With the death of former Chinese premier Zhu Rongji, both China and the wider world have lost a great leader. Zhu took personal risks for better US-China ties. He believed that productive Sino-American relations were good for China and for the world. He was a global leader before China had achieved its current great power status. In mid-1990, when I was president of the National Committee on United States-China Relations, our organisation invited Zhu, then Shanghai mayor, to the United States....

Chinese museums have been criticised for spelling errors in their information boards, including one in Zhejiang province where one of the captions for an exhibition about the Long March turned the Red Army into a “red car”. Such mistakes are especially embarrassing given the high importance the authorities attach to Communist Party history and come amid an ongoing push to promote “red tourism” or revolutionary-themed attractions. The mistake by Zhejiang Provincial Museum in Hangzhou was one of a...

For generations, working with ancient Chinese texts has been a painstaking task. Specialists would spend years deciphering unfamiliar characters, copying manuscripts by hand, adding punctuation to texts written without it, comparing different editions and tracing references scattered across thousands of years of records. But artificial intelligence (AI) is now changing that process, not only by helping to preserve fragile manuscripts but also by transforming how ancient texts are recovered,...

A provincial propaganda department in China has warned the public against subscribing to growing conspiracy theories on history, such as those stating that Aristotle and Ancient Greece never existed. In a post on Wednesday, “Zhejiang Propaganda” – a social media account affiliated with the Zhejiang provincial publicity department – warned about the rise of the “pseudo-historical school” online. The school promotes conspiracy theories that deny Western history and claim key achievements of...

Known for his sharp intellect, no-nonsense demeanour and relentless drive for reform, China’s former premier Zhu Rongji was the primary architect of the country’s transition from an isolated, rigidly planned economy to a market-driven titan connected to the rest of the world. During his tenure from 1998 to 2003, he engineered an economic “soft landing”, steered the nation through the Asian Financial Crisis and secured entry into the WTO, laying the groundwork for the country’s historic...

Former Chinese premier Zhu Rongji, the driver of the nation’s economic reforms, died on Wednesday aged 97 following an illness. Zhu spearheaded China’s 2001 accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO), paving the way for an export boom that fuelled the country’s transformation into the world’s second-biggest economy. He also oversaw domestic market reforms that included closing hundreds of loss-making state enterprises and laying off some 30 million workers. The former Shanghai mayor was...

A highway operator in Gansu province, northwestern China, apologised on Wednesday after a service area sign for the hot water room, mistranslated in English as “open water rooms”, was shared on social media. Similar translation errors, as well as spelling mistakes, on signage at public facilities have repeatedly drawn attention, including an incident in late March, when a passenger at an airport in the southwestern city of Guiyang discovered multiple misspellings. The mistranslation of the...

“Regardless of what lies ahead – be it a minefield or a deep abyss – I will forge ahead unswervingly, dedicating my entire life and energy to the country until my dying day.” Those words, spoken at the dawn of his premiership, came to define Zhu Rongji, China’s towering economic reformer who died in Beijing on Wednesday. He was 97. His remarks at a press conference in 1998 came as China was undertaking sweeping state-owned enterprise (SOE) reforms that caused widespread job losses, even as it...

China’s National Cultural Heritage Administration is putting museums nationwide on notice to strengthen emergency management during the summer peak season, following a series of operational failures, including a sudden power outage in Xian’s Terracotta Warriors museum last week. According to the notice published on Monday, there have been issues such as blackouts, air conditioning failures and severe overcrowding at some museums, triggering safety fears and public concern. The disruptions...

Former Chinese premier Zhu Rongji, who helped engineer one of the greatest economic reforms in human history, died of an illness on Wednesday in Beijing. He was 97. Zhu, who served as China’s premier from 1998 to 2003, is remembered for shaking up the centrally planned economy, overhauling the state-owned enterprise (SOE) sector and tackling corruption. He was the mastermind behind negotiations for China’s World Trade Organization (WTO) entry in 2001, which opened China up to the international...

Beijing has started airing a flagship documentary on former Chinese president Jiang Zemin as part of commemorative events marking the centenary of his birth, expected to culminate on Monday in a grand ceremony presided over by President Xi Jinping. In the lead-up to the anniversary, state broadcaster CCTV launched a 12-episode documentary titled Jiang Zemin, with the network’s flagship CCTV-1 airing two episodes nightly at prime time from Tuesday. The series is jointly produced by the ruling...

