Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) has granted a banking licence to Bakai Bank, marking the first Central Asian bank to set up in Hong Kong amid closer ties in the economy and trade flows between China and the region, according to a statement on Monday.
Bakai Bank, one of the largest lenders in Kyrgyzstan, will operate as a restricted licence bank in Hong Kong. It will be the 17th restricted licence bank in Hong Kong.
Under the licence, it can take deposits of at least HK$500,000 (US$63,776)...
An 86-year-old grandmother in China has become a social media sensation for operating a coffee shop for over a decade – a business she took over from her son in 2015, despite having no experience with coffee at the time.
Zhao Qiying, affectionately known as the “Coffee Grandma,” revealed that the shop, located in downtown Qingdao in eastern China’s Shandong province, was nearly bankrupt due to her son’s lack of business acumen, according to the Peninsular Metropolis News.
At that time, Zhao was...
Eight more companies from countries belonging to Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative have applied to list in Hong Kong, the city’s trade promotion chief has revealed.
Frederick Ma Si-hang, chairman of the Trade Development Council, also said on Monday the city’s economy would benefit from improving China-US ties.
Speaking on the sidelines of the Global Youth Powerhouse Summit, Ma said interest in Hong Kong’s capital markets from Central Asia had surged after a high-level delegation led by Chief...
For decades, China’s property sector was defined by spectacular scale: farmland transformed into suburbs, skylines rising across regional hubs and, more recently, the prominent unravelling of heavily indebted developers. Yet beneath those dramatic changes, a far quieter and more consequential transformation is taking shape.
Official figures published by the National Bureau of Statistics in September reveal that secondary market home transactions have surpassed new residential builds in volume....
US chip giant Qualcomm has agreed to pay to licence and acquire patents from China’s Huawei Technologies for the first time as part of a “multi-year, broad patent licence agreement” covering 5G, computing and artificial intelligence.
The deal involved cross-licensing between both firms’ patent portfolios, the Shenzhen-based firm said in a statement on Monday, adding that it included Qualcomm’s purchase of specific Huawei US patents across compute, AI, networking and other technologies.
The...
Midway through the Asian Games, China’s sports minister felt the need to issue a rallying cry despite the country again overwhelmingly dominating proceedings.
A week into competition, the delegation had already racked up 125 gold medals, won more swimming titles than ever before and were so far clear of the rest that one American press outlet half-jokingly suggested changing the name to the China Games.
In the final reckoning on Sunday, China’s tally was as follows: 169 gold, 89 silver and 83...
UK fund house Schroders will increase investment and headcount in Hong Kong after being acquired by US asset manager Nuveen, according to Schroders’ global CEO.
“Hong Kong is a critical interface for mainland China through schemes like Wealth Management Connect,” Richard Oldfield said in an online interview with the South China Morning Post on Friday. The scheme, launched in 2021, allows investors in the Greater Bay Area to buy wealth-management products across borders.
Underpinning Schroders’...
Hong Kong’s largest public hospital, built on the former airport site in Kai Tak, will begin its first phase of operation on Monday after more than a decade of planning and preparation.
The South China Morning Post looks at the new hospital’s key features and what its opening means for the city’s healthcare development.
1. What makes Kai Tak Hospital special?
With a gross floor area of about 500,000 square metres and 2,400 beds, Kai Tak Hospital will be Hong Kong’s largest public hospital. It...
Chinese scientists have built a small, stable co-production plant that uses one system to extract hydrogen and fresh water from seawater, while also recovering uranium and bromine and improving electricity use efficiency by about 15 per cent.
The team, led by Deng Dehui and Liu Yanting from the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, improved on an existing technology that is both costly and power hungry, according to a paper in the peer-reviewed journal Nature...
An elderly man in central China, who has spent the past 21 years making ends meet as a scavenger, experienced a remarkable stroke of luck when he discovered that his pension fund contained over 420,000 yuan (US$63,000).
In late September, the 71-year-old man, surnamed Ru, received a bank card linked to his pension account, which revealed a balance of 424,204 yuan, as reported by Changde Daily.
