Category: Latest

On the list of professions that are currently flourishing in China, estate agents do not come high up. Houses were once easy to sell, the surest investment available. But as a result of a four-year slump in the market, millions of homes now sit unsold. Some already paid-for properties are not even getting built. New home starts fell by almost 30% in the first two months of this year, compared with a year earlier. As of February, average new home prices had fallen for 21 months in a row. The…

To rescue china’s lacklustre economy, the ruling Communist Party is trying to revive the animal spirits of entrepreneurs and rehabilitate the profit motive. Xi Jinping, China’s leader, has welcomed Jack Ma, a leading tech boss, back in from the cold, and basked in the reflected glory of DeepSeek, a private ai firm. The government has also recently released five employees of Mintz, an American due-diligence firm, detained in 2023. To get rich is, if not glorious, at least less dangerous than it seemed a few years ago. The Economist

China’s POWER is growing rapidly every year. From warships to missiles, the country is churning out hardware at an extraordinary rate. In the unseen, online world, it is making similar leaps. On March 4th America’s Justice Department charged eight Chinese nationals with large-scale hacking of government agencies, news outlets and dissidents in America and around the world, on behalf of i-Soon, a Chinese company, at the direction of the Chinese government. It also indicted two officials who it said “directed the hacks”. The Economist

Is it a barge? Is it a bridge? It is both. Last summer China began building several unusual vessels at its Guangzhou shipyard on the south coast. The barges had legs that could drop down to stabilise the craft in shallow water, and wielded a 100m-bridge that could extend from the bow and onto a beach. In recent weeks pictures have emerged of these mongrel ships (see photo) and of how they connect together into giant causeways. The fear is that they could one day be used to funnel troops…

On March 5th China’s prime minister, Li Qiang, in his annual speech at the National People’s Congress (npc), China’s rubber-stamp parliament, promised to end “discrimination in the workplace”. He gave no specifics but Communist Party leaders, always alert to discontent in the workforce, have in recent years allowed more laws to protect workers. Since 2005 local governments have removed bans on hiring those with hiv or hepatitis b. The first sex-discrimination lawsuit was filed in 2012, and since 2023 companies found guilty of discrimination against women can be fined up…

“We didn’t give it to China. We gave it to Panama, and we’re taking it back.” Thus spoke Donald Trump shortly after BlackRock, an American investment firm, announced on March 4th that it would buy two ports on the Panama Canal from ck Hutchison (ckh), their Hong Kong-based operator. China’s initial response was strikingly muted, given the genesis and scope of the deal, which covers a total of 43 ports in 23 countries. The Economist

Hong kong has had a tough few years. It saw huge pro-democracy protests in 2019, covid lockdowns and a political crackdown in 2020, and a new national-security law in 2020. Those changes and their fallout have taken their toll on the tourist industry. Some 65m people visited in 2018. In 2024 that was down to 45m. Now officials have launched a $16bn blueprint to bring tourists back, including high-profile pop concerts, horse-racing at the legendary Jockey Club and four new giant pandas. One small but crucial part of it focuses…

It is difficult in China to discuss the horrors of the Cultural Revolution openly. The dark period from 1966 to 1976, when millions of people were persecuted, many of them to death, by fanatical gangs unleashed by Mao Zedong, is skated over in official histories. Under Xi Jinping the subject is even more taboo. He describes reflection on Mao-era atrocities as “historical nihilism”—a threat, as he sees it, to the Communists’ grip on power. Yet in online discussion of American politics, censors provide leeway. When mocking or lamenting the Trumpian…

Sitting in his spacious office in the southern city of Guangzhou, He Xiaopeng is in an expansive mood. The boss of Xpeng, a Chinese electric-vehicle (ev) maker that is one of the frontrunners in the self-driving tech race, says that autonomous driving is on the cusp of a “Chatgpt moment”. He points to the instant at the end of 2022 when, after years of development, Openai’s chatbot pushed generative artificial intelligence from the realm of researchers into the mainstream. The Economist

Film-makers in China have long tried to find the secret sauce for movies that wow audiences while pleasing the Communist Party. The epics that evolved became known as zhuxuanlu, or “main melody” films, because they are in tune with the party line. But the heavy doses of patriotism that they usually involve have fallen out of favour. Instead, one Beijing studio has struck gold with a cartoon reimagining the tale of a “demon child” from a 16th-century novel. The Economist