Kurt Campbell is a veteran US diplomat and strategist who has played a leading role in shaping Washington’s approach to China and the Indo-Pacific for more than a decade. He served as the White House coordinator for Indo-Pacific affairs from 2021 to 2024 and as US deputy secretary of state from 2024 to 2025. Previously, he served as assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs from 2009 to 2013 and was a key architect of the Obama administration’s “pivot to Asia”. Often...

The founder of the Esports Association of Hong Kong (ESAHK), Erik Yeung, is hoping a perfect storm of changing perceptions, Asian Games success and a wider talent pool can help continue the growth of the gaming scene in Hong Kong. Competitive gaming has been a huge growth market in Asia and became an official medal event at the Asian Games in 2023, and was back again in Japan last month. China has dominated proceedings, winning seven gold medals across the two Games. Three of those came at this...

Dallas Mavericks fans will have to wait just a little bit longer to see Kyrie Irving in their team’s colours for the first time in almost two years, after he sat out Friday’s 135-117 pre-season loss to the Houston Rockets in Macau. Even without the flashy point guard running things, however, the two Texas clubs still put on a show for the thousands that packed into The Venetian Arena for the second year of NBA China Games. When the 34-year-old does finally return after an injury break that began...

Home-grown hero Zheng Qinwen pulled out some of her best tennis to beat Ukraine’s Elina Svitolina 6-3, 7-6 at the China Open on Friday and storm into the semi-finals. Zheng, a wild-card entry in Beijing, finally notched her first straight-sets win of this year’s tournament, having needed more than 10 hours on court to get to the quarter-final. The world No 54 sent the crowd roaring as she punched winners down the line, though the seventh-ranked Svitolina came back fighting to force a second-set...

Chinese basketball fans wanting to catch a glimpse of Yang Hansen in a Portland Trail Blazers uniform might get their wish next year, with the centre’s side reportedly one of the two teams tipped to play in the 2027 NBA China Games in Macau. The Trail Blazers, who opened their pre-season with a 123-118 win over the Golden State Warriors on Thursday, have Chinese centre Yang, all-star point guard Damian Lillard, and former rookie of the year Ja Morant on their roster. A well-placed source told...

Chinese state funds are ramping up support for the country’s second-largest contract chipmaker, pouring billions of yuan into the parent of Hua Hong Grace Semiconductor and a new manufacturing facility to fuel Beijing’s drive for self-reliance in mature-node chips. The capital blitz, spanning Hua Hong’s Shanghai-based parent company and a fabrication plant in Wuxi, highlights how government-coordinated financing is doubling down on domestic foundries, as Washington tightens technology...

Bradley Dack reached 250 Gillingham appearances last weekend – and boss Gareth Ainsworth insists the midfielder remains a big part of the club.

James Brophy has given Gillingham boss Gareth Ainsworth a selection dilemma ahead of Conor McManus’ return from international duty.

Coleman Wong Chak-lam’s historic men’s singles gold at the Asian Games had an impact far beyond earning him a spot at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics; it also secured tennis’ elite status in Hong Kong for another four years. Wong beat Wu Yibing of China in straight sets in the final at the Higashiyama Park Tennis Centre in Nagoya, becoming his city’s first singles winner at the continental Games. Bronze for Eudice Chong and Cody Wong Hong-yi in the women’s doubles made it the most successful Games...

Chinese table tennis authorities have called in police and announced plans for venue blacklists as they crack down on extreme fan behaviour, after men’s head coach Wang Hao was swarmed and verbally abused by a crowd of extreme fans at the WTT China Smash. The crackdown coincides with mounting public scrutiny over team management and athlete overwork, after world No 1 Sun Yingsha suffered a shock early exit while competing with a fever on Wednesday night. The off-court turmoil unfolded on Tuesday...

Meta Platforms’ breakout Muse personal AI agent is shining a spotlight on a new battleground in artificial intelligence – one in which China’s biggest internet companies are already jostling for position. Launched on September 8, Muse surpassed 2.5 million downloads in its first two weeks and topped free-app rankings on Apple and Google’s US app stores. Its popularity has drawn fresh attention to the emerging market for what are known as agent harnesses. Unlike chatbots, which merely respond to...

Gillingham will need to check on the status of defender Conor McManus before deciding whether he will travel this weekend.

Gillingham are continuing to manage an injury that has restricted Sam Tabares’ start to life at Priestfield.

