Tag: Hainan Island (China)

In China, It’s Time to Splurge Again, and the Luxury Industry Is Relieved

Media Library

This time last year, Shanghai — China’s capital of fashion and luxury — was in the throes of a ruthlessly enforced Covid lockdown. The city’s glittering high-end malls and avenues lined with flagship stores stood practically empty. Today it is a different story. Huge crowds on a recent weekend flocked to top retail destinations on or near Nanjing Road, the hub of glamour in China ever since the country’s first large department stores began to open there in 1917. “I splurge more extravagantly,” Sunny Zhang, 24, said as she waited…

In China, Luxury Shopping Faces Ongoing Headwinds

Chin@Strategy

This article is part of our special section on the DealBook Summit that included business and policy leaders from around the world. Toward the end of 2021, a glittering luxury shopping center called Taikoo Li Qiantan opened its doors in Shanghai. The 120,000-square-meter center (the equivalent to a stretch of 17 soccer pitches) is made up of nine buildings, landscaped gardens and stores from Western brands such as Balenciaga, Bulgari, Cartier, Gucci, Hermès and Tiffany & Company. The expectation for this colossal state-of-the-art mall in China’s commercial capital, owned by…

China Launches Its Space Station’s Third and Final Module

Chin@Strategy

China launched the third and final module of its space station on Monday, a significant step as the country expands its extensive scientific research outside the Earth’s atmosphere. State television broadcast the launch live, showing a rocket roaring into a gray layer of clouds above Hainan Island in southernmost China, with the module aboard. Deng Hongqin, the director of the launch command center, announced after 14 minutes that the module was in orbit. Nearly 59 feet long and weighing 23 tons, the module, called Mengtian, was expected to dock with…

China Imposes More Covid Lockdowns, Stoking Anxiety

Chin@Strategy

In the hours before the southern Chinese city of Chengdu entered a coronavirus lockdown, Matthew Chen visited four vegetable markets in an attempt to stock up on fresh food. But seemingly the entire city had the same idea, and by the time he got to each place, most of the shelves had been stripped bare, except for hot peppers and fruit, he said. Mr. Chen, a white-collar worker in his 30s, managed to scavenge enough cherry tomatoes, meat and greens for about one day, and since then has been ordering…

China’s Covid Lockdowns Strand Tourists

Chin@Strategy

A few days into a two-week tour through the island province of Hainan — known as the Hawaii of China — Nicole Chan received a message from local authorities that no traveler in the country wants to see in the pandemic. On Aug. 3, a day after officials reported 11 cases of Covid-19 in Sanya, a city of more than one million in Hainan, Ms. Chan was identified by the authorities as at risk because she had been in the area that day. She was told to quarantine right away…

With Property Sales Plunging, China Evergrande Faces More Protests

Chin@Strategy

Protesters gathered outside China Evergrande offices in Guangzhou on Tuesday to demand that the indebted real estate developer give them their money back, as the company’s sales across China continued to plunge. Evergrande, the world’s most indebted developer, has tried for months to signal to home buyers, employees and investors that its $300 billion debt problem was under control. Just last week, its billionaire founder pledged to restart construction on its many stalled sites. But the challenges keep mounting. On Tuesday, Evergrande said that property sales fell 39 percent last…

Hong Kong’s Global Watch Dominance Comes to an End

Chin@Strategy

Hong Kong was the Swiss watch industry’s No. 1 export market for more than a decade. Not anymore. “It is the end of El Dorado,” Thierry Huron, founder of The Mercury Project, a Swiss watch and jewelry consultancy, wrote in an email. With its tourism-driven sales dented by pro-democracy demonstrations in 2019 and then blocked entirely by a coronavirus-related ban on tourist arrivals, Hong Kong lost half its watch and jewelry sales between 2018 and 2021, according to the July edition of the Sell-Out Index, Mr. Huron’s monthly report. The…

Spies for Hire: China’s New Breed of Hackers Blends Espionage and Entrepreneurship

Chin@Strategy

One posting from Hainan Xiandun stood out. The ad, on a Sichuan University computer science hiring board from 2018, boasted that Xiandun had “received a considerable number of government-secret-related business.” The company, based in Hainan’s capital, Haikou, paid monthly salaries of $1,200 to $3,000 — solid middle-class wages for Chinese tech workers fresh out of college — with bonuses as high as $15,000. Xiandun’s ads listed an email address used by other firms looking for cybersecurity experts and linguists, suggesting they were part of a network. Chinese hacking groups are…