https://www.scmp.com/rss/507516/feed en https://assets.i-scmp.com/static/img/icons/scmp-meta-1200x630.png https://www.scmp.com Gerui Wang Gerui Wang The global frenzy around China’s Labubu, the candy-coloured monster character with the mischievous smile adorning bags, desks, streets and social feeds worldwide, is often hailed as a triumph of Chinese soft power. But Labubu’s success reveals something deeper: the unmatched sophistication of China’s integrated platform economy. Pop Mart, Labubu’s retailer, started with a small shop in Beijing in 2010 but has leveraged China’s unique digital ecosystem in recent years to build a global... https://www.scmp.com/opinion/china-opinion/article/3316496/labubus-rise-reflects-hitmaker-ability-chinas-digital-ecosystem?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/opinion/china-opinion/article/3316496/labubus-rise-reflects-hitmaker-ability-chinas-digital-ecosystem?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 02 Jul 2025 08:30:07 +0000 Zhao Ziwen Zhao Ziwen On a recent Sunday afternoon in lower Manhattan, a small shop inside the Oculus, a soaring curvilinear mall at the World Trade Center, stands out for the bustling crowd thronging its space. “We’re out of stock,” more than one employee can be heard telling customers. This is not one of New York’s many top-brand boutiques but Pop Mart, a Chinese designer toy brand that has become a sensation in the United States. Its signature “blind box”, containing collectable figurines revealed only when the... https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/3316434/some-china-retailers-us-still-offers-path-profit-one-toy-or-tea-order-time?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/3316434/some-china-retailers-us-still-offers-path-profit-one-toy-or-tea-order-time?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 30 Jun 2025 15:50:59 +0000 Winston Mok Winston Mok Where would the United States be without immigrant talent? Some of the country’s leading tech companies, including Alphabet and Nvidia, were founded or co-founded by immigrants. Two-thirds of the tech workers in Silicon Valley are foreign-born. According to research by the Institute for Progress, 60 per cent of the US’ top artificial intelligence (AI) companies have immigrant founders, including former international students. The role of Cambridge, Massachusetts as a magnet for global talent is... https://www.scmp.com/opinion/world-opinion/article/3313712/us-crackdowns-academia-will-only-send-global-talent-elsewhere?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/opinion/world-opinion/article/3313712/us-crackdowns-academia-will-only-send-global-talent-elsewhere?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 10 Jun 2025 08:30:08 +0000 Bochen Han Bochen Han US President Donald Trump’s administration on Thursday said it had revoked Harvard University’s right to enrol international students, citing its “coordinated activity” with China’s Communist Party as a factor in the decision. The move, which comes amid an escalating clash between Trump and the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based university, was expected to affect almost 6,800 foreign students – more than a quarter of Harvard’s student population. Each year, anywhere from 1,800 to 2,300 Chinese... https://www.scmp.com/news/world/united-states-canada/article/3311448/trump-admin-bars-harvard-enrolling-foreign-students?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/news/world/united-states-canada/article/3311448/trump-admin-bars-harvard-enrolling-foreign-students?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 22 May 2025 18:26:11 +0000 Bochen Han Bochen Han Nearly 100 days in, Donald Trump’s second term as US president has been defined by his determination to upend the established order on nearly all fronts of domestic and foreign policy. In the sixth of this series, we look at the impact of the Trump administration’s stringent monitoring of individuals who came to the US to study and conduct research, and what it might mean for America’s competitiveness and intellectual culture. Growing up in Shanghai, Ming dreamed of attending a top US university... https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/3308259/trumps-immigration-crackdown-chills-speech-foreign-students-and-scholars-us?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/3308259/trumps-immigration-crackdown-chills-speech-foreign-students-and-scholars-us?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 28 Apr 2025 15:05:16 +0000 Amid the turbulence of China-US relations, a stabilising force has stood the test of time: exchanges between people, particularly educational exchanges. International students are a bedrock of ties, their experiences fostering understanding and building vital bridges between the two nations. As the world’s leading destination for international students, the US has long attracted Chinese students seeking a top-notch education and cross-cultural experiences. The recent report on international... https://www.scmp.com/opinion/china-opinion/article/3266928/5-ways-china-can-attract-us-students-back-its-universities-again?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/opinion/china-opinion/article/3266928/5-ways-china-can-attract-us-students-back-its-universities-again?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 19 Jun 2024 21:30:08 +0000 For the past few months, it has looked as though there may be something of a spring thaw in the US-China relationship. Chinese diplomats have lauded the San Francisco vision, referencing the meeting last November between US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping, which aimed to set guardrails on strategic competition and rebuild ties at the highest level. Xi called for 50,000 American students to come to China in the next five years, sending China’s educational bureaucracy into a... https://www.scmp.com/opinion/china-opinion/article/3266661/mixed-messages-undermine-us-china-rebuilding-people-exchanges?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/opinion/china-opinion/article/3266661/mixed-messages-undermine-us-china-rebuilding-people-exchanges?