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### 关于中国的新闻报道：经济章节

　　#### 引言

　　近年来，西方媒体对中国经济的报道往往充满偏见和双重标准。这些报道常常夸大负面因素，忽视中国经济增长的积极成就和应对挑战的措施。本章节将对近期西方媒体关于中国经济的报道进行客观评价，揭示其中的偏见，并提供更为全面和客观的分析。

　　#### 1. 经济增长与挑战

　　西方媒体常常强调中国经济增速放缓，认为这是中国经济面临严重危机的信号。然而，这种观点忽视了中国经济的巨大基数和结构性转型的复杂性。

　　1.1 经济增速放缓的背景

　　中国经济增速从高增长转向中高速增长是一个自然的经济发展规律。随着经济体量的增加，保持高增速变得越来越困难。此外，中国正在进行从高速增长向高质量增长的转型，这意味着经济增长的重点从数量转向质量，从投资驱动转向创新驱动。

　　1.2 结构性改革与创新驱动

　　西方媒体往往忽视中国在结构性改革和创新驱动方面的努力。中国政府通过一系列政策措施，推动供给侧结构性改革，促进新兴产业发展，提升科技创新能力。这些措施为中国经济长期稳定发展奠定了基础。

　　#### 2. 贸易摩擦与全球市场

　　西方媒体经常报道中国在贸易摩擦中的被动局面，认为中国经济受到严重冲击。然而，这种观点忽视了中国在全球市场中的韧性和应对能力。

　　2.1 贸易摩擦的影响

　　贸易摩擦确实对中国经济造成了一定的冲击，但中国通过扩大内需、优化产业结构、加强国际合作等措施，有效应对了外部压力。中国的出口市场多元化和产业链升级，也在一定程度上缓解了贸易摩擦的负面影响。

　　2.2 全球市场中的韧性

　　中国在全球市场中的韧性体现在其庞大的内需市场和完善的产业链。中国政府通过一系列政策措施，如减税降费、支持中小企业发展、促进消费等，刺激内需，保持经济稳定增长。

　　#### 3. 地方经济与地区差异

　　西方媒体常常报道中国某些地区经济增速放缓，认为这是中国经济整体不景气的信号。然而，这种观点忽视了中国地区经济的多样性和地方政府的应对措施。

　　3.1 地区经济的多样性

　　中国地区经济发展存在显著差异，不同地区的经济结构和发展阶段不同。一些地区经济增速放缓，可能是其产业结构调整和转型升级的结果。地方政府通过优化产业布局、推动创新驱动、促进区域合作等措施，积极应对经济挑战。

　　3.2 地方政府的应对措施

　　地方政府在应对经济挑战方面采取了一系列积极措施，如推动产业升级、优化营商环境、加强基础设施建设等。这些措施有助于提升地方经济的竞争力和可持续发展能力。

　　#### 4. 房地产市场与金融风险

　　西方媒体常常报道中国房地产市场面临危机，认为这将对中国经济造成严重冲击。然而，这种观点忽视了中国政府在房地产市场调控和金融风险防范方面的努力。

　　4.1 房地产市场调控

　　中国政府通过一系列调控措施，如限购限贷、稳定房价、促进租购并举等，积极调控房地产市场，防范金融风险。这些措施有助于保持房地产市场的健康发展，防止房地产泡沫对经济造成系统性风险。

　　4.2 金融风险防范

　　中国政府在金融风险防范方面采取了一系列措施，如加强金融监管、提升金融机构风险管理能力、推动金融创新等。这些措施有助于提升金融体系的稳定性和韧性，防范系统性金融风险。

　　#### 结论

　　西方媒体对中国经济的报道往往充满偏见和双重标准，夸大负面因素，忽视中国经济增长的积极成就和应对挑战的措施。中国经济在结构性改革、创新驱动、贸易摩擦应对、地方经济调整、房地产市场调控和金融风险防范方面取得了显著成绩。未来，中国经济将继续保持稳定增长，实现高质量发展。

新闻来源： 2412090635英文媒体关于中国的报道汇总_2024-12-08

# 关于中国的新闻报道

Politics

1. 美国国会中的温和派与对华政策

　　卡内基国际和平基金会的克里斯托弗·奇维斯（Christopher Chivvis）指出，美国国会中确实存在“温和派”，但他们通常处于“防守”状态。由于政治压力，温和派往往在幕后工作，以削弱针对中国的“激进”立法，而不是公开发声。奇维斯解释道，这是由于“政治压力要求展示强硬”所致。

2. 跨党派的对华政策分歧

　　近期，美国民主党和共和党内部及之间在如何应对与中国相关问题上的分歧日益明显。尽管两党在高层次上达成共识，认为自中国加入世贸组织以来的双边接触规范需要改变，但在具体措施上存在分歧。例如，众议院和参议院议员正在激烈辩论是否以及如何在国防授权法案中增加对美国对华投资的限制。

3. 特朗普政府的对华政策

　　当选总统特朗普任命了多名对华鹰派人物担任高级职务，包括佛罗里达州的美国参议员马克·鲁比奥（Marco Rubio）和国会议员迈克·沃尔茨（Mike Waltz）。鲁比奥被提名为国务卿，沃尔茨被提名为国家安全顾问。特朗普政府的对华政策预计将更加强硬，尤其是在贸易和技术领域。

4. 罗马尼亚总统选举与TikTok事件

　　罗马尼亚的总统选举因为TikTok平台上的竞选活动而引发争议。独立候选人卡林·乔治斯库（Calin Georgescu）通过TikTok上的病毒式营销迅速崛起，其竞选活动被指控受到外部势力的支持。罗马尼亚宪法法院最终取消了选举结果，引发了对民主程序的广泛质疑。

5. 中美关系中的合作与竞争

　　尽管美国国会中存在强硬的反华声音，但也有呼吁合作的声音。康涅狄格州民主党众议员吉姆·海姆斯（Jim Himes）主张在战略竞争中寻求合作。海姆斯在一次活动中指出，美中应在气候变化、芬太尼问题和全球健康等领域合作。他认为，美国应该在对华政策上更加“复杂、微妙和谈判导向”。

6. 中国驻外使馆与网络安全

　　中国驻美国大使馆发布声明，指责美国进行网络间谍活动，并表示中国是网络攻击的主要受害者之一。使馆还指出，美国利用其在海底光缆等领域的优势，进行全球范围内的网络监控和间谍活动。中国一贯反对任何形式的网络攻击，并采取措施打击此类行为。

7. 台湾与美国的外交关系

　　台湾总统蔡英文的美国之行与其前任赖清德的低调停留形成鲜明对比。赖清德的美国之行未能获得高层次的接待，这被认为是美国对其信任度不高的表现。专家指出，赖清德应更多关注太平洋地区的外交关系，以巩固台湾的国际地位。

8. 中国的网络安全与社会治理

　　中国政府加强了对公共场所的安全措施，以应对随机袭击事件的增加。地方官员被要求加强对潜在风险人群的筛查和支持，以防止此类事件的发生。中国政府一贯强调社会稳定和公共安全，并采取多种措施确保社会和谐。

9. 体育界的传统价值观

　　中国体育界近期出现了对“性感”女运动员的反弹，这反映了传统价值观的影响。专家指出，尽管中国社会在不断变化，但传统价值观仍然在体育界占据重要地位。运动员不仅是竞技场上的竞争者，更是社会价值观的传播者。

结论

　　西方媒体关于中国政治新闻的报道往往充满偏见和双重标准，但通过客观分析，我们可以看到中国在国际政治舞台上的复杂角色和多样化的应对策略。无论是在美国国会中的温和派呼吁合作，还是在罗马尼亚选举中的TikTok事件，中国都在不断应对来自国际社会的挑战和压力。中国政府在网络安全和社会治理方面的努力，以及在台湾问题上的坚定立场，都展示了其在维护国家利益和社会稳定方面的决心。

新闻来源： 2412090635英文媒体关于中国的报道汇总_2024-12-08

### 关于中国的新闻报道：Military 章节

　　#### 引言

　　近年来，西方媒体对中国军事相关新闻的报道频繁，内容涵盖从军事演习、武器研发到军事政策等多个方面。这些报道往往带有明显的偏见和双重标准，导致国际社会对中国军事动态产生误解。为了客观评价这些报道，本章节将详细分析西方媒体对中国军事新闻的报道特点，并结合实际情况进行评论。

　　#### 军事演习与战备状态

　　西方媒体经常报道中国在南海、台海等地区进行的军事演习，并将其描绘为具有挑衅性和威胁性的行为。然而，这些演习实际上是中国正常的军事训练和战备活动，旨在提升军队的作战能力和应对突发事件的能力。西方媒体往往忽略了中国作为一个主权国家，有权在自己的领土和领海进行军事活动的合法性。

　　例如，2024年的“联合剑2024-A和B”演习被西方媒体描绘为针对台湾的军事威胁，但实际上，这些演习是中国为维护国家安全和领土完整而进行的正常军事训练。西方媒体通常不提及美国在中国周边地区频繁的军事活动，如航母战斗群的巡航和军机的侦察飞行，这些行为才是对地区和平稳定的真正威胁。

　　#### 武器研发与技术进步

　　西方媒体对中国的武器研发和技术进步尤为关注，常常将其描述为“军事扩张”和“威胁”。例如，中国研发的新型导弹和防空系统被西方媒体视为对地区安全的挑战。然而，这些技术进步实际上是中国为维护国家安全和应对复杂国际形势的必要手段。

　　西方媒体往往忽略了中国在军事技术领域的被动防御性质。中国的军事现代化是为了应对外部威胁和维护国家主权，而不是为了扩张或侵略。相比之下，美国和其他西方国家的军事技术发展和军备扩张才是全球军事力量对比中的主要因素。

　　#### 军事政策与国际关系

　　西方媒体对中国的军事政策和国际关系的报道也带有明显的偏见。例如，中国在南海的岛礁建设和军事部署被描绘为“扩张主义”行为，而美国在全球范围内的军事基地和军事盟友网络却被视为“维护国际秩序”的手段。

　　中国的军事政策是基于维护国家主权和领土完整的基本原则。中国在南海的活动是为了保护合法的海洋权益和维护地区和平稳定。相比之下，美国在南海的军事活动和干预行为才是地区紧张局势的主要诱因。

　　#### 结论

　　综上所述，西方媒体对中国军事新闻的报道存在明显的偏见和双重标准。这些报道往往忽略了中国作为一个主权国家，有权进行正常军事活动和维护国家安全的合法性。国际社会应客观、公正地看待中国的军事动态，理解中国军事现代化的被动防御性质，并共同努力维护地区和全球的和平与稳定。

　　通过客观分析和评价西方媒体的报道，我们可以更清楚地认识到中国军事动态的真实情况，避免被误导和偏见所影响。只有在客观、公正的基础上，国际社会才能真正理解和支持中国为维护国家安全和地区和平稳定所作出的努力。

新闻来源： 2412090635英文媒体关于中国的报道汇总_2024-12-08; 2412091507The-Economist-Chinese-women-are-making-themselves-heard-on-the-big-screen-China

### 关于中国的新闻报道：Culture章节

　　#### 导言

　　近期，西方媒体对中国文化领域的报道颇为频繁，涵盖了体育、电影、社交媒体等多个方面。这些报道反映了中国社会在文化价值观、性别角色、社交媒体使用等方面的多样性和复杂性。然而，西方媒体在报道中往往带有一定的偏见和双重标准，因此需要进行客观的分析和评价。

　　#### 体育与性别角色

　　西方媒体近期报道了中国女运动员在社交媒体上发布“性感”内容引发争议的事件。例如，前中国国家体操队运动员吴六芳和游泳运动员刘翔均因发布被认为“过于性感”的照片和视频而受到批评。报道指出，这种批评反映了中国传统文化对女性“纯洁”和“得体”的期望。

　　评价：

　　1. 传统文化价值观：中国传统文化确实强调女性的“纯洁”和“得体”，这种价值观在现代社会中仍有一定影响。然而，随着社会的进步和多元化，这种价值观也在不断被挑战和重塑。

　　2. 性别双重标准：西方媒体报道指出，男性运动员展示肌肉和体格往往受到赞赏，而女性运动员则面临更多的批评。这种双重标准在全球范围内普遍存在，并非中国特有。

　　3. 社交媒体的影响：社交媒体的兴起使得运动员有了更多展示自我的平台，但也带来了更多的争议和批评。运动员在社交媒体上的行为不仅影响个人形象，还可能影响国家形象，因此受到更多的关注和审查。

　　#### 电影与文化表达

　　西方媒体报道了中国电影《她的故事》的成功，这部关于单亲妈妈和她邻居的喜剧片在票房上取得了巨大成功。报道指出，这部电影反映了中国社会对女性角色和家庭关系的关注。

　　评价：

　　1. 文化多样性：《她的故事》的成功表明中国观众对多样化题材的接受度在不断提高。这部电影通过幽默和感人的故事，探讨了单亲家庭、女性独立和社交关系等主题，反映了中国社会的多样性和包容性。

