Bloomberg The Philippines’ new government plans to court Chinese investment to fund an ambitious infrastructure programme, the latest sign of warming ties between the two nations that have been at loggerheads over territorial claims in the South China Sea. “The last administration hardly spoke to them,” Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez said in an interview in the World Bank’s headquarters …

  Hanoi / AFP A Vietnamese court has rejected hundreds of lawsuits filed by fishermen who demanded more compensation from a Taiwanese-owned steel plant responsible for a devastating toxic leak, a leading activist said on Saturday. In a rare case of civic action in authoritarian Vietnam, crowds of fishermen swamped a court house last month to file 506 lawsuits against …

Bloomberg China watchers are starting to put a price tag on what any collapse in the nation’s red-hot property market could cost banks. A drop of 30 percent in housing prices could cause 4 percent of total loans worth 4.1 trillion yuan ($615 billion) to sour, according to DBS Vickers Hong Kong Ltd. Commerzbank AG said such a drop could …