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From supply chain competition between Beijing and Washington to domestic consumption picking up in China, here’s a round-up from today’s coverage

Supply chain competition between China and the United States is set to intensify over the next five years, with eight developing countries – including four in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) – poised to benefit from the relocation of manufacturing from China, according to a recent study.

China’s economic data sent mixed signals in May, with US tariffs continuing to weigh on the country’s manufacturing and exports but domestic consumption picking up slightly in the run-up to a major online shopping festival.

The Chinese military carried out patrols in the South China Sea on Saturday, as the Philippines and Japan held a joint drill in the disputed waters.

Ana Alias Martinez alleges her contract at HKUST was not renewed due to her complaints against male colleague

A Spanish language lecturer at a university in Hong Kong is suing her boss and the tertiary education institution after her contract renewal was allegedly rejected due to her complaints about workplace harassment.

A writ filed to the District Court showed Ana Alias Martinez was seeking unspecified damages for emotional distress, reputational harm and financial losses.

She accused her supervisor of becoming hostile and opting against renewing her employment contract after she made a harassment complaint last year.

The plaintiff joined the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in 2004 as a part-time Spanish language instructor at the institution’s centre for language education. She became a full-time lecturer in 2021.

She said she had no “disciplinary warnings, complaints or negative performance reviews” during her time at the university.

According to the writ filed on Friday last week, the dispute could be traced back to September 2024, when the lecturer lodged a workplace harassment complaint against a male colleague.

The show, which runs from Wednesday until October 6, includes Islamic carpets, ceramics and manuscripts

An exhibition featuring 90 works, including Islamic carpets, ceramics and manuscripts, from the 10th to the 19th centuries will open in Hong Kong on Wednesday amid government efforts to forge stronger ties with the Middle East.

The show, “Wonders of Imperial Carpets: Masterpieces from the Museum of Islamic Art, Doha”, is hosted by the Hong Kong Palace Museum and marks the Qatari institution’s debut in the city.

“This exhibition showcases a millennium of cultural exchange between the Islamic world and China and sheds light on the historical roots of today’s Belt and Road Initiative,” Hong Kong Palace Museum director Louis Ng Chi-wa said on Monday, referring to Beijing’s scheme to grow global trade.

Shaika Nasser Al-Nassr, director of the Museum of Islamic Art (MIA), said dozens of national treasures would be on display and were chosen from a vast 12,000-piece collection. The show marked a “significant moment” for the institution, she added.

“This collaboration reflects our belief that art has the power to connect culture and transcend borders,” she said, adding that they were committed to creating spaces that invited dialogue, curiosity and deeper understanding.

Hong Kong leader John Lee Ka-chiu led a visit to the Middle East earlier this year, following one in 2023, with the aim of driving more business and people-to-people ties amid escalating China-US tensions and geopolitical uncertainty.

Mixed messaging from American leader adds to complicated terrain for companies, especially at state level where suspicion can run high

When US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick addressed over 5,000 attendees via video at a major investment forum outside Washington last month, his message was clear: now is the time to invest in the US.

Aimed at a global audience of business leaders and investors, Lutnick’s remarks at the SelectUSA Investment Summit were meant to affirm America’s openness to foreign capital.

Meanwhile, the terrain for Chinese investment on the US state level is as complicated as ever, making it easy to understand why Lutnick’s words might not spur the kind of investment interest seen before Sino-American ties began to fray.

China, once the largest foreign delegation to the annual summit hosted by the US Commerce Department since 2011, sent only about 50 delegates this year.

Fatal industrial accidents have brought scrutiny to firm, which is set to be removed from registered list of contractors on Friday

A Hong Kong construction company has filed an appeal against the government’s decision to reject its licence renewal due to safety violations linked to five deaths in three accidents, including a 2022 crane collapse that killed three workers.

Authorities said on Monday that Aggressive Construction Company had lodged an appeal with the Court of First Instance against the Buildings Department’s move to refuse the renewal application.

“As the case is now undergoing judicial proceedings, the Buildings Department is not in a position to make any comments,” a department spokesman said.

Secretary for Development Bernadette Linn Hon-ho said late last month that Aggressive would be removed from the government’s registered list of contractors on June 20, making it ineligible to carry out works under the Buildings Ordinance.

