Asian

Published on 03/07/2026 – 10:07 GMT+2•Updated
10:11

Stock markets across Asia mostly advanced on Friday, taking their cue from a fresh record close for the Dow on Wall Street, as some of the AI-linked shares battered in this week’s sell-off found their feet again while others kept falling.

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The volatility was calmer than the heavy selling seen a day earlier, when worries about stretched technology valuations sent semiconductor shares tumbling across the region.

At the time of writing, South Korea’s Kospi led the bounce, climbing over 4% to recoup part of the nearly 8% plunge it suffered on Thursday. Samsung Electronics, the country’s largest company and a major chipmaker, jumped 7%, while smaller memory rival SK Hynix rose 4.9%.

In Tokyo, the Nikkei 225 added 1%, helped by a 6.6% leap in memory maker Kioxia, although chip-equipment supplier Tokyo Electron slipped 2.5%.

Elsewhere, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng gained 1.7% and the Shanghai Composite rose 0.7%, while Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 advanced 1.3% and Taiwan’s Taiex bucked the trend, easing 0.6%.

As for European markets, both the Euro Stoxx 50 and the broader pan-European Stoxx 600 opened within a 0.3% range.

The UK’s FTSE 100, Germany’s DAX 30, France’s CAC 40 and Italy’s FTSE MI, all traded between 0.1% and 0.3% higher.

Spain’s IBEX 35taly’s FTSE MIB led the pack and rose about 0.4%.

Wall Street’s record, a cooler jobs report and oil

US stocks were mixed on Thursday, but the Dow still managed a fresh peak, rising 1.1% to 52,900.

The broader S&P 500 ended virtually flat despite seven in ten of its members gaining, held back by another retreat in chip stocks, while the technology-heavy Nasdaq fell 0.8%.

Sentiment drew support from data showing US employers added 57,000 jobs last month, well below the 100,000 forecast and a slowdown on May.

A softer labour market could ease inflation pressure and, with oil back below its pre-war levels, may lessen the case for the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates repeatedly this year, an outcome investors would welcome.

Crypto-linked shares also firmed as Bitcoin rose about 2%, lifting Robinhood and Coinbase alongside it.

Still, the AI trade remained under strain.

Micron gave up an early gain to fall 5.5%, a day after a 10.6% slump, while Lam Research sank more than 10% and Nvidia, now worth close to $4.7 trillion, edged 1.4% lower.

On oil, Brent crude, the international benchmark, rose 1% to around $73 a barrel early Friday, while US crude added 0.5% to about $69, with prices still sitting below where they were before the Iran war began in late February.

Additional sources • AP

Published on
02/07/2026 – 9:39 GMT+2

Most Asian stock markets dropped on Thursday, dragged down by a wave of selling in semiconductor shares, as European bourses made a subdued start and Wall Street looked set to open in the red before the release of key US employment figures.

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The pullback centred on the technology sector, where investors retreated from the chip stocks that have powered much of this year’s rally, amid growing unease that the vast sums Big Tech is spending on AI could leave the market awash with supply.

South Korea’s Kospi bore the worst of it, tumbling around 5% as its heavyweight chipmakers slid. Memory specialist SK Hynix lost close to 8% and Samsung Electronics fell more than 6%.

In Tokyo, the Nikkei 225 shed about 1.5%, with chip-equipment maker Tokyo Electron down around 5.6%, while Taiwan’s Taiex slipped 1.1% as TSMC, the world’s largest contract chipmaker, gave up 1.8%.

The falls followed a rough session for chip stocks on Wall Street this Wednesday, where Micron Technology dropped more than 10% and Intel sank around 9%.

The moves stand in sharp contrast to a stellar year for Asian tech, with the Kospi and the Nikkei still up roughly 85% and 34% respectively in 2026.

On the other hand, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng rose about 0.8%, lifted by an 8.7% jump in electric-vehicle maker BYD after it reported a second straight monthly rise in sales, while India’s Sensex added 0.5%.

In Europe, markets opened flat as both the Euro Stoxx 50 and the broader pan-European Stoxx 600 traded within a 1% range at the start of Thursday’s session.

The UK’s FTSE 100, Germany’s DAX 30, France’s CAC 40 and Spain’s IBEX 35, all traded between 0.1% and 0.3% higher.

Italy’s FTSE MIB led the pack and rose about 0.4%.

Oil extends its slide and US jobs in focus

Crude prices fell again, trading below where they sat before the Iran war began in late February, as hopes grew that supplies through the Strait of Hormuz will steadily recover.