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 18 Jun 2024 01:30:09 +0000 The recent passage of controversial US legislation to force Chinese tech company ByteDance to divest itself of TikTok or face a ban is not the first time that TikTok has been a target in the complex narrative of US politics. It is not even really about TikTok, popular though the short-video app is. The debate is merely a reflection of broader concerns about tech governance in the United States. US policymakers have been in a dilemma over TikTok for years. In August 2020, president Donald Trump,... https://www.scmp.com/opinion/china-opinion/article/3257266/tiktok-just-bogeyman-americas-sorry-lack-digital-governance?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/opinion/china-opinion/article/3257266/tiktok-just-bogeyman-americas-sorry-lack-digital-governance?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 02 Apr 2024 12:30:13 +0000 In his regular column in the Post, David Dodwell sometimes refers to a time in his youth when he serendipitously went to Pakistan and taught in a tribal area there in 1968. It was a life-changing event for him. I’ve heard similar stories. One is from a former student. Decades ago, he briefly taught English in a remote area in Nepal and that also had a profound impact on his life. He admitted he was not qualified to teach, and thought at the time the area was so poor in so many ways that English... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3249185/fewer-westerners-china-bad-china-worse-west?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3249185/fewer-westerners-china-bad-china-worse-west?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 24 Jan 2024 11:30:14 +0000 What does Washington, DC, have in common with Provo, Utah? Or Greenville, Michigan? Or Overland Park, Kansas? All are home to publicly funded Mandarin immersion programmes, where kids as young as three years old spend half of each school day taking their regular classes – like math, science or physical education – entirely in Chinese. Most of the programmes began during a period of American engagement with China under the administration of Barack Obama, when Mandarin was increasingly seen as a... https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/3246088/mandarin-immersion-programmes-persist-american-schools-despite-high-level-us-china-tensions?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/3246088/mandarin-immersion-programmes-persist-american-schools-despite-high-level-us-china-tensions?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 26 Dec 2023 19:13:41 +0000 Tallies of Americans studying in Hong Kong and Taiwan recovered slightly after the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic, but the number of American students in mainland China plummeted to the lowest in over a decade, according to new data released on Monday. Only 211 Americans studied in mainland China during the 2021-22 school year, according to the 2023 version of an annual US government-funded study by the Institute of International Education (IIE). In contrast, from 2018 to 2019, there were... https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/3241168/number-americans-studying-mainland-china-falls-sharply-chinese-students-still-flock-us?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/3241168/number-americans-studying-mainland-china-falls-sharply-chinese-students-still-flock-us?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 13 Nov 2023 05:01:06 +0000 The past few weeks have seen a flurry of high-level diplomatic activity in Hong Kong. California Governor Gavin Newsom was greeted by a packed room for a fireside chat with University of Hong Kong Vice-President Peng Gong. This was followed by the visit of a delegation of six US mayors to the university, where they spoke to prominent sustainability experts in the city. A day later, former US consul general Kurt Tong addressed an audience at Asia Society Hong Kong, a jewel of people-to-people,... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3240598/three-ways-hong-kong-can-help-thaw-china-us-relations?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3240598/three-ways-hong-kong-can-help-thaw-china-us-relations?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 08 Nov 2023 21:30:20 +0000 A delegation of Chinese academic, economic, cultural and sports figures called for “China-US people power and friendship” on Wednesday in a bid to reboot the nation’s wobbly soft power ahead of an increasingly likely meeting between President Xi Jinping and President Joe Biden. The effort to seed the ground for improved ties dovetails with a rare Xi statement at a gala dinner in New York the evening before in which the third-term president called for mutual progress and common prosperity with... https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/3239203/leading-chinese-academic-and-cultural-figures-call-sino-us-people-power-and-friendship?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/3239203/leading-chinese-academic-and-cultural-figures-call-sino-us-people-power-and-friendship?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 25 Oct 2023 20:40:24 +0000 Mondays are history evenings for my father and me. Since 2021, my father and I have had a standing phone call where I ask him a question related to a milestone in his life, or some aspect of how he feels about life, love and other broader topics. I tape the call and save the recording. A couple of years on, there are well over 100 recordings. In the beginning, my father, who has spent much of his life and career as a professor, questioned the notion that his story would merit the time. “There... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3236160/how-my-family-and-i-are-preserving-slice-chinese-american-history?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3236160/how-my-family-and-i-are-preserving-slice-chinese-american-history?