Tennis star Coleman Wong Chak-lam said he longed for nothing more than some decent rest at home and eating with friends after he returned to Hong Kong from a hectic two weeks involving three different cities. Off the back of a quarter-final appearance at the Hangzhou Open, Wong won five matches on the trot to win Asian Games gold in Nagoya, before breaking into the Shanghai Masters main draw following back-to-back wins in the qualifiers. Following his loss to Quentin Halys of France in straight...

Alibaba Group Holding is expected to report a 50 per cent revenue surge for its cloud and artificial intelligence unit for the September quarter, driven by strong returns on its aggressive AI investments, according to analysts. Analysts across several financial institutions projected revenue growth for the Chinese tech giant’s AI Cloud and Compute Services unit to have accelerated in the three months ended September 30, up from the 45 per cent growth seen in the preceding quarter. The unit’s...

US artificial intelligence company Anthropic has introduced Chinese-language options to its Claude chatbot in supported markets, even as it continues to block users from mainland China. Checks by the South China Morning Post on Thursday confirmed that Claude’s web interface now lets users select simplified and traditional Chinese as their preferred on-screen language. China also briefly appeared as a billing country option before disappearing from the settings. Users on X have shared screenshots...

No offence to Kyrie Irving’s Dallas Mavericks teammates or, for that matter, the Houston Rockets, but there is no question who will get the loudest cheers on Friday and Sunday in the NBA China Games. Nor is there any doubt which player will attract the most cameras and reporter questions during Thursday’s Mavericks-Rockets Media Day, which is projected to be covered by more than 400 journalists, most of them from China and other Asian countries. China’s love fest with Mavericks star guard...

When I took out the US$3,500 Huawei Mate XT 2 over a family dinner during China’s “golden week” – the long National Day holiday in early October – the trifold phone quickly became the centre of discussion: my father and his peers took turns playing with the device, marvelling at the sleek design while debating whether it was true innovation or pure luxury. It wasn’t the first time unfolding its massive 10.2 inch display raised a few eyebrows at dining tables during the week I spent trying out...

Manager Gareth Ainsworth believes his Gillingham team are the real deal this season.

Catch up with all the week’s football fixtures and results here.

China’s open-weight artificial intelligence models are taking off globally, but much of the money they generate is flowing to third-party providers rather than the companies that create them, according to a new study. Developers including DeepSeek and Moonshot AI make their model weights – essentially the “brains” of their AI systems – freely available for download. This strategy, which has accelerated global adoption over the past two years, allows other companies to run the models on their own...

Gillingham defender Conor McManus scored for Republic of Ireland under-21s in a win over England.

Gillingham midfielder Armani Little made his return from injury at the weekend with more than just football on his mind.

After completing the interminable process of assembling a world-class coaching team that “knows what it is to win”, Herve Dagorne said he needed to “hurry up” and deliver a champion Hong Kong cyclist before time runs out on his reign. The appointment of two-time Olympic silver medallist Kevin Sireau to lead the city’s sprint squad was the final piece in a particularly tricky jigsaw that head coach Dagorne has been attempting to piece together for the past two years. Also a three-time world...

A sellout crowd at Chatham Town saw Gillingham’s young side well beaten in the Kent Senior Cup second-round tie.

Rising fencing star Harris Ho Shing-him said for the coming Youth Olympic Games he only had one goal in mind: to win the gold medal. Hong Kong have never won any individual gold medals at the Youth Olympic Games since their inception in 2010, and while teenager Ho had “no idea” who he might face in the capital city of Senegal, he was determined to succeed. “I had a one-week break after the Asian Games and that’s enough for me. I am ready to get going again,” the 17-year-old said. “I am confident...

On September 22, the global artificial intelligence landscape spun on its axis within a matter of hours. In Beijing, Xiaomi engineers went live with an unusual broadcast, streaming the training run of their new MiMo-V2.6 model. In San Francisco, Anthropic unveiled its frontier Opus 5.5 model. About an hour later, OpenAI crashed the party with the surprise release of its GPT-6 Sol and Luna models. For tech executives and developers trying to keep pace, it was just another overwhelming day in the...

Gillingham will turn to their best young players for their midweek Kent Senior Cup game at Chatham.

Elite Hong Kong athletes Ryan Choi Chun-yin and Vincent Ho Chak-yiu have been named among the recipients of this year’s Ten Outstanding Young Persons award. The pair have represented the city at home and abroad over the past several months, with Choi winning two silver medals at the Asian Games last month, in the men’s individual foil and men’s team foil categories. Ho, meanwhile, captained Hong Kong’s first ever Shergar Cup team to an impressive second place at Ascot in August and is the first...

Coach Adam Hollioake reckons Kent have found a formula they can stick with in terms of preparing home surfaces as they return to top-flight cricket.