China Financial News

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.WASHINGTON—The U.S. has burned through so many munitions in Iran that some administration officials increasingly assess that America couldn’t fully execute contingency plans to defend Taiwan from a Chinese invasion if it occurred in the near term, U.S. officials said.The U.S.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Chinese artificial-intelligence startup DeepSeek is tapping external investors for the first time since it became a household name, looking to raise funds for research and development, people familiar with the matter said.In recent weeks, DeepSeek has held talks with potential investors, including Chinese technology giants Alibaba and Tencent, seeking to raise at least $300 million, the people said. The funds will be denominated in Chinese yuan, they said.Beijing-based venture-capital firm Shunwei Capital—backed by Lei Jun, founder of Chinese consumer-electronics maker Xiaomi—has also held talks with the AI startup, some of the people said.Preliminary discussions value the Chinese AI heavyweight at between $10 billion and $30 billion, the people said.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.A jet fuel shortage is leading airlines to cut flights, and could cause a severe slowdown in travel this summer—particularly in Europe.German carrier Lufthansa said this week it is canceling 20,000 flights from now through October, immediately reducing its flight schedule by 120 trips a day. Reductions are happening all over, including at the company’s hubs in Frankfurt, Munich, Zurich, Vienna, Brussels, and Rome.More than a dozen other airlines have also reduced capacity, including discount Norwegian airline Norse Atlantic, which cut flights from Los Angeles. American carriers are not in danger of running out of fuel, but U.S.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.If the Iran War has taught us nothing else, it’s that weaponizing shipping routes is now the military move du jour. That has rightly turned attention to the Taiwan Strait, but in this era of intense US-China rivalry, the Strait of Malacca is just as important.The shipping route—which carries roughly 40% of global trade and around 80% of China’s imported oil—has long been regarded as vulnerable to disruption. Southeast Asia’s divisions will make any crisis much harder to contain.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Dario Amodei, Sam Altman, Demis Hassabis, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk—a recent Economist article describes them as the small, powerful group of five men who will determine the path along which artificial intelligence (AI) evolves. Their fellow AI pioneer Geoffrey Hinton, who invented the neural network system that enables AI models to learn like humans, quit Google in 2023 to alert the world that while further development of AI could lead us to a utopian future, it could equally lead us to a dystopian one.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.MUMBAI: Steel companies are set to post a strong March quarter (Q4FY26), thanks to firm demand and higher prices after hitting multi-year lows in November 2025. Will this momentum continue in the coming months?Mint breaks down why this rally in prices is expected to decline starting mid-May.Steel prices began rising around mid-December, driven initially by higher coking coal costs, and continued to gain through the quarter.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.A $10 million purse? Believe it. A Hermès handbag owned by the late fashion icon Jane Birkin sold for that eye-popping, record-setting sum last summer at Sotheby’s in Paris.Now, if you can afford a $10 million pocketbook, there’s no doubt you have plenty of dough.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Japan has decided to ease restrictions on its sale of weapons to other countries, although this would be limited to the 17 with which it has defence tie-ups. As India is part of the four-nation Quad—with Japan, the US and Australia as other members—Tokyo’s move opens up a possibility worth close consideration by New Delhi. We could diversify our set of high-tech arms suppliers to include a non-hegemonic power with which we have had good relations for eight decades.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Iran, China and an array of middlemen have evaded U.S. sanctions for years by shipping oil on aging tankers with opaque records and transferring cargoes between ships at sea, all to avoid scrutiny and legal liability.U.S.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.When the war in Iran started nearly two months ago, countries in Asia—which receive more than 80% of the oil and liquefied natural gas delivered through the Strait of Hormuz—were among the most exposed to the energy shock.But now, a combination of deep reserves, aggressive energy conservation efforts and savvy diplomatic efforts have allowed the deepest-pocketed of them to weather the blow—at least for now.They rushed to locate energy outside the Middle East, including the U.S. and Russia, often paying top dollar on the spot markets.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.On Thursday, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal—two states with sharply different political rhythms—head to the polls. Tamil Nadu will vote in a single phase across all 234 seats, while West Bengal begins its first phase in 152 of 294 constituencies.Both contests will test the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) momentum: it has little presence in Tamil Nadu but poses a serious challenge to the Trinamool Congress (TMC) in West Bengal.Mint explores:West Bengal has a history of extended single-party/alliance rule. The state was governed by the Left Front, led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist), for 34 years before Mamata Banerjee’s rise ended that run in 2011.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.NEW DELHI: Apple on Monday named John Ternus, its vice-president of hardware engineering, as its next chief executive, succeeding Tim Cook. The transition was expected for later this year, but its timing—and Apple’s choice of a hardware leader—comes as artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping Big Tech.The move signals Apple’s bet that tightly integrated devices will remain central to its strategy, even as rivals push ahead in AI.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.The old pharma order anchored around cutting-edge advances in the West has quietly disappeared. What we have now is a bipolar industry centred on the US and China—with implications for patients and policymakers worldwide. China has closed the gap on the number of research studies being conducted and in certain cases even moved ahead of the West on developing new treatments.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is again fighting for his political life this week, thanks to a scandal that’s becoming emblematic of Britain’s national dysfunction. Mr. Starmer’s woes boil down to a crisis of incompetence.Ostensibly the scandal concerns the vetting of a high-profile appointee—the long tail of the release in the U.S.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Mumbai: Life is coming full circle for Suzlon Energy Ltd as the company looks to resume selling wind turbines in Europe, a market where it stopped sales nearly two decades ago as it worked its way out of a debt crisis.The Pune-based company on Tuesday launched two new turbine designs for the European market with capacities of 5 MW and 6.3 MW, based on its new Blue Sky product platform. These add to its portfolio of 2.1 MW and 3 MW machines.The new platform will debut in Europe and the company will take a call later this year on the specifications in which it can be brought to India, Girish Tanti, the executive vice-chairman of Suzlon, told Mint over a call from Madrid.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.India needs to rethink its power storage options in the light of an energy shock that has exposed the fragility of global supply chains. Since geopolitical conflict and wobbly rules of international engagement are unlikely to relieve us of trade clamps being used as weapons, we must adjust our cost and security calculus accordingly. At particular risk are battery electric storage systems (BESS) that are now increasingly favoured by renewable energy (RE) producers for grid-scale storage.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.FOR DECADES Americans have fretted that China might dump its vast holdings of Treasuries, undermining the dollar. Global investors therefore snapped to attention when Bloomberg, a news agency, reported on February 9th that China’s regulators have warned commercial banks against holding too many American government bonds. Some banks have been told to cut their exposure.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.On 17th April Seyed Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, declared that commercial passage through the Strait of Hormuz was “completely open”. Shortly afterwards Donald Trump, America’s president, echoed his words: the conduit was “completely open and ready for business”.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.The US has extended by 30 days its waiver from sanctions for Russian oil purchases. Just days ago, US Treasury secretary Scott Bessent had ruled that out. This flip-flop is a relief.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.WASHINGTON—The United Arab Emirates has opened talks with the U.S. about obtaining a financial backstop in case the Iran war plunges the oil-rich Persian Gulf state into a deeper crisis, U.S. officials said.U.A.E.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.BEIJING—For decades, China has broadcast a simple message to its people: America is a chaotic and dangerous place.For just as long, that message largely failed to resonate, as millions of Chinese people looked across the Pacific and saw a proverbial “shining city upon a hill.” Many of China’s best and brightest saw the U.S. as a land of boundless opportunity underpinned by robust rule of law.Today, America’s allure is fading.