China added MP Materials and USA Rare Earth, as well as eight other US entities it said are linked to ​the US military to its export control list, reports Reuters. This comes in shortly after Washington placed ‌several Chinese companies under restrictions this month.

Aveox, a motor manufacturer for mission-critical applications, was also among those placed on the list, which halts Chinese dual-use exports to the companies. Pentagon-backed MP Materials, which operates the ​only active rare earth mine in the US, and USA Rare Earth are ​both involved in the mine-to-magnet supply chain.

The measures are a response to the “US government’s ​malicious practice” and were taken to safeguard national security and interests, as well as to ​fulfil international obligations such as non-proliferation, China’s Commerce Ministry said in a statement on Monday.

China’s universities are undertaking a massive reshuffling of their academic offerings, reports the South China Morning Post. The country is culling thousands of so-called obsolete degrees in favor of new, tech-focused programmes.

Between 2021 and 2025, China’s higher education institutions revoked or suspended 12,200 undergraduate degree programmes while introducing 10,200 new ones, meaning that more than 30% of the nation’s university programmes underwent adjustments, according to Ministry of Education data.

The cuts have been heavily concentrated in arts, humanities, foreign languages and management–fields that are increasingly deemed outdated or oversaturated in China. Many of the new programmes are closely aligned with Beijing’s economic development goals. For instance, nine universities have added new majors in embodied intelligence, which dovetails with a national drive to speed up the integration of next-generation AI into the real economy.

Chinese Leader Xi Jinping will visit North Korea next Monday and Tuesday, reports the South China Morning Post.

At the invitation of North Korean Leader Kim Jong-un, Xi will pay a state visit to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea from June 8 to 9, according to a statement from the International Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.

The trip will be Xi’s second to North Korea. The Chinese president visited in 2019, before the coronavirus pandemic shut border crossings between the countries for years.

China has reported a second consecutive decline in the number of students sitting the country’s national university entrance exams, reports the South China Morning Post. This comes as a graduate jobs crunch leads many teenagers to decide against pursuing an academic degree.

A total of 12.9 million students have registered for this year’s National Higher Education Entrance Examination–known as the gaokao in China–down 450,000 from a year ago, according to data from the Ministry of Education. In 2025, the number of sign-ups fell by 70,000 compared with the previous year.

For decades, the gaokao has been known for being brutally competitive, with families often viewing the test as having the potential to make or break a young person’s future. But attitudes are beginning to change as millions of university graduates struggle to secure jobs amid China’s economic slowdown, according to market observers.

China is set to implement a landmark regulation next month that aims to protect the basic rights of its rapidly growing cohort of older workers, reports Caixin. The move, analysts say, will significantly reshape relations between employers and senior staff, but could also drive-up business costs and trigger a temporary hiring contraction for older employees.

The Interim Provisions on the Protection of Basic Rights and Interests of Over-age Workers, issued by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, will take effect on July 1. As a key supporting measure for China’s broader delayed-retirement initiative, the new rules establish a distinct legal status for “over-age workers”—those who continue to work after reaching the statutory retirement age. For the first time, it guarantees them core rights such as work injury insurance.

Under China’s traditional retirement system, reaching the statutory retirement age automatically terminates a formal labor relationship. However, this has not stopped older citizens from working. Many continue to seek employment to supplement their income, even as they are cut off from the legal protections of standard labor contracts. This dynamic has left older workers vulnerable to unpaid wages, unsafe working conditions, and a lack of compensation for on-the-job injuries, leading to a surge in labor disputes as China’s population rapidly ages.