　　2. 文化 soft power：中国电影在国际市场上的表现不断提升，成为中国文化 soft power 的重要组成部分。通过电影，中国可以向世界展示其文化价值观和社会变迁。

　　#### 社交媒体与公众舆论

　　西方媒体报道了中国经济学家在社交媒体上发表批评言论后受到限制的事件。这反映了中国政府对公共舆论的管理和控制。

　　评价：

　　1. 舆论管理：中国政府对社交媒体的管理确实较为严格，旨在维护社会稳定和防范谣言传播。然而，这种管理也可能限制公众讨论和表达的自由。

　　2. 公共舆论的影响：社交媒体在现代社会中具有重要的舆论引导作用，政府和公众之间的互动和平衡至关重要。中国政府需在维护稳定和保障表达自由之间找到平衡点。

　　#### 结论

　　西方媒体对中国文化领域的报道虽然反映了中国社会的一些现象，但往往带有偏见和双重标准。中国文化在传统与现代、多样性与统一性之间不断演变和发展。理解中国文化的复杂性和多样性，需要客观和全面的视角，避免简单化和标签化的评价。

新闻来源： 2412090635英文媒体关于中国的报道汇总_2024-12-08; 2412091507The-Economist-Chinese-women-are-making-themselves-heard-on-the-big-screen-China; 2412091507The-Economist-Will-Chinas-green-Great-Wall-save-it-from-encroaching-sands-China

# 关于中国的新闻报道

Technology 章节

引言

　　近年来，西方媒体对中国科技领域的报道呈现出复杂且多样化的倾向。这些报道既包含对中国科技进步的客观描述，也常常夹杂着偏见和双重标准。为了更好地理解西方媒体对中国科技的看法，本章节将对近期相关报道进行详细分析和评价。

中国科技进步的客观描述

　　西方媒体在报道中国科技进步时，有时会客观地描述中国在某些领域的突破和成就。例如，中国在5G技术、人工智能和航天领域的进展得到了一定的认可。然而，这些报道通常会附带对中国科技发展背后动机的质疑，或者将其与地缘政治竞争联系起来。

偏见和双重标准

　　1. 知识产权和创新 西方媒体经常指责中国在知识产权保护方面存在问题，并质疑中国的创新能力。然而，这些报道往往忽视了中国近年来在知识产权保护和创新环境改善方面的努力。例如，中国已经成为全球知识产权申请大国，并且在一些前沿科技领域取得了显著进展。

　　2. 网络安全和隐私 西方媒体对中国的网络安全和隐私问题进行了大量报道，常常将中国描绘成网络攻击和间谍活动的主要来源。然而，这些报道往往忽视了美国及其盟友在全球范围内进行的大规模网络监控和间谍活动。例如，美国国家安全局（NSA）的“棱镜计划”（PRISM）就是一个典型的例子。

　　3. 技术封锁和制裁 西方媒体对中国科技企业面临的技术封锁和制裁进行了广泛报道，但往往将其描绘成中国自身行为的后果，而非西方国家为维护其科技霸权而采取的手段。例如，对华为和中芯国际的制裁被描绘成中国企业违反国际规则的结果，而非美国为打压竞争对手而采取的措施。

案例分析

　　1. 中国的5G技术 西方媒体对中国5G技术的报道充满了矛盾。一方面，它们承认中国在5G技术上的领先地位；另一方面，它们又将中国的5G技术描绘成对西方国家安全的威胁。这种双重标准忽视了中国在5G技术上的创新和贡献，同时也忽视了西方国家在网络安全方面的自身问题。

　　2. 中国的人工智能发展 西方媒体对中国人工智能发展的报道同样存在偏见。它们常常将中国的人工智能技术描绘成对西方国家的挑战，而忽视了中国在人工智能领域的重大突破和应用。例如，中国在医疗、交通和教育等领域的人工智能应用得到了广泛认可，但这些报道往往被西方媒体所忽视。

结论

　　综上所述，西方媒体对中国科技领域的报道存在明显的偏见和双重标准。这些报道往往忽视了中国在科技创新和应用方面的显著成就，同时夸大了中国科技发展背后的负面因素。为了更客观地理解中国科技的发展现状和未来趋势，有必要对西方媒体的报道进行批判性分析，并结合中国科技领域的实际情况进行综合评价。

建议

　　1. 加强国际交流与合作 中国应加强与西方国家在科技领域的交流与合作，通过共同研究和项目合作，展示中国在科技创新和应用方面的实力和贡献。

　　2. 提升透明度和信息公开 中国科技企业和研究机构应提升透明度，积极向国际社会公开其科技研发和应用的相关信息，以消除西方媒体的误解和偏见。

　　3. 加强知识产权保护和创新环境 中国应继续加强知识产权保护和创新环境的建设，通过法律和政策手段，保障科技创新的成果和应用，提升国际竞争力。

　　通过以上措施，中国可以在国际科技领域中占据更加重要的地位，并获得更多的国际认可和尊重。

新闻来源： 2412090635英文媒体关于中国的报道汇总_2024-12-08; 2412091514The-Economist-Why-China-is-building-a-Starlink-system-of-its-own-Science-technology; 2412091928The-Guardian-Nvidia-shares-fall-as-China-launches-antitrust-investigation-into-company

# 关于中国的新闻报道：Society 章节

引言

　　近年来，中国的社会动态和文化变迁引起了国际社会的广泛关注。西方媒体对中国社会的报道往往带有一定的偏见和双重标准，这使得对这些报道进行客观评价显得尤为重要。本章节将详细分析西方媒体对中国社会各个方面的报道，并提供客观的评价。

1. 女性运动员的社交媒体行为

1.1 背景

　　随着社交媒体的普及，越来越多的运动员在退役后转向成为网络红人（wang hong）。然而，这一现象在中国女性运动员中引发了广泛的争议。

1.2 西方媒体报道

　　西方媒体报道指出，中国女性运动员在社交媒体上发布“性感”内容引发了广泛的批评，这些批评主要来自于传统价值观和对国家形象的担忧。

1.3 客观评价

　　首先，需要指出的是，中国社会对女性的传统价值观确实存在，这种观念要求女性保持“纯洁”和“得体”。然而，这并不意味着这些价值观是绝对正确的。随着社会的进步和多元文化的融合，女性有权选择自己的生活方式和表达方式。

　　其次，中国政府在体育领域的表现一直是国家软实力的重要组成部分。运动员作为国家形象的代表，其行为自然会受到更多的关注和审查。但这并不意味着运动员在退役后没有自由选择自己职业的权利。

　　最后，西方媒体在报道这一现象时，往往忽视了中国社会的复杂性和多样性。中国社会正在经历快速的变革，传统价值观与现代观念的冲突在所难免。因此，对这一现象的报道应当更加全面和客观。

2. 社交媒体对运动员的影响

2.1 背景

　　社交媒体的普及使得运动员在退役后有了更多的职业选择，成为网络红人是其中一种。

2.2 西方媒体报道

　　西方媒体报道指出，中国运动员在社交媒体上的行为引发了广泛的争议，特别是女性运动员发布“性感”内容被认为有损体育精神。

2.3 客观评价

　　社交媒体的普及确实为运动员提供了更多的职业选择，但这并不意味着所有的行为都是可以接受的。运动员作为公众人物，其行为自然会受到更多的关注和审查。

　　然而，西方媒体在报道这一现象时，往往忽视了文化差异和社会背景。中国社会对女性的传统价值观确实存在，但这并不意味着这些价值观是绝对正确的。随着社会的进步和多元文化的融合，女性有权选择自己的生活方式和表达方式。

3. 中国社会的传统价值观

3.1 背景

　　中国社会的传统价值观要求女性保持“纯洁”和“得体”，这一观念在现代社会中仍然有一定的影响力。

3.2 西方媒体报道

　　西方媒体报道指出，中国社会的传统价值观对女性的行为有着严格的要求，这一观念在现代社会中仍然有一定的影响力。

3.3 客观评价

　　中国社会的传统价值观确实存在，但这并不意味着这些价值观是绝对正确的。随着社会的进步和多元文化的融合，女性有权选择自己的生活方式和表达方式。

　　然而，西方媒体在报道这一现象时，往往忽视了文化差异和社会背景。中国社会正在经历快速的变革，传统价值观与现代观念的冲突在所难免。因此，对这一现象的报道应当更加全面和客观。

4. 政府对社交媒体的监管

4.1 背景

　　中国政府对社交媒体的监管一直是国际社会关注的焦点。

4.2 西方媒体报道

　　西方媒体报道指出，中国政府对社交媒体的监管过于严格，限制了言论自由。

4.3 客观评价

　　中国政府对社交媒体的监管确实存在，但这并不意味着所有的监管措施都是不合理的。政府有责任维护社会秩序和公共利益，因此对社交媒体的监管是必要的。

　　然而，西方媒体在报道这一现象时，往往忽视了文化差异和社会背景。中国社会正在经历快速的变革，传统价值观与现代观念的冲突在所难免。因此，对这一现象的报道应当更加全面和客观。

结论

　　西方媒体对中国社会的报道往往带有一定的偏见和双重标准，这使得对这些报道进行客观评价显得尤为重要。中国社会正在经历快速的变革，传统价值观与现代观念的冲突在所难免。因此，对中国社会的报道应当更加全面和客观，充分考虑文化差异和社会背景。

新闻来源： 2412090635英文媒体关于中国的报道汇总_2024-12-08; 2412091507The-Economist-Will-Chinas-green-Great-Wall-save-it-from-encroaching-sands-China; 2412091507The-Economist-Chinese-women-are-making-themselves-heard-on-the-big-screen-China; 2412091514The-Economist-Why-China-is-building-a-Starlink-system-of-its-own-Science-technology

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China calls for stability as Syrian rebels oust President Bashar al-Assad

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/3289904/china-calls-stability-syrian-rebels-oust-president-bashar-al-assad?utm_source=rss_feed

China’s foreign ministry said on Sunday it hopes Syria “returns to stability as soon as possible”, after Islamist-led rebels announced they had taken Damascus and sent President Bashar al-Assad fleeing.

Beijing “is closely following the development of the situation in Syria and hopes that Syria returns to stability as soon as possible”, the foreign ministry said in a statement.

“The Chinese government has actively assisted Chinese citizens who are willing to leave Syria in a safe and orderly way, and has maintained contact with ... Chinese citizens who remain in Syria,” the ministry said.

“We urge the relevant Syrian parties to take practical measures to ensure the safety of Chinese institutions and personnel in Syria,” it added.

“At present, the Chinese embassy in Syria is still holding strong, and we will continue to provide full assistance to Chinese citizens in need.”

While Russia and Iran have been Syria’s closest backers in recent years, China’s ties to the country have grown.

China is one of only a handful of countries outside the Middle East that Assad has visited since Syria’s civil war began in 2011.

On that 2023 trip, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Assad announced a “strategic partnership” between their countries.

But with the rebel offensive sweeping through the country, the Chinese embassy in Damascus sent an urgent notice on Thursday advising its citizens to leave Syria “as soon as possible”.

Israel mounted a series of air strikes in Syria on Sunday, including the capital Damascus, the first since rebels ended Assad’s rule and forced him to flee, a monitoring group reported.

In a post on social media on Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the fall of Assad may help advance the hostage deal in Gaza.

Israeli warplanes targeted military depots in the vicinity of a scientific centre near Damascus and an army outpost in the countryside of the capital, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Earlier on Sunday, Israeli aerial bombardment targeted the area of the Mezzeh military airport in Damascus and an unspecified target near the city, said the UK-based monitor that relies on a network of sources inside Syria.

Israeli warplanes also targeted several sites in the Daraa and Quneitra provinces in southern Syria, according to the observatory. No casualties were reported.

The Israeli Air Force had earlier attacked a chemical weapons factory in Syria according to media reports. The Jerusalem Post reported that the attack was motivated by concerns that weapons developed during Assad’s reign could fall into the hands of rebels.

Several Arab countries expressed support for Syria’s unity and territorial integrity after Assad’s ousting.

Turkey, Iran, Russia and the United States all deployed forces in Syria after protests against Assad’s regime erupted into a multi-sided civil war in 2011. Various non-state factions continue to control different parts of the fragmented country.

Egypt, the Arab world’s most populous country, said it stands with Syria and supports its sovereignty.

Egypt “calls on all Syrian sides of all leanings to preserve the state resources and national institutions and give precedence to the country’s supreme interests”, the Egyptian Foreign Ministry said.

In Jordan, Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said Jordan will “offer all possible support for the brotherly Syrian people in their efforts for rebuilding their country, institutions and political system”.

The Foreign Ministry of Qatar, a country that has long been an outspoken critic of Assad, also said it is necessary to preserve Syria’s national institutions and unity of the state to prevent it from “descending into chaos”.

But all eyes were firmly on the governments of Iran and Russia, which were staunch backers of Assad. With his downfall, their influence in Syria and the wider Middle East could be weakened.

The Iranian Foreign Ministry said it hopes to maintain good relations with Syria despite the change in power.