Two people from mainland China were arrested six days after illegally landing in Taiwan by inflatable boat, raising fresh concerns over the island’s coastal security amid its biggest annual military drill. The timing of the incident has drawn scrutiny. The two men arrived just before the 10-day Han Kuang exercise, which began on August 5, and remained at large for nearly a week before being arrested. The case only came to light on Monday after an angler reported finding an abandoned inflatable...

Chinese police have dismantled more than 1,000 gangs and detained about 8,200 suspects, just 10 days after the country’s top security official announced a year-long campaign against organised crime. The Ministry of Public Security said on Monday that the crackdown focused on crimes that had evolved into “more covert” forms and spread rapidly online. “New types of crimes such as online predatory lending, soft-violence debt collection … coerced consumption and online harassment have become major...

Zhu Senlin, a former Guangdong governor and key enforcer of the province’s economic transformation when China was opening up in the 1990s, died on Monday aged 95, according to official media. Nanfang Daily, mouthpiece of the Guangdong party committee, confirmed on Tuesday that Zhu had died due to illness. Shanghai-born Zhu spent more than five decades in the southern province that neighbours Hong Kong. He is widely remembered as a pragmatic, steady administrator who steered Guangdong through...

Taiwan is conducting its first-ever mobile network throttling exercise this week to test how the public responds to wartime communications disruptions, a new civil defence measure that has sparked criticism over the government’s preparedness. The exercise, held in central Taiwan on Monday and planned for northern Taiwan on Thursday, will simulate severe mobile network congestion by reducing 4G and 5G bandwidth for 30 minutes. About 17 million people, or 73 per cent of the island’s population,...

A China Southern Airlines flight was forced to abandon its departure and return to the gate at Shenzhen airport over the weekend after the Airbus A321 aircraft was struck by lightning while taxiing. Flight CZ3209, bound for the city of Wuxi in China’s eastern Jiangsu province, was waiting on the ground during a heavy thunderstorm on Saturday afternoon when the incident occurred, according to a report by The First Scene, a news portal under Shenzhen Media Group. The incident came to light on...

Scheduled drone performances at tourist attractions and events across China have been grounded as the country steps up scrutiny of low-altitude aviation, although in many cases no clear reason was given for the cancellation. Tourist attractions and event organisers in 11 provinces and regions – including Inner Mongolia, Gansu, Shandong, Guangdong and Hainan – took the unusual step last week of announcing that drone shows scheduled from Friday onwards were cancelled. By Monday, none had announced...

China’s central government has invited dozens of scientific, technological and academic experts to its annual summer retreat, highlighting how the country is focusing on innovation and breaking through “chokepoints” amid fierce competition with the US. According to state news agency Xinhua, the Communist Party’s Central Committee and the State Council, China’s cabinet, invited 60 experts to the seaside resort of Beidaihe from August 1 to 7. The list of invitees – who represented fields including...

Residents in Beijing have been warned not to go outside unless it is absolutely necessary as the capital and multiple other cities are on high alert for the arrival of Typhoon Dolphin, which is travelling north. In Beijing, a red rainstorm alert – the second highest – was issued on Monday for a number of districts, with rain expected to continue over the next three days. According to the city’s forecaster, the rain will get increasingly stronger with the most concentrated period expected to be...

Professor Wang Gungwu is regarded internationally as an authority on Chinese history. The 95-year-old is best known for his explorations of Chinese history in the long view, and for his writings on the Chinese diaspora. He has been a professor at the National University of Singapore since 2007 and emeritus professor at the Australian National University since 1988. He was vice-chancellor of the University of Hong Kong from 1986 to 1995. This interview first appeared in SCMP Plus. For other...

“Women hold up half the sky.” This iconic quote attributed to Mao Zedong has been central to Beijing’s messaging about gender equality for decades. It was not just a slogan. After the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949, the Communist Party passed a Marriage Law that banned arranged marriages, abolished foot-binding and encouraged women to enter education and the workplace. But the party’s stance on where women belong has shifted over the decades, according to a new study. To gauge the...

Taiwan’s plan to dissolve the pro-Beijing Chinese Unification Promotion Party (CUPP) has sparked controversy over whether the independence-leaning authorities are using security concerns to suppress political dissent. The island’s interior ministry is seeking a Constitutional Court order to declare the CUPP unconstitutional and dissolve it, marking the first such action against a political party in Taiwan’s history. “The CUPP has long been linked to organised crime, including cross-border...

