CAMBODIA’S arrest of alleged scam center kingpin Chen Zhi and his extradition to China was “not the end” of the Southeast Asian nation’s battle to stamp out trans-border crimes, its foreign minister said.

Last week’s surprise arrest of Chinese-born Mr. Chen is a key step in an until now fragmented international campaign targeting sophisticated scam networks in Southeast Asia run by criminal gangs, swindling victims worldwide out of billions of dollars.

The extradition of Mr. Chen, sanctioned by several countries and indicted by the United States for wire fraud and money laundering, followed a joint investigation by China and Cambodia, details of which have not been made public.

“It’s a continued combat, and we have set measures and steps in order to eradicate this crime,” Cambodian Foreign Minister Prak Sokhonn said in a rare interview from Phnom Penh, the capital.

Cambodia has always been determined to crack down on transnational crimes, especially crimes employing new technology, such as online scam organizations, he told Reuters.

“The fact that Chen Xi was arrested and extradited to China is just reflecting this firm commitment of Cambodia to combat the crime. And it’s not the end of the combat.”

He gave no details of the investigation into Mr. Chen but said full cooperation with Beijing had started months ago.

BILLIONAIRE CONGLOMERATE HEAD
Mr. Chen, an enigmatic billionaire in his late 30s, heads the Prince Group conglomerate, based out of Cambodia with scores of ostensibly legitimate businesses worldwide.

But US authorities have said those were fronts for “one of the largest investment fraud operations in history”.

Last year, Prince Group rejected as baseless the accusations against Mr. Chen.

Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan have frozen hundreds of millions of dollars in assets linked to Prince Group, while Britain and South Korea have imposed sanctions.

Last year, US prosecutors seized about $15 billion in bitcoin linked to Mr. Chen and Cambodia has liquidated the Prince Bank he founded.

It is not clear what Mr. Chen will be charged with in China, which set up a special task force in 2020 to investigate Prince Group, Chinese court documents dating to 2022 showed.

Last week, China’s state broadcaster showed video of Mr. Chen arriving in Beijing handcuffed and hooded.

It said Mr. Chen was wanted for fraud and running illegal casinos and described him as the “leader of a major transnational gambling and fraud crime syndicate”.

The scams, operated from vast compounds in countries such as Cambodia, Myanmar, and Laos, involve tens of thousands of workers.

Among them are human trafficking victims lured by promises of jobs in industries such as technology and hospitality, forced to cheat strangers online or face brutal punishment.

Cambodia has “very close cooperation” on transnational crime with countries such as the United States, China, South Korea, and neighbors Vietnam and Thailand, the Cambodian minister said.

“This is the result of a long investigation,” Prak Sokhonn added, referring to the events that led to Mr. Chen’s extradition.

“Chen Zhi had Cambodian nationality, but when we made those investigations and found that his nationality was not legally obtained and he is also a Chinese national … we have decided to extradite him to China.” — Reuters

BEIJINGUS — China on Wednesday reported a strong export run in 2025 with a record surplus of nearly $1.2 trillion, as producers braced for three more years of a Trump administration set on slowing the production powerhouse by shifting US orders to other markets.

Beijing’s resilience to renewed tariff tensions since President Donald Trump returned to the White House last January has emboldened Chinese firms to shift their focus to Southeast Asia, Africa and Latin America to offset US duties.

With Beijing looking to exports to counteract a prolonged property slump and sluggish domestic demand, the record-shattering surplus risks further unsettling economies concerned about China’s trade practices and overcapacity, as well as their overreliance on key Chinese products.

The manufacturing powerhouse’s full-year trade surplus came in at $1.189 trillion – a figure on par with the GDP of a top-20 economy globally like Saudi Arabia – customs data showed on Wednesday, having broken the trillion-dollar ceiling for the first time in November.

“The momentum for global trade growth looks to be insufficient, and the external environment for China’s foreign trade development remains severe and complex,” Wang Jun, a vice minister at China’s customs administration, said at a press briefing on Wednesday.

However, “with more diversified trading partners, (China’s) ability to withstand risks has been significantly enhanced,” Wang said, adding that “the fundamentals for China’s foreign trade remains solid.”

