Hong Kong’s sports sector helped to generate an extra HK$46 billion (US$5.9 billion) in value for the economy in 2024, the year local athletes clinched two gold and two bronze Olympic medals, with a lawmaker calling for targeted policies to build on that success. The Census and Statistics Department on Monday released an analysis of contributions to Hong Kong’s economy by sports and related activities in 2024, including the operation of facilities, manufacturing and retail, tourism and...

Malaysia may finally scrap the university law that generations of students have blamed for stifling campus dissent, but activists and academics say the harder fight will be over what comes next. Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim has promised to abolish the Universities and University Colleges Act 1971, better known by its Malay acronym AUKU, a law that has long sat at the centre of arguments over how much freedom Malaysian students should have to protest, organise and challenge university...

China’s retail sales growth trailed expectations, the pace of industrial output expansion slowed and a drop in investment worsened as its economy struggled to regain pace at the start of the second half of the year. July retail sales rose by 0.6 per cent, missing the 1.3 per cent expectation among economists polled by financial data provider Wind, and slowing from June’s 1 per cent rate. Industrial output rose by 4.5 per cent, trailing the 4.9 per cent forecast and June’s 5.3 per cent pace,...

Shares of ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT), China’s leading DRAM maker, jumped 12 per cent on Monday to close at a record 61.80 yuan (US$9.16), lifting its market capitalisation to 4.13 trillion yuan and extending its lead as China’s most valuable listed company. The Hefei-based chipmaker first overtook Hong Kong-listed Tencent Holdings on Thursday as China’s most valuable listed company, when CXMT’s market value reached about 3.54 trillion yuan. It had already become the most valuable...

Hong Kong recorded about 4.5 million visitor arrivals in July, up 3 per cent from a year earlier, as major international conventions boosted business travel while bad weather weighed on growth from mainland China, according to the Tourism Board. The board said on Monday that a series of major international meetings, incentives, conventions and exhibitions (MICE), including the 108th Lions International Convention and the technology exhibition LEAP East, helped drive an increase in business...

Global commercial real estate investment markets are roaring back to life. In the first half of this year, direct investment in commercial property rose 27 per cent in annualised terms. The sharpest increase was in the Asia-Pacific, where transaction volumes were up 38 per cent to US$92.5 billion, the strongest half-yearly performance on record, according to data from JLL. While there have been many positive surprises in Asian real estate since the eruption of the Covid-19 pandemic, the...

Thousands of people have rallied in Singapore against plans to build homes on two forested sites in a large public display of concern over how the land-scarce city state should balance housing demand with conservation. The projects have brought renewed urgency to a long-running debate over land use: activists say remaining mature forests should be protected, while the government says conserving more greenery would mean fewer homes for Singaporeans. Residents, nature lovers and conservation...