Brent crude, the international standard, eased around 1% to about $70.89 a barrel while WTI, the US benchmark, dropped 3% to roughly $69.

Attention now turns to the US, where stock futures edged lower ahead of the June employment report, brought forward a day because of Friday’s Independence Day.

Economists polled by Dow Jones expect around 115,000 jobs were added last month.

The figure carries extra weight under the new Federal Reserve chair, Kevin Warsh, with investors wary that a strong reading could harden the case for keeping interest rates higher for longer.

According to economists at Capital Economics, demand for AI may keep growing but at a slower pace than many expect, a caution that helped sour sentiment towards the sector.

Additional sources • AP

For my 50th birthday, I bought a Toyota Corolla. Wait. Is my midlife crisis car really a Corolla, the best selling and most boring model of all time?

Well, yes. And no.

I have “modded” it, or in layman’s terms, modified the stock components and tuned the engine. This is not your aunt’s Corolla. When I hit the gas, the car pulls hard and the engine buzzes as if it’s powered by a hive of killer bees.

I get thumbs-ups from Mustang drivers and cool head nods from Challenger owners. My favorite is when kids at red lights ask me to rev the engine like I’m F1 driver Lewis Hamilton.

Probably a lot of my drive-by admirers are fans of the movie “The Fast and the Furious,” which was released 25 years ago this month. Fans of modified Japanese import cars, like me, have a love-hate relationship with the $7 billion “Fast and Furious” franchise. On one hand, the movies helped popularize modified Japanese cars. People all over the world fell in love with them and the import car culture they publicized.

On the other hand, the movies left out so, so much of the story.

In Southern California in the mid-1990s and early 2000s, people lived, for the most part, phone-free. The internet was nascent — a repository for flyers and ’zines — and most websites looked like Tetris.

The fashion was baggy everything for guys and short shorts, midriffs and little backpacks for girls. The hair was outrageous. And the cars, especially Japanese import cars, had reached the pinnacle of automotive engineering.

During this era, I was in college at UCLA. I saved up and bought a red 1989 Honda CRX Si. It also had a slick five-speed manual transmission, peppy engine and nimble steering. That car got me to work and through college, and from the mountains of California to the border of Oregon. It probably helped me get girlfriends. It consoled me through breakups. It helped me move to the San Francisco Bay Area for my first grown-up job.

And then, stupidly, I sold it, and all the precious memories it carried.

Now when I hit a loopy freeway interchange at night and my GR Corolla carves through the turns, it’s 1996 and I’m cruising in my CRX, getting pho in San Gabriel or rushing to a flyer party at Naga in Long Beach. That’s the magic of certain cars. A regular car takes you from place to place. A special car takes you back in time.

To be completely honest, I bought the CRX to fit in.

The ’90s import car scene was as diverse as Southern California. But there’s no doubt it started with Asian Americans (specifically Japanese Americans in the South Bay city of Gardena) who were influenced by modified car culture in Japan. Soon, Asian American kids all over the region were taking their inexpensive, underpowered four-cylinder, front-wheel-drive Honda Civics (our parents preferred Japanese reliability over American muscle) and turning them into street rockets.

Not only were they building race cars from scratch, they were also building one of my first experiences with a collective Asian American identity: one that wasn’t overtly about politics and activism, or immigration and assimilation. It was about Asian American joy. It was Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Filipino and Vietnamese Americans building cool-looking, fast cars. It was kids stereotyped as nerds going to parties where the awful stereotype of Long Duk Dong from “Sixteen Candles” was shredded into rubber and obliterated by exhaust blasts.

At the time, the Asian Americans we saw in the mainstream media were negligible or offensive, especially for Vietnamese Americans like me. But in import car culture, I saw, for maybe the first time, Asian guys and Asian girls in a centered and even glamorous light.

We made our own cars and our own car shows. We raced each other and then got fast (with turbos, superchargers and nitrous oxide) and raced others. And we won. We published our own magazines, built our own automotive businesses and, for good and bad, promoted our own outlaw street racer image and our own beauty standard. In those 1990s clubs and car shows, you could see and feel that Asian Americans weren’t assimilating culture. We were creating it.

“The Fast and the Furious” picked up on that. Based on a 1998 Vibe magazine article about street racing import cars in New York, the film was transplanted to Southern California. But it got so many details glaringly wrong. Its street races looked like street raves on major, four-wide roads packed with pedestrians. The races of our scene were clandestine, underground events in industrial, under-policed areas, where cars faced off two at a time.

