Tag: Shanghai (China)

Why Elon Musk Needs China

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When Elon Musk first set up Tesla’s factory in China, he appeared to have the upper hand. He gained access to top leaders and secured policy changes that benefited Tesla. He also got workers accustomed to long hours and fewer protections, after clashing with U.S. regulators over labor conditions at his California plant. The Shanghai factory helped make Tesla the most valuable car company in the world and Mr. Musk ultrarich. But Tesla is now struggling. Mr. Musk helped create his competition, Chinese E.V. makers that are taking market share…

Has China Lost Its Taste for the iPhone?

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For years, Apple dominated the market for high-end smartphones in China. No other company made a device that could compete with the iPhone’s performance — or its position as a status object in the eyes of wealthy, cosmopolitan shoppers. But evidence is mounting that, for many in China, the iPhone no longer holds the appeal it used to. During the first six weeks of the year, historically a peak season for Chinese shoppers to spring for a new phone, iPhone sales fell 24 percent from a year earlier, according to…

What’s in Our Queue? Mahjong and More

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Chinese Football is an indie-rock band from Wuhan, a city that has become synonymous with Covid-19. This electrifying homage to the city tells us it deserves other kinds of recognition. As the seven-minute song gets to the coda, the beat suddenly stops, and I find myself singing along with Xu Bo, the band’s lead, belting out “Wuhan!” over and over. NYT

As China’s Markets Stumble, Japan Rises Toward Record

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There’s a shift underway in Asia that’s reverberating through global financial markets. Japan’s stock market, overlooked by investors for decades, is making a furious comeback. The benchmark Nikkei 225 index is edging closer to the record it set on Dec. 29, 1989, which effectively marked the peak of Japan’s economic ascendancy before a collapse that led to decades of low growth. China, long an impossible-to-ignore market, has been spiraling downward. Stocks in China recently touched lows not seen since a rout in 2015, and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index was…

Hong Kong Stocks Sink 4 Percent as China’s Economy Scares Investors

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China’s No. 2 leader, Li Qiang, traveled to Switzerland with a message for the titans of the business world gathered for the World Economic Forum. “Choosing the Chinese market is not a risk, but an opportunity,” Mr. Li, China’s premier, told an audience in Davos, Switzerland on Tuesday. But there’s a different sentiment about China playing out in the stock market and it’s not so optimistic. The worries over China’s economy have been visible for months in Hong Kong, where stocks plunged 14 percent last year. The new year hasn’t…

China’s GDP Grew in 2023, but Economic Strains Lurk

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Car production set records in China last year. Restaurants and hotels were increasingly full. Construction of new factories surged. Yet China’s economic strengths conceal weaknesses. Deep discounts helped drive car sales, particularly for electric cars. Diners and travelers chose cheaper dishes and less expensive hotels. Many factories ran at half capacity or less because of weak demand inside China, and are working to export more to make up for it. China’s economy grew 5.2 percent last year as it rebounded from nearly three years of stringent “zero Covid” pandemic control…

An Oratorio About Shanghai’s Jews Opens in China at a Difficult Time

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“Émigré,” a new oratorio about Jewish refugees who fled Nazi Germany for Shanghai in the late 1930s, begins with a song by two brothers, Josef and Otto, as their steamship approaches a Chinese harbor. “Shanghai, beacon of light on a silent shore,” they sing. “Shanghai, answer these desperate cries.” The emigration of thousands of Central European and Eastern European Jews to China in the late 1930s and early 1940s — and their survival of the Holocaust — is one of World War II’s most dramatic but little-known chapters. In “Émigré,”…

Shanghai’s Halloween Party, a Rare Chance for Chinese to Vent in Style

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There were evil wizards, TV celebrities and undead beings, yes. But there were also walking memes, rare public expressions of queer life, wry commentary on the state of China and at least one bipedal cucumber — a colorful burst of pent-up energy and emotion in Shanghai’s first big Halloween celebration in years. In Shanghai, revelers have embraced Halloween, turning what started as a Western tradition into something distinctly Chinese. Over four days, they celebrated many of the things that Chinese censors normally suppress: elements of L.G.B.T. life, political and social…

For China’s Jobless Young People, Hostels Are the Place to Be

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In a youth hostel in downtown Shanghai, amid the dull roar of a hair dryer, the shriek of a blender and the lingering aroma of spicy instant noodles, Ethan Yi, 23, was pondering the state of the world. “Why can’t I, a college graduate, find a job?” Mr. Yi lamented as he sat in the hostel’s common room after a day of unsuccessful interviews. “Why is it only jobs that pay just $400 or $500 a month that want me? Sometimes I wonder, how can it be this hard?” That…

Frieze London: For Two Artists, Reality Is Ripe for Manipulation

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The two painters who will be represented at Frieze London by Gallery Vacancy in Shanghai share a need to depict the extraordinary in the ordinary, one through everyday industrial items and the other through the simplest images from nature. That juxtaposition is what captivated Lucien Tso, the founder and director of the gallery, located in the upscale Huangpu district of Shanghai. The artists, Ni Hao, who is Taiwanese, and Shi Jiayun, who is from Chongqing, China, but lives in Shanghai, are integral parts of the contemporary Asian art scene with…