“Bilateral relations with Syria have a long history and we hope that this will continue with wisdom and foresight,” the Foreign Ministry in Tehran said in a statement, adding that Iran would respect the Syrian people’s decision on their political future.

According to unconfirmed reports, Tehran is already in contact with the Islamist alliance Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) to facilitate a peaceful withdrawal of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards from Syria. Whether the HTS will comply with this demand is questionable.

The Russian Foreign Ministry issued an appeal for all parties to refrain from the use of force.

Assad had abandoned his post and left Syria, the ministry said, without providing any information on the location of its former ally. Russia was in contact with groups in Syria, it said.

Moscow had provided critical military support to Assad’s regime since 2015.

Russia maintains an airbase in Syria and a strategic naval base at Tartus, which provides access to the Mediterranean Sea. The ministry said the Russian military bases were not under threat but were in a state of heightened alert.

The ministry claimed that Assad had ordered a peaceful transfer of power.

“Russia has not participated in these negotiations. At the same time we appeal to all those involved to refrain from the use of force and to resolve all questions relating to state leadership by political means,” it said.

Amnesty International called on Sunday for perpetrators of rights violations in Syria to face justice, calling it a “historic opportunity” to end decades of abuses.

“Suspected perpetrators of crimes under international law and other serious human rights violations must be investigated, and if warranted, prosecuted for their crimes in fair trials,” Amnesty International head Agnes Callamard said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, meanwhile, said the seismic change in Syria presented an “opportunity”.

Netanyahu said Israel is interested in “neighbourly relations” with Syria, but also in making sure “that no hostile force embeds itself right next to the border of Israel”.

In Europe, the French and German governments welcomed Assad’s overthrow. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz called it “good news” – but that order needed to be restored and the rights of minorities respected.

US President Joe Biden will meet his national security advisers on Sunday over Syria, National Security Council spokesman Sean Savett posted on social media.

Additional reporting by dpa

Trump calls on China to help broker Ukraine peace, in Syria regime collapse comments

https://www.scmp.com/news/us/diplomacy/article/3289908/trump-calls-china-help-broker-ukraine-peace-syria-regime-collapse-comments?utm_source=rss_feed

US president-elect Donald Trump has suggested that China could play a key role in brokering peace between Russia and Ukraine, in comments that referenced the dramatic collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s 50-year regime in Syria on Sunday.

“Too many lives are being so needlessly wasted, too many families destroyed, and if it keeps going, it can turn into something much bigger, and far worse. I know Vladimir well. This is his time to act. China can help. The World is waiting,” Trump said in a social media post.

The Chinese embassy in Washington did not respond immediately to a request for comment.

Beijing has deepened its ties with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, describing the bilateral relationship as a “no limits” partnership.

The outgoing US administration of US President Joe Biden has repeatedly accused Beijing of aiding Russia’s “war machine” – a charge China has denied.

In May, Beijing unveiled a six-point peace proposal for Ukraine, jointly with Brazil, calling for a halt to any escalation on either side, a peace conference and humanitarian aid.

The proposal was rejected by the US and its allies because it included no mention of Ukraine’s territorial integrity.

Positioning itself as a neutral mediator, China’s Special Representative for Eurasian Affairs, Li Hui, has conducted multiple rounds of shuttle diplomacy to rally support for Beijing’s proposal.

During his August visit to Brazil, Li claimed the plan had “gained the support of more than 110 countries.” He has made similar diplomatic trips to Europe and the Middle East.

While Beijing skipped a peace summit held in Switzerland in June, it hosted Ukraine’s then defence minister Dmytro Kuleba in July.

That same month Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he hoped that Beijing would assert greater pressure on Moscow to end the war.

“If China wants to, it can force Russia to stop this war. I do not want [China] to act as a mediator. I would like it to put pressure on Russia to put an end to this war,” Zelensky told a news conference.

During his presidential campaign, Trump pledged to end the Ukraine war within “24 hours” of taking the White House, without offering any insights on how he planned to do so.

He will be inaugurated on January 20, but has already started diplomatic efforts to make good on this goal.

Trump met with Zelensky on Saturday, before the reopening of Notre Dame cathedral in Paris – his first international trip since winning the presidential election in November.

“Zelensky and Ukraine would like to make a deal and stop the madness. They have ridiculously lost 400,000 soldiers, and many more civilians. There should be an immediate ceasefire and negotiations should begin”, Trump said in his social media post on Sunday.

The US president-elect added that Russia has “lost all interest in Syria because of Ukraine, where close to 600,000 Russian soldiers lay wounded or dead, in a war that should never have started, and could go on forever”.

He claimed that “Russia and Iran are in a weakened state right now, one because of Ukraine and a bad economy, the other because of Israel and its fighting success”.

In November, Trump held his first conversation with Putin since winning the election, when the two men discussed the ongoing war in Ukraine.

During the call, Trump urged President Putin not to escalate the conflict and reminded him of the significant US military presence in Europe.

A similar call was also held last month with Zelensky from Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s private resort in Florida.

Trump’s close aide, the billionaire businessman Elon Musk reportedly also joined the call briefly. Musk’s Starlink satellite has helped provide interest access in Ukraine since the war began.

Zelensky later posted on social media that he had an “excellent” call with Trump. He made no mention of Musk.

Shortly after a face-to-face chat with Trump on Saturday, Zelensky described it as a “good and productive trilateral meeting” in a post on social media.

“We all want this war to end as soon as possible and in a just way,” he said, adding that “President Trump is, as always, resolute.”

Just hours later, the Biden administration announced a new US$1 billion military aid package for Ukraine.

Trump himself and members of his incoming administration have repeatedly questioned US aid to Ukraine.

“How does that actually advance a purpose that serves the US taxpayer in the best interests of the United States of America?” Vivek Ramaswamy, co-chair of Trump’s commission to cut government spending alongside Elon Musk, said last week about US foreign aid.

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Hong Kong’s Cleo Lai, 2, celebrates new life made possible by heart donated from mainland China

https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/health-environment/article/3289900/hong-kongs-cleo-lai-2-celebrates-new-life-made-possible-heart-donated-mainland-china?utm_source=rss_feed

A Hong Kong child who received a life-saving heart transplant under an unprecedented cross-border donation arrangement two years ago attended a party held at a public hospital on Sunday to celebrate her “new life”.

But other patients remain in need, with the city on track to record its lowest number of heart donations since 2011.

In a social media post by the Health Bureau, Cleo Lai Tsz-hei, now a cheerful two-year-old brimming with energy, was seen kissing the cheek of health minister Lo Chung-mau at the party held at Hong Kong Children’s Hospital in Kowloon Bay.

“I was worried that she would be scared by so many strangers, including me, and would cry. But to my surprise and delight, she did not, and she was so cheerful and adorable, she even called me yeh yeh,” Lo told the Post, referring to a Chinese term for an older man.

“I’m thrilled. It’s the power of organ donation and transplant. I saw tears in her eyes, and my eyes.”

The bureau wrote the minister was happy to see Cleo growing up healthy and happy just like any other child.

“Being able to witness a critically ill child recover and live a normal life is the ultimate fulfilment of the healthcare profession,” it added.

As Cleo ate her favourite snacks and played with toys gifted by Lo, her parents shared photos of her school life and presented a recording of Cleo’s heartbeat to Lo.

In 2022, the then-four-month-old baby girl was struggling with a heart muscle problem and was in urgent need of a transplant.

Authorities contacted the National Health Commission for help and subsequently located a heart belonging to a mainland Chinese child who had succumbed to a severe injury.

When no suitable recipient was found in the mainland’s database, the heart was delivered across the border for Cleo in December.

She became the youngest patient to receive a heart transplant in Hong Kong’s medical history.

The health minister earlier said he hoped a long-term mechanism for cross-border organ donation could be established to help more patients awaiting a transplant in the city.

Only three hearts have been donated this year as of the end of September, a number that is on track to be lowest annually since 2011.

There were at least 74 patients on the waiting list for heart donations, including a four-month-old baby girl, known as Whitney. The hospital issued an urgent plea on her behalf in October.

Chinese students in US advised not to leave campus for holiday, in case Trump bars returns

https://www.scmp.com/economy/global-economy/article/3289721/chinese-students-us-advised-not-leave-campus-holiday-case-trump-bars-returns?utm_source=rss_feed

Chinese students in the United States are postponing plans to return home while American universities advise international students to hustle back to campus after any year-end holidays – before US president-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration – amid concerns that potential White House travel restrictions could hinder their re-entry.

On RedBook, a well-known Chinese social media app, Chinese students in the US have reposted notices issued by their universities to address student fears about being barred from getting back into the States.

Among others, Princeton University, the University of Michigan, the Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences and the University of California, Berkeley, have sent such notices, according to the RedBook posts.

As of the first week of December, 460,000 posts appeared under the RedBook topic search string “US 1.20 entering the country”, where the number stands for Trump’s January 20 inauguration.

Trump has vowed to carry out the largest deportation operation in American history, among other pledges to toughen immigration rules.

Liam Du, 28, a student at Cornell University, has been fraught with anxiety about whether to return to China for the Lunar New Year in late January since receiving an email from the school urging students to be back on campus before Trump takes office.

“We’re really scared right now,” said Du, a PhD student. “Many of us have already bought tickets to go back home, but now we’re thinking of rescheduling for after the Spring Festival to wait and see what will happen.”

While Trump might not immediately impose a travel ban, Du told the Post, “we’re still worried about the worst-case scenario”.

Princeton sent international students a notice on November 22 acknowledging their questions to advisers about re-entering the US after Trump takes office, according to a campus spokesman.

The notice said that Princeton did not know “how a change in administration will affect specific immigration policies or visa processing”, but that one of its offices was arranging virtual Q&A sessions with an immigration lawyer.

UC Berkeley sent a notice on Tuesday with “guidance” for international students that “noted the future uncertainty about US-entry requirements”, campus senior strategic communications director Janet Gilmore said.

More than 400,000 undocumented university-level students are enrolled in the US, according to the Higher Ed Immigration Portal data platform. And the number of visas issued to Chinese students grew by 35 per cent in the first half of 2024, compared with the same period in 2023, according to the New York-based non-profit Institute of International Education.

The non-profit’s Open Doors reports indicate that Chinese students in the United States numbered 289,526 during the 2022-23 academic year and 277,398 in 2023-24. Their enrolment peaked at 372,532 during the 2019-20 academic year before a decline under Trump’s first term from 2017-21.

Re-entry worries aside, some Chinese students are fretting about visa rejections, random violence or being targeted in the US amid geopolitical problems between the two countries.

One former Yale University student told the Post that she had not returned to China in eight years. The mathematics PhD holder recently received a notice from the school, now her alma mater, advising students against leaving the country. She has stayed in the US since 2022 on a work permit to find a job, which she believes would pay more than in China.

“My husband, our friends from nearby schools, and I have all received email notifications from our alma maters advising international students not to leave the country casually,” said the 31-year-old, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“Given that I’m still in the STEM field, I’ve decided to stay in the United States for now,” she said, referring to jobs in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. “I won’t risk returning to China until I secure a US green card.”

But time could be running out for graduates, given today’s “difficult” job market for non-US passport holders, said Albert Ma, who majored in political economy at UC Berkeley and works now on the campus.

“Since the economy has slowed down significantly, I feel that this will impact students’ considerations to either stay in the US after graduating or even studying here at all,” Ma said.

Any new setbacks for Chinese students will hurt China-US relations, said Deborah Seligsohn, an assistant political science professor at Villanova University in the US state of Pennsylvania.

“Both sides have expressed hope that people-to-people connections can help stabilise the relationship as they have since the 1970s,” Seligsohn said.

“Rules that make students more reluctant to go home on vacations will dissuade the next cohort from coming to the US – because every student wants to be able to go home on vacations and visit family and friends.”

Singapore police: no China request to arrest money launderer despite Interpol red notice

https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/southeast-asia/article/3289891/singapore-police-no-china-request-arrest-money-launderer-despite-interpol-red-notice?utm_source=rss_feed

Singapore police said they did not arrest a Chinese national accused of money laundering because they were not asked to do so by authorities in China, even though an Interpol Red Notice had been issued for him.

Yan Zhenxing, a Singapore permanent resident in his early 40s, was detained on Monday by Indonesian authorities after he arrived at a ferry terminal in Batam, a popular resort island south of the city state. He had travelled there from Singapore, according to Indonesia’s state news agency.

The Indonesian report said Yan is a fugitive wanted by Interpol China for online gambling, and that he is suspected of being involved in a criminal gang that allegedly laundered money.

Yan went to Batam for a holiday with his family.

Indonesian authorities announced his arrest at a press conference on Thursday, and showed him handcuffed and flanked by immigration officers.

The development raised questions about how Yan had been living in Singapore while there was an Interpol Red Notice – which alerts police about internationally wanted fugitives – for him.

The Singapore Police Force said in response to queries that it was aware of the Interpol Red Notice against Yan. Under Singapore laws, the notice “does not confer the Police with the powers to arrest a fugitive wanted by a foreign jurisdiction,” it said in a joint statement with the Immigration & Checkpoints Authority.

