed anti-Western sentiments,” Liew said. “Malaysia’s membership, despite having limited economic ties with other member countries beyond China and India, can be seen as a primarily geopolitical move rather than an economic one.”

Originally formed by Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, Brics now includes Saudi Arabia, Iran, Ethiopia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, representing preferential trade and investment opportunities for nations covering 45 per cent of the global population.

For some Malaysia watchers, Anwar’s overtures to China and Brics reflect a prime minister leveraging new-found political stability and the region’s economic potential to enhance his country’s standing. “Concerns that Malaysia’s recent foreign policy posturing under PMX is leaning heavily towards China are hyped up,” said Deborah Chow, an associate director with political risk consultancy BowerGroupAsia, using a popular term to refer to Anwar, Malaysia’s 10th prime minister.

Experts argue that the notion of commanding unwavering loyalty from Southeast Asian nations is outdated, especially as the region’s economy grows and millions of new consumers emerge for markets ranging from smartphones to electric vehicles.

During Malaysia’s industrialisation boom in the 1980s and 1990s under then-prime minister Mahathir Mohamad, Western investments flowed in despite his Look East policy, which focused on East Asian economies.

Southeast Asia took time to regain its footing after Trump ripped up trade rules that had threaded together supply chains reliant on cheap labour and manufacturing throughout the region. Since then, countries have explored a range of economic alternatives.

Malaysia has agreed bilateral agreements with China and India to conduct trade using their own currencies, aiming to mitigate exposure to foreign exchange volatility. “Anwar sees de-dollarisation as a more stable trading system” than relying on the US currency, risk consultant Shazwan said. “Especially during the ever-present US-China trade wars” that began in 2016.

This foreign policy shift has also broadened Malaysia’s semiconductor horizons, paving the way for collaborations with nations eager to tap into the booming global market for chips.

“China has a lot of interest in Malaysia because we have the best [semiconductor] ecosystem, we have the experience and the culture, food and living conditions are quite familiar to them,” MSIA’s Wong said.

With revenue from the global semiconductor sector projected to soar from US$577 billion in 2022 to US$1 trillion by 2030, “everyone is asking, ‘why can’t my country get a piece of the cake?’”

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Pacific Islands Forum communique taken down after Chinese envoy calls Taiwan reference ‘unacceptable’

https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/aug/30/pacific-islands-forum-communique-taken-down-after-chinese-envoy-calls-taiwan-reference-unacceptable

A summit of Pacific leaders has ended in drama after China’s regional envoy demanded the scrapping of language about Taiwan, with the communique later republished without the offending paragraph.

The Pacific Islands Forum (Pif) summit in Tonga this week brought together Australia, New Zealand and 16 Pacific island countries or territories, only three of which still have diplomatic relations with Taiwan.

China is not a member of the regional grouping, but – like the US and numerous other major countries – attends some of the Pif events as a “dialogue partner”.

For more than 30 years, Taiwan has been afforded the lesser status of “development partner”, a situation that irks Beijing, which claims the self-governed democracy as its territory.

Solomon Islands, which has fostered increasingly warm ties with Beijing since switching diplomatic recognition from Taiwan in 2019, had raised concerns in the lead-up to this week’s summit about Taiwan’s status.

But the final communique published on the Pif website on Friday rebuffed any push for change and stood by existing arrangements.

“Leaders reaffirmed the 1992 Leaders decision on relations with Taiwan/Republic of China,” it said.

China’s special envoy for the Pacific, Qian Bo, called for changes to the communique.

Nikkei Asia reported that it saw a “visibly angry” Qian confront the Pif secretary general, Baron Waqa, immediately after the closing news conference and that he called the statement “unacceptable”.

Qian later told reporters in Tonga’s capital, Nuku’alofa, that it was “a surprising mistake made by someone” and it “must be corrected”.

He reiterated Beijing’s position that China should be seen as the representative “on behalf of the whole China, including Taiwan and the mainland”, Nikkei Asia reported.

The Guardian has seen and verified a copy of the final communique that appeared on the Pif website earlier on Friday. It included a line reaffirming the decades-long arrangements regarding Taiwan.

But as of Friday evening local time, this communique was no longer easily accessible on the website.

The communique was republished on the Pif website on Saturday morning local time, but with paragraph 66 about Taiwan no longer included.

A paragraph about Solomon Islands being the host of next year’s Pif was moved up to become the new paragraph 66.

The Guardian has sought comment from the Pif secretariat.

Taiwan’s deputy foreign minister, Tien Chung-kwang, also travelled to Nuku’alofa this week. Tien held talks with Taiwan’s three remaining Pacific allies, Palau, Tuvalu and the Marshall Islands.

China’s foreign ministry said on Friday: “Any attempt by the Taiwan authorities to brush up their sense of presence by rubbing shoulders with the forum can only be self-deceptive.”

The Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, had previously played down the prospect of any attempt to change Taiwan’s status within Pif structures.

When asked about the matter on Thursday morning, prior to the leaders’ retreat, Albanese said: “Well, that hasn’t been discussed at all. We support all the existing arrangements.”

Additional reporting by Reuters

China-born neuroscientist Jane Wu lost her US lab. Then she lost her life

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3276370/china-born-neuroscientist-jane-wu-lost-her-us-lab-then-she-lost-her-life?utm_source=rss_feed

For molecular biologist and cancer researcher Bing Ren, Jane Wu was a “true role model”.

