The long-awaited face-to-face meeting between US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping finally took place this week on the sidelines of the G20 summit. While both sides expectedly reiterated their stance on key issues such as climate change, North Korea and the Russia-Ukraine war, the Taiwan issue continues to be the highlight, with Xi marking it as the “first red line’’ that must not be crossed. Zaobao journalists Miao Zong-Han and Daryl Lim tell us more.

In this fourth instalment of a seven-part Lianhe Zaobao-Business Times series on China and ASEAN, we look at the role of Chinese investors in the rise, fall and recovery of Cambodia’s Sihanoukville province.

Cambodia is one of Southeast Asia’s fastest growing economies, but it has also become a hotbed of Chinese telecoms and online scams targeted at mainland Chinese in recent years. Most of the scam rings based in Sihanoukville recruit mainland Chinese, but have also started to bring in Chinese from Southeast Asia and Taiwan. Once duped into joining their firms, these workers are trapped and forced to work as online scammers. Lianhe Zaobao journalist Daryl Lim visited Sihanoukville in May to get a better picture.