A day later, the company said that it would file an appeal as it had stepped up safety checks since the fatal 2022 accident.

It also warned that the government’s move would slow the progress of public housing flats and affect the livelihoods of thousands of workers.

The firm, a subsidiary of Great Harvest Group, came under intense scrutiny when a 65-tonne tower crane collapsed at a site on Anderson Road in Kwun Tong in September 2022. Three workers died and six others were injured.

Legal relief now to run until June 23 amid American president’s claim that university’s engagement with China is a national security concern

The order would be in place while Burroughs weighs issuing a longer-term injunction.

In issuing the proclamation on June 4, Trump cited the university’s engagement with China along with other national security concerns. It marked the first time he directly used his executive powers to limit Harvard’s ability to host foreign students.

In an amendment to its lawsuit from last month to challenge the new directive, Harvard said the US president’s proclamation was “an end run around” Burroughs’ previous decision and that it violated the First Amendment of the US Constitution.

US president, at G7 summit in Canada, said several times on Monday that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon

US President Donald Trump abruptly cut short his G7 summit visit to Canada, the White House announced, just minutes after the president issued a stark warning on social media urging the immediate evacuation of Tehran – a city of nearly 9.5 million people – amid escalating tensions in the Middle East.

“Iran should have signed the ‘deal’ I told them to sign. What a shame, and waste of human life. Simply stated, IRAN CAN NOT HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON. I said it over and over again!” Trump posted on Truth Social. “Everyone should immediately evacuate Tehran!”

He then told reporters that he needed to return to Washington “for obvious reasons … as soon as I can”, adding: “I wish I could stay back but [the G7 leaders] understand. This is big stuff.”

Earlier on Monday, Israel’s military issued an evacuation warning affecting up to 330,000 people in a part of central Tehran that includes the country’s state broadcaster and police headquarters. Three large hospitals, including one owned by Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, are also in the area.

Iran state television lost service after an Israeli attack on the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) building in Tehran.

The moves in AI and cloud infrastructure may deepen US concerns about China’s growing digital presence in Latin America

Chinese tech giants Huawei Technologies and ByteDance are planning major investments in Brazil’s cloud infrastructure and artificial intelligence sectors, moves likely to deepen US concerns over Beijing’s expanding digital reach in Latin America.

The Brazilian newspaper Folha de S. Paulo reported on Monday that Huawei is set to announce a deal with Dataprev – a state-run technology company that manages the country’s social data systems – to use its data centres. Huawei is also in talks with Edge UOL, a cloud services arm of Grupo UOL PagSeguro, which also owns Folha.

Executives from Huawei and Edge UOL met in May in Dongguan, China, along with Brazil’s secretary of digital governance Ricardo Leite and the Huawei Cloud division’s Latin America president Mark Chen.

“We want to be the bridge between China and Latin America,” Chen said, calling the Brazilian firm a “strategic service partner”.

Edge UOL Chief Operating Officer Rodrigo Lobo said that the partnership aimed to expand into infrastructure, cybersecurity and AI operations across Brazil.

The planned expansions come as the United States has stepped up warnings about Chinese investments in critical tech infrastructure across Latin America, citing risks of data theft, surveillance and strategic leverage.

Trump’s unpredictability is well known, but his treatment of his erstwhile ally will make Beijing extra cautious about agreeing to a summit

Musk, who was Trump’s biggest political donor and his self-proclaimed “first buddy”, said the American leader “would have lost the elections” without him, and alleged without evidence that Trump was named in the sealed files of the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Trump retaliated, saying he was “very disappointed” by Musk’s comments and threatening to terminate the Tesla chief executive’s government subsidies and contracts. “Elon and I had a great relationship. I don’t know if we will any more,” he said.

Sun Chenghao, a fellow at Tsinghua University’s Centre for International Security and Strategy, said the fallout was not entirely unexpected but Trump’s behaviour was in line with how the Chinese public and government saw his character.

“Many people believe that Trump is a transactional president who is accustomed to using tactics such as probing and pressure to determine the other party’s bottom line and maximise his own interests,” he said.

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