She was warm, caring and inspiring – and guided Ren’s decision to make the area of research his life’s work.

“Dr Wu taught me basic molecular biology skills, and showed me how discoveries were made at the bench,” said Ren, who first met Wu in 1993 and worked under her direct supervision at Harvard University.

“Dr Wu was the one that opened my eyes to the wonderful world of molecular biology, and convinced me to pursue a career in this field,” said the professor in cellular and molecular medicine at the University of California, San Diego.

Wu was a prominent neuroscientist at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, and left her mark on many other researchers in both the United States and China before taking her life in July.

The 60-year-old former Dr Charles L. Mix Research Professor at Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine took her own life in her Chicago home on July 10, according to Cook County records.

In addition to the personal tragedy for Wu’s family and friends, the scientist’s death drew attention yet again to much criticised efforts to pursue researchers suspected of having undisclosed ties to Beijing.

The most high-profile of these efforts was the China Initiative, which was launched in 2018 during the Trump administration to counter alleged economic espionage and technological theft from China. It was heavily criticised for unfairly targeting people of Chinese descent and scrutinising them about issues unrelated to espionage. In 2022, the programme was officially terminated by the Biden administration.

The US National Institutes of Health (NIH), the US government’s main agency for biomedical and public health research and the main funder for Wu’s decades-long research at Northwestern University, started a similar but separate programme around the same time as the China Initiative.

In the past six years, more than 250 scientists – most of them of Asian descent – have been identified as having failed to disclose overlapping funding or research in China, or having broken other rules. There were only two indictments and three convictions as legal outcomes of those investigations, yet 112 scientists lost their jobs as a result.

The NIH Office of Extramural Research declined to say whether Wu was a target but a source informed about the matter said there were investigations of Wu.

“The investigations killed her career,” said Xiao-Fan Wang, a distinguished professor in cancer research at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.

Without naming Wu, advocacy group APA Justice said the lab at Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine of a prominent Chinese-American researcher in neurology and genetics who died on July 10, 2024, had been shut down.

“She was such a devoted scientist. Denying her the right to do research was like taking away the most important thing in her life,” Wang said.

Peter Zeidenberg, a Washington-based lawyer who has represented dozens of scientists of Chinese descent facing US government prosecutions over their alleged China ties, said Wu had been his client.

Born in Hefei, Anhui province in 1963, Wu graduated from Shanghai Medical University in 1986 and went on to earn her doctorate in cancer biology from Stanford University in the US.

She did postdoctoral research at Harvard University and spent a decade at Washington University in St Louis as an assistant and then associate professor in paediatrics, molecular biology and pharmacology before joining Northwestern University in 2005.

Wu’s research at Northwestern focused on two interconnected biological processes known as RNA splicing and regulatory RNA-binding proteins, according to molecular geneticist Adrian Krainer from the Cold Spring Harbour Laboratory in New York.

The processes are key to understanding and treating neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s, frontotemporal dementia and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, said Krainer, who co-organised a science conference with Wu in the 2000s.

“I remember her as a kind and caring person,” Krainer said. “She was very devoted to training the next generation of scientists in both the US and China.”

In 2009, Wu was recruited by the Chinese government under the Thousand Talents Programme to help run a lab and train students at the Institute of Biophysics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing.

The programme sought to lure top mainland-born scientists in the US to return to China, either on a full-time or part-time basis.

But it would become a major target of the NIH foreign interference investigation.

It is not clear if Wu’s involvement in the programme was a trigger for an NIH investigation.

Northwestern University has not responded to multiple inquiries from the Post since July. Wu’s profile page on the medical school, where she worked for about two decades, has disappeared. Other web pages, such as her publication and grant records on the Northwestern Scholar website, have also been deleted.

“The university’s reaction is rather unusual,” said a Chinese-American biologist based in Ohio, who did not wish to be named. “Normally, the school or the university would publish an obituary and keep the faculty’s webpage for a period of time.”

Wu was buried at the Rosehill Cemetery in Chicago on July 17, according to a funeral arrangement notice drafted by her two children, who declined to talk to the Post.

To Haipei Shue, president of United Chinese Americans, a non-profit organisation based in Washington and the largest Chinese-American coalition, Wu’s death is a “tragic coda to the now-defunct China Initiative”.

“It demonstrated once again the unbearable human cost of this programme to many innocent Chinese-American scientists.”

Wang, from Duke University and former president of the Society of Chinese Bioscientists in America, said the research community had been devastated by Wu’s death.

“It’s hard to believe such a familiar and upbeat colleague has left us,” he said.

Structural biologist Yifan Cheng from the University of California, San Francisco was also at a loss.

Cheng said Wu gave him a printout copy of Banksy’s painting, Girl with Balloon, right after he finished the Chicago Marathon in 2018.

That was their last meeting. “I still have it in my office,” he said. “It’s a big loss to the scientific community that such a talented scientist is now away from us forever.”

Additional reporting by Holly Chik

If you have suicidal thoughts or know someone who is experiencing them, help is available. In Hong Kong, you can dial 18111 for the government-run Mental Health Support Hotline. You can also call +852 2896 0000 for The Samaritans or +852 2382 0000 for Suicide Prevention Services. In the US, call or text 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org for the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. For a list of other nations’ helplines, .