But the most egregious and inexcusable Hollywood crime to me is that “The Fast and the Furious” whitewashed Asian Americans, the creators of this world, out of starring roles. The Korean American actor Rick Yune appears in the movie, sure — but he plays the villain, Johnny Tran, a guy who hates Vin Diesel’s Dominic Toretto for a crime deal gone bad (understandable) and for sleeping with his sister (ditto). Of course, in a tradition that goes back to “Madame Butterfly” and “Miss Saigon,” Tran dies at the end, shot dead by the blond-haired, blue-eyed hero, Paul Walker’s Brian O’Conner.

A few months ago, seeking a mechanic to mod my Corolla, I was referred to an auto shop in Garden Grove aka Little Saigon. The guy who sent me asked me, “Do you even know who’s working on your car?”

“No,” I replied.

He told me the name, and I Googled it.

Apparently, back in the ’90s, this Vietnamese American mechanic from Orange County had one of the fastest Honda Civics in the world. A true OG of the import car scene modified my car with his own hands. What an honor, and what a connection to the past.

This import car story ends in a full poetic justice circle. As a pioneer and legend of the real-life import car scene, my mechanic wasn’t the villain. He was the hero. He was the fastest, and his car was the most furious.

That’s the heart of my GR Corolla journey. Asian Americans created import car culture. We all deserve to be the hero of our own story.

Ky-Phong Tran is a Vietnamese American writer from Long Beach. He is a professional artist fellow with the Arts Council for Long Beach. This article was produced in partnership with Zócalo Public Square.

The Recording Academy announced significant changes for the 2027 Grammys, introducing several new genre categories and updating eligibility rules for two of its top awards.

The rule changes will most prominently affect the new artist and album categories.

A change to allow for four submissions for new artist instead of three “establishes more specific language surrounding prominence,” the academy said in a statement. The change updates the famously confusing criteria for new artist, in which acts familiar to some fans for years can suddenly break through and earn new consideration for the category.

It’s likely to benefit an artist such as Ella Langley, who had previously submitted several times for new artist but finally had a commercial and critical breakthrough with her single “Choosin’ Texas” and LP “Dandelion.”

“We’ve heard from the music community that the way artists are being developed is changing, and the time it’s taking to find success or recognition can take longer than it once did. Artists are often releasing more music before they actually break through the consciousness of consumers or of our voters, and that evolution directly impacts this Category,” Recording Academy Chief Executive Harvey Mason Jr. said in a statement announcing the changes. The changes “reflect the reality that artist development looks different than it did even a few years ago.”

In the album category, new rules state that “the threshold of new recordings required on an eligible album is lowered from 75% to 66% to reduce the exclusion of entries that are widely recognized throughout the music industry as new albums.” Given the fast streaming-centric release cycle of new singles, remixes and live cuts, the rule changes reflect that a new album may have a significant amount material released earlier.

Additionally, the academy announced five new genre categories, most significantly a dedicated award for Asian pop — a late but welcome acknowledgment of the commercial reach, artistic accomplishments and deep fan culture of K-pop and other scenes in Japan, the Philippines and China.

Other new categories include Latin song, a songwriting-specific award for Latin music in an era when Bad Bunny and Karol G make some of pop’s most salient political and creative statements; distinct awards for R&B collaboration or duo/group performance and R&B solo performance; a new traditional pop vocal performance award; and the replacement of folk album with categories for contemporary folk album and traditional folk album.

Additionally, a new “ballot plus” option will allow for voting members working across genres to vote in more categories, and songwriting contributors to winning albums in most genre categories will receive Grammy statuettes and achievement certificates, as producers and engineers currently receive.

“These changes and expansions give even more people a place for their music to be respected, heard and evaluated. With more Categories, we can represent more music creators, artists, writers, and producers, and it gives us a great opportunity to be more inclusive,” Mason said in his statement. “Now more than ever, we have to keep pace because things are changing and evolving so quickly. These changes are a reflection of that fast-paced evolution.”

Los Angeles is a city rich with regional specificity when considering the cuisines of Asia. When someone asks for a restaurant recommendation for “Korean food” or “dumplings” or “Thai,” I encourage them to be more specific. Are you in the mood for xiao long bao, mandu, gyoza or momos? You want to know where to get barbecue in Koreatown? Those sizzling grills crowded with galbi, while dependably righteous, only scratch the surface of the breadth and depth of Korean cuisine in what is home to the largest Korean diaspora outside of Korea.

