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Shares of Chinese defense-manufacturing companies rallied on Wednesday, as the escalation in border tensions between Pakistan and India boosted the outlook for mainland exporters, Bloomberg said in a report. Pakistan, which has imported a bulk of the defense equipment including J-10C fighter jets, shot down five Indian planes, including three French Rafale jets. “This led to speculation that Chinese defense platforms may have been deployed in the conflict, given Pakistan’s recent heavy reliance on such arms imports,” the report said. According to Bloomberg, an index of Chinese defense companies in mainland China jumped 1.6% to a two-week high. The J-10C…

LONDON (AP) — Two men who cut down the beloved Sycamore Gap tree did it for a laugh, a prosecutor said Wednesday as he provided a motive for the first time to explain the senseless crime that shocked Britain.Richard Wright told jurors in his closing argument that the men charged with criminal damage for the “arboreal equivalent of mindless thuggery” had badly misread their audience.“They woke up the morning after and soon realized — as the news media rolled in, as the outrage of the public became clear … it must have dawned on them that they couldn’t see anyone…

A Philippine Senate probe has accused the Chinese embassy in Manila of funding a covert online influence campaign aimed at discrediting the country’s military and critics of Beijing ahead of midterm elections – prompting calls for diplomatic sanctions and potential criminal prosecution.If the allegations prove to be true, the operation – said to involve hundreds of fake social media accounts – could lead to the expulsion of embassy personnel and legal action under a rarely invoked 84-year-old law targeting subversive acts during peacetime, analysts have warned.The Chinese embassy and its local partner, Infinitus Marketing Solutions, have strongly denied the accusations.…

Deliveries by Tesla’s Shanghai factory plunged in April, reversing a short-lived turnaround a month earlier, in the latest sign of the US carmaker’s grim situation in the world’s largest electric-vehicle (EV) market.The company’s Gigafactory 3 handed 58,459 Model 3 and Model Y vehicles to customers in mainland China and abroad last month, representing a 25.8 per cent drop from March, according to data released by the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA) on Wednesday. Deliveries slipped 6 per cent from a year earlier.“Tesla’s hopes for a sustained rebound in China have faded since competition is getting fiercer,” said Eric Han, a…

Deliveries by Tesla’s Shanghai factory plunged in April, reversing a short-lived turnaround a month earlier, in the latest sign of the US carmaker’s grim situation in the world’s largest electric-vehicle (EV) market.The company’s Gigafactory 3 handed 58,459 Model 3 and Model Y vehicles to customers in mainland China and abroad last month, representing a 25.8 per cent drop from March, according to data released by the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA) on Wednesday. Deliveries slipped 6 per cent from a year earlier.“Tesla’s hopes for a sustained rebound in China have faded since competition is getting fiercer,” said Eric Han, a…

Catch up on some of SCMP’s biggest China stories of the day. If you would like to see more of our reporting, please consider subscribing.1. China’s Xi Jinping launches Russia trip with thanks for Moscow over TaiwanXi Jinping kicked off his state visit to Russia on Wednesday by thanking Moscow for supporting Taiwan’s reunification with mainland China.2. China warns US against ‘coercion’ as top officials prepare for trade talksBeijing has warned Washington not to use dialogue as a tactic for coercion as senior US and Chinese officials prepare to for talks this weekend that will be the first face-to-face discussions…

Catch up on some of SCMP’s biggest China stories of the day. If you would like to see more of our reporting, please consider subscribing.1. China’s Xi Jinping launches Russia trip with thanks for Moscow over TaiwanXi Jinping kicked off his state visit to Russia on Wednesday by thanking Moscow for supporting Taiwan’s reunification with mainland China.2. China warns US against ‘coercion’ as top officials prepare for trade talksBeijing has warned Washington not to use dialogue as a tactic for coercion as senior US and Chinese officials prepare to for talks this weekend that will be the first face-to-face discussions…

The Pakistan Airports Authority (PAA) on Wednesday said all airports across the country “remain fully operational” and the airspace “continues to be open and secure for civil aviation activities”. The development comes after Pakistan shot down five Indian jets in retaliation for missile strikes from India, which killed at least 26 people in Pakistan in the wee hours of Wednesday. “Pakistan has formally conveyed its concerns to the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) regarding the serious risks posed to civil aviation safety by India’s reckless and provocative actions,” PAA said. “The Pakistan Airports Authority, through the safe and efficient management…

A visit to Russia this week by Chinese President Xi Jinping would add “symbolic” weight to the camaraderie between the two neighbours, while subsequent developments could be more significant, according to European observers.They also cautioned, however, that Beijing faced an unsustainable balancing act – strengthening ties with Moscow amid a prolonged war in Ukraine, while attempting to foster closer relations with Europe.Xi was set to arrive in Russia on Wednesday for a four-day state visit and hold talks with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on Thursday.As arguably the most prominent foreign leader to join Putin as the “main guest of…

Artificial intelligence (AI) start-up DeepSeek has acknowledged the significant role that a technical solution from Tencent Holdings played in addressing a persistent issue in its system, highlighting the local open-source community’s contribution to China’s AI advances.DeepEP, a code library for inter-chip communications, attained a “huge speed boost” by using a technical solution from Tencent’s network platform department, according to Zhao Chenggang, an AI infrastructure engineer at DeepSeek.Tencent’s solution not only enhanced the robustness of the DeepEP project, but also “elevated communication performance”, Zhao wrote in a recent note published on a GitHub repository, where DeepSeek hosts its open-source models and…