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 01 Oct 2023 01:30:17 +0000 The fatal shooting of a professor on Monday by a graduate student, both of Asian descent, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill was greeted with anxiety and trepidation on Tuesday by members of the minority community over concerns it would only fan more stereotypes and racial hatred. On Tuesday, Chinese doctoral candidate Tailei Qi, 34, was charged with first-degree murder and possession of a firearm on educational property in the killing of Zijie Yan, an associate professor in the... https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/3232751/fatal-north-carolina-shooting-chinese-doctoral-student-stirs-anxiety-among-asian-americans?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/3232751/fatal-north-carolina-shooting-chinese-doctoral-student-stirs-anxiety-among-asian-americans?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 29 Aug 2023 22:55:40 +0000 The latest “small yard, high fence” investment restrictions by the United States on China would choke venture capital and dwindle foreign direct investment inflows into the world’s second-largest economy, while also hitting its technological advancement, analysts said. US President Joe Biden revealed a long-anticipated executive order on Wednesday, declaring “a national emergency”. The latest restrictions are intended to curb US venture capital and private equity investments in Chinese companies... https://www.scmp.com/economy/global-economy/article/3230616/us-tech-investments-curbs-have-china-gravely-concerned-already-shrinking-fdi-looking-even-less?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/economy/global-economy/article/3230616/us-tech-investments-curbs-have-china-gravely-concerned-already-shrinking-fdi-looking-even-less?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 10 Aug 2023 06:28:41 +0000 US Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Beijing this week in what was seen as a landmark occasion. Blinken was the highest-ranking member of the two-year-plus Biden administration to visit China. Clearly, Blinken’s visit was meant to be a start towards reversing the decline in US-China relations – and, hopefully, resetting it – when pundits in the United States, China and elsewhere had opined that things were at a nadir. It was widely perceived that something had to be done for the two... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3225022/reset-us-china-relations-could-start-educational-exchanges?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3225022/reset-us-china-relations-could-start-educational-exchanges?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 23 Jun 2023 17:00:13 +0000 Over the past few months, I’ve become an expert in making wontons, among other Chinese dishes. It was rather serendipitous that I discovered the Mid-Hudson Chinese Language Centre here in upstate New York, roughly 120km (75 miles) north of New York City, in a place where most of the population is white. The language centre also offers cooking and art classes, such as lantern making and traditional drumming. I became immersed in the centre earlier this year, after a friend forwarded me an invite... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3216899/chinese-culture-has-power-unite-even-us?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3216899/chinese-culture-has-power-unite-even-us?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 14 Apr 2023 19:30:08 +0000 Last month, the US Mint said that Anna May Wong, Hollywood’s first Chinese-American film star, would appear on new US quarters. Given the rising tensions between China and the United States, and the talk of economic decoupling, the announcement was a timely reminder that the two countries have been linked even in their darkest days. Wong was born in Los Angeles in 1905, in a neighbourhood near Chinatown. It was a time when the Chinese Exclusion Act was still in force; the Los Angeles Chinatown... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3199327/anna-may-wong-us-coin-timely-reminder-deep-us-china-ties?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3199327/anna-may-wong-us-coin-timely-reminder-deep-us-china-ties?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 14 Nov 2022 19:30:07 +0000 It’s back-to-college time in the United States. Students are descending on university towns and cities, enjoying a few more days of summer before they become saddled with coursework, writing papers and exam preparation. At Cornell University and other prestigious colleges across the country, some 10 per cent of these students are Chinese. At first glance, it looks like a return to the days before the pandemic and the downward spiral of US-China relations. Yet Chinese students, who in recent... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3189973/americas-universities-will-welcome-fewer-chinese-students-year?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3189973/americas-universities-will-welcome-fewer-chinese-students-year?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 24 Aug 2022 22:45:11 +0000 China’s middle class has grown explosively in the past 20 years. In 2000, roughly 3 per cent of the country’s population was classified as middle class. By 2018, more than half of China’s population – 707 million people – had entered the country’s middle-income bracket, according to calculations from the Centre for Strategic and International Studies that defined the middle class as those spending between US$10 and US$50 a day. As China’s middle class has expanded, it has in many ways also... https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3158753/chinas-expanding-middle-class-starting-look-lot-us-its-not?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3158753/chinas-expanding-middle-class-starting-look-lot-us-its-not?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 07 Dec 2021 16:01:05 +0000 “Ping pong diplomacy” has returned to the world of table tennis after a 50-year gap, with American and Chinese players teaming up in the mixed doubles at the World Championships in the US. While China are expected to dominate the competition in Houston, the resumption of the sporting relationship between the two countries generated most interest in the days before it started, especially considering the rather frosty political relationship between the two. Two mixed doubles pairs have been... https://www.scmp.com/sport/hong-kong/article/3157177/china-us-relationship-enjoys-winning-start-table-tennis-world?