China’s commerce ministry said on Thursday protectionist sentiment is rising in the U.S. after Chinese company Ant Financial’s plan to buy U.S. money transfer company MoneyGram International collapsed. China is disappointed that the Ant Financial-Moneygram deal was rejected on national security grounds, ministry spokesman Gao Feng said in a regular briefing. Ant Financial’s plan to […]

As Beijing and the surrounding region reported big improvements in air quality last year, nationwide gains were much more muted as industrial activity shifted further away from the capital, a report by Greenpeace shows. Strict restrictions on coal use and industrial activity led to a dramatic improvement in air quality in Beijing and across northern […]

South Korea’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges were raided by police and tax agencies this week for alleged tax evasion, people familiar with the investigation said on Thursday. “A few officials from the National Tax Service raided our office this week,” an official at Coinone, a major cryptocurrency exchange in South Korea, told Reuters. “Local police also […]

China’s cyber watchdog has scolded Ant Financial, Alibaba’s payment affiliate, for compromising user privacy after many users of its Alipay service were automatically enrolled in its credit scoring system. The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) said in a statement it had summoned Ant Financial representatives to a meeting last Saturday and told them they had […]

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said the economy is expected to have grown around 6.9 percent last year, according to the official Xinhua news agency. China’s foreign exchange reserves continued to rise last year, while the country’s corporate leverage ratio declined at a steady pace, Li said at the Mekong-Lancang Cooperation Forum in the Cambodian capital […]

Major U.S. indexes closed lower on Wednesday — two notching their first decline of the year — setting the stage for Asia’s Thursday trading day. One reason cited for the decline was a report that China, the largest buyer of U.S. Treasurys, could potentially slow or halt its purchases following recommendation from officials in Beijing. […]

Avocado sales to China are expected to more than double this year as demand continues to grow for the fruit from the country’s expanding middle-class population. “It appears to just double every year, from what we’ve seen,” Steve Barnard, president of Oxnard, California-based Mission Produce, the world’s largest distributor of avocados. “It maybe more than […]

South Korean President Moon Jae-in credited U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday for helping to spark the first inter-Korean talks in more than two years, and warned that Pyongyang would face stronger sanctions if provocations continued. The talks were held on Tuesday on the South Korean side of the demilitarized zone, which has divided the […]

Next month could see North and South Korean athletes marching together at the Olympics for the first time in over a decade — following a year of escalating hostilities over Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile program. But once the Games are done, many fear North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un will resume his belligerence. That’s where […]

Chinese logistics company ZTO Express said Tuesday the allegations by a U.S. pension fund that it exaggerated its profit margins have no merit. The company was sued by Birmingham Retirement and Relief System. The pension fund alleged that ZTO left out certain low-margin business segments from its financial statements in order to inflate overall profit […]