South China Morning Post

Sales of gas masks have soared in Taiwan, with some shops reportedly running out of stock in the past month as Hongkongers snap up supplies from the island to protect themselves during anti-government protests. 

A sales manager at Taipei-based Ceachain Enterprise, a wholesale and online supplier of protective equipment, said the company had triple-digit growth in sales of gas masks and filters compared with the same time last year.

“We are running out of stock of [one model] and it will take…

In the midst of heightened tension over the unrest in Hong Kong, many of the top topics trending on China’s Weibo platform last week pertained to international brands.

From Versace and Givenchy to Coach and Swarovski, the companies apologized for daring to mislabel Hong Kong or Taiwan as countries on their products or websites.

Supermodel Liu Wen, actress Yang Mi and pop idol Jackson Yee were among the celebrities who publicly severed their endorsement contracts with the brands and declared…

For decades, revolutionary songs – called red songs – praising the ruling Communist Party were a staple in Chinese society and part of the country’s propaganda push.

The most famous of these tunes is arguably “The East is Red,” a hit in the 1960s, when China was engulfed in the destructive Cultural Revolution. Its lyrics lauded Mao Zedong as the “people’s great savior.”

But, as anti-government protests continue in Hong Kong, Beijing has found a more modern way to convey its message: rap music…

Hong Kong’s tourism industry is paying the price for three months of anti-government protests calling for political reforms. 

With fewer tourists traveling to Hong Kong, many hotel workers have had to take paid or unpaid leave due to a drop in occupancy rates. 

For example, the 492-room Mira Hong Kong, situated in the bustling tourist district of Tsim Sha Tsui, has put scores of housekeeping staff for an unwanted break, the South China Morning Post has learned. 

A few streets away, the…

When Kathy Tang (not her real name) and her fellow Hong Kong interns arrived at the fabled Palace Museum in Beijing’s Forbidden City in 2017, they received a red-carpet welcome.

There were high hopes for this first batch of 15 young Hongkongers hand-picked by the Hong Kong government to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the city’s handover to China.

The university students were to set an example for the next generation of Hongkongers: to be patriotic youth who were eager to “understand their…

Widespread waste and fraud associated with China’s Belt and Road Initiative has been revealed after the country’s state railway group admitted that a significant amount of cargo containers shuttling between China and Europe were empty.

The admission by the state-run China Railway, the sole operator of the lines, followed an investigation by the Chinese Business Journal, which found that in one extreme case only one of 41 containers on a particular train actually carried goods.

The belt and…

When Hong Kong’s anti-government protests first started in June, mainland Chinese media kept quiet about the large-scale marches. 

The silence was soon replaced by reports that featured only violent clashes between activists and police. The protesters were usually portrayed as rioters and separatists intent on destroying the city’s stability and prosperity. 

Feeling “unsatisfied” by what mainland news media had delivered, Chen Qiushi, a lawyer from Beijing, went to Hong Kong this past weekend…

Chinese cities are the most monitored in the world, according to a report by a British consumer website.

If surveillance cameras are installed at planned rates, the country can expect to have one public camera for every two people by 2020, according to the report by Comparitech, which provides research on tech services. 

In a ranking based on the number of CCTV cameras per 1,000 people, China has eight of the top 10 most surveilled cities in the world. The only two non-Chinese cities in the…

In what appeared to be an attack targeting supporters of continuing anti-government protests in Hong Kong, a man stabbed three people, leaving one of them in critical condition.

The assault took place in the early hours of Tuesday morning at a so-called Lennon Wall, surfaces plastered with sticky-note messages of support for the recent demonstrations, in the residential neighborhood of Tseung Kwan O. 

Police said on Tuesday afternoon they arrested a 50-year-old man in connection with the…

Convoys of Chinese patriots in Ferraris and other high-end sports cars have been revving up pro-Beijing demonstrations in Canada, home to tens of thousands of Chinese millionaire migrants.

Drivers of luxury sports cars – which also included McLarens, Porsches and Aston Martins – waved Chinese flags, gunned their engines and honked their horns to cheers from pro-China demonstrators in Vancouver and Toronto, who were facing off against groups supporting the Hong Kong protest movement.

In…