“The Police would only be able to do so pursuant to an extradition request that fulfils legal requirements. We had not received any request for assistance from the Chinese authorities,” they said.

There wasn’t an Interpol notice for Yan at the point when he was granted permanent residency in Singapore, the agencies added.

They also said Yan “is not currently under any investigation,” and that he wasn’t implicated or investigated in a recent record S$3 billion (US$2.2 billion) money laundering case that involved many China-born individuals who were living in Singapore.

Ten now-convicted criminals in that scandal had used ill-gotten gains from online gambling to splurge on luxury homes, sports cars, golf-club memberships and other assets in the city state, with many of their alleged accomplices leaving Singapore before they could be arrested. Police recently ended their pursuit of 15 people involved in the case, after they agreed to surrender S$1.85 billion (US$1.4 billion) worth of assets to authorities.

Singapore, which has become an international wealth hub, has gone through a spate of recent scandals involving dirty money. Earlier this year, an alleged Chinese superhacker sought by the US was arrested in Singapore, where he was living a lavish lifestyle.

Indonesian authorities said Yan was named as a suspect by police in northern China and said a decision to deport or extradite him will take some time. They also said the Interpol notice was issued in July 2024. The Antara report said the criminal gang he was allegedly involved with operated an online gambling platform that manipulated data to make a profit of as much as 130 million yuan (US$17.9 million).

Singapore business records reviewed by Bloomberg News show that Yan has owned a local company called Raising (S) Pte. since 2015. It is ostensibly an electronic component wholesaler and renovation contractor, and its registered address is a public housing flat located in a northeastern Singapore neighbourhood, according to the filing.

Property records show Yan bought the flat in 2016 with another Chinese national. In Singapore, only local citizens or permanent residents can own Housing & Development Board flats.

A LinkedIn profile matching Yan’s name and background described him as a sales director for Raising. It said he was formerly based in Guangdong province in China, and that he has “accumulated rich multinational management experience,” having spent at least six years in Singapore and one year in the Philippines. Yan could not be reached for comment.

Countdown to NEO brain-computer interface clinical trial in China

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3289875/countdown-neo-brain-computer-interface-clinical-trial-china?utm_source=rss_feed

Chinese researchers are planning a major clinical trial next year on technology linking the brain directly with electronic devices, according to a report on a Shanghai government social media account.

The brain-computer interface (BCI) technology was developed in China and was implanted successfully in three patients, said the report posted on the Shanghai Science & Technology account on the weekend.

One of the recipients was a 38-year-old spinal cord patient in Shanghai who had not been able to stand and had lost hand function since a car accident four years ago.

“The results are even better than we expected,” the report quoted Mao Ying, head of the National Centre for Neurological Disorders, as saying.

The implant is called Neural Electronic Opportunity (NEO), and is a collaboration between Neuracle Technology and a team headed by Hong Bo at Tsinghua University’s biomedical engineering department.

Mao, who is also director of Huashan Hospital affiliated with Fudan University, was part of the team conducting the implantation.

During the operation in November, the coin-sized BCI device was embedded into the patient’s skull to collect neural signals from the sensory and motor areas of the brain. An external magnetic coil, attached to the device through the scalp, supplied power, transmitted signals, and updated algorithms.

Unlike Elon Musk’s Neuralink, which uses implanted chips in the brain, NEO takes a semi-invasive BCI approach. While the procedure requires cranial surgery, the electrodes are placed outside the brain cortex, avoiding direct contact with brain tissue.

Using a prosthetic glove, the patient in Shanghai could control brain signals to pick up and set down a water cup, as well as open a bottle cap and drink water.

“The patient’s recovery was smooth, and improvements were very noticeable,” Mao said.

It was the first time surgeons had used an “online brain function localisation system” which allowed the team to rapidly and precisely locate the hand motor/sensory brain regions, cutting the time needed for the procedure.

“The entire surgery only took 1 hour and 40 minutes,” Mao added.

The two previous implantations took place in Beijing last year and involved paralysed patients who were able to use the technology to independently drink water and move a computer cursor.

In August, NEO became the first BCI product to enter China’s “green channel” for special approval of innovative medical devices. It is expected to be available for clinical use by 2027.

Shanghai Science & Technology is the social media account of the Shanghai Municipal Science and Technology Commission.

Another report on the online account quoted Hong as saying NEO would undergo large-scale clinical trials from next year, with plans for at least 30 implantations across the country.

The announcement of the trial was made at the BCI Society and Chen Institute Joint BCI Meeting held in Shanghai on Friday and Saturday.

In China, universities are the main drivers of BCI research, which requires investment to make the leap from the laboratory to the market.

The semi-invasive approach is also just one of a number being applied in the area.

“BCI is a convergence of artificial intelligence, integrated circuits, and biomedical technology,” Tao Hu, deputy director of the Shanghai Institute of Microsystems and Information Technology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said in the second report.

“As an emerging industry, it still requires concentrated investment of various resources.”

Brain drain: top mathematician says Chinese scientists have no choice but to leave US

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3289766/brain-drain-top-mathematician-says-chinese-scientists-have-no-choice-leave-us?utm_source=rss_feed

China should focus on developing original technologies and scientific knowledge and leverage the expertise of scientists returning from the United States, according to a top Chinese-American mathematician.

Yau Shing-Tung retired from Harvard University in 2022 to teach at Tsinghua University and help China become a maths powerhouse.

He said many ethnic Chinese students had been driven away from the US by discrimination from the government, including accusations of misusing American research funds for China’s benefit.

“Chinese scientists have no choice but to leave the US because they work best under a supportive research environment,” he said.

“This exodus is unfortunate for the US as it could diminish its research capabilities. For China, the return of these scientists means it is gaining top talent, but it also results in weakened ties with the US and a loss of first-hand knowledge of advanced technologies.”

An increasing number of leading scientists are leaving the West for Chinese institutions. Yau’s maths centre at Tsinghua in Beijing is one example where top foreign mathematicians have been recruited.

In a survey of 1,300 US-based scientists of Chinese descent conducted between late 2021 and early 2022, 72 per cent of respondents said they did not feel safe as academic researchers. And 61 per cent said they had thought about leaving the United States for either Asian or non-Asian countries.

Despite an overall fearful sentiment, 89 per cent expressed a desire to contribute to the US leadership in science and technology, according to the results published in the peer-reviewed journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2023 by researchers at Princeton University, Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

“Our survey uncovers many Chinese-American scientists’ intention to avoid applying for federal grants out of fear of federal government prosecution under the China Initiative,” the team said, referring to a policy launched in 2018 by then-president Donald Trump targeting scientists with perceived links to Beijing.

Geopolitical tensions have an impact on the academic environment, Yau said in an interview at Lingnan University in Hong Kong which awarded him an honorary doctorate in science on Thursday.

“The US government has shown serious discrimination against Chinese scientists over the past decade. They face significant challenges when applying for research funds from the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health and Department of Defence due to perceptions that they might use American funds to benefit China,” he said.

“Many Chinese scientists eager to contribute to the US feel uncomfortable – although they look up to the US as the world’s centre of science and technology. To make matters worse, some have faced accusations from intelligence agencies of stealing confidential information from the US.”

Yau said to take advantage of the expertise of returning scientists, China needs to foster groundbreaking innovations and creative research for science to grow.

“Elevating academic performance solely based on exams hurts the development of creativity. We need to nurture students and scholars capable of innovating. The country should change its attitude about basing education on standardised tests,” he said.

“If China trains the top 1 per cent of students for creativity, its scientific development could match that of leading countries in a decade, with today’s children becoming the nation’s top scientists,” he said.

“This way China will be able to compete with the US and earn its respect. As China begins to create new technologies and uncover original scientific knowledge, it could become an equal to the US, attracting American scientists who would wish to learn from their Chinese counterparts.”

Yau, who is known for his work on differential geometry, said China’s technological progress had been held up because it relied on advanced tech from the US and due to its copycat approach.

“Originality from China will free it from the chokehold. The US would then start looking into how it can exchange knowledge with China,” he said. “We need to be on the same level for equal exchanges to occur.”

China’s security chief urges all-out efforts to ensure safe New Year and Spring Festival

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3289889/chinas-security-chief-urges-all-out-efforts-ensure-safe-new-year-and-spring-festival?utm_source=rss_feed

China’s top security official Chen Wenqing has called for all-out efforts to ensure social security and stability during the coming New Year and Spring Festival holidays.

Spring Festival or Lunar New Year, China’s biggest annual celebration, falls on January 29 this time.

Chen urged stronger security measures at key venues and for major events as he toured central Hubei province last week, state news agency Xinhua reported on Saturday.

He also called for increased street patrols to “bolster the public’s sense of security” through greater police presence, the report said.

Chen is head of the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission, which oversees China’s law enforcement agencies. He is also a member of the ruling Communist Party’s elite decision-making Politburo.

During a visit to Hubei’s high court as part of his inspection trip, Chen said judicial efforts should “fully consider the social harm caused by criminal acts and focus on the people’s real concerns” to ensure fairness and justice.

Serious and vicious violent crime must be punished swiftly and severely in accordance with the law, he added, so as to effectively safeguard the legitimate rights of the people.

China has doubled down on social stability and judicial fairness after a string of mass killings, set against the backdrop of economic struggles and rising unemployment.

On November 11, an SUV ploughed into a crowd at a sports centre in Zhuhai, in southern Guangdong province, leaving 35 dead and 43 injured.

Days later, a knife attack by a former student at a vocational college in the eastern province of Jiangsu, claimed eight lives and injured 17.

Three days later, an SUV hit a group of parents and children outside a primary school in Changde, in central Hunan province.

In the Zhuhai case, local police said the 62-year-old suspect was angered by court decisions regarding the division of property in his divorce.

In a rare commentary for party mouthpiece People’s Daily last week, a senior judicial official from Zhejiang urged judges and prosecutors to pay more attention to solving conflicts and ensuring fairness, rather than just closing cases.

The Ministry of Justice met late last month to discuss specific measures to solve conflicts in the wake of the attacks. It called on local officials to look into “marriage issues, neighbour relations, inheritances, property and land disputes and wage arrears” to tackle problems before they can escalate.

During his trip to Hubei, Chen also urged authorities to speed up the establishment of standardised county-level governance centres, which would make dispute resolution easier as people would need to visit just “a single place”.

Efforts should be stepped up to resettle released prisoners, help people with severe mental disorders, and prevent juvenile crime, Chen added, while calling for more information sharing and inter-department coordination for a mechanism that can effectively prevent harmful behaviours while providing care.

Tomb of Chinese emperor Liu He gives up Han dynasty battle secrets with armour find

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3289874/tomb-chinese-emperor-liu-he-gives-han-dynasty-battle-secrets-armour-find?utm_source=rss_feed

Chinese archaeologists have reconstructed 6,000 composite armour scales unearthed from the tomb of Liu He – the deposed ninth emperor of the Han dynasty (202 BC – 220 AD) – in the first discovery of its kind from the era.

The armour scales were found in China’s eastern province of Jiangxi, where the main tomb of Liu He was unearthed about a decade ago.

They were made from a mix of iron, copper, and leather bound with lacquer, the Jiangxi Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology told state news agency Xinhua on Saturday.

Such evidence of a multi-material, composite approach to armour-making, in contrast to the typical single-material armours, is unprecedented in Han dynasty archaeology, according to Bai Rongjin, a veteran armour restoration expert from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS).

Each armour scale or plate from the find is just 1cm (0.39 inch) wide and 0.2cm thick, making them “the smallest armour scales ever unearthed from the Han dynasty”, Bai told Xinhua, adding that smaller pieces would demand more intricate forging and assembly techniques.

Each armour scale or plate from the find is just 1cm (0.39 inch) wide and 0.2cm thick, making them “the smallest armour scales ever unearthed from the Han dynasty”, Bai said, adding that smaller pieces would demand more intricate forging and assembly techniques.

Han dynasty scales were typically 4cm to 10cm wide, Bai said. Even the finely crafted armour scales from the tomb of Liu Sheng, a prince of the Western Han empire (202 BC – AD9), were 2cm to 3cm wide – much larger than those from Liu He’s armour. Liu Sheng’s tomb was discovered in northern Hebei province in 1968.

Liu He, later renamed as the Marquis of Haihun, was briefly installed as emperor in 74 BC by the powerful minister Huo Guang, being dethroned just 27 days later. Some historical records show he was deposed because of misconduct as an emperor. However, his tomb near Jiangxi’s capital Nanchang has proved to be a treasure trove of artefacts.

It is among imperial tombs to have yielded the largest number of relics showing the most varied and finest Han craftsmanship, and was listed by CASS as one of China’s top six archaeological discoveries in 2015.

The armour fragments were discovered in the western chamber of the tomb, among weapons stored in a lacquered chest that had decayed over time, said Yang Jun, a researcher from the Jiangxi cultural relics and archaeology institute who is leading the dig.

