DENG XIAOPING was barely five feet tall, but China’s late ruler was a political giant. He was a leading figure in the Communist revolution and a hard-nosed Leninist. Yet, as ruler, he launched market-oriented reforms and opened China up to the world. On August 22nd, the 120th anniversary of Deng’s birth, China’s current leader, Xi Jinping, lauded his “extraordinary life”. The Economist
IN JULY last year Henry Kissinger travelled to Beijing for the final time before his death. Among the messages he delivered to China’s ruler, Xi Jinping, was a warning about the catastrophic risks of artificial intelligence (AI). Since then American tech bosses and ex-government officials have quietly met their Chinese counterparts in a series of informal gatherings dubbed the Kissinger Dialogues. The conversations have focused in part on how to protect the world from the dangers of AI. American and Chinese officials are thought to have also discussed the subject…
In America businessmen learn to play golf in order to fit in and foster relationships. In China they learn guandan, a card game that has become a staple of business meetings and banquets. Millions of Chinese people enjoy it. “Eating without playing doesn’t count as a meal,” says one executive. Guandan, which translates as “egg tossing” or “bomb tossing”, involves four people in teams of two. Players try to shed their cards by forming various combinations. The game can last for hours and usually involves a lot of chit-chat. The…
“The internet is not beyond the law!” warned police in Fujian province earlier this month. They had recently arrested a man, identified as Mr Gong, for using a virtual private network (VPN). This is a piece of software that can make it appear as if a computer or mobile phone is in another country. VPNs thus allow netizens to bypass the “great firewall”, as China’s system of online censorship is known. By using one, Mr Gong had allowed “false foreign information” to flow into China, the police claimed. The Economist
CHINA IS OFTEN criticised for its emissions of carbon dioxide, which dwarf those of other countries. By way of defence, Chinese leaders can at least point to their official goal of having those emissions peak by 2030. But China is also the world’s biggest emitter of methane, another greenhouse gas. It produces about 14% of global emissions each year. When it comes to methane, Chinese leaders have less to say in their defence. They are just starting to grapple with the problem. The Economist
OVER RECENT decades, individual Chinese dreams reshaped the world. The largest manufacturing power on Earth emerged, in part, because hundreds of millions of rural men and women left behind families and villages to toil in coastal boomtowns. Behind dry graphs showing steep growth rates lurked stories of the human heart. Generations raised amid Maoist conformity reinvented themselves as entrepreneurs and risk-takers. The Economist
Chinese officials and analysts are struggling. A woman who has never visited China and who has only briefly met its leader, Xi Jinping, has suddenly emerged as a serious contender in the race for the White House. The Democratic Party gathered from August 19th to 22nd to celebrate the nomination of Kamala Harris as its presidential candidate and her selection of Tim Walz as her running-mate. For China’s rulers the ascent of the Harris-Walz ticket creates two difficulties. It challenges China’s nihilistic interpretation of American politics as racist and decrepit.…
America’s super-rich are rarely quiet types. Just this week, for example, its richest man, Elon Musk, used his platform, X, to promote himself and another noisy billionaire, Donald Trump. China’s wealthiest are more tight-lipped. When Colin Huang, founder of Pinduoduo, an e-commerce site, this month displaced a bottled-water tycoon to become China’s richest man, his public reaction was typical: utter silence. He has thrived while toeing the party line and keeping quiet. The Economist
IN CHINA’S TOP-GROSSING summer film, “Successor”, a rich businessman seeks to motivate his son by raising him in poverty. Young Jiye believes his family is truly poor. He is told to “change his fate” by studying hard and doing well in China’s university-entrance exam, known as the gaokao. But just in case, his father also hires undercover tutors. Fake street peddlers test Jiye’s English. The neighbourhood butcher gives him maths puzzles. A tutor posing as the family’s grandmother tells the boy that her dying wish is for him to study…
“WHEN A PROPER respect towards the dead is shown at the end and continued after they are far away, the moral force of a people has reached its highest point.” That precept appears in the “Analects”, a collection of sayings attributed to Confucius. What, then, to make of the news that from 2015 to 2023 a Chinese crime ring stole, dismembered and sold more than 4,000 corpses for use in manufacturing bone grafts? The Economist