Day: June 9, 2022

In april 2020, just after China’s first wave of covid-19 had passed, Hermès opened a new 511-square-metre shop selling luxury bags, scarves and jewellery in Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong province. The store described itself as “minimalist”. The response to its opening was anything but. Shoppers spent at least 19m yuan ($2.7m) on the first day, according to Women’s Wear Daily. One customer (the last to leave) posted online a photo of herself filling the boot of her car with shopping bags. She could not remember if she had spent…

“Why did I give birth to a monster?” asks the mother of Huang Shuli in his award-winning documentary short film, “Will You Look at Me”. Mr Huang, who grew up in the coastal city of Wenzhou, has filmed his mum tending her garden, picking flowers and swimming in the wild. There are several dreamy shots of her smiling when she sees him. The audio, though, is from an anguished conversation between the two about his homosexuality. Listen to this story.Enjoy more audio and podcasts on iOS or Android. Your browser…

It is nearly nine years since China’s president, Xi Jinping, began to unveil his first plan for global development. It was revealed in stages, in vague language that conveyed little of what was eventually to become a splurge of infrastructure-building across the world costing hundreds of billions of dollars. Poor countries were delighted; the West grew unnerved. But the Belt and Road Initiative (bri) has hit a few potholes. Covid-19 has taken a toll on debt-laden borrowers. Credit from China has shrunk. So Mr Xi has hatched a new idea.…

It is almost too polite to call the deepening rivalry between China and the American-led West a new cold war. The original cold war between America and the Soviet Union was grimly rational: a nuclear-armed confrontation between hostile ideological blocs which both longed to see the other fail. For all their differences, China and Western countries profit vastly if unevenly from exchanges of goods, people and services worth billions of dollars a year. Their respective leaders know that global problems from climate change to pandemics or nuclear proliferation can only…