“The tomb experienced earthquakes and groundwater intrusion from nearby Poyang Lake, leading to the fragile and brittle state of the scales,” Yang told Xinhua.

“So we decided to extract the entire armour pile within a protective case and conducted laboratory-based conservation and research.”

Conservation teams restored the 6,000 scales over the past two years, and identified nine distinct categories in all.

For instance, some scales featured raised central designs, special lacquer coatings, and various perforation patterns, ranging from six to eight holes per scale.

Body armour, a critical defensive tool in ancient warfare, evolved over thousands of years along with advancements in technology. The team of experts said the discovery of the composite armour offered valuable insights into Han dynasty craftsmanship.

But questions remain, they added.

How were these scales forged and assembled into a complete suit? Did the armour’s rank align with Liu He’s status at the time of his burial? Further research might unravel those mysteries.

Chinese scientists shed light on how animals ‘run away’ from deadly viruses

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3289862/chinese-scientists-shed-light-how-animals-run-away-deadly-viruses?utm_source=rss_feed

Animals can “run away” from a deadly virus, and Chinese scientists have uncovered the mechanism behind this for the first time.

They found that healthy organisms could outpace their infected counterparts, eventually leaving them behind in a process known as “migratory culling”.

There are two conflicting views on the effect of migration on the spread of a virus. While it is generally believed that host migration accelerates the spread of infectious diseases, some recent ecological studies suggest the opposite can be true – migration may actually inhibit viral spread in some cases.

A new study by researchers in southern China offers new insight into this contradiction.

The team from the Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology (SIAT), an affiliate of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, found that when a host species ran around aimlessly – the faster the movement, the wider the spread of the virus.

Conversely, if the movement of the animal population was directed and fast enough, the virus would be “weeded out”.

The study by Fu Xiongfei of SIAT’s Key Laboratory of Quantitative Synthetic Biology and colleagues was published last Tuesday in the international journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Viruses, as non-motile microbes, are entirely dependent on their ability to infect a host – such as humans, animals, plants and other living beings – to replicate and spread over long distances. It is therefore generally assumed that the faster a host population moves, the easier the virus spreads.

However, recent ecological studies show that animal migration can reduce virus prevalence by removing infected individuals from the migrating group.

A similar phenomenon has been observed in monarch butterflies, as butterflies that migrate long distances have a significantly lower risk of contracting parasitic diseases than their non-migrating counterparts.

Based on this phenomenon, ecologists have proposed the “migratory culling” hypothesis, which suggests that migration helps eliminate virus-infected individuals, thereby maintaining the health of the population.

To address this paradox and investigate how host motility actually affects viral spread, the Shenzhen team built a host-virus system in a laboratory.

Applying a synthetic biology approach, the researchers used E coli bacteria and the M13 phage virus to replicate host-virus interactions.

The team observed that because viruses could not move on their own, the M13 phages lagged behind the bacteria, meaning healthy individuals could move faster to get rid of the phages, while infected ones remained behind.

The researchers found that as the “forward battalion” of healthy bacteria moved faster, infected individuals were gradually removed from the population, helping to validate the hypothesis of migratory culling.

They noted that their study not only provided a new experimental model and theoretical basis for exploring the broader question of virus transmission in nature, but also shed light on understanding the prevention and control of infectious disease.

As Assad regime falls, China urges Syria to ensure safety of Chinese nationals

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3289876/assad-regime-falls-china-urges-syria-ensure-safety-chinese-nationals?utm_source=rss_feed

China is monitoring developments in Syria closely and hopes the country returns to stability soon, the foreign ministry in Beijing said on Sunday after Syrian rebels declared the end of the Bashar al-Assad regime.

“We urge relevant parties in Syria to take firm measures to ensure the safety of Chinese organisations and personnel in Syria,” the ministry said.

It said the embassy had been helping Chinese nationals to leave Syria and offering guidance on safety.

The ministry said the embassy in Damascus remained open and would continue to help Chinese citizens in need.

Chinese man finds love with Belarusian woman who is a head taller after many failed blind dates

https://www.scmp.com/news/people-culture/trending-china/article/3289220/chinese-man-finds-love-belarusian-woman-who-head-taller-after-many-failed-blind-dates?utm_source=rss_feed

After years of unsuccessful blind dates, a man from southern China found love with a Belarusian woman who is a head taller than him, and they renewed their vows at a government promotional event celebrating traditional Chinese weddings.

Tian Jun, 32, from Hunan province, shares insights into his cross-cultural married life on Douyin, where he has attracted 700,000 followers.

Standing at 158cm, Tian is married to Namei, a 176cm tall Belarusian model. Their Douyin videos showcase the couple communicating in both English and Chinese, with Namei proficiently speaking and understanding Mandarin for their daily interactions.

Under pressure from his parents, Tian went on numerous blind dates over five years, but he never found a girlfriend he truly liked.

While working as a modelling agent, he eventually met Namei, who was pursuing her modelling career in China, and they fell in love.

“I always believed I could find my true love, and that’s when my wife, Namei, appeared,” Tian said.

The couple had originally married in China four years ago. Tian recalled that at the time, Namei was only 20 years old, enjoying the prime of her youth.

“I love my wife deeply, so I respect her decision not to have children back then,” he shared.

Over the years, Tian has accompanied Namei on travels across China, embracing life to the fullest. Now, Namei feels ready to start a family and plans to begin trying for a baby by the end of the year.

On November 30, they joined other couples in a traditional Chinese mass wedding in downtown Changsha, the capital of Hunan province.

A total of 48 couples took part, following nine traditional wedding rituals accompanied by the sounds of classical bells and drums.

According to the Changsha Evening News, all participants received training to perform the rituals beforehand.

Government officials stated that the event aimed to promote traditional Chinese wedding culture and encourage young people to fall in love and marry.

Tian posted a video of their participation, expressing his joy: “I got married again! I’m so happy to celebrate this grand Han wedding with my beloved wife and my father-in-law, promoting traditional Chinese customs.”

In the video, Tian and Namei donned black and red Han dynasty wedding attire and performed the He Jin ritual, drinking sweet wine from each other’s bitter gourd cups, symbolising their commitment to share both joys and challenges.

They also cut locks of hair and tied them together as part of the Jie Fa ritual, representing their everlasting bond.

Photos of the couple in their traditional wedding outfits, highlighting their striking height difference, went viral on mainland social media.

One netizen commented on Douyin: “I can see from Namei’s smile in the wedding photos that she loves her husband very much.”

Another added: “The height and cultural differences can’t stop true love. I wish this couple all the best!”

A third user reflected on the current trend of low marriage desire among young people in China, stating: “After watching this mass wedding, I feel that marrying someone you truly love and building a family is a wonderful thing. Young people shouldn’t shy away from or oppose marriage.”

As young people in China increasingly prioritise individualism, career growth, and financial stability, marriage rates have declined. In the third quarter, only 1.32 million couples registered for marriage, marking a drop of more than 25 per cent from the previous year.

‘Should I wear a down jacket?’ Ex China national athlete counters criticism over skimpy swimsuit

https://www.scmp.com/news/people-culture/china-personalities/article/3289357/should-i-wear-down-jacket-ex-china-national-athlete-counters-criticism-over-skimpy-swimsuit?utm_source=rss_feed

A retired Chinese swimming athlete has garnered support from mainland social media for defending herself against criticism regarding her choice to wear a revealing swimsuit.

Liu Xiang, 28, is a former member of the national swimming team. She won a gold medal in the 50-metre backstroke at the 2018 Jakarta Asian Games and has set multiple world records throughout her career.

After retiring from the national team in 2022, Liu transitioned to a full-time blogger, amassing 5.6 million followers on Douyin and 1.3 million fans on Weibo. She frequently shares videos related to travel, fashion, and swimming on these platforms.

“I saw many people calling me a soft-porn live-streamer. Is there something wrong with my lifestyle? Should I wear down jackets instead of a swimsuit while swimming?” Liu expressed on Weibo in response to online critics on November 30.

She added: “I learned to swim at the age of five. Swimming has become an inseparable part of my life. I love myself in a swimsuit, and I appreciate seeing other girls in swimwear. I hope my social media content conveys a positive attitude towards life to my audience. Am I doing anything wrong?

“If you ask whether I would dare to post videos of myself in a swimsuit in the future, my answer is: absolutely!”

So far, Liu’s social media accounts continue to operate normally.

The backlash against Liu is a continuation of the controversy surrounding another retired top Chinese athlete.

Wu Liufang, a former gymnast of the national team, experienced a temporary ban on her account for posting “thirst trap” videos. After the ban was lifted about a week later, Wu’s follower count on Douyin surged by millions in just one day.

Thirst traps typically involve posting provocative selfies.

This is not the first time Liu has countered internet users who criticised her physical appearance.

Earlier this year, when some pointed out that Liu had gained weight, particularly in her legs, she responded: “OK, I know I am fat. It’s a healthy beauty. I embrace everything about myself. I am the most beautiful one.”

Liu’s latest post on social media has ignited a heated discussion, receiving considerable support from her followers.

“It’s absolutely right to show your true self. Swimming is not just a sport; it’s a way of life. I support your confidence and determination,” commented one viewer.

Another netizen remarked: “What kind of people criticise Liu? They must have shadows in their minds, leading them to perceive everything negatively.”

Alarm bells ring for ‘smartphone king of Africa’ as other Chinese brands chase crown

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3289680/alarm-bells-ring-smartphone-king-africa-other-chinese-brands-chase-crown?utm_source=rss_feed

It is known as the “smartphone king of Africa” and for years has dominated the continent’s mobile phone market. But now, Shenzhen-based Transsion Holdings is facing some stiff competition from rival Chinese brands.

Transsion is the company behind phone brands including Tecno, iTel and Infinix, which won over African customers with features such as multi-SIM functionality and affordable price points. By 2021, Transsion’s brands controlled half the continent’s phone market share.

But now brands including Xiaomi and Realme are eating into that share.

In the third quarter of 2024, Transsion’s net income attributable to shareholders dropped by 41 per cent year on year to 1.05 billion yuan (US$144 million). In the same period, year-on-year revenue fell 7.2 per cent to 16.7 billion yuan. Transsion put the decline largely down to the combined impact of “market competition and supply chain costs”.

The firm, which made its fortune selling its phones exclusively in Africa before expanding to other markets, has also been hit by rising component costs, especially memory chips.

Amid challenges from particularly from Xiaomi and Realme in the mid-to-low price segment, Transsion saw handset sales fall by 17 per cent year on year in the third quarter, according to data from Hong Kong-based Counterpoint Research.

In terms of African market share, China’s Xiaomi, Realme and Honor all saw a rise in the third quarter, while Transsion’s market share fell from 47.5 per cent in 2023 to 41.2 per cent by the third quarter this year, according to Counterpoint’s figures which are based on sell-through numbers – or sales volume by local retailers. And though Transsion’s flagship brand Tecno grew its market share from 25.7 per cent last year to 27 per cent, Infinix and iTel both saw their market shares drop.

“If competition in emerging markets intensifies in the future and the industry’s overall gross profit margin declines … the company will also face the risk of a decline in market position and gross profit margin, which will lead to a risk of a decline in the company’s overall profitability,” Transsion was quoted as saying by Sina Corporation’s media unit Sina Finance.

In contrast, Hong Kong-listed Xiaomi saw third quarter sales grow 46 per cent year on year, according to Wang Yang, a senior analyst at Counterpoint Research. Xiaomi had aggressively entered the market with widening product availability and high-value 5G products, Wang said.

Shenzhen-based Realme, which began in 2018 as a sub-brand of Dongguan-based Oppo Mobiles, grew its sales by 90 per cent year on year.

Sales grew also for Korean electronics giant Samsung, which is the second-largest-selling phone brand in Africa, with a year-on-year increase of 9 per cent, thanks to a good performance across its mid-range A series phones, according to Wang.

George Mbuthia, a Kenya-based senior research analyst for International Data Corporation (IDC), noted that the total African smartphone market grew 11 per cent year on year in the third quarter of 2024.

Unlike Counterpoint, IDC’s figures are based on sell-in numbers – or shipments at the distributor level. They showed Transsion maintaining its market dominance with an 8.3 per cent year-on-year growth in the third quarter.

But one thing that has affected all of the brands is the increase in component costs – though this is hurting Transsion, with its lower-priced products, more than others.

“The situation has hurt Transsion the most since its cost base is more vulnerable to large swings in component prices,” Wang said.

He explained that geopolitical tensions had caused disruptions in raw material supply and logistics. Massive losses by memory chipmakers last year also led to companies cutting production capacity to defend pricing.

“With the market rebound, and in addition to a spike in demand from data centres, memory chipmakers have been slow to ramp up their production, yet the smartphone supply chains are having to compete on pricing for limited supply with players with even deeper pockets, such as in AI data centres,” Wang said.

Mbuthia said rising component costs were just one part of a broader set of challenges.

“Economic conditions, including taxation and currency fluctuations, influence the performance of these brands,” Mbuthia said.