There are omakase experiences for every price point. Cramped izakayas. A restaurant where the sole speciality is lamb prepared in the style of the Uyghur people of China’s Xinjiang province. Pho parlors and banh mi shops with pâté-smeared baguettes. Sunny Taiwanese breakfast restaurants slinging steaming bowls of congee and tightly wrapped fantuan.

AAPI-owned restaurants act as the vital centers of countless communities around the city. The San Gabriel Valley, Westminster, Little Bangladesh, Koreatown and so many more. These are places that are both hubs for thriving immigrant communities and sought-after dining destinations.

Here’s a list of 20 AAPI-owned standouts from our most recent guide to the 101 Best Restaurants in the city. — Jenn Harris

It’s best known for its mighty concrete jungle, but Chris Granet discovers Hong Kong’s greener side, with forested peaks to hike and pristine coastline and islands to explore

The sunshine glittered off the jade waters as we chugged gently out of the busy harbour. Surrounding us were dozens of traditional fishing boats, like the one I was on. Surrounding them was a horizon full of hills, soaring out of the sea and carpeted in lush forests.

Our destination was Sharp Island in the distance, a tiny coral-encircled gem that could’ve been Thailand, Vietnam, or any remote region of Southeast Asia. Surprisingly, I was in Hong Kong. I say that surprisingly because when you think of Hong Kong, you think of the typical Asian megacity. Dense urban living. High-rises and hustle. Manic traffic and neon nightscapes. All of which are true of Hong Kong, and fantastic to experience, but what most people don’t realise is that you can also get off the beaten track within minutes and find pristine nature and beaches.

Formed by supervolcanic eruptions, the territory comprises 430 subtropical square miles across 263 islands, endless peninsulas, and swathes of craggy mainland. Nestled at the heart of this is the main Hong Kong Island and city, which for me has to be one of the world’s best cities for natural settings. However, it’s far from remote – it’s the fourth most densely populated region in the world, with 7.5 million residents. Everywhere you look in the city are tightly packed groves of skinny tenement blocks. It’s like nowhere I’ve ever seen. “We have very little flat land here,” explained our guide. “Most of it is made from demolished hills or reclaimed from the sea – we have to build upwards, not outwards.” But this also means 53% of the land is still forest, with 40% designated as country parks.

The quickest way to experience this would be to journey up Victoria Peak, which stretches up behind the city but is usually obscured by the vertiginous towers. We headed over to the Peak Circle Walk, which gently loops around the summit, on a stroll that encompassed tranquil woodlands and cinematic views of the world-famous skyline and bay below. Magnificent. If you want to avoid the crowds, then there are several trails back down to the city, which are made all the more pretty in the evening once the towers start turning on their technicolored light shows. Hong Kong Island’s southern side is another quick escape into nature, with curving coastal roads, low-rise neighbourhoods, cute coves, and those ubiquitous jungled hills.

It was a gloriously sunny day when I walked the Dragon’s Back trail on the most southeastern peninsula. The name is attributed to the ridge rolling between gentle peaks that resembles the mythical creature’s spine, tumbling down to a bay on one side, and the sea on the other. Despite it being November, it felt like summer as we then made our way down through the woodlands to Big Wave Bay, a glorious golden arc of sand that’s just one of over 100 beaches in the territory. We sat and had a light lunch and a glass of vino in the shade of an outdoor cafe while watching the surfers ride the crashing waves. Bliss.

Nearby, giant Lantau Island has plenty of options. Connected to the mainland by bridges, it’s home to the massive airport – but I took a different sky ride in the glass-bottomed Ngong Ping 360 cable car. It whisked us up and away from a generic concrete suburb over swathes of that lush greenery to the lofty Po Lin Buddhist monastery. The walk from the cable car terminal to the monastery was lined on both sides with tourist shops – not quite the spirit of immaterialism Siddhartha had intended, but handy for those, like me, in need of another coffee. The ornately pretty monastery is famous for its large seated Buddha statue, which we reached via a long flight of stairs as breathtaking as the panoramic views at its summit. On the coastline nearby is the picturesque fishing village of Tai O, with scores of ramshackle wooden houses precariously propped up on stilts on the sides of a little estuary. It was all very quiet as we wandered its maze of backstreets, feeling a hundred miles and years from Hong Kong city. But it perked up as we reached its busier center, and at The Crossing Boat restaurant overlooking the river, we sat at a spinning table and shared a sizzling seafood lunch. Prawn, scallops and fish all locally caught, plus an array of Cantonese stir fries.

