CNN – Asia/Pacific

By Chris Lau, CNN A severe sandstorm has cloaked Beijing and China’s northeastern regions for the fourth time in a month forcing some residents to stay indoors to protect themselves from dense air pollution. Images showed the Chinese capital engulfed in a cloud of orange haze on Monday which hung thick in the air into

By Heather Chen, CNN An elderly couple has died after eating poisonous pufferfish in Malaysia, prompting an appeal from their daughter for stronger laws to prevent others from suffering the same fate. Ng Chuan Sing and his wife Lim Siew Guan, both in their early 80s, unknowingly purchased at least two pufferfish from an online

By Brad Lendon, CNN The US Navy has sent a destroyer close to a contested island in the South China Sea that Beijing has fortified with military installations to stake its territorial claims on the region. The sailing came as the Chinese military entered a third day of a show of force around Taiwan, a

By Wayne Chang The Covid-19 virus may have originated from humans, a Chinese scientist has claimed. The genetic sequences of viral samples taken from the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan — thought to be the ground zero site of the pandemic — were “almost identical” to those of patients infected with the coronavirus, suggesting that

By Eric Cheung, Larry Register and CNN’s Beijing bureau, CNN China said Sunday it was simulating precision attacks on key targets in Taiwan as the military drills it launched in response to the island president’s meeting with the US House Speaker entered a second day. The mock drills included “tactical maneuvers” by the Chinese navy,

By Heather Chen and Kocha Olarn, CNN Her father was ousted from power by a military coup in 2006. Her aunt’s government suffered a similar fate eight years later. Now, Paetongtarn Shinawatra is set to become the latest member of Thailand’s famed political dynasty — after father Thaksin and aunt Yingluck — to take on

By Heather Chen There’s an old Chinese saying that goes: “Kill the chicken to scare the monkey.” Roughly translated it means the best way to intimidate a big rival is to destroy a smaller one. But what happens after that? One man in China appears to have just found out. In a curious court case

By Xiaofei Xu, Wayne Chang, Jade Wurapa and Heather Chen, CNN A Chinese court on Friday sentenced six people to jail for their roles in the human trafficking and abuse of a woman whose appearance in an online video showing her chained by the neck sparked a public outcry. The Xuzhou Intermediate People’s Court in

By Wayne Chang, Sophie Jeong, Heather Chen, Brad Lendon and Eric Cheung, CNN China has started three days of military exercises around Taiwan after the island’s president met the US House Speaker in defiance of repeated threats by Beijing. The exercises, dubbed “United Sharp Sword,” have been denounced by Taiwan. China sees Taiwan as its

By Mohammed Tawfeeq and Heather Chen, CNN North Korea claimed on Saturday to have tested a new type of underwater drone it said was “capable of carrying a nuclear warhead.” The drone — called the “Haeil-2 Unmanned Underwater Nuclear Attack Boat’” — was tested between April 4 and 7, according to a report by the

By Andrew McNicol and Andrew Raine, CNN It was a Chinese dream driven by the same sort of ambition that has seen this country rise from poverty to the world’s second-largest economy in the space of just a few decades. In 2011, around a year before becoming the country’s leader, Xi Jinping outlined a vision

By Simone McCarthy, Jake Kwon, and CNN’s Beijing bureau China has slapped sanctions on two American organizations that hosted Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen during her recent travel in the United States, which Beijing had fiercely condemned. China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced Friday the Washington-headquartered think tank Hudson Institute and the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library

By Emiko Jozuka and Brad Lendon, CNN Rescuers are scanning waters off southern Japan for 10 people on board a Japanese military helicopter that apparently crashed into the sea on Thursday, Defense Minister Yasukazu Hamada said. “I will continue to do my best to collect information on the damage and search for human lives,” said

By Jessie Yeung and Moeri Karasawa, CNN Across Japan, nearly 1.5 million people have withdrawn from society, leading reclusive lives largely confined within the walls of their home, according to a new government survey. These are Japan’s hikikomori, or shut-ins, defined by the government as people who have been isolated for at least six months.

By Simone McCarthy, Jake Kwon and Pauline Lockwood, CNN French President Emmanuel Macron told Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping he was counting on him to “reason” with Russia and help end the war in Ukraine. In his opening remarks at talks in Beijing on Thursday, Macron said Russia had “put an end to decades of peace