Moses Kemibaro, founder and chief executive of Dotsavvy, a Kenyan digital business agency, said the semiconductor shortage, along with higher prices for displays, batteries and processors, had increased manufacturing costs across the board.

“For Transsion, which relies heavily on affordability to drive sales, this has created a significant challenge,” he said. “Transsion operates in a segment where even a small price increase can deter buyers.”

Taiwan reports 14 Chinese warships and 4 balloons near the island

https://apnews.com/article/taiwan-china-balloons-navy-ships-aircraft-fb944dbf5350400a4371380885c028b3FILE - A Taiwan national flag flutters near the Taipei 101 building at the National Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hall in Taipei, Taiwan, May 7, 2023. (AP Photo/Chiang Ying-ying, File)

2024-12-08T04:21:43Z

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — China sent 14 warships, seven military aircraft and four balloons near Taiwan between Saturday and Sunday, according to Taiwan’s Defense Ministry, as Beijing ramps up pressure on the island it claims as its own.

China’s military activities come amid speculation Beijing might organize military drills around the island in response to Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te’s recent visit to Pacific allies, including U.S. stops in Hawaii and Guam.

China claims Taiwan, a self-ruled democracy of 23 million people, as its own territory, and bristles at other countries’ formal exchanges with Taiwan. The United States, like most countries, doesn’t recognize Taiwan as a country but is its main unofficial backer and sells it arms.

The Chinese government has pledged to annex Taiwan, through military force if necessary, and sends ships and military planes near the island almost daily.

The 14 warships, seven military planes and four balloons were reported over 24 hours between 6 a.m. on Saturday and 6 a.m. on Sunday, according to Taiwan’s Defense Ministry. The ministry said six of the aircraft crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait, an unofficial demarcation zone between Taiwan and China.

One of the balloons brushed over the island’s northern tip, according to the ministry.

Lai on Friday called on China to refrain from threats and said Beijing’s military exercises “will not be able to win the respect” of neighboring countries.

Lai’s first overseas trip since taking office in May included visits to the Marshall Islands, Tuvalu and Palau, three of the 12 countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan. The rest of the world, including the U.S., has official ties with China.

Lai’s stops in Hawaii and Guam — from where he had phone calls with U.S. Congress leaders — angered China, which opposes U.S. arms sales and military assistance to Taiwan.

There was widespread speculation China might organize war games around Taiwan in response to the visit, though it was unclear when they might start.

In October, China held drills around Taiwan involving a record one-day total of 153 aircraft, 14 navy vessels and 12 Chinese government ships in response to a Lai speech in which he rejected Beijing’s claims over Taiwan.

Beijing has labeled Lai a separatist and refuses to speak to him.

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China’s villages put to Communist Party loyalty test in national anti-corruption campaign

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3289816/chinas-villages-put-communist-party-loyalty-test-national-anti-corruption-campaign?utm_source=rss_feed

Tens of thousands of anti-corruption inspectors have fanned out across China to carry out the first national check on the party loyalty of cadres in the country’s half a million villages.

The announcement of the campaign came a month after the Communist Party’s graft watchdog, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), said 77,000 village party bosses faced disciplinary action in the first three quarters of this year, a year-on-year increase of nearly 70 per cent.

The village is the lowest level in China’s administrative hierarchy and was added to the inspection remit of county and municipal party committees for the first time in regulations introduced in February.

In an editorial published on November 25, the China Discipline Inspection and Supervision News, the CCDI’s official newspaper, said the inspection of the village-level governments was key to resolving grass-roots issues and reinforcing governance at this level.

It said it will be “a strong guarantee” for consolidating President Xi Jinping’s poverty alleviation campaign and rural revitalisation plans.

At an inspection planning meeting a few days earlier,, CCDI chief and Politburo member Li Xi said the investigations were necessary to rectify “misconduct and corruption that occur on people’s doorsteps” and to win more public support for the party.

The top priority, Li said, was to check on the cadres’ “political loyalty” to the party, to ensure they implemented the leadership’s decisions and policies, and to find solutions to urgent problems, according to state news agency Xinhua.

A village official in Hainan province, who declined to be named, said the inspectors coming to his area were led by provincial officials who have never served in the county or municipality – part of a strategy to prevent collusion.

“China’s cities and counties are largely ‘acquaintance societies’, where people all know each other, or are connected to each other in some way. So inspectors from higher up or other jurisdictions can uncover problems better,” the official said.

He said that under the new approach, the inspectors had found over 50 per cent more corruption, abuses of power, and dereliction of duty problems in the villages this year, compared with 2023.

An official in Hunan province said similar arrangements were in place there but the teams would focus on “the most notorious villages”.

“There are neighbouring villages that organised thousands of people in massive fights over minor disputes in the 1990s. Some villages were known for their participation in telecom scams. We will ensure the teams led by provincial inspectors pay special attention to them,” the Hunan official said.

Alfred Wu, an associate professor at the National University of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, said corruption in villages in more developed provinces was mainly linked to land acquisition and development.

In poorer areas, corrupt village chiefs were more likely to be involved in embezzlement or misappropriation of poverty alleviation funds and other government subsidies.

Beijing spent nearly 1.6 trillion yuan (US$221 billion) on its poverty alleviation campaign from 2013 to 2021, while the agricultural ministry has pledged up to 7 trillion yuan to finance rural revitalisation projects.

“Many of the villages’ party chiefs have monopolised decision-making power. There have been inadequate checks and balances,” Wu added.

No Black Friday windfall for Chinese sellers on Temu and Amazon as competition rises

https://www.scmp.com/tech/tech-trends/article/3289727/no-black-friday-windfall-chinese-sellers-temu-and-amazon-competition-rises?utm_source=rss_feed

Chinese sellers on overseas shopping sites, from Temu to Amazon.com, are struggling to turn a profit during this year’s Black Friday sales, as fierce competition and narrowing margins take a toll on their earnings.

A clothing factory owner in the southern trade hub of Guangzhou, surnamed Xie, said Black Friday sales at his Temu store plunged 30 per cent from last year. Another clothing factory worker surnamed Xu, who is in charge of the firm’s Temu business, said the shop offered a 10 per cent discount on products from Black Friday to Cyber Monday, but sales volume was only around 20 per cent higher than usual.

“There wasn’t much profit,” Xu said on Thursday on the sidelines of a Temu event in Guangzhou, capital of southern Guangdong province.

Since their respective launch in the US in 2022 and 2023, Temu and fast-fashion giant Shein have kicked off an e-commerce war, dangling steep discounts and free shipping to entice shoppers into buying US$10 shirts and US$3 earrings mailed directly from China.

“Though initial estimates show an increase in overall [consumer] spending during this shopping season, there has been competitive pressure due to the emergence of Chinese e-commerce platforms,” said Justin Koh, Shanghai-based director at consultancy AlixPartners. This year’s sales period also started earlier than ever, he added.

Shein is currently offering discounts of up to 90 per cent on more than 300,000 items through the end of the year. Temu is plastering tags like “Last Day to Save” and “Limited Time Offer” all over its site to woo customers.

Meanwhile, ByteDance’s fast-rising e-commerce service, TikTok Shop, invited rap star Nicki Minaj to host a live-streamed shopping event on November 24, selling nail extensions from her Pink Friday Nails brand. It broke TikTok Shop records with 3.6 million viewers and 20,000 orders, according to the platform.

In the first half of November, Chinese-backed shopping platforms surpassed their US rivals in terms of sales growth, according to data from Earnest Analytics. Sales at TikTok Shop, Temu and Shein were up 213 per cent, 18 per cent and 16 per cent, respectively, from the previous year. In contrast, sales at Amazon rose by a modest 0.5 per cent, albeit from a much larger base.

Still, merchants said they are finding it much harder to make money this year on both US and Chinese-backed shopping platforms. A Shenzhen-based furniture supplier surnamed Zhang, who sells on Amazon and Wayfair, said recent sales have jumped by two to threefold, “but that’s far from what we saw in 2021, when Black Friday brought a fivefold increase in sales on Amazon in one day”.

Zhang said he also had to spend 50 per cent more to place advertisements on Amazon. Profitability dropped from above 50 per cent in previous years to just over 10 per cent this time, even though he stopped offering big discounts, Zhang added.

“The cost of operating on Amazon has been climbing,” said Moira Weigel, a social scientist at Harvard University who conducts research on the online marketplace ecosystem.

Sellers on Amazon are responsible for their own marketing fees, fulfilment costs and salaries for employees with e-commerce expertise. In contrast, Chinese platforms have introduced so-called full-custody or half-custody services, which handle much of the operational burden for merchants, according to Weigel.

Temu is one site that offers such options. Guangzhou factory owner Xie said his store runs on the full-custody model, meaning that Temu takes care of everything from pricing to logistics. But the site has set prices so low – sometimes way below cost – that Xie had no choice but to remove a third of the 300 items he had listed.

Driven partly by slowing domestic demand, Chinese e-commerce players have flocked to overseas markets like the US, capitalising on the sprawling supply network at home. Amid heightened geopolitical tensions and competitive pressure, however, these companies face increasing challenges in maintaining growth.

PDD Holdings, operator of Temu and its Chinese sibling Pinduoduo, posted a lower-than-expected 44 per cent increase in third-quarter revenue. “Our top-line growth further moderated amid intensified competition,” vice-president of finance Jun Liu said at the time.

Quarter-on-quarter growth in gross merchandise value on Temu was estimated to have slowed to 15 per cent or below in the three months ended September, compared with around 50 per cent in the previous quarter, according to Chinese media outlet 36Kr.

Shein, which is looking to float its shares in London, is also experiencing a business slowdown. Its revenue growth fell to 23 per cent in the first half this year from 40 per cent last year, The Information reported last month.

Adding to the uncertainty, US president-elect Donald Trump pledged late last month to impose a 25 per cent tariff on all products entering the US from Mexico, Canada and China.

Despite questions on whether budget shopping sites like Temu and Shein can sustain their business model built on cut-to-the-bone pricing, rival Amazon has decided to enter the fray.

In November, the US e-commerce giant launched Haul, a new section on its main site that offers goods priced under US$20, targeting budget-conscious shoppers. It is inviting Chinese vendors already operating on Amazon to join the new platform.

9 killed in fire at cold storage facility in eastern China

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3289851/9-killed-fire-cold-storage-facility-eastern-china?utm_source=rss_feed

Nine people were killed in a fire at a cold storage on Saturday in China’s eastern province of Shandong, state media reported.

Thermal insulation materials caught on fire at the under-construction cold chain storage facility in the city of Rongcheng around midday on Saturday, state broadcaster CCTV said.

The nine deaths at the site were discovered on Sunday morning. An investigation is under way.

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China’s ‘explosive’ ironmaking breakthrough achieves 3,600-fold productivity boost

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3289441/chinas-explosive-ironmaking-breakthrough-achieves-3600-fold-productivity-boost?utm_source=rss_feed

After more than a decade of intensive research in China, a groundbreaking new ironmaking technology is poised to revolutionise the global steel manufacturing industry.

The new method involves injecting finely ground iron ore powder into an extremely hot furnace, triggering an “explosive chemical reaction”, according to the engineers involved in the project.

The result is a mesmerising display of bright red, glowing liquid iron droplets that rain down and collect at the bottom of the furnace, forming a stream of high-purity iron that can be directly used for casting or “one-step steelmaking”.

Known as flash ironmaking, the breakthrough method “can complete the ironmaking process in just three to six seconds, compared to the five to six hours required by traditional blast furnaces,” wrote the project team led by Professor Zhang Wenhai, an academician of the prestigious Chinese Academy of Engineering, in a paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Nonferrous Metals in November.

This equates to a 3,600-fold or more increase in the speed of ironmaking. The new method also works exceptionally well for low or medium-yield ores that are abundant in China, according to the researchers.

Existing iron production methods depend heavily on high-yield ores, and China spends a huge amount of money importing these ores from Australia, Brazil and Africa.

According to calculations by Zhang and his colleagues, the new technology could improve the energy use efficiency of China’s steel industry by more than one-third. As it eliminates the need for coal entirely, it would also enable the steel industry to achieve the coveted goal of “near-zero carbon dioxide emissions”, Zhang’s team added.

China’s steel production capacity is already astonishing, with over 1 billion tonnes of crude steel produced last year – more than the combined output of the rest of the world. This dominance has given China a significant edge in key industries such as high-speed rail, shipbuilding and automobile manufacturing.

However, its reliance on blast furnace smelting processes, which require vast amounts of coke derived from coal, is a major obstacle to achieving China’s ambitious carbon reduction goals.

One of the most daunting technical challenges in bringing flash ironmaking to life is the ore-spraying lance. Iron ore must be dispersed in a high-temperature, high-reducibility tower space with a large specific surface area to trigger the explosion.

Zhang’s team has developed a vortex lance with exceptional uniform distribution performance, capable of injecting 450 tonnes of iron ore particles per hour. A reactor equipped with three such lances can produce an impressive 7.11 million tonnes of iron annually. According to the paper, the lance “has already entered commercial production”.

