Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi will visit Azerbaijan and three Balkan countries amid Beijing’s push to shore up its trade corridors and geopolitical influence in the regions. Wang will attend the seventh summit of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia (CICA) in Baku, Azerbaijan, on Thursday “as special representative of President Xi Jinping”, according to China’s foreign ministry. Aside from Azerbaijan, Beijing’s top diplomat will visit Croatia, Montenegro and...

For the first time in a decade, China has returned to the top 100 out of 145 economies in an annual global report assessing gender equality. China closed 69.9 per cent of its gender gap in 2025, rising to 96th place from 103rd the previous year and increasing 1.3 percentage points, according to the 2026 Global Gender Gap Report published by the World Economic Forum (WEF), an international non-profit organisation based in Switzerland. It marks the first time China has been ranked in the top 100...

China’s industry minister is set to lead Anhui province, a key semiconductor hub, in the latest personnel reshuffle within the Communist Party. Li Lecheng, 61, has served as minister of industry and information technology since April 2025. State news agency Xinhua reported on Wednesday that Li had been appointed the party secretary of Anhui and a member of its standing committee, taking over both roles from Liang Yanshun. Liang, Anhui party chief since June 2024, retains his role as party...

Qin Weizhong, former mayor of the southern technology hub of Shenzhen, is under investigation for corruption, the country’s top watchdog has confirmed. According to a statement by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection on Monday, Qin is “suspected of grave disciplinary and law violations and is currently undergoing review”, which usually means a corruption probe. Qin was appointed deputy party secretary and mayor of Shenzhen in May 2021. On August 24 this year, those positions were...

Zhang Dongdong has been fielding ever more requests for legal advice from jittery entrepreneurs, nervous government officials or their desperate relatives. They usually do not tell him the whole story, and sometimes say it happened “to a friend”, but most want to know the same thing: what to do when they are targeted by China’s corruption busters. “Some had received a tip-off that they were being investigated, some got a call from disciplinary inspectors asking them to cooperate, but in most of...