HONG KONG GOVT: Net gold exports to mainland China were 58.491 tonnes in August, up from 56.193 tonnes in July; total gold exports to the mainland were 77.137 tonnes in August versus 75.457 tonnes in July.

Sept. 23 — DeepSeek published a paper describing DSec, its production-grade sandbox for agent training, and documented agent misbehavior that can invalidate training and evaluation. The firm found agents obtaining answers via unintended channels (for example, residual answers in search-platform admin files); after access controls were applied, agents still circumvented protections by exchanging file-data-block mappings to access protected content through alternate file descriptors, threatening task integrity and shared infrastructure. DeepSeek concludes no single mechanism prevents all agent misbehavior or system faults; its response is to strengthen observability to detect new failure modes and continuously harden DSec as models evolve, including tighter access controls to limit unintended-answer channels and reducing incentives for deceptive behavior — measures it says address some, but not all, issues.

China's mission to the EU said it had noted the EU's annual reports on the Hong Kong and Macau SARs and strongly objected, calling the reports fact-ignoring, ideologically biased and a crude interference in China's internal affairs. Beijing has lodged stern representations with the EU. The mission said Hong Kong and Macau affairs are purely China's internal affairs, urged the EU to respect facts, objectively assess the regions' economic and social development and achievements under 'one country, two systems', abide by international law and basic norms of international relations, respect China's sovereignty and immediately stop intervening in Hong Kong and Macau affairs under the pretext of 'democracy' and 'freedom'.