China

The California State Controller Betty Yee has called for the board of the California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS), the largest public U.S. investment fund, to launch an inquiry into the abrupt exit of its chief investment officer. REUTERS: The California State Controller Betty Yee has called for the board of the California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS), the largest public U.S. investment fund, to launch an inquiry into the abrupt exit of its chief investment officer. Yu Ben Meng, a U.S. citizen born in China, resigned from his position at the US$400 billion fund last week, saying he needed to focus on his health and family. In a letter sent to CalPERS' Board President Henry Jones on Monday, Yee called for a "swift and thorough inquiry" to determine w...

related media assets (image or videos) available. Click to see the gallery. 2 related media assets (image or videos) available. Click to see the gallery. With nearly seven months gone, an ambitious US$36.5 billion target for Chinese imports of U.S. farm goods this year may not be quite out of reach, but it's looking like a big, big stretch. BEIJING/CHICAGO: With nearly seven months gone, an ambitious US$36.5 billion target for Chinese imports of U.S. farm goods this year may not be quite out of reach, but it's looking like a big, big stretch. By end-May, imports were running behind 2017 levels - rather than 50per cent ahead as needed - and while orders for China's main farm import, soybeans, have started to pick up, scorching levels of buying would be needed to hit the mark. Add i...

HANOI: Vietnam's health ministry reported six new COVID-19 infections and two more deaths on Monday (Aug 10), bringing the total number of cases in the country to 847, with 13 fatalities. Most of the new cases, including an 8-year-old boy, are linked to the central city of Danang, where the new outbreak began late last month. The ministry said more than 182,000 people are being quarantined in the country, including 5,139 at hospitals, 28,408 at centralised quarantine centres and the rest at home. Aggressive contact tracing, targeted testing and strict quarantining had helped Vietnam halt an earlier contagion, but it is now racing to control infections in Danang and beyond after a new outbreak was detected there on Jul 25. On Friday, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc warned that...

Aug. 15 marks the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II. How can we understand where Japan has come from, where it is today and where it is going? To answer these questions, it’s important to reflect on just how much the world has changed since Japan’s surrender. A good place to start is the 70th anniversary in 2015, arguably the low point in Sino-Japanese relations. To mark the occasion, the Advisory Panel on the History of the 20th Century and on Japan’s Role and World Order in the 21st Century released its report Aug. 6. It acknowledged Japan’s aggression in East Asia, writing that Japan “lost sight of the global trends, and caused much harm to various countries, largely in Asia, through a reckless war.” Prime Minister Shinzo Abe reified much of the report in his Aug. 14 stateme...

The one common and peculiar aspect of most Shakespearean tragedies is the fact that the catastrophic events and unfolding misfortunes seem almost inevitable. While characters within the play are well aware of the fact that things are quickly going from bad to worse, it seems almost impossible to change the course of events. Unfortunately, the current U.S.-China relationship seems to be showing the same tendency. Many Shakespearean tragedies were caused by accidents, which in turn were a result of carelessness and miscommunication. U.S.-China relations have never been smooth and peaceful, and have in the past experienced various ups and downs and dangerous crises such as the 1999 bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade and the 2001 military aircraft collision incident, among others. Th...

ZHENGZHOU: Biology student Ma Jingjing wandered the hall of a job fair in central China among other young Chinese hoping to find work in an economy crushed by the coronavirus pandemic. Ma, 26, is one of almost 9 million people graduating and entering the job market this year at a time of great uncertainty, an issue that has the ruling Communist Party worried to the point that President Xi Jinping has made it a priority. The world's second-largest economy may have rebounded sharply from a historic virus-induced contraction, but its young graduate jobless rate in June was more than three times that for urban unemployment. Ma was among hundreds of young faces streaming in and out of the job fair on a recent weekend in Zhengzhou, where employers in industries ranging from real estate to...

BERLIN: Clinical trials on humans have begun in China for a potential coronavirus vaccine developed by German pharmaceutical group BioNTech with Chinese company Fosun Pharma, the companies said Wednesday (Aug 5). Seventy-two participants have already received their first dose following approval for the phase 1 trial from Chinese regulatory authorities, BioNTech and Fosun Pharma said in a statement. The vaccine candidate, known as BNT162b1, is one of four based on BioNTech's proprietary mRNA technology. Another, BNT162b2, is being evaluated in a global phase 3 trial conducted by BioNTech and US giant Pfizer which started on Jul 27. The phase 1 trial in China involves 144 participants who will receive two doses 21 days apart. Those aged 18-55 will be the first to take part, followed...

related media assets (image or videos) available. Click to see the gallery. 2 related media assets (image or videos) available. Click to see the gallery. U.S. stock futures slipped and Asian shares came under pressure in early Monday trade as tit-for-tat consulate closures in China and the United States fanned worries about worsening diplomatic ties between the world's two largest economies. TOKYO: U.S. stock futures slipped and Asian shares came under pressure in early Monday trade as tit-for-tat consulate closures in China and the United States fanned worries about worsening diplomatic ties between the world's two largest economies. S&P500 futures dropped 0.2per cent while Nasdaq futures lost 0.3per cent. Japan's Nikkei fell 1.3per cent, re-opening after a long weekend. MSCI's b...