Completely unaware of his entitlement to pensions over the decades, Ru sobbed as he spoke to the media:...
Neighbouring China and Vietnam, two manufacturing giants, are building out railways, adding flights and boosting cargo links to leverage their geographic proximity for another boost in trade and tourism that will help both weather pressure from the US.
The two countries set aside political disputes last year to step up economic ties, and analysts said they were now improving both the quality and quantity of transport links.
“Overall, I see the China-Vietnam connectivity story moving from...
Beijing has tightened scrutiny of quantitative trading funds in recent months amid fears they add to market instability. Yet a leading investor believes the future is bright for China’s quant funds, as they are “necessary for a developed economy”.
Seth Huang, the head of Aris Capital, said quant funds had such a clear advantage over retail investors on China’s capital markets that the situation could be described as “a war with some using machine guns and others butcher knives”.
Quant funds have...
China’s spending on research and development (R&D) has reached a milestone worth celebrating, a testament to Beijing’s sustained commitment to science and technology.
It hit a record 2.8 per cent of gross domestic product last year, exceeding 3.92 trillion yuan (US$584.8 billion) and beating the average for Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) member states. Yet, there is still a long road ahead as the nation strives to lead the world at the technological frontier.
The...
Zheng Yongnian is a political scientist in China and a government adviser. His academic work is mainly about contemporary China, particularly politics, the country’s transformation and its external relations.
This interview first appeared in SCMP Plus. For other interviews in the Open Questions series, click here.
Many have offered a lukewarm assessment of the Xi-Trump summit in Washington, citing the lack of a breakthrough. What is your take?
There are two primary views right now. One is...
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei seems to believe that he, the American artificial intelligence (AI) industry and the United States are the only ones who should have the right to determine the fate of humanity.
While he pays lip service to involving other democracies in AI development, which ones remotely approach the technological capacities of the US and China? Do other non-democratic developing countries not count?
His self-belief is far more dangerous than mere commercial greed. Like Peter Thiel,...
The Asian Games in Aichi-Nagoya close on Sunday, bringing the curtain down on a fortnight of competition featuring some record-breaking performances.
Among the best performers were the two athletes named Asian Games MVPs: 13-year-old Chinese swimmer Yu Zidi and Thai track and field sprinter Boonson Puripol.
Yu, who won all three of her individual events with ease, said “I’m no prodigy” after being named the women’s MVP on Sunday.
The schoolgirl, who looks poised to take the Los Angeles 2028...
Beijing has been urged to do more to protect its overseas interests with a call for diplomatic engagement to reshape international rules and deeper security cooperation with other countries.
As China’s expanding global footprint comes under pressure from geopolitics and restrictions from the West, a Chinese analysis posted on the Global Security Research social media account has called for a major shift in strategy.
The author was not identified, but the account regularly posts analysis and...
A range of public and private-sector Chinese buyers have acquired a total of 44 small-model Bell helicopters, often for sightseeing and corporate travel. This makes China the vendor’s second biggest market in the Asia-Pacific, with growing demand for more despite safety concerns surrounding rotary-wing aircraft, an aviation services firm said.
China lagged behind only South Korea in the total number of five-seat Bell 505 Jet Ranger X helicopters, according to a statement by the Hong Kong-based...
China Eastern Airlines has reported a male passenger to the police for allegedly disturbing order, after a flight attendant was filmed kneeling in a cabin aisle to apologise for bumping his elbow with a service trolley.
In its second statement on the incident, the carrier said on Saturday that it believed the actions of the passenger amounted to disturbing order aboard a civil aircraft and had severely infringed upon the employee’s personal dignity.
The airline added that it had banned the...
For American and Chinese people interested in the outcome of the latest summit between China’s President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump, their conclusions could not be more different if they turn to the media and pundits for guidance.
Chinese state media spared no superlative, echoing the official description of the summit as: forging the right way for the major powers to get along and writing a new chapter in ties. It played up the fact that Trump gave Xi the highest-level reception...