World

U.S. Olympic gold medalist Nathan Chen is an example of how being Chinese-American can be a double-edged sword today in China. The 22-year-old took the top prize on Thursday at the Winter Olympics in the men’s figure skating event. But his record-beating performance, which sealed Chen’s reputation as the top skater in the world, promoted more castigation on Chinese social media than it did elation. A hashtag discussing Chen’s victory was the second-highest trending on the Twitter-like Weibo platform shortly after his win. Many of the comments, however, were negative, including some users who decried his performance as mediocre and “ape-like,” while others called him a “banana,” a derogatory term used to describe people of Chinese descent who are Westernized. Other attacks took on a more...

SINGAPORE: Singapore Airlines (SIA) posted a net profit of S$85 million in the third quarter on Thursday (Feb 24), helped by a strong cargo market and an improvement in passenger numbers as Singapore eased some of its border restrictions. The airline reported its first profitable quarter since December 2019, before the pandemic hit. The profit for the three months ended Dec 31 came in versus a loss of S$142 million in the year-ago period that was boosted by a tax credit. Revenue rose to S$2.32 billion from S$1.07 billion in the prior year. SIA Group said in a news release that the third-quarter performance came amid a "significant step-up" in air travel to and through Singapore in the October to December 2021 period, as well as continued robust demand and strong yields in the cargo mark...

BRUSSELS: The European Union is pushing for a global deal aimed at preventing new pandemics that could include a ban on wildlife markets and incentives for countries to report new viruses or variants, an EU official told Reuters. International negotiators will meet for the first time on Wednesday (Feb 9) to prepare talks for a potential treaty, said the official, who is not authorised to speak to media and so declined to be named. The aim is to reach a preliminary agreement by August. However, Brussels has so far struggled to get full backing for a new treaty from the United States and other major countries, some of which want any agreement to be non-binding. A spokesperson for Charles Michel, the president of the European Council who in November 2020 proposed a new treaty on pandemics...

On Dec 31, MCT announced plans to buy MNACT, seeking to create the seventh-largest REIT in Asia with an expected market valuation of about S$10.5 billion. MNACT's main portfolio includes one commercial property in Hong Kong and two in China, while MCT is a Singapore-focused REIT. Quarz, which is run by Jan Moermann, a former Swiss banker, said it supports the deal rationale but objects to the merger ratio and price. "Quarz has been approached by many MNACT unitholders on MCT's inferior offer for MNACT. We agree that the offer is value destructive to unitholders and significantly undervalues MNACT," Moermann and Havard Chi, Quarz's Singapore-based research head, said in the letter. MCT offered to acquire all units of MNACT in exchange for MCT units, or a combination of both cash and MCT...

In the hinterland of Argentina, Mario Pizarro’s office looks like a shrine to China. There’s the framed photo of a Chinese peasant with Pizarro’s face superimposed beneath the conical farmer hat. There’s the blue-robed smiling Buddha statue. And there’s the model wind turbine from a Chinese company with an inscription in English and Mandarin: “Create Our Future Together.” Pizarro, 62, is the energy secretary of Jujuy, a province high in the Andes that borders Bolivia and Chile. Overlooking a river, his office building is ordinary — shabby, even — but the projects he and his colleagues oversee are anything but. And the one country that’s made them all possible is China. Chinese technology and money have helped build one of Latin America’s largest solar energy plants in Jujuy, where hundre...

SINGAPORE: Singapore is continuing to “invest heavily” in children to give them "the best possible start in life", said Finance Minister Lawrence Wong in his Budget 2022 speech on Friday (Feb 18). “Just as we uplift our vulnerable groups, we will also continue to enhance social mobility,” he added. “The Government is committed to ensuring that all Singaporeans have the opportunities to do well for themselves, no matter their background or starting points.” Support starts early from the pre-school years, especially for children from low-income families, Mr Wong said. “Yet, we know that some vulnerable children fall out of or behind in our education system because of difficult conditions at home. Early intervention in their formative years can make a big difference in their lives.” The ...

BANGKOK: Myanmar military leader Min Aung Hlaing agreed to arrange for an Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) special envoy from Cambodia to meet members of the ousted ruling party on a future visit, a senior Cambodian official said on Monday (Feb 7). The pledge, made in a Jan 26 video call with Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, represents a small concession in a deadlocked peace process since Myanmar's military seized power a year ago from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD). Min Aung Hlaing did not identify which members of the NLD might be made available, said Kao Kim Hourn, a minister in Hun Sen's office who was part of the video meeting. "They have said during the video conferencing between our prime minister and senior genera...

Moviegoers line up in front of promotional posters for Chinese Lunar New Year films in Shanghai on Feb. 1, 2022. Costfoto | Future Publishing | Getty Images BEIJING — Chinese consumer spending on movies plunged during the Lunar New Year holiday last week as theaters raised prices to record highs. The seven-day holiday that ended Sunday is typically the biggest week of the year for new movie releases in China, the largest box office in the world. Eight Chinese-made films debuted this year. However, the total holiday box office of 6.04 billion yuan ($951.1 million) marked a drop of 23% compared to 7.84 billion yuan for the same period in 2021, according to online ticketing site Maoyan. Tickets were on average 8% more expensive this year versus last year, the data showed. The average price p...

SINGAPORE: The former executive chairman and director of Kimly, one of Singapore's largest traditional coffee shop operators, were fined by a court on Wednesday (Feb 16) for failing to disclose that its chairman had a 30 per cent stake in a company Kimly was acquiring. Then-executive chairman of the Catalist-listed company Lim Hee Liat, 56, was fined S$150,000. The director of Kimly at the time, 47-year-old Vincent Chia Cher Khiang, was fined S$100,000 for his involvement. They were both disqualified from acting as directors for five years. Both men paid their fines in full on Wednesday. They pleaded guilty to one count each of intentionally failing to notify the Singapore Exchange (SGX) that Kimly's acquisition of Asian Story Corporation (ASC) was an "interested person transaction", as...

The government leader, Chief Executive Carrie Lam, has said Hong Kong "cannot surrender to the virus" and that containing the outbreak "is now of paramount importance", as she seeks the people's understanding for inconveniences caused by the policies. "Elimination was initially the best strategy for Hong Kong," but is no longer appropriate, said Dr David Owens, a founding partner of OT&P clinic. "Once effective vaccinations became available, the negative framing and policy around zero-COVID adversely impacted vaccination rates, especially in the vulnerable," he said. "The messaging was not only unscientific, it paradoxically increased the risk to population health." The government did not respond to a request for comment on whether its zero-COVID policy had contributed to the current pr...