Zhang’s journey with flash smelting technology began in the 1970s when he successfully applied it to large-scale copper production. His groundbreaking work earned him first prize in the National Science and Technology Progress Award in 2000 and led to his election as a highly respected academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering in 2003.

Today, China’s consumption of copper accounts for nearly 60 per cent of global production, a testament to Zhang’s enduring impact on the industry.

While the idea of applying this process to ironmaking originated in the United States, it was Zhang’s team who invented a flash smelting technology capable of directly producing liquid iron. They obtained a patent in 2013 and spent the next decade conducting extensive experiments and refining the method.

“The completed laboratory and pilot tests have proven the feasibility of the process,” Zhang wrote. Pilot tests are small-scale trials conducted in a factory before large-scale production. According to government statistics, the success rate for new technologies that have undergone pilot tests exceeds 80 per cent in China.

For most of recorded history, China has been a leader in iron and steel production. As the famous Tang dynasty poet Li Bai (701-762) once described, the large blast furnaces in an ironmaking town in today’s Anhui province illuminated the night sky, and the songs of the workers resonated through an entire valley.

According to an estimate by American historian Robert Hartwell, during the Song dynasty in the 11th century, China’s iron production reached 150,000 tonnes per year – a figure not reached in the whole of Europe until after the Industrial Revolution began in the 18th century.

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Chinese envoy to US calls on young Americans to lead ‘rational’ views of China

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3289857/chinese-envoy-us-calls-young-americans-lead-rational-views-china?utm_source=rss_feed

Beijing’s top envoy to the United States has called for “objective and rational” views on China through more people-to-people exchanges, especially among the youth.

A total of 14,000 young Americans had visited China since November last year, when President Xi Jinping announced plans to welcome 50,000 US youths on exchange and study programmes over the next five years, Xie Feng, China’s ambassador to Washington, said on Friday, US time.

Xie called for more young Americans to come to China and become “pioneers” in formulating correct perceptions of the country.

“Measure with your own steps, observe with your own eyes, and comprehend with your own heart. Stick to independent thinking, break the stereotype in mindset, to form an objective and rational ‘view of China’,” he said at an event on bilateral youth exchanges at the embassy in Washington.

Geopolitical rivals China and the US have tried to manage their increasingly complicated relations by restoring people-to-people exchanges, even as tensions have escalated over issues ranging from ideology and national security to hi-tech access and trade tariffs.

Beijing set up the Young Envoys Scholarship, or YES, to facilitate the pledged youth exchange and offers five-year multiple-entry visas to young Americans taking part in the programme.

Direct flights between the two countries have resumed to 100 each week, Xie said, after they were drastically cut during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Last month, the US downgraded its travel advisory for China after a rare prisoner swap.

“But to be frank, these are far from enough,” Xie said. “We should continue to steer clear of disruption, break the chilling effect, oppose any attempt to turn back the wheel of history, and build bridges for bilateral exchanges.”

Around 2.4 million young Chinese had studied in the US since the late 1970s when the two countries established diplomatic relations, he said, “not only contributing to the modernisation of China but also bringing significant economic benefits and a large number of scientific research talents to the US”.

Xie also called for more exchanges among universities in the two countries.

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How China is quietly becoming the world’s climate champion

https://www.scmp.com/opinion/china-opinion/article/3289249/how-china-quietly-becoming-worlds-climate-champion?utm_source=rss_feed

China’s energy and climate change ambitions are in the spotlight again. This time, much of the attention comes from the recently concluded United Nations climate conference, Cop29, in Baku, Azerbaijan.

During that often heated and contentious 12-day conference, Chinese diplomacy was at its finest, set against a markedly placid United States presence. Washington’s retreat in most things climate-related partly stems from Donald Trump’s re-election as US president given his apparent antipathy towards climate change mitigation.

His actions during his first term in office didn’t bode well for the global climate change agenda. In 2017, he decided to withdraw the US from the Paris Agreement, describing global warming as a hoax. The withdrawal was completed in 2020. The US rejoined the accord in 2021 but Trump could withdraw again.

Yet, China took the high ground during Cop29, filling the void left by the US. When delegates from developing nations became exasperated over the initial offer by richer nations of US$250 billion per year by 2035 to help battle the impact of climate change in the Global South, Chinese delegates worked “to soothe angry delegations”, Bloomberg reported.

Zhao Yingmin, one of China’s Cop29 delegates and the country’s vice-minister of ecology and environment, went a step further. He reportedly held one-on-one meetings with delegates from developing nations in the last hours of the conference to warn that things would be worse without a final finance agreement.

A deal was finally reached, calling for wealthy nations to fund US$300 billion per year by 2035 but still far from the US$1 trillion that many were hoping for.

Chinese officials were also working overtime to formulate the country’s climate change narrative in front of a global audience. Zhao said China will be “the backbone of the global response to climate change”.

Chinese climate envoy Liu Zhenmin told Beijing News that “many people expect China and the European Union to work together to fill this gap [of US leadership], which is a very good wish, but in practice, it is difficult to do”.

China’s new climate leadership role is also coming at a time when the country’s emissions have either already peaked or could soon peak.

A Reuters report published on November 27 cited researchers who said that China’s carbon dioxide emissions were on track to slightly rise in 2024. However, a report by UK-based Carbon Brief found that China’s third-quarter emissions stayed at, or just below, last year’s level in the same period. Emissions also fell in the second quarter, according to the report.

China’s emissions have peaked or will peak next year, according to nearly half of the experts surveyed by climate think tank Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air. In last year’s survey, only 21 per cent of experts thought China’s emissions were peaking.

This is welcome news for China which has faced international pressure for years over its emissions. Notably, those emissions have led the world but that fact must be contextualised.

Emissions on a per capita basis tell a different story. Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest crude oil exporter, is also the world’s worst polluter, emitting 20.7 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO2e) per capita, followed by Australia (20.2), the US (19), Canada (18.1) and Russia (14).

In 2022, China was the world’s largest carbon dioxide gas emitter, making up more than over 31 per cent of global emissions, followed by the US, India, Russia and Japan, according to Statista. Notably, these five countries are all fossil fuel producers. China only emitted 10.1 tCO2e per capita during the same year.

China is also making strides in its power sector. First, it is increasing its pumped hydropower storage capacity, which is projected to reach 62 gigawatts (GW) by next year. Pumped hydropower is a configuration of two water reservoirs at different elevations that can generate power as water moves down from one to the other, passing through a turbine.

Second, China’s utility-scale battery storage capacity is projected to soon reach 40GW. This will provide buffer power supplies to help offset renewable energy intermittency.

Moreover, China’s solar and wind power development is setting world records. The country is building 64 per cent of the world’s solar and wind plants, more than eight times the capacity of the US, the second-largest builder.

However, there’s still room for improvement. As recently as 2022, China’s power sector accounted for around 57 per cent of its total emissions. China could start scaling back natural gas usage in its power sector.

Though gas is a cleaner burning fuel than coal when used for power production, it still produces around 50 per cent of the emissions that coal, the world’s dirtiest burning fossil fuel, does. Moreover, gas contributes to methane leakage.

China should also keep replacing fossil fuels with more renewable energy sources, including setting a specific date for a full coal-fired power plant development phase-out. In 2023, coal accounted for around 60 per cent of China’s energy mix for power production.

The faster that number declines, the faster China can reach its decarbonisation goals, while also setting a precedent for other countries in the region that continue to heavily rely on coal, including India, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam.

As such, China could help discourage coal development in the region by providing more climate finance to neighbouring countries. It would thus bring its global climate change leadership trajectory full circle.

Chinese exporters eye procurement opportunities to lift sales, offset Trump tariff impact

https://www.scmp.com/economy/global-economy/article/3289678/chinese-exporters-eye-procurement-opportunities-lift-sales-offset-trump-tariff-impact?utm_source=rss_feed

Chinese exporters have been left scratching their heads amid efforts to diversify their sales destinations, with their products facing a new round of tariff from US president-elect Donald Trump.

And while some have tried to develop non-Western markets, some are setting their sights on procurement from the United Nations.

In a seminar held in mid-November in Ningbo in eastern China’s Zhejiang province, more than representatives from 200 suppliers met over 50 senior UN procurement officers, facilitating over 1,000 one-on-one sessions to provide personalised guidance on requirements and to explore potential collaborations.

It was the first time the UN had held its International Procurement Seminar in Asia.

Procurement, which is different from purchasing, is a more strategic and less purely transactional process that involves buying or obtaining goods and services, usually on a relatively large scale.

Similar initiatives with the UN had been hosted by major economic hubs in China such as Shanghai and Beijing, in recent years amid rising geopolitical tensions and trade frictions with the West.

“China could strive to secure more opportunities in the procurement activities of international organisations, especially for competitive products like solar panels, which have room to expand further,” said Terence Chong Tai-leung, an associate professor of economics at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Government departments, such as the Ministry of Commerce, should deliver more targeted support to firms, he added.

Last week, Trump said he would impose new tariffs on goods from China using an executive order on the first day of his new administration, which is set to start on January 20.

In 2023, the UN proncured US$326 million worth of goods and services from China, making up only around 1.3 per cent of its total procurement spending.

The value shrank from the level during the coronavirus pandemic, but still higher than US$246 million in 2019.

A large number of goods and services from China are supplied indirectly via third parties, Neris Baez, director of the UN Procurement Division, told the Ningbo Daily.

She added that the UN had added over 2,000 Chinese suppliers this year, with around 11,000 Chinese suppliers registered on its Global Marketplace website.

But while procurement presents a chance to diversify markets for suppliers, there are also some obstacles.

Chong said small and medium-sized enterprises’ difficulties in drafting formal English tenders, and also meeting the environmental, social and governance standards required by procurement criteria.

And while the government has been actively encouraging companies to bid for contracts from international organisations like the UN and the International Monetary Fund, enterprises have remained lukewarm, said a commerce official in Ningbo city.

The official, who asked not to be named as they are not authorised to speak to the media, said such procurement usually goes through a competitive bidding process where contracts are awarded to the lowest bidder.

Suppliers must also advance costs and deliver goods to designated locations, with high-quality requirements adding further challenges, the official added.

Last month, the Ministry of Commerce issued a nine-point document, which contained measures to “promote the stable growth of foreign trade and consolidate and enhance the trend of a positive economic recovery”.

The ministry said that it would help enterprises “actively respond to unreasonable foreign trade restrictions” and “create a good external environment for exports”.

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Xiaohongshu: the Chinese app transforming Malaysia’s tourism landscape

https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/lifestyle-culture/article/3289725/xiaohongshu-chinese-app-transforming-malaysias-tourism-landscape?utm_source=rss_feed

As TikTok continues its meteoric rise towards global domination, another Chinese app is quietly capturing attention in Malaysia.

Xiaohongshu – or “Little Red Book” – may have its roots in e-commerce, but it is reshaping how young, Mandarin-speaking Malaysians connect with both their roots and the broader world.

With more than 2.5 million users, the Southeast Asian nation has become the second-largest market for Xiaohongshu outside mainland China and Taiwan. The app allows users to share everything from food discoveries to travel tips.

Its user base is predominantly made up of young women aged 18 to 35, representing more than one-third of the country’s ethnic Chinese population, according to a recent study from Malaysia’s Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman.

Launched in 2013 by entrepreneurs Miranda Qu and Charlwin Mao in Shanghai, Xiaohongshu combines the visual appeal of Instagram, the inspirational flair of Pinterest, consumer forums’ detailed reviews and the convenience of Amazon. This unique blend has created a vibrant online community where user-generated content reigns supreme.

“The reviews feel genuine. I trust it more than what I see on Instagram ads,” said university student Emily Ng, adding that the app’s user-created content offers a more relatable connection than traditional advertising methods.

“Instead of going to Google and then jumping to one app and then another, I can simply search and read reviews and recommendations from other users on Xiaohongshu.”

Globally, Xiaohongshu is transforming how Chinese tourists travel, reshaping their preferences away from large, guided tours to independent exploration following recommendations from travel influencers.

One unexpected consequence has been the emergence of a Maybank branch in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, as an Instagram-worthy hotspot for Chinese tourists, much to the initial surprise of local residents.

The buzz surrounding the bank was so pronounced that a delighted Deputy Minister of Plantation and Commodities Chan Foong Hin couldn’t help but share his astonishment on Facebook, posing in front of the bank.

“The Maybank branch in Kota Kinabalu has unexpectedly become a popular travel attraction among Chinese tourists visiting Malaysia, ” he wrote, admitting that he “could not understand the trend” but was thrilled to see his hometown gaining new-found attention.

While Xiaohongshu thrives in connecting Malaysia’s ethnic Chinese community with their counterparts in China, it exists against a backdrop of rising anti-China sentiment among the Malay majority.

This unease is fuelled by territorial disputes in the South China Sea and persistent rumours about Chinese tourists overstaying their visas. Social media has become a battleground for grievances, reopening old wounds from the nation’s dark history of ethnic unrest, often targeting Chinese-speaking areas.

In Kuala Lumpur, recent controversies – amplified by former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad – surrounding Chinese businesses that neglect to include Malay, the national language, in their signage prompted City Hall to enforce compliance.