An organised ring that helped people in the central Chinese province of Henan cheat their way to government-sponsored jobs has been exposed. An official investigation concluded that a province-wide exam held to fill the posts last month had been compromised by “large-scale, organised cheating” with suspects paying officials overseeing the exam to obtain test papers and the correct answers in advance, state broadcaster CCTV reported on Friday. The case was the latest in a string of similar crimes...

Ferry routes have been suspended, construction halted, fishermen evacuated and drones deployed to patrol over the sea as China’s coastal provinces prepare for the landfall of Typhoon Dolphin, the fourth typhoon to hit the country this summer. As of Friday morning, Dolphin was about 820km (510 miles) from China’s east coast, the National Meteorological Centre said. It is forecast to make landfall between Zhejiang and Fujian provinces sometime from Sunday afternoon to Monday morning. The centre...

Professor Wang Gungwu is regarded internationally as an authority on Chinese history. The 95-year-old is best known for his explorations of Chinese history in the long view, and for his writings on the Chinese diaspora. He has been a professor at the National University of Singapore since 2007 and emeritus professor at the Australian National University since 1988. He was vice-chancellor of the University of Hong Kong from 1986 to 1995. SCMP Plus readers get early access to articles in the Open...

In just two months, Yale graduate Edward Kuperman went from being praised by Chinese state media to being bombarded by public accusations that he was a spy. It began with a June 18 article from state news agency Xinhua, in which he was described as an eager 24-year-old sinophile who made the unconventional choice of spurning China’s eastern metropolises to live in Dunhuang, an oasis in the country’s northwestern Gansu province. His interest in China started with a Chinese language class in...

China announced new drone supply chain export controls and counter-sanctions against seven American firms in retaliation for US trade restrictions imposed last week targeting Chinese companies. Sales to United States entities of “drones, their key components and related technologies” will be subject to “strict case-by-case scrutiny”, the Ministry of Commerce said on Wednesday, with the measures taking effect immediately. They amount to a tightening of restrictions first implemented in 2023 and...

A former senior Chinese defence official has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for accepting over 43 million yuan (US$6.3 million) in bribes, as China’s anti-corruption drive continues it sweep through the military sector. Zhang Jianhua, former deputy head of China’s State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defence, was sentenced on Wednesday by the Dazhou Intermediate People’s Court in Sichuan province, according to state news agency Xinhua. The court was told...

An All Nippon Airways passenger jet took evasive action after coming close to a government inspection aircraft near Tokyo’s Haneda airport on Tuesday, in the latest aviation safety incident at the airport since a deadly runway collision in 2024. According to Japanese media reports, ANA flight NH968 from Shanghai was approaching the airport at around 6am on Tuesday when its traffic collision avoidance system (TCAS) was activated, warning of a potential collision risk with another aircraft. The...

A Chinese speaker today might describe their day at work as first making a “PPT” (a PowerPoint presentation) and then having to “PS tu” (Photoshop an image). After clocking off, they might “chang K” (sing karaoke) with friends before taking the “C wei” (centre spot) in a group photo. These novel phrases spring from the widespread habit of adopting English abbreviations directly into daily speech, usually pronounced letter by letter. While this is the organic result of cultural exchange, the...

Opposition parties in Taiwan have accused the government of failing to defend the island’s long-standing claims in the South China Sea, following its muted response to Philippine attempts to delimit a disputed shoal. “The government speaks loudly when confronting mainland China, but falls silent when Japan or the Philippines challenges Taiwan’s claims,” Kuomintang culture and communications committee director Chen I-hsin said on Sunday. Chen was referring to the Philippines’ move to assert...

Beijing has signalled the start of the summer break for China’s political elite with the announcement of retreats at the seaside resort of Beidaihe. State news agency Xinhua reported on Monday that Cai Qi, the man often referred to as President Xi Jinping’s “chief of staff”, “extended sincere greetings” to various academics and scientists invited to the resort about 300km (186 miles) east of Beijing. The report did not name those invited but did say they included specialists working at the...

Many young students in China have been inspired by the achievement of Wang Hong, the first Chinese woman to receive the Fields Medal – the world’s most prestigious prize in mathematics. But it is the 35-year-old’s candid remarks about feeling “discouraged” in her early years at an elite Chinese university that appear to have struck the deepest chord. Those comments have set off a broader debate about the country’s education system and whether it provides the support students need to develop...