Outbound shipments from the world’s second-biggest economy grew 6.6% in value terms year-on-year in December, compared with a 5.9% increase in November. Economists polled by Reuters had expected a 3.0% increase.

Imports were up 5.7%, after a 1.9% bump the month earlier and also beat a forecast for a 0.9% uptick.

“Strong export growth helps to mitigate the weak domestic demand,” said Zhiwei Zhang, chief economist at Pinpoint Asset Management.

“Combined with the booming stock market and stable US-China relations, the government is likely to keep the macro policy stance unchanged at least in Q1.”

EXPORTS UP AS CHINA SET TO GAIN MORE GLOBAL SHARE
China’s yuan held steady following the upbeat data even as equity investors welcomed the forecast-beating numbers. The benchmark Shanghai Composite index and blue-chip CSI300 index both rose more than 1% in morning deals.

The Asian economic juggernaut’s monthly trade surpluses exceeded $100 billion seven times last year, partially underpinned by a weakened yuan, up from just once in 2024, underscoring that Trump’s actions have barely dented China’s broader trade with the wider world even if he has curbed US-bound shipments.

Exports to the US slumped 20% in dollar terms in 2025, while imports from the world’s top economy were down 14.6%. Chinese factories managed to make inroads in other markets, with exports to Africa jumping 25.8% and those to the ASEAN bloc of Southeast Asian nations up 13.4%. EU-bound shipments grew 8.4%.

Trump on Tuesday said he thinks China can open its markets to American goods, after threatening a day earlier to slap a 25% tariff on countries that trade with Iran, risking reopening old wounds with Beijing, Tehran’s biggest trading partner.

Economists expect China to continue gaining global market share this year, helped by Chinese firms setting up overseas production hubs that provide lower-tariff access to the United States and the European Union, as well as by strong demand for lower-grade chips and other electronics.

A flagship of Beijing’s global industrial ambitions, China’s auto industry saw overall exports jump 19.4% to 5.79 million vehicles last year, with pure EV shipments up 48.8%. China would likely remain the world’s top auto exporter for a third year after first superseding Japan in 2023.

Beijing, however, has shown signs of recognising it must moderate its industrial exports if it is to sustain its success, and the leadership has been increasingly cognizant and vocal about imbalances in China’s economy and the image problem outsized exports are causing.

After November’s trillion-dollar surplus data, Chinese Premier Li Qiang was quoted last week on national television as calling for “proactively expanding imports and promoting the balanced development of imports and exports.”

The country also scrapped subsidy-like export tax rebates for its solar industry, a long-standing point of friction with EU states.

Lawmakers last month passed revisions to the Foreign Trade Law after two, rather than the usual three readings, in a signal to members of a major trans-Pacific trade pact that China is prepared to shift from industrial subsidies and towards freer, more open trade.

Despite the year-long truce on tariffs that Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping struck in late October, US duties of 47.5% on Chinese goods are well above the roughly 35% level analysts say enables Chinese firms to export to the US at a profit. — Reuters

HONG KONG — An app called “Are you dead” targeted at people living alone has gone viral in China, with surging downloads and widespread commentary on social media, prompting the company to introduce a subscription fee and change its name for a global audience.

The app called Sileme in Chinese, which translates to “Are you dead?” in English, is “a lightweight safety tool created for solo dwellers” from students, to solo officer workers or “anyone choosing a solitary lifestyle”, says its development team.

The app requires setting up one emergency contact and sends automatic notifications if the user has not checked in via the app for consecutive days.

China may have up to 200 million one-person households, with a solo living rate exceeding 30%, state newspaper the Global Times said.

Sileme said on its official Weibo on Tuesday that the company will launch the global brand name Demumu in its new version to be released soon.

It is already called Demumu on Apple’s paid app chart where it is currently sitting at number two, after surging to the top earlier in the week.

“Thanks to all netizens for their enthusiastic support. We were originally just an unknown small team, co-founded and operated independently by three born after 1995,” Sileme said.

It said on Sunday that it would launch an eight yuan ($1.15) payment scheme to help cover increasing costs.

Netizens on social media platforms, including Weibo, called on Sileme not to change its name, while others suggested options like “Are you alive”, “Are you online” or “Are you there.”

