On 12 December, Jimmy Lai, a successful businessman and brave campaigner for freedom and democracy, was led into court in Hong Kong in handcuffs and chains, accused of breaking the national security law recently imposed by the Communist Party of China (CPC).

China tech giant Alibaba offered face-recognition software that could enable users to identify Uighurs, a report said, making it the latest Chinese company embroiled in the country's controversial treatment of the Muslim minority.Alibaba's website for its cloud-computing business showed how clients could use the software to detect the facial features of Uighurs and other ethnic minorities within images and videos, according to The New York Times.The references, later removed by Alib

In my previous commentaries on the peculiar world of equity markets in 2020, I offered a bullish outlook for how events would unfold as the year progressed (with all due caveats for the market’s overall unpredictability). In the event, things have broadly played out as I anticipated, owing to a remarkable monetary – and fiscal-policy expansion and the timely arrival of vaccines that appear capable of ending this dreadful pandemic. What can we expect in 2021?

Global indebtedness has never been greater than it is today. With interest rates so low for so long, anyone who could borrow has done so. But, even with rock-bottom borrowing costs, the economic fallout from the pandemic has forced one vulnerable country after another to declare sovereign default, or to signal that it may do so soon. Worse, the main creditor to debt-distressed emerging economies, China, has little experience managing cascading sovereign defaults.

At the United Nations (UN) General Assembly this September, Chinese President Xi Jinping announced that China aims to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060. Given that China has been the planet’s single-largest source of global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in recent years – accounting for about 30 percent – decarbonisation there could contribute substantially to the global effort to mitigate climate change. China, of course, will have to rebalance its economy.

China and India edged forward in their commitment to lower carbon pollution on Saturday, issuing a string of promises that experts said fell short of action needed from the two emerging giants.President Xi Jinping told a virtual climate summit that China would work to reduce the intensity of its emissions by 65 percent by 2030, compared with 2005 levels.Xi promised to "aim to peak carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions before 2030", repeating a pledge he made in September, when the world&#0

As wealthy countries scramble to buy up the limited supply of big-name coronavirus vaccines, China is stepping in to offer its homegrown jabs to poorer countries.

China’s economy seems largely to have bounced back from the COVID-19 shock. It registered 4.9 percent annual growth in the third quarter of 2020, and the rate may well exceed five percent growth in the fourth quarter. The result would be at least two percent annual full-year growth – not bad at a time when much of the world is facing a pandemic-induced recession. But that doesn’t mean smooth sailing ahead.

Australia’s China problem – official contacts frozen and many of our exports under siege – is now gaining attention far beyond our shores.

Indonesia has received 1.2 million doses of a COVID-19 vaccine made by China's Sinovac, officials said, as the world's fourth most populous nation struggles to get soaring case rates under control.The doses arrived in Jakarta late Sunday on a flight from Beijing, with another 1.8 million expected to be sent again next month.Although Chinese regulators have yet to clear any of country's vaccines for mass distribution, they have approved some advanced candidates for emergency use