China’s factory activity unexpectedly slipped into contraction for the first time in five months, and construction activity fell to its lowest since the pandemic, underscoring a divide in the nation’s economy that complicates efforts to revive growth. The official manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) dropped to 49.2 in July, missing the 50.1 median estimate in a Bloomberg poll of economists. Construction and services, part of non-manufacturing PMI, tumbled to 49 from 50.2 a month...

This report was translated from Chinese into English using Alibaba’s Qwen3.7-Plus, then checked and tweaked for accuracy by a South China Morning Post journalist. It is for reference only, and is not the official English version of the original Chinese document. Alibaba owns the SCMP.

The death toll from a landslide in Chongqing province, southwest China, earlier this month rose to 51, with 10 people still missing, local authorities said late on Thursday night. The landslide, which occurred two weeks ago in Pengshui county, swept away several residential buildings at the foot of a mountain along a riverbank. Quoting the command centre of the rescue effort, state-run news agency Xinhua said that 51 people had been found and confirmed dead, while 10 were still missing. Drone...

China’s top leadership has made party governance the focus of a coming key conclave, signalling the significance of a clean record in the selection process ahead of next year’s national congress. The Politburo, China’s top decision-making body, announced on Thursday that the fifth plenary session of the Communist Party’s 20th Central Committee would be held in October, state news agency Xinhua reported. The meeting is likely to be the party’s most important gathering ahead of its 21st national...

China has seen a spike in Covid-19 in recent weeks, overtaking influenza as the top respiratory pathogen for the first time this year, but most patients experienced mild symptoms, while the medical authorities said data suggested the infection rate was significantly lower than last year’s peak. The spread of the Omicron NB.1.8.1 variant has reached a “moderate transmission level”, according to the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The CDC does not give a weekly total of...

The Chinese government has appealed to the public for information as part of its investigation into a reservoir dam that collapsed in southern China earlier this month, causing heavy casualties. State media reported on Monday that the public could call a hotline to submit information related to the collapse of the Liulan Reservoir in Hengzhou, Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region on July 6. People also have until August 15 to post submissions to an investigation and assessment work group from the...

Taipei mayor Wayne Chiang Wan-an has emerged as the biggest political winner from an opposition protest against the government’s handling of a food safety scandal that drew what organisers said were more than 200,000 people onto the streets of the city. The unexpectedly large turnout on Saturday appears to have given the island’s main opposition party, the Kuomintang, fresh momentum ahead of the local elections in November, and could reshape the race to become the party’s candidate in the next...

Alleged scam-network mastermind Chen Zhi could face the death penalty, with Chinese prosecutors adding intentional injury to the list of charges against him. Chen, 38, was extradited from Cambodia to China six months ago and formally arrested on July 6, according to Chinese business magazine Caixin. He founded the Cambodian conglomerate Prince Group, which authorities say was linked to a sprawling online scam network. Caixin reported on Monday that prosecutors dropped a previous count of...

As Typhoon Noul barrelled into southern China on Sunday with winds reaching 160km/h (99mph), violent gusts ripped a cot from indoors and flipped it over several metres away, sending the child inside flying to the ground. Hongxing News, a Chinese media outlet, reported that a six-year-old girl lying in her cot in the southern city of Shenzhen was blown from inside a building onto the grass verge outside. Footage released by Hongxing showed a ground-floor grocery shop being battered by the gale,...

International students once saw US colleges as a gateway to a world-class education and career head start but shifting United States immigration policies, tightening visa conditions and high-profile ICE raids are causing them to reconsider. In the first in our series, Phoebe Zhang looks at how Chinese students are preparing for life – and safety – in America. The second instalment in our series is here. Beijing student Lulu Lu was just preparing for bed when she was startled by loud banging at...

Minutes after a Berlin court sentenced a Chinese man to five years in prison for aiding and abetting aggravated rape and sexual coercion, two women who had sat through the trial hugged each other and cried. But the case left one of those women, named Kristina, balancing mixed emotions as she struggled to reconcile her desire to see the perpetrators punished and questions about what justice really meant in a case of this nature. The 32-year-old accused, who was studying medicine, was jailed for...

High-speed rail services and flights across Guangdong province were cancelled on Sunday after Typhoon Noul made landfall in the province, bringing heavy rainfall to large parts of southern China. Noul – the strongest typhoon to hit China so far this year – made landfall at Huizhou city in Guangdong at around 3.50am on Sunday. The National Meteorological Centre issued its first red typhoon warning of the year – the highest alert level in a four-tier system – on Saturday evening. The following...