“Maybe some conservative people can’t accept it,” said one user, but it is helpful for safety purposes. “It will make us unmarried people feel more at ease to spend our lives.”— Reuters

LONDON — Britain’s foreign minister will visit Finland and Norway on Wednesday, where she will call for NATO to step up its work in the Arctic to safeguard regional interests against Russia.

Yvette Cooper’s Arctic Circle tour follows renewed threats by US President Donald Trump to take over Greenland, an autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark. The Danish and Greenlandic foreign ministers will meet US Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday.

Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer has said he stands with Denmark in its defense of Greenland.

Ms. Cooper’s trip will focus on Russia, which the foreign office described in a statement as the “greatest threat” to Arctic security.

In Finland, Ms. Cooper will meet border guards defending NATO’s eastern flank with Russia, while in Norway she will visit marines taking part in a live training exercise.

The high north, which includes Greenland, is home to key shipping routes and critical infrastructure such as undersea cables, making the region vital to Britain’s security, the foreign office said.

“The UK and Norway share a determination to ensure Russia does not succeed in its illegal war of aggression,” the foreign office said, adding that Russia posed a threat through its military activity, risks to undersea infrastructure and the use of its “shadow fleet”.

Britain last week provided support to the US in its operation to seize a Russian-flagged oil tanker in the North Atlantic.

“Arctic security is critical to protecting Britain and NATO,” Ms. Cooper said, urging the military alliance to enhance efforts to defend Euro-Atlantic interests against “hostile states who seek to meddle” in the high north.

“Coming together as an alliance allows us to unify and tackle this emerging threat,” she added, noting that climate change has opened new shipping routes, exposed valuable resources, and turned the region into a “hotspot” for geopolitical competition.— Reuters

SEOUL — North Korea’s Kim Yo Jong, the sister of leader Kim Jong Un, said on Tuesday South Korea’s hope for an improvement in relations is an illusion that cannot be realized, state media KCNA reported.

The leader’s powerful sister, who is a director of North Korea’s ruling party, criticized a comment attributed to a South Korean government official on Tuesday that Seoul saw a chance of talks resuming with Pyongyang based on her recent reaction to an alleged drone incursion into her country.

“In conclusion, it has already gone wrong in their expectation,” Ms. Kim was quoted by KCNA as saying.

“As far as Seoul’s various hope-filled wild dreams called ‘repair of (North-South) relations’ are concerned, they all can never come true,” Ms. Kim said.

The official at South Korea’s Unification Ministry, which oversees relations with North Korea, told reporters that Kim Yo Jong seemed to have toned down her statement at the weekend when she urged Seoul to investigate drones flown to the North.

South Korea had “committed a grave provocation by infringing upon North Korea’s sovereignty,” Kim Yo Jong said in the statement published late on Tuesday, echoing her earlier criticism over the drones, according to KCNA.

“I make it clear once again to the hooligans of the enemy state,” she said, demanding a South Korean government apology and a pledge never to let similar incidents from occurring.

The administration of South Korean President Lee Jae Myung has been seeking to improve ties with Pyongyang, but so far its overtures have been rebuffed by its neighbor.— Reuters

TOKYO — Japanese Prime Minster Sanae Takaichi and South Korean President Lee Jae Myung rounded off their summit meeting on Tuesday with an unexpected jam session where the two played drums along to some K-pop hits.

In a short video posted on the Japanese Prime Minister’s office YouTube channel on Wednesday morning, the two leaders played the drums to global hits from the likes of BTS and Kpop Demon Hunters.

Ms. Takaichi, a keen drummer and fan of heavy metal, complemented Mr. Lee’s new found chops.

“The president learned to play the drums in just 5, 10 minutes,” she said in the video.

“Although our tempos were a bit different, we both tried to match the rhythm together – we will create a future-oriented relationship with one heart,” Mr. Lee posted on X on Wednesday morning.

While ties between Tokyo and Seoul have often been strained in the past, Ms. Takaichi and Mr. Lee have forged a friendlier relationship and on Wednesday morning the two also visited Horyuji Temple in Nara, Ms. Takaichi’s hometown.

In statements on Tuesday, Ms. Takaichi and Mr. Lee said they aimed to deepen security and economic ties in the face of growing tensions in East Asia and to continue “shuttle diplomacy”, with Ms. Takaichi next due to visit South Korea.— Reuters