China should not try to copy SpaceX despite the US company’s successful IPO, a leading economist has said. The company raised US$75 billion when it went public on Friday and made its chief executive Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire. But Shen Yingchun, a professor at Beihang University, told Beijing Daily: “China does not need to and cannot copy SpaceX.” She said “the strength of the US model is efficiency”, using the market to drive down costs and forcing companies to innovate. Shen...

Mainland China’s fourth-ranking official has hailed the “enthusiastic” participation of people from Taiwan at a cross-strait forum despite the “obstacles” placed in their way. The independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party this year tightened restrictions on the Straits Forum in Fujian province, imposing the first outright ban on local officials attending the event. Senior officials had already been prohibited from attending. Addressing the event on Saturday, Wang Huning, Beijing’s top...

Mainland China’s fourth-ranking official has hailed the “enthusiastic” participation of people from Taiwan at a cross-strait forum despite the “obstacles” placed in their way. The independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party this year tightened restrictions on the Straits Forum in Fujian province, imposing the first outright ban on local officials attending the event. Senior officials had already been prohibited from attending. Addressing the event on Saturday, Wang Huning, Beijing’s top...

China activated the world’s first three-band optical fibre communication system early this month, technology that its developers say could expand the carrying capacity of future AI networks. According to the project team, a single fibre can carry more than five times the traffic of conventional systems, while transmission capacity per core increases by nearly half. The project, completed in Qingdao in the eastern Chinese province of Shandong, was jointly developed by state-owned...

The Philippines’ confrontational approach to maritime territorial disputes, such as its championing of the 2016 South China Sea arbitration ruling, has not only failed to resolve regional tensions, it also risks undermining Asean centrality. In May, addressing Japan’s National Diet, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr announced that Manila would mark the ruling’s 10th anniversary in July, an occasion he said “embodies our determination to resolve disputes through peaceful means”. That is...