Worldcrunch
In the age of Trump, there are innumerable issues and arguments that go unnoticed or underreported because this president is sucking up the oxygen of the entire American media universe, with his indecisive tweets and resulting indecisive policies. This is one of those topics that escaped the public eye. It centers around Trump’s announcement to […]
Upstarts no longer, the so-called BAT companies — Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent — are a force to be reckoned with.
China has quietly become a major coffee producer — mostly for export. But its people are developing a taste for the beverage as well, much to the delight of vendors like Starbucks.
It will be marked in the historical record as the date when China took over control of Far East Asia.
TOKYO — Chinese boys and girls are often referred to as “Little emperor” or “Little princess.” They grow up in surroundings with financial means where six adults are catering to their demands: they are the luckiest generation since the founding of modern China. Yet few of them realize that there is an even luckier bunch […]
By becoming president for life, Xi Jinping is bringing China back to its imperial history, taking advantage of the exceptional development of his country but also of America’s mistakes. But Chinese coming fortunes are still very much up in the air.
-Analysis- PARIS — With his new sweeping round of protectionist tariffs on steel and aluminum, it looks like Donald Trump has decided to extend to the economic field the “madman strategy” he had already applied to the Korean Peninsula. That was the take last week from former CIA Director David Petraeus. Developed by the Nixon-Kissinger […]
-Analysis- There is no set recipe for democracy. Still, we can agree that the ingredients must include basic guarantees of free speech and free elections: If you don’t have the right to speak out against those in charge — and eventually vote them out of power — you are living under some form of rule […]
-Analysis- PARIS — It’s a plan of titanic proportions, with a budget of close to $1 trillion and transport projects, for both land and sea, on almost every continent. No single fund can finance it, and the development bank created for it brings together more than 60 countries. The “New Silk Road,” and the figures […]
BEIJING — An online game from Japan has become a hopping success in China. Unheard of until recently, Tabikaeru: Travel Frog — developed by the Japanese company Hit-Point — is suddenly all the rage, leapfrogging the competition to become the most popular free online game in China’s Apple App Store. Travel Frog requires little of […]
Marvel all you want at Californian surfers, but this one-man Li River retailer on his bamboo raft is the real deal.
President Xi Jinping demands ‘inflexible atheism’ from his fellow Communist Party members. But he also has a soft spot for Buddhism, sources suggest.
Show this picture of red lanterns in the gardens of Suzhou to any Tintin reader, and there’s a good chance it’ll remind them of the cover of The Blue Lotus.
BEIJING — Over the past decade or so, “The Low-Fertility Trap,” a hypothesis put forth by Wolfgang Lutz, Vegard Skirbekk and Maria Rita Testa, respectively Austrian, Norwegian and Italian scholars, has worried many countries facing the risks of an aging population. This includes China. The theory suggests that when a country’s birth rate is lower […]
Recently opened to visitors, the ‘816 Nuclear Military Plant’ in Fuling takes visitors back in time, to the height of the Cold War. It also brings to mind the current nuclear ambitions of China’s provocative neighbor, North Korea.
Lai Wei’e wants to stay by the side her Chinese human rights advocate husband, Liu Yao, who was recently condemned to a 20-year prison sentence.
There are factories galore in the capital of China’s Henan province, where the labor pool is abundant. But for seasonal jobs, producers also use teenage interns.
NEW DELHI — The impact of the 19th Communist Party of China congress and affirmation of President Xi Jinping as China’s ‘most powerful” leader in decades matters for India — especially on the ‘Tibet Issue,” which also intersects with longstanding conflicts over the Chinese-Indian border. Tibetan leader Dalai Lama’s well-known desire to return home has taken on new urgency, following this November 23 statement: “The past is past, Tibetans want to stay with China,” he said. These words carry a serious political overtone, coming as it does immediately after the 19th party congress and amid the current Doklam border standoff […]
Brutal evictions of poor migrants in Beijing’s outskirts are part of a long history of cynical control of the populace.
