SHANGHAI -- Ant Group has abandoned its 18 billion yuan ($2.8 billion) sale of securities backed by online loans, apparently in response to China's mounting crackdown against the fintech heavyweight's lucrative consumer credit business.

Plans for the float, which was to be conducted by two Ant subsidiaries, were approved by the Shanghai Stock Exchange last fall. The Shanghai exchange gave no reason for the suspension of the sale when it announced the news Tuesday.

Asset-backed securities form a key part of

NEW YORK -- Even with Beijing and Washington still trading barbs under U.S. President Joe Biden's administration, private equity giant Carlyle Group and its CEO Kewsong Lee see "massive opportunities" in the Chinese market and throughout Asia.

The Washington-based company, which boasts $260 billion in assets under management worldwide, aims to raise another $130 billion-plus by 2024 for funds under its umbrella, with its sights set on growth investments in markets including China,

TOKYO -- Japanese engineering company IHI will enter the emerging field of small modular nuclear reactors -- a cheaper and safer alternative to conventional reactors -- with a stake in a project led by U.S. startup NuScale Power, Nikkei has learned.

NuScale Power is constructing a 600 to 700-megawatt nuclear power plant composed of about seven small reactors in the U.S. state of Idaho, with plans to start commercial operations as early as 2029. Each module will have

TOKYO -- Japan will let Myanmar citizens remain in the country legally even after their visas expire, in response to deteriorating political conditions in the Southeast Asian nation following the February coup.

The exemption applies to students and technical interns who could face trouble returning home. They can choose to study or work in Japan for another six or 12 months, under plans outlined Wednesday by the Immigration Services Agency to lawmakers.

These Myanmar citizens will be able to apply for another extension if the political situation in their country fails to improve

Katsuji Nakazawa is a Tokyo-based senior staff writer and editorial writer at Nikkei. He spent seven years in China as a correspondent and later as China bureau chief. He is the 2014 recipient of the Vaughn-Ueda International Journalist prize for international reporting.

TOKYO -- The European Parliament has voted overwhelmingly to freeze the ratification process of an investment pact with China -- a deal that Beijing six months ago considered a big strategic victory.

It has sent shock waves throughout China, with only one month and

TOKYO -- Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga's pledge to go carbon neutral by 2050 was turned into law by parliament on Wednesday, setting in motion a technology race that will determine its economic standing in a post-carbon world.

At the forefront of that race are solid-state batteries, a technology that is considered a safer alternative to the lithium-ion batteries that are now used for electric vehicles. With Toyota Motor, Panasonic and Idemitsu Kosan leading the world in related patents, Japan has a

TOKYO -- Former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has weighed in on who should lead the country and the ruling Liberal Democratic Party that he controlled for more than eight years, but polling suggests his views are out of step with the public's preferences.

In an interview with the conservative Hanada monthly magazine released Wednesday, Abe named Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi, Chief Cabinet Secretary Katsunobu Kato, party policy research chief Hakubun Shimomura and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida as potential candidates.

Abe stepped down as prime minister last year after a

William Pesek is an award-winning Tokyo-based journalist and author of "Japanization: What the World Can Learn from Japan's Lost Decades."

Backbench lawmaker Kazuo Yana is now famous for all the wrong reasons: blaming Japan's demographic time bomb on the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer, or LGBTQ, community's failure to breed.

Politics 101: Avoid the spectacularly dumb and offensive. Apparently, the toxic spectacle of the five-ring Olympic circus crashing Tokyo's

YANGON/BANGKOK -- Myanmar's military on Feb. 1 detained State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi and President Win Myint in the country's first coup since 1988, bringing an end to a decade of civilian rule.

The Suu Kyi-led National League for Democracy had won a landslide in a general election in November . But the military has claimed the election was marred by fraud.

For all our coverage, visit our Myanmar Coup page.

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