Crypto News: Simmering China tension

Good morning, it's Sunil in Sydney with your menu of today's top news.

Today's must-reads:
• Anxiety about China's rise
• Lingering rate-hike risk
• Sydney's record home prices

Smouldering unease between China and democratic states took center stage at a meeting of global defense leaders in Singapore over the weekend. Australia has "security anxieties" in its relationship with the world's second-largest economy even as Beijing lifts most of the curbs on exports imposed in 2020, Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles told Bloomberg Television.

Australian Deputy PM and Defence Minister Richard Marles. Photographer: Roslan Rahman/AFP.

Australia is the only developed economy apart from Japan where money markets still price in some chance of an interest-rate increase. The cash rate is lower than in peer countries and inflation is proving sticky.

Yet Sydney home prices equalled a record high from January 2022 as Australia's property market climbed further in May. A supply shortfall and swelling population are countering elevated borrowing costs. Prices overall rose 0.8% month-on-month for the nation's major cities.

Linfox Armaguard, the transport company that moves 90% of physical money around Australia to banks, retailers and ATMs, is fighting for its life. While its woes imperil access to notes and coins, cash's role in payments is rapidly shrinking as people switch to digital wallets.

Asia-Pacific stocks look set to rise after the best month for US shares since February. OPEC+ extended output cuts to bolster a fragile market, but also set a date to begin bringing some oil back online later this year.

A landslide general election victory looks closer for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party-led alliance. The nation's stocks, bonds and currency are poised to climb on expectations of more policies to bolster one of the world's fastest-growing economies.

Narendra Modi, India's prime minister. Photographer: Anindito Mukherjee/Bloomberg.

Voters in Mexico are set to elect their first woman president as Claudia Sheinbaum — who's backed by President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, popularly known as AMLO — duels with opposition candidate Xochitl Galvez. In South Africa, the African National Congress began talks with rivals to form a government after a big setback at the ballot box.

Israel pushed back against a fresh US cease-fire proposal that Washington had hailed as a potentially "decisive moment" for the war in Gaza. The impasse between the Jewish state and Hamas over exchanging hostages for prisoners appears to remain unchanged.

Fresh from being convicted in the first criminal trial of a former US president, Donald Trump joined TikTok — the Chinese-owned platform he tried to ban in the US — as he steps up efforts to reach young voters. Meanwhile, Australians are more distrustful of the US than at any time in Joe Biden's administration, a Lowy Institute poll found.

• Australia manufacturing PMI: 9a.m. Sydney
• Melbourne Institute inflation reading for May: 11a.m.

China's growing might stretches to the unfolding strategic contest in space. A Chinese spacecraft just landed on the far side of the moon, a difficult technical task that underlines how Beijing is vying with the US in the race to return people to the lunar surface.