WorldcrunchRaphaël Balenieri is a French journalist specializing in tech. He joined Les Echos in 2018, after six years as a freelance journalist in Beijing for several French-language newspapers and magazines, including Libération, La Tribune de Genève, The Good Life and Les Echos Week End. Raphaël speaks English, Chinese and Italian.
The 75,000 wholesalers in the export manufacturing hub of Yiwu say they have been moderately affected by the tariffs imposed by U.S. President Donald Trump, which he has just announced he will double. Many had already pivoted to developing countries to sell their goods.
Life has resumed its course in the large industrial city in central China, where the virus first appeared at the end of 2019. Five years after confinement, the 14 million people of Wuhan are drowning in economic difficulties. Meanwhile, China has erased this period from its history.
As China slowed down after the COVID-19 pandemic, this modest supermarket chain from Henan seems to have found the magic formula to encourage Chinese consumers to shop. Pangdonglai is so successful that it has become a national tourist attraction.
China’s real estate crisis is hitting small, unattractive cities like Shaoguan hard. This city of 3.3 million residents in the far south of the country has a stock of empty apartments that could take 10 years to sell.
In Oulu, Finland, near the Arctic Circle, 500 researchers at the 6G Flagship laboratory are already outlining the next generation of mobile technology, due to arrive by 2030. Nokia’s homeland wants to turn the page on 5G, which failed to win over the industry.