Day: November 28, 2024

Listen to this story Your browser does not support the <audio> element. MS MAO WAS making lunch one day at her home in the eastern city of Wuxi when she got the phone call. Rather than the courier’s delivery update she was expecting, she found herself subject to an intimate interrogation by a neighbourhood official: When was your last period? Are you pregnant? Do you plan to have a baby? “It doesn’t seem like the kind of thing that could happen in the 21st century,” says the 28-year-old. Such intrusive…

Aseries of violent attacks has shaken China in recent weeks. On November 11th, 35 people were killed and 43 injured when a man drove through a crowd in Zhuhai, a southern city. The police said he was angry at how assets had been divided after his divorce. Five days later in the eastern city of Wuxi, eight were stabbed to death at a vocational school by a former student, said to be unhappy about his pay after graduation. Three days after that, several people were injured when a car rammed…

IT IS KNOWN in China as “Musk’s miracle medicine”. In 2022 the boss of Tesla and new owner of Twitter, now X, gave credit for his slimmer figure to Wegovy, a drug manufactured by Novo Nordisk, a Danish firm. News about the drug quickly went viral on Chinese social media, where Mr Musk is wildly popular. The hype was, unusually, justified. Wegovy’s active ingredient, semaglutide, belongs to a class of drugs known as GLP-1 receptor agonists. GLP-1s help control blood sugar and promise to bring many other benefits as well.…