-Analysis- BEIJING — Two weeks ago, a preschool in Shanghai was exposed for abusing toddlers. One young child was brutally thrown around the floor, while another was forced to eat spicy mustard. Then, last week, a kindergarten in Beijing run by the Red, Yellow and Blue (RYB) Education company, was found to have been injecting […]
Chinese tourist agencies will be severely punished for organizing tour groups to St. Peter’s Square and the Sistine Chapel (as well as the tiny Pacific island of Palau). The reason? Taiwan
Beijing has become one of the largest weapons exporters in the world, allowing it to gain new allies and place its pawns strategically throughout the continent.
China, Russia and the U.S. see potential and risks. And for now, there’s still no form of governance to oversee AI development — technology moves faster than diplomacy.
Recent UN sanctions are trying to limit the flow of money North Korea generates by sending workers abroad, especially to China.
Apple has opened the doors of its new 175-acre campus, built in the shape of a gigantic UFO, where 12,000 employees will be working. It will cost Apple $5 billion – five times as much as NASA’s Juno, which traveled to Jupiter. Because of the design of the main building, the Apple Park has already […]
-Analysis- Some shoes are just too big to fill. Take the ones left behind by Thailand’s King Bhumibol Adulyadej, who died just over a year ago at 88, and whose five-day cremation ceremony began in Bangkok yesterday after 12 months of national mourning. The longest-reigning monarch in Thai history served for 70 years, and was […]
This rock formation in Guilin, southeastern China, reminded me a lot of similar karst caves in Ardèche, in my native France. This one’s name is translated as, Elephant Trunk Hill. Do you see it?
Ground has been broken on the signature domestic project of the Chinese leader’s next term. It is meant to be a massive model city of innovation, forever linked to Xi’s Chinese Dream.
Will China’s unfulfilled promises of real market reforms finally come to pass? Eyes on the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party, opening on Oct. 18.
Chinese domestic brands like Huawei, Oppo, Vivo and Xiaomi are undercutting the American giant, which aims ever more upmarket.
I stumbled upon a parade in full traditional attire in the lush gardens of Suzhou, in eastern China. What I like most about this shot is the pair’s symmetrical contrast with the man and woman in contemporary uniforms just over their respective right shoulders.
Once again, life imitates art. In his masterpiece 1984, George Orwell wrote, “Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered.” This quote has proven particularly relevant in recent weeks as activists in the West suddenly […]
When China stopped importing seafood products from North Korea as part of new sanctions, businesses along the border were bound to pay the price.
BEIJING — “Goodbye,” Ying told her third husband. “Oh,” he responded indifferently. Through their legal, but dishonnest, marriage, Ying earned 40,000 yuan ($6,000). Her “husband” was allowed to buy an apartment in Beijing, which in turn, nets him about one million yuan ($150,000) a year. Ying and her real husband Wang are a couple who […]
Climate change is already affecting people’s lives, even as some may try to deny it. If nothing is done to curtail it, the impact will be much more pronounced in the coming years and decades, not only for certain communities — in low-lying coastal areas, for example — but for entire regions. Fast forward to […]
In villages along the Huai river, in eastern China, cancer rates are 50% higher than in the rest of the country.
Bling and style are barriers that the Chinese-owned, Swedish-based company may not be able to overcome.
-Essay- TAIPEI — I still recall the long journey I made in 1987 during my first visit in China, traveling in crammed buses with the smells of caged poultry on board. Through Guangzhou in Canton, and the famous mountain landscape of Guilin and Yangshuo in the southeast province of Guangxi, I recall being amazed that, […]
Near Guilin, my wife and I hopped on a short cruise on the Li River. The makeshift houseboats built from discarded modern materials were interesting to look at, but clashed with the scenic surroundings of sugarloaf hills and gorges in southern China. See more slides from My Grand-Père’s World here.
And the rest of ours too…