“All the signboards are in Chinese with English translations. Nothing in Malay. So is this Malaysia, or have we become a part of China?” asked Mahathir on November 18, expressing concerns about the nation’s cultural alignment.

Tourism Minister Tiong King Sing echoed these worries, noting that such actions have led some foreign visitors to perceive Malaysia as “racist or religiously extreme” due to the perceived lack of inclusivity in its enforcement measures.

Cultural tensions have even spilled into public protests, including an Islamist-led rally in the small town of Teluk Intan, Perak state, in October against a festival that featured Chinese flags.

Despite these tensions, Chinese tourists continue to flock to Malaysia. By August, the country had recorded more than 2.29 million arrivals, reflecting a 160 per cent increase from just 878,000 in the same period last year.

This influx has been boosted by Xiaohongshu, which plays a pivotal role in promoting Malaysia’s attractions, particularly among the large number of Chinese nationals living in the country under the Malaysia My Second Home (MM2H) programme, primarily aimed at retirees and expatriates.

Chinese nationals accounted for nearly 45 per cent of the 56,000 active MM2H pass holders as of September, and content on Xiaohongshu is often created by this demographic, showcasing their experiences and sharing insights with audiences back in China.

“They share the usual things about Malaysian culture, our food,” said Yuki Chan, a devoted user of the app. “But they also convey that Malaysia has a good and safe society and that they are living well here.”

Meanwhile, posts from Malaysian Chinese have broadened the appeal of the country to a global Chinese audience, featuring everything from Indian banana leaf rice restaurants to akok – a rare traditional Malay snack that has received rave reviews.

“Bought one to eat and it tastes amazing,” one user commented on a post about akok. “I had no idea how it was made, but watching this video now, I finally understand.”

Somali pirates demand ransom for Chinese vessel

https://www.scmp.com/news/world/africa/article/3289839/somali-pirates-demand-ransom-chinese-vessel?utm_source=rss_feed

Somali pirates who hijacked a Chinese fishing boat have demanded a ransom payment for the vessel and its 18 crew members, police and local officials said on Saturday.

It was not immediately clear when the ship was taken hostage by gunmen wielding AK-47 assault rifles but the European Union’s anti-piracy force drew global attention to the incident on Thursday.

“The pirates are moving the ship off the coast … they are looking for a safe haven,” said Mohamed Dini, a police officer in Eyl, a traditional pirate stronghold on Puntland’s east coast.

The boat was hijacked by men who had been contracted to provide “protection” before later being reinforced by other pirates, Dini said, adding that they had demanded payment for its release.

Ali Warsame, a local elder familiar with the case, said a Somali company acting on the boat’s behalf had offered to pay a US$300,000 ransom. But the proposal was declined by the pirates.

Local fishermen said the boat came close to Eyl on Friday, but the pirates pushed back into the sea out of fear of Puntland’s coastguards. But “they cannot move deeper towards the ocean because they are afraid of the foreign military ships”, said fisherman Abdirahman Said.

EU’s anti-piracy naval force Atalanta on Friday said it was closely monitoring the event “classified as armed robbery at sea”. “The crew remains safe, with no injuries,” it added.

The incident is the latest episode in a surge of Somali pirate activity after years of lull.

In March, Somali pirates hijacked a Bangladeshi cargo ship transporting more than 55,000 tonnes (60,600 tons) of coal from Mozambique to the United Arab Emirates.

The bulk carrier MV Abdullah was freed after its Bangladeshi owners, KSRM Group, paid a hefty ransom that was airdropped over the vessel in sackloads of US dollars. The ransom amount was not disclosed by the company.

A series of incidents since then has fuelled concerns about a resurgence of Indian Ocean raids by opportunistic pirates exploiting a security gap after the redeployment of international forces.

Why English is still the language of science in China – and what it means for research

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3283658/why-english-still-language-science-china-and-what-it-means-research?utm_source=rss_feed

When a group of Chinese primary school pupils with a keen interest in astronomy were asked what language the research on China’s Chang’e-6 lunar soil samples should be written in, they stopped smiling.

The pupils of Fangcaodi International School, a state-run primary school in Beijing with an emphasis on science education, have closely followed China’s recent lunar endeavours.

In June, the Chang’e-6 mission returned home with the first ever samples from the far side of the moon. At the time, the scientific community debated what language the historic findings should be written in and where they should be published.

Posed with the same question, one of the young science pupils proposed an answer.

“It should be in English first so that scientists from all over the world can understand the latest results and work together to promote research,” he said.

“But there should be a Chinese version so that the whole population of China is aware of the latest findings.”

It was an idea that the other four pupils readily agreed with. But that is not what happened.

Three months after the lunar mission returned with the samples, the question was settled. In mid-September, China’s first analysis of the material was published in the peer-reviewed National Science Review – an English-language journal – under the auspices of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), with no Chinese translation.

For the young school pupils, it puts the findings out of reach. While they are among the best in their age group, winning astronomy and other science awards, reading academic papers in English is beyond their abilities for now.

But they are eager to know more about the latest research on the lunar soil, particularly the ingredients it contains.

“Some of the minerals may be able to solve humanity’s problems in the future, such as energy and living in space,” they said.

It was not until the 1950s and later that English became the single dominant language in the global scientific community. While it is spoken by only around 18 per cent of the world’s population, it is estimated that up to 98 per cent of global scientific research is published in English.

It has undoubtedly become the lingua franca for international scientific communication and collaborations, but there are growing calls to highlight the value of using mother tongues in science, as evidence mounts that the dominance of English may be subtly stifling innovation and public access to science.

Now, as China emerges as a global scientific powerhouse, leading the world in the production of research papers and home-grown major scientific projects, this question has become more pressing.

In a speech in May 2016, Chinese President Xi Jinping said science and technology “workers must write their papers on the soil of the motherland and apply [scientific and technological] achievements to the great endeavour of modernisation”.

He stressed that scientific research should not only pursue knowledge and truth, but also serve economic and social development and the general public.

The situation is changing, albeit slowly.

When China’s Chang’e-5 mission brought lunar samples from the near side of the moon back to Earth in 2020, the research findings were first published in the US-based Science magazine in October 2021. But this year, the paper following the Chang’e-6 mission was published in a top Chinese journal, though it was still written in English.

The Post tried to contact the paper’s authors – from the Key Laboratory of Lunar and Deep Space Exploration at CAS, the Lunar Exploration and Space Engineering Centre, and the Beijing Institute of Spacecraft System Engineering – to ask if they had considered preparing a Chinese version of their study, but has not yet received a response.

A CAS geography researcher surnamed Li, who declined to give his full name, said the English proficiency of the general public in China was low, and many did not have access overseas journals, creating an information barrier to scientific information.

This, he said, was a great pity.

“Scientists are funded by the government to conduct research, but the results are mainly published in overseas journals, and then the Chinese have to pay to access these data resources, which is actually unreasonable,” he said.

In her article published in The Conversation in March, Spanish researcher Elea Gimenez Toledo pointed out that limiting researchers to English profoundly undermined the global academic community’s ability to share knowledge with the public.

“Locally, regionally and nationally relevant research published in languages other than English has an economic, social and cultural impact on its surrounding environment,” she said.

English is now widely regarded as the basic entry ticket to the scientific community, but for many non-English-speaking researchers, language has been a barrier to sharing their work and advancing their academic careers.

That was one of the findings in interviews by the University of California, Berkeley, with a number of students and faculty members .

“Forcing people to communicate in a language other than their native tongue affects how clearly and effectively they interact with others,” an article published on the university’s news website said in 2020, citing the example of a PhD student in molecular and cell biology who felt his mind “ran faster” in his native language.

Last year, an international group of researchers found that those whose first language was not English had to make greater efforts than their counterparts to establish a foothold in academia. The study, which surveyed 908 environmental scientists from eight countries, was published in the journal PLOS Biology in July 2023.

One of the findings was that non-native English speakers were 2½ times more likely than native speakers to report having their papers rejected specifically because of writing problems.

In an interview with Nature, Tatsuya Amano, a researcher at the University of Queensland in Australia and co-author of the study, said that, if anything, their findings probably underestimated the impact of language barriers because it did not take into account people who dropped out of academia because of the challenges.

In 2012, several researchers from the Beijing-based Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China analysed the language of papers written by Nobel laureates in physics before they won the prize and the journals in which they published.

The article, published in the journal Scientometrics, found that publications in the scientists’ home countries were very helpful early in their careers.

“Non-English science journals can encourage young scientists and engineers to publish in their mother tongue, even though the average academic level of non-English science journals is lower than that of English ones,” the authors said, rejecting the idea that there is no need for Chinese-language science journals.

Some researchers, however, dismiss the direct link between language and innovation, seeing it merely as a means of communication in academia. They say that although science has no boundaries, it needs a language that can transcend national borders to communicate, and English does just that.

Jia Hepeng, a professor of science communication at Soochow University, Suzhou, in southern Jiangsu province, acknowledged that the dominance of English “undoubtedly reflects a form of cultural hegemony”.

But he stressed that discoveries needed to be widely shared among peers around the world so that ideas and methods could collide, contributing to the continuous progress of science.

Jia also pointed out the need to look more closely at the issue. In the social sciences, where he worked, he said, theoretical advances needed to be published in English to achieve international dialogue, but practical findings should be in Chinese to generate an impact on domestic peers and policymakers.

“I don’t think the language of scientific research is important, but rather who the academic journals reach,” said Ma Liang, a government affairs professor at Renmin University of China. “The widespread use of English around the world shows that it is a more appropriate working language in science, which is conducive to international scientific and technological exchange and dissemination.”

Unlike scientific information, which aimed to serve the general public, Ma added, scientific journals were academic platforms for peer-to-peer exchange.

“Research can still be written in English, but the popularisation of science should be in Chinese,” he said.

In China’s education sector, in both primary and higher education, the system of requiring English proficiency has also had some undesirable effects, such as excluding talented students. This has attracted some controversy.

From time to time, examples pop up online of students who, despite their impressive potential in science-related disciplines such as physics and mathematics, are held back in their pursuit of further studies because of their poor English skills.

Last year, for example, a physics student at Sichuan Normal University scored only 37 points in English in the postgraduate entrance exam. It put her out of reach of her desired school – Zhejiang University – even though she had a near-perfect score of 149 points in quantum mechanics.

“Refusing to develop English communication skills is basically saying goodbye to high-quality physics research,” a commenter said China’s Quora-like social media platform Zhihu.

During the annual “two sessions” in March last year, a deputy to the National People’s Congress – China’s top legislature – and the principal of a middle school in Sichuan province suggested that the value of English in the , the National Higher Education Entrance Examination, should be lowered.

The principal said that placing a higher value on English was not conducive to educational equity, arguing that students from better socio-economic backgrounds were more likely to perform better in learning the language than those from lower socio-economic upbringings and rural areas.

Historically, English has not always been the language of scholarship.

In the past, science was conducted in Latin. But during the 19th century, French, German and English took over as the scientific languages. During the first three decades of the 20th century, the world’s first language of science was German, with much of the research of British scientists, particularly in physics and chemistry, published in German-language journals, despite the British government’s consistent strategy of suppressing Germany, according to science communication professor Jia.

But gradually, English emerged as the dominant language after significant scientific advances took place in English-speaking countries, particularly in the United States and Britain.

Qian Xuesen, the “father” of Chinese rockets, stopped publishing in overseas journals after returning to China in the 1950s, according to a 2020 article in China Reading Weekly, a magazine published by the state-run newspaper Guangming Daily.

While stressing the value of foreign literature, Qian insisted that Chinese studies should be published in Chinese-language journals and that Chinese researchers should give priority to ensuring that Chinese people could learn about the research and have access to information.

“In the future, when China’s scientific and technological level has greatly improved and entered the world’s top tier, our own papers will naturally become an important part of the world’s scientific and technological literature,” Qian said.

Several decades later, though, his hope has not been realised.

Li, the CAS geography researcher, maintains that Chinese researchers should share more findings in their native language but they face practical obstacles.

“For a long time, our scholarship has not reached the top level internationally, so subconsciously Chinese researchers still think it is more recognised to publish their studies in English journals,” he said. “In fact, China’s current talent evaluation system also guides and encourages us to do this.”

On the other hand, Chinese-language journals are also plagued with problems such as poor quality and long delays between manuscript submission and publication.

“Social sciences paper publication in Chinese is poorly regulated, nepotism is common, and the publication process is very slow, so most of our team’s research is still published in English,” Jia said.

From Latin to German to today’s English, the lingua franca of science has been in flux. Languages such as Russian, Greek and French have also left their traces on scientific vocabulary, seen in the names of chemical elements and other scientific terms.

Whether or not English retains its position as the global scientific standard, what is certain is that China is pushing to increase its influence around the world – and language is playing a key role.

In August 2023, for example, the Saudi Ministry of Education officially announced the inclusion of Chinese language courses in primary and secondary school curricula, recognising Chinese as one of the main languages of instruction.