US and China agree to extend trade truce until January: Bessent

Easing tensions with Washington gives Beijing room to tackle economic troubles at home while reducing its vulnerability to American pressure.

For China’s elite artificial intelligence researchers, Silicon Valley no longer holds the unrivalled appeal it once did. A growing number are opting to stay home to build their careers, helping China overtake the United States as the leading workplace for top-tier AI talent, according to a study released this week by the think tank Carnegie China. China employed 41 per cent of the world’s leading AI researchers tracked by the study last year, pulling ahead of the US at 34 per cent, according to...

The good news is, when US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping met in Washington this week, neither chose confrontation. Amid the high pomp and ceremony, what China has called “constructive strategic stability” continues. Even an uneasy truce in great power relations can be useful. Both recognise the considerable incentive to prevent their economic rivalry from spiralling out of control. Even limited understandings can reduce risks in artificial intelligence (AI) and other...

The first known breach of a government website by rogue artificial intelligence agents has prompted global calls for more regulation of the technology.

The United States and China must work together to establish safety guardrails for artificial intelligence, leading scholars and industry leaders said at a Singapore forum, warning that rapid advances in the technology demand stronger risk controls. Speaking at the FutureChina Business Forum on Friday, Jude Blanchette, managing director of consultancy Macro Advisory Partners, urged the two superpowers to find common ground despite escalating geopolitical tensions. “If ever there was a moment for...

American chief executives turned out in force to see Xi Jinping, while their Chinese counterparts were absent, a sign of how drastically business ties have changed.

India’s “cockroach” youth movement is testing whether it can turn anger over education and jobs into a broader challenge to the country’s political establishment, two months after its protests helped force an education minister to resign over alleged entrance exam leaks. Its latest target is another powerful institution: the country’s election watchdog. The shift marks a transition for the movement from high-profile demonstrations in New Delhi to a more diffuse campaign of school audits,...

Mary Jane Veloso was convicted of drug smuggling and nearly killed by a firing squad in Indonesia. On Friday, more than a decade later, she was pardoned in the Philippines.

The Philippines’ decision to block messaging platform Discord for less than a day following a series of school shootings has raised questions about the government’s response to child safety online, with analysts describing the move as a show of regulatory muscle that did little to address underlying problems. The Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) announced on Thursday that it had lifted the ban after what officials described as successful negotiations with Discord...

Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump discussed artificial intelligence (AI) and Taiwan at the White House on Thursday as part of a state visit dominated by pageantry. On AI, Xi said that “the right thing to do is to draw on each other’s strengths, not guard against each other”, according to a statement from the Chinese foreign ministry. He also backed continued dialogue about risks, joint efforts to prevent misuse and keeping AI under human control. Trump earlier said on...

A major coal deal in Indonesia is set to secure a powerful new partner for one of the country’s biggest miners, even as the industry worries a delay in the government’s approval of production quotas could have a severe impact on the business outlook. Low Tuck Kwong and his daughter Elaine Low, the biggest shareholders of Bayan Resources, agreed on September 16 to sell a 30 per cent stake in Indonesia’s third-largest coal producer to fellow tycoon Andi Syamsuddin Arsyad, better known as Haji...

Former Malaysian leader Najib Razak has no money to pay the fine to secure his transfer to house arrest, his lawyers have said, as they question the delay in releasing the full details of the conditional pardon granted by Malaysia’s king last week. King Sultan Ibrahim Iskandar last Friday decreed that Najib would be allowed to serve out the remainder of his sentence at home, on condition that he pay his 50 million ringgit (US$10.3 million) fine. The decision triggered widespread outrage among...