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/sport/hong-kong/article/3157177/china-us-relationship-enjoys-winning-start-table-tennis-world?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 24 Nov 2021 07:00:18 +0000 In a bid to help stabilise soaring international crude oil prices, the United States has asked China to tap into its crude oil reserves. The issue came up during a virtual meeting between President Xi Jinping and his US counterpart Joe Biden in November. The US has the world’s largest reported strategic petroleum reserve, while China as the world’s largest importer of crude oil has also built up a system of its own. Why does China need a strategic crude oil reserve? In the 1990s, China said it... https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3156952/how-big-are-chinas-crude-oil-reserves-and-how-do-they-compare?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3156952/how-big-are-chinas-crude-oil-reserves-and-how-do-they-compare?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 22 Nov 2021 17:00:23 +0000 China’s record corn-buying spree – a cornerstone of its trade deal with the United States – may be running out of steam, with risks growing that imports by the top buyer will fall short of US official estimates.  The domestic harvest season is looming and China is expecting a bumper crop after farmers sharply boosted corn planting this year. This is already starting to weigh on Chinese corn prices, narrowing the gap with overseas prices and hurting the attractiveness of imports, according to... https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3147114/chinas-bumper-harvest-may-cool-corn-buying-binge-impact?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3147114/chinas-bumper-harvest-may-cool-corn-buying-binge-impact?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 01 Sep 2021 03:20:33 +0000 The United States did not designate China as a currency manipulator on Friday, as the Treasury Department released its first foreign exchange report of President Joe Biden’s administration.  China remained on the watch list over its currency practices. The report, which is typically issued to the US Congress twice a year, said: “China’s failure to publish foreign exchange intervention and broader lack of transparency around key features of its exchange rate mechanism and the activities of... https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/3129921/us-treasurys-new-list-currency-manipulators-does-not-include-china?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/3129921/us-treasurys-new-list-currency-manipulators-does-not-include-china?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 16 Apr 2021 14:24:39 +0000 Unfavorable views of China have reached historic highs, especially in the West. Even China’s achievements – such as combating Covid-19 at home – are viewed negatively. What went wrong? Some Western media outlets are prone to seeing China as a monolith, characterised by human rights abuses, ethnic division and oppression, and a repressive state. There is less willingness to recognise China’s laudable performance in improving people’s living standards, its vivid social life and tremendous internal... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3127609/improve-chinas-image-globally-welcome-foreigners-and-let-them-be?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3127609/improve-chinas-image-globally-welcome-foreigners-and-let-them-be?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 31 Mar 2021 20:00:16 +0000 He Huifeng He Huifeng China’s youth do not seem to want to go so far as to be labelled anti-American, but while older generations once admired US values, films and brands and held the political conditions and economic and technological advancement in a positive light, conversations with the younger generation show the appeal has certainly faded in the last few years. Citizens born in the 1970s and 1980s have memories of once admiring US individualism and democratic freedoms, but modern generations have become... https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3126180/chinas-millennials-generation-z-leading-nation-away-hollywood?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3126180/chinas-millennials-generation-z-leading-nation-away-hollywood?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 19 Mar 2021 16:30:11 +0000 The US State Department has scrapped five China-funded exchange programmes, with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo dismissing them as “propaganda tools” disguised as cultural exchanges. The announcement on Friday is the latest in a series of moves towards cultural and educational decoupling and came just two days after the outgoing administration of President Donald Trump moved to restrict travel visas to the United States for the estimated 92 million members of the Chinese Communist Party and... https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3112710/us-axes-chinese-cultural-programmes-propaganda-grounds?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3112710/us-axes-chinese-cultural-programmes-propaganda-grounds?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 05 Dec 2020 07:32:15 +0000 Chinese-American neighbourhood patrols in New York and California are bracing for a spike in anti-Asian harassment and possible violence in the days leading up to the November 3 US presidential elections and what could be a turbulent aftermath, community activists say. While Chinese-Americans have faced racism throughout America’s history, researchers and activists assert that Sinophobia has surged as a result of US President Donald Trump’s inflammatory language – particularly in the wake of the... https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3106905/amid-rising-xenophobia-chinese-american-communities-both-coasts?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3106905/amid-rising-xenophobia-chinese-american-communities-both-coasts?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 23 Oct 2020 20:39:07 +0000