If you want proper pristine, then head up to the 58 square mile Hong Kong Unesco Global Geopark on a wild peninsula, with a cluster of islands fanning out from the mainland. It’s the epicentre of the volcanic drama that shaped the region, sculpting surreal honeycombed sea caves, hexagonal rock columns and sheer cliffs, softened over the eons by ocean erosion and dusted with white sand beaches. Truly spectacular. It’s here that Sharp Island is located. It’s easily accessible from the chirpy tourist town of Sai Kung, with its busy harbourfront heaving with seafood restaurants and boat crews clamouring to offer you tours and rides to the many destinations around the Geopark. The usual price for a return ticket to Sharp Island is 50-60 Hong Kong dollars per person (approx £6), but our group of six paid 150HKD pp (approx £15pp) as we chartered the whole boat. Said boat was a little wooden fishing vessel, like most of the others in the harbour, all prettily painted in nautical blues and greens.

I sat perched at its front basking in the high sun for the 15 minutes it took to chug over to the little island’s southern tip. There, our surly boatman dropped us off, then made his way to the northern tip, where he collected us up later. We hiked the 1.5 mile long trail, a ridge walk similar to Dragon’s Back, offering more postcard-worthy views. Branching off Sharp’s northwestern shore is its Instagram-famed bar of shingle and rock that connects it to Kiu Tau islet. It’s only visible during low tide and was sadly in the process of being re-swallowed by the sea as we arrived.

Further offshore are plenty of snorkelling opportunities as, incredibly, Hong Kong is home to more coral species than the entire Caribbean combined, as well as over a quarter of all of China’s marine biodiversity.

Back at Sai Kung harbour, we indulged in more sizzling seafood, with hearty dishes big enough to share, like the fully stacked braised crab roe and shrimp casserole, at a reasonable £10 a pop. Very nice indeed. As I sat digesting our meal, staring out to sea and watching the Saturday afternoon crowds ambling through the sunshine, it was easy to forget that I was still in the midst of a roaring megametropolis.

BOOK THE HOLIDAY

Cathay Pacific flies direct to Hong Kong from London, from £549 return. Book at cathaypacific.com Dorsett Wan Chai has doubles from £113 per night with breakfast. Dorsett Kai Tak has doubles from £115 per night with breakfast. Both hotels offer complimentary shuttle service to major transport hubs, shopping, and dining destinations. Find out more and book at dorsetthotels.com

Find out more at discoverhongkong.com

Re “Asian Population Surges in County,” Feb. 12: Assemblywoman Carol Liu (D-La Canada Flintridge) suggests that the reason Asian Americans lack political influence in the U.S. is Asian American cultural characteristics. Although I have the greatest respect for Liu and her work in the Legislature, I disagree. The culprit is not culture but many Asian Americans’ ineligibility to vote as they make their way through the citizenship process, and parties’ and candidates’ failure to mobilize the Asian American community.

Contrary to a public image of political complacency, Asian Americans have a long history of participation in American politics. They have participated through lobbying, litigation, petitioning, protesting, boycotting, civil disobedience and contributing to political campaigns. Liu herself is an example of such involvement. In a multi-city, multiethnic, multilingual survey of Asian Americans, my colleagues and I find that, contrary to assumptions of political apathy, Asian Americans are not culturally disadvantaged when it comes to politics. In fact, they are not at all apathetic. Only 13% express a lack of interest in American politics.

Janelle Wong

Asst. Prof., Political

Science, Program

in American Studies

and Ethnicity, USC

Draw for the 24-team 2027 AFC Asian Cup, originally set for Saturday, moved to May 9.

The draw for the 2027 ⁠Asian Cup ⁠in Saudi Arabia has been rescheduled for May 9 in Riyadh as the ⁠United States-Israel war on Iran disrupts regional sporting events.

The draw, originally scheduled for last Saturday, will be held at the historic At-Turaif District in Diriyah. The Asian Football Confederation (AFC) said ⁠on Wednesday that the postponement was ‌made to ensure the full participation of all key stakeholders and member associations.

A number of sporting events across the region have been postponed or cancelled due to the war, which began on February 28.

Saudi Arabia is set to ⁠host the 24-team, quadrennial continental championship for the first time from January 7 to February 5. With 23 of the ⁠24 teams already confirmed, the draw will divide the qualified ⁠nations into six groups of ⁠four.

The final qualification place will be decided on June 4 when Lebanon face Yemen in a playoff.

Defending champions ‌Qatar have already secured their place at the finals along with four-time winners Japan and fellow ‌World ‌Cup qualifiers South Korea, Iran, Jordan, Australia and Uzbekistan.