China’s regional slowdown: Painful but necessary?

From rare, handwritten manuscripts surviving only in Singapore to the multibillion-view world of modern xianxia, wuxia remains a cultural powerhouse. Lianhe Zaobao senior correspondent Lim Fong Wei gives us a glimpse of a special exhibition from this year’s City Reading @ SG festival, tracing how these legendary martial arts tales evolved from newspaper serials into global screen phenomena.

From a shop in Singapore’s Chinatown, a homegrown brand with over 100 years of history steadily sells its products to locals and tourists alike. Lianhe Zaobao journalist Lilia Yeo speaks to the third-generation owners and discovers the rich heritage of this store that began by selling medicated oils.

After months of review, Chinese authorities have decided to stop Meta’s acquisition of Manus, ordering the deal to be reversed over the next few weeks. Lianhe Zaobao China news editor Yang Danxu finds out what this development means and whether such a deal can be undone.

China’s culinary tradition prized technique over luxury ingredients. Now, rising affluence and innovation are changing that — turning caviar and other premium foods into symbols of status and engines of growth. Economist Li Jingkui looks at how high-end ingredients can play a part in boosting the economy.

With young consumers in China looking beyond established Western luxury brands, homegrown brands are increasingly winning people over with their designs and quality. Lianhe Zaobao correspondent Liu Liu finds out more.

US AI leadership has long relied on Chinese talent, from leading researchers in top institutions to foreign-born engineers driving innovation, underscoring how global talent flows have been central to its technological dominance. Economist Min-Hua Chiang gives her analysis.

Beyond Chinese infrastructural investment or resources extraction in Indonesia, the web of exchanges formed from building mobility, education and institutional links could help to foster a more holistic approach to building bilateral relations and make them stronger, says analyst Kevin Zongzhe Li.

Chinese AI companies’ focus on cost efficiency and concrete applications — compared with US companies’ focus on fundraising and compliance over deployment — has given them the upper hand in dominating global market share and reach. Chinese technology expert Yin Ruizhi observes that aside from the AI video generation field, China is poised to overtake the US in more AI domains.

Reflecting on the assassination attempts against US President Trump, commentator Deng Yuwen argues that institutions once seen as sources of public confidence have weakened, while repeated gunfire in symbolic spaces of power shows external hatred increasingly penetrating the system’s boundaries. This is especially dangerous when the US president becomes a highly symbolic figure embodying political conflict.

China and the US have reasons to work together to tackle the scourge of cyberfraud in Southeast Asia. The problem, however, is that their geopolitical rivalry gets in the way.

China is turning seeds into a strategic frontier — balancing domestic food security needs with global ambitions in agricultural supply chains, biotech dominance and the geopolitics of food production. Researcher Genevieve Donnellon-May explains.

For decades, industrial policy was discouraged in developing economies, even as China’s state-led model reshaped global supply chains. Now, with the US and Europe embracing massive interventions, the old orthodoxy looks less like principle than self-interest. Academic Guanie Lim examines how the discourse on industrial policy has shifted.

AI agents were all the rage in March, but by April, the spotlight had shifted to AI-generated video. The pace of launches has accelerated, but so has the regulatory scrutiny and backlash due to copyrighted IP.

The Strait of Hormuz crisis has driven alternative routes, strengthening energy supply chains and boosting cooperation across the Middle East, Central Asia and South Asia, while expanding cross-border trade — so the outlook is not entirely bleak despite disruption at Hormuz, says Chinese academic Peng Nian.

From the skies over Africa to the strategic waters of the Middle East, the world’s vital transit nodes are being transformed into tools of statecraft. As major powers move beyond traditional warfare to weaponising global infrastructure, smaller nations find themselves navigating a high-stakes era of chokepoint diplomacy and economic coercion. Lianhe Zaobao journalist Miao Zong-Han finds out more.

Well into the second half of Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos Jr’s presidency, academic Aaron Rabena analyses that the perceived distancing of Philippines-China relations is not so clear-cut. In fact, at the state and sub-state levels, there seems to be engagement on some fronts and caution in others.

In 1984, historical photo collector Hsu Chung-mao travelled to Israel as a young Taiwanese journalist expecting a conventional war zone, but found instead a society where military life, religion and daily existence were tightly interwoven in ways that shaped every encounter.