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The torn pieces of paper by Gao Zhen, a renowned artist jailed in China, show family portraits, memories of New York and expressions of faith. To his wife, they are love letters.

Chinese exports are flooding the developing world, and the social consequences are bound to be profound.

Commerce department finalizing deal to allow H200 chips to be sold to China as strict Biden-era restrictions relaxed
Donald Trump has cleared the way for Nvidia to begin selling its powerful AI computer chips to China, marking a win for the chip maker and its CEO Jensen Huang, who has spent months lobbying the White House to open up sales in the country.
Before Monday’s announcement, the US had prohibited sales of Nvidia’s most advanced chips to China over national security concerns.

Chinese exports are flooding the developing world, and the social consequences are bound to be profound.

Paramount says its hostile offer “provides superior value, and a more certain and quicker path to completion to WBD shareholders”
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Back in China, car sales have fallen for the second month running.
Retail vehicle sales fell about 8% to 2.1 million units in November, according to published by the China Passenger Car Association today. This shows a 22% slump in sales of gasoline cars, with new-energy vehicle sales rising 4.2% for the month.
“Usually the trend at the end of the year is that the car market should get stronger and stronger from October. But the retail sales in November compared to previous years is unusual.”
“Mortgage rates continue on the downward trend and November was particularly fruitful for fixed rate cuts.
The re-pricing by lenders led to the average five-year fixed rate dropping below 5% for the first time in over two years and sits at its lowest point since before the ‘mini-Budget’ in September 2022, alongside its two-year counterpart.

The pain is visceral, but civil society, media and the creative community have been sent into retreat since the 2019 pro-democracy protests
Antony Dapiran is the author of two books on Hong Kong politics and protest
White flowers at makeshift shrines and messages of support posted in a public square. A rainbow of folded paper cranes. Boxes of donated goods for those in need. Hongkongers’ responses to the Tai Po fire disaster – in which at least 159 people have died and 31 are still unaccounted for – have, on the surface, resembled similar community expressions of solidarity last seen during the 2019 protests. But beneath the surface, Hong Kong civil society is struggling to respond to this latest collective trauma in a city that has deeply changed in the past five years.
The cauterisation of Hong Kong’s civil society that has occurred under Beijing’s national security crackdown has meant that the types of grassroots activism that would traditionally have occurred in response to such a tragedy – as they would in any other open society – are no longer possible.
Antony Dapiran is the author of two books on Hong Kong politics and protest

Tokyo has vowed a 'calm and resolute' response as tensions with Beijing continue to escalate.

We can move from defensive crouch to position of strength but only if we use the economic cards we have against US coercion
Europe is on a trajectory towards nothing less than “civilisational erasure”, the Trump administration claims in its extraordinary new , a document that blames European integration and “activities of the European Union that undermine political liberty and sovereignty” for some of the continent’s deepest problems.
Everybody should have seen it coming after Washington’s humiliating 28-point plan for Ukraine. in February, in which he suggested that Europe’s democracies were not worth defending was an early red flag. But the new words still land as a shock. The security document is the clearest signal yet of how brutally and transactionally Washington wants to engage with the continent. It marks another phase in Trump’s attempt to reshape Europe in his ideological image while at the same time abandoning it militarily. US policy, the paper says, should enable Europe to “take primary responsibility for its own defence”.
Georg Riekeles is associate director and Varg Folkman a policy analyst at the European Policy Centre

China’s ambassador summoned over alleged weekend incident that saw Chinese J-15 fighter aircraft twice train their radar on Japanese F-15s
The diplomatic dispute between Japan and China appeared to deepen over the weekend after Chinese military planes were accused of locking their radar on to Japanese fighter jets near the Okinawa islands.
Japan’s prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, vowed to “respond calmly and resolutely” to the alleged incident, saying her country would take all possible measures to strengthen maritime and airspace surveillance and closely monitor Chinese military activities. The country’s foreign ministry also summoned China’s ambassador on Sunday. China’s government has roundly rejected Japan’s accusations, instead lodging its own counterprotests.

The government is pushing hard to raise turnout in an election overshadowed by a deadly fire and public anger over safety lapses and official accountability.

"Legacies: Asian American Art Movements in New York City" was billed as the first institutional show ever to survey artists of Asian descent in its titular city, a distinction that would make this ...

Beijing disputed the accusation, the latest flare-up in a festering dispute between the two countries.