Malaysia’s ban on exports of unprocessed rare earth metals this week signals that the Southeast Asian country has a realistic shot – on its own terms – at feeding the mineral-hungry United States amid its strained trade ties with the world’s dominant supplier, China, according to analysts. Kuala Lumpur will bar exports of unprocessed rare earth minerals, which are globally prized raw materials used in a range of electronic hardware, to keep supplies onshore for investment in downstream...

While the deployment of US warships near the coast of Venezuela is intended to heap pressure on the government and limit its already strained capacity for oil shipments, the action would probably serve to bolster China’s extensive economic ties with the South American country, analysts said. Three destroyers and an amphibious squadron with about 4,000 US Marines were dispatched to the Caribbean Sea close to Venezuelan waters, the White House said this week, in an act they said was intended to...

As US destroyers closed in on the coast of Venezuela on Thursday – a stark show of military force President Donald Trump said was intended to combat drug cartels – global attention has turned to the South American country, with China voicing opposition to “the interference of external forces in Venezuela’s internal affairs, under any pretext”. Here, the Post examines how the situation has developed and Venezuela’s role in the international oil trade – a prominence that has given the conflict...

As America retreats from clean energy investment around the world, with US President Donald Trump labelling wind and solar power “the scam of the century” on Wednesday, Chinese “cleantech” firms have been striding into emerging markets in Southeast and Central Asia and Latin America. Mabill Technologies, a Malaysian cleantech start-up developing a predictive AI algorithm that will connect energy efficiency analytics and sustainable cooling solutions, said Chinese investors had been showing...

A record high number of private-sector executives and chief scientists have been shortlisted this year to compete for academicianship in China’s top institute for engineering science and technology. Nineteen are included on the newly released candidate list for the Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE), including Hu Guoping, 48, principal researcher and co-founder of AI specialist iFlyTek; Wu Kai, 57, chief scientist and co-president of battery manufacturer CATL; Lian Yubo, 61, chief scientist of...

China’s electricity consumption surpassed the 1 trillion kilowatt-hour mark in July, energy authorities said, as scorching heatwaves pushed demand to levels equivalent to the annual usage of all Asean nations combined. Power usage in the country rose 8.6 per cent year on year to reach a historic high of 1.02 trillion kilowatt-hours (kWh), according to data released by China’s National Energy Administration on Thursday. The level was more than double that of a decade ago and comparable to the...

From Paris to Athens, and Lisbon to Berlin, Europeans are enduring a prolonged and punishing summer heatwave amid global warming. And rising right alongside the blazing temperatures are China’s exports of air conditioners (ACs) to the continent, with a nearly 60 per cent jump by volume in July, compared with the same time last year, according to Chinese customs data. The Spanish capital of Madrid kicked off the week under a yellow alert – the third-highest heat warning on a four-tier scale –...