A crude, low-tech animation about a cow and a skylark has become a sleeper hit at China’s box office, sitting alongside blockbusters such as The Odyssey and Spider-Man: Brand New Day in cinema revenue rankings. Niu Lai, which translates to The Cow is Coming, is an 86-minute budget animation about a newborn calf and a skylark whose relationship develops over the course of an abstract dream sequence. Released on 5 August, the film reportedly made just 7,700 yuan (£842) in its first 10 days of screenings, with fewer than 300…
Tag: World news
China’s economy showing signs that slowdown may be extending
China’s economy is showing signs of extending a slowdown with a slump in industrial output and retail sales in July, adding to pressure on Beijing to intervene with measures to support activity. After the world’s second largest economy posted one of its lowest quarterly growth readings on record in the three months to June, the latest figures suggest it continued to falter in July. Factory output grew 4.5% from a year earlier last month, compared with 5.3% in June, official figures from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed on…
How to buy a ‘mega-dinghy’: the perilous new model of Channel crossing
Providing a large dinghy for use in the choppy seas of western Europe was not a problem, as long as the order was for more than 20 vessels, they said. The sales manager at the Chinese company even had an online brochure for an undercover Guardian reporter, posing as a prospective client, to peruse. They had a production capacity of 500 boats a month and, yes, it was possible to get even bigger ones for the right price. They could do a seven or even an eight-metre military-style dinghy for…
The Fauci hearing was painful to watch. But we need answers on Covid-19’s origin| David Relman
As a microbiologist and infectious disease clinician, it has been tough to watch the recent devolution of public discourse on Covid-19 origins. It has been especially difficult for me to read the comments of Anthony Fauci about the origins debate in his now-public diary. And it has been painful to watch the televised spectacle hosted by the US senator Rand Paul on 29 July involving a hostile interrogation of Fauci. Despite many early pleas, including my own, for a dispassionate, objective assessment of what we know, don’t know and need…
The west turns a blind eye to Xi Jinping’s repressive regime in China | Letters
In his article on China’s latest tool for suppression of minorities, the “ethnic unity” law, Simon Tisdall seems to take it as read that western governments will continue to pay lip service to notions of human rights in China while pursuing short-term economic goals, ultimately destructive to their own productivity (President Xi never wastes a good crisis. As Iran, Ukraine and Palestine distract the world, he tightens his grip, 8 August). This has been the pattern since June 1989, the Tiananmen Square massacre. His faint hope that the young urban…
Passenger jet billed as China’s answer to Boeing and Airbus prepares to make first international flight
China hopes to break into the world of commercial aviation with the first international flight of a Chinese-made passenger jet scheduled for Wednesday. The Comac C919 will take off from Beijing capital international airport at 3pm, landing in Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia, just over two hours later. It has been billed as China’s alternative to the Boeing-Airbus duopoly that dominates global aviation, particularly in Asia, but analysts say it could take generations before a Chinese aircraft could meaningfully challenge their global dominance. The C919 is made by the Chinese…
Cook Islands election: PM Mark Brown speaks on the diplomatic crises that defined his year
As voters in the Cook Islands prepare to head to the polls in a high-stakes general election, they will have much to reflect on. Over recent years, politics in this small island nation has been defined by fierce debates about deep-sea mining, diplomatic rifts with ally New Zealand and a major reshaping of the country’s foreign partnerships. In an exclusive interview with the Guardian, days before Wednesday’s poll, Cook Islands prime minister Mark Brown defended his four-year term and the decisions he made that have seen this South Pacific nation…
‘Everything about me is good in his eyes’: the women in China choosing AI boyfriends over human men
Qin has never said “I love you” to her parents or friends. She has only ever said those three special words to her AI “boyfriend”, Lu Chen – a brown-haired, red-eyed CEO of a major corporation. For 840 days Qin has been using the Glow app to interact with the handsome string of code as a confidant, fantasy romance and respite from loneliness: the app uses predictive algorithms to provide Qin with soothing conversation, meal suggestions and fleeting self-worth. The software’s pet name for her is Miss Bunny. “It feels…
Weather tracker: Europe breaks more heat records as temperatures soar
High pressure has dominated central and eastern Europe in early August, breaking temperature records across the region. Austria recorded a high of 41.2C (106.2F), while Slovakia reached 42.2C. Hungary hit a peak of 41.8C, surpassing a record set in 1905, while overnight temperatures remained above 28C in some areas, marking it as a tropical night. The extreme temperatures have been driven by a heat dome beneath the high-pressure system, which traps warm air close to the surface. The prolonged heat has dried out soil and vegetation, creating conditions conducive to…
Typhoon Dolphin: more than a million people evacuated in China as record rainfall dumped on Shanghai
More than a million people were moved to safety across eastern China by Sunday evening as powerful Typhoon Dolphin made landfall amid fears torrential rain would cause flooding and landslides. Wenzhou, a coastal city in Zhejiang province, said it relocated more than 900,000 people and opened more than 1,500 emergency shelters. In neighbouring Fujian, 98,900 people were moved from high-risk areas. In Shanghai, 215,600 people were moved from areas considered at risk by Sunday evening, substantially higher than an earlier figure of 30,300. A weather station in the city centre…