LPG Vehicles Region, Key Players (Volkswagen, Honda, Ford, Toyota) Competition and Forecast to 2021

Contemporary Amperex Technology Ltd (CATL) has doubled down on new businesses including battery swapping and energy storage as the world’s largest battery maker seeks new growth drivers amid intensifying price wars and mounting pressure on profitability. But the new path is far from straightforward. Established players like Nio have already built a strong presence in battery swapping, while BYD has reinforced its position in energy-storage systems. Lucas Zhang Liutong, director of Hong...

The former vice premier was one of just six women to have served on the Chinese Communist Party’s elite Politburo, though she was excluded from the top ranks of power.

After spending three months in a coma following a brain haemorrhage, a patient in China has regained the ability to speak, eat and walk with support – part of an early clinical trial using targeted sound waves to help “wake up” severely damaged brains, according to state media. The technology, developed by a coalition including the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, used focused ultrasound waves to stimulate regions deep within the brain without requiring...

Malaysia’s Melaka state began its election campaign on Saturday after 79 candidates were cleared to contest a poll testing whether Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s governing partners can turn an opportunistic alliance with his Islamist opponents into a platform for national power. The coastal state south of Kuala Lumpur heads to the polls on November 14, handing the United Malays National Organisation (Umno) and the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS) another opening to deepen cooperation after...

The United States, South Korea and Japan reaffirmed their commitment to the “complete denuclearisation” of North Korea on Saturday, as Pyongyang continues to reject disarmament ahead of possible talks with Washington. Speculation is mounting over a potential meeting between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un at next month’s Apec summit in China, with Trump making repeated overtures to Pyongyang for nuclear talks. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, South Korean Foreign...

In Malaysia, U.S. and Chinese tech giants are pouring billions into vast data centers, straining local resources and testing the limits of Washington’s restrictions on advanced chips.

The co-founder of Chinese chip giant Cambricon Technologies urged the introduction of universal ethical requirements for leading Chinese and American artificial intelligence models on Friday to mitigate growing risks to society. Chen Yunji’s remarks at an event in Shanghai come as the rapid advance of AI systems globally has resulted in a string of high-profile cyberattacks that have threatened critical infrastructure and breached government servers. Predicting that AI advances would develop...

A 500-day campaign to find and identify fallen soldiers has unearthed hundreds of bodies, but not everyone gets a chance at closure.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un attended an exhibition devoted to drones and called for rapidly expanding the country’s drone technology, state media reported on Friday, as his military escalates threats against South Korea and the United States. Acquiring advanced drones is a top priority for Kim, who now wants to strengthen conventional and nuclear capabilities to counter what he calls US-led security threats. It is unclear how far North Korea’s drone programme has progressed. Experts say...

A village that sent hundreds of men to one of imperial Japan’s most notorious wartime units is being demolished to make way for a runway at Tokyo’s Narita International Airport. Unit 731 carried out lethal experiments on captives, many of them Chinese, to develop biological weapons during the second world war. Around 300 of its roughly 3,000 personnel came from Kamo, a neighbourhood in Shibayama town, Chiba prefecture, east of the capital. Its founder and commander, Lieutenant General Shiro...

Nafeesa Azman has applied for hundreds of jobs over the past two months, yet the 24-year-old Malaysian marketing graduate is yet to find a permanent role that pays what she needs or uses the skills she spent years, and a good deal of money, developing. Natthanicha Intawong, a final-year media arts student in Bangkok, describes the terror many of her peers feel as they prepare to enter a jobs market that artificial intelligence is already beginning to scythe through. For Joshua Nai, a Singaporean...

China has broken up a major transnational drug trafficking network in cooperation with Indonesia and Malaysia, seizing around 1.2 tonnes of liquid methamphetamine, China’s Ministry of Public Security said on Friday. The operation was carried out on October 21 by Indonesia’s National Narcotics Agency (BNN), which raided and shut down a large-scale drug processing and purification facility in Aceh, Indonesia, and arrested 11 people, with help from China’s National Narcotics Control Commission...