These productions have been sticking to romance or family drama to keep costs down as they need fewer visual effects. But now AI can “elevate low-budget productions into more ambitious genres such as sci-fi, period drama and, now, action”, Kwok says. BBC
Since Japan’s Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi made comments that have plunged ties with China to their lowest level in years, Beijing has been piling on the pressure in a wide range of ways – sending warships, throttling rare earth exports, curbing Chinese tourism, cancelling concerts and even reclaiming its pandas. BBC
It was hard to miss: glitzy skyscrapers, a sprawling high-speed rail network, highways packed with electric vehicles, and a boom in green energy, robotics and artificial intelligence. Chongqing – a humid southwestern metropolis which once made global headlines for a corruption scandal and murder – turned popular and cool. BBC
Chinese Australian dissident artist Badiucao, known for his content against the Chinese Communist Party, posted drawings of the athletes recently. One showed Liu in front of a Tiananmen tank, a reference to her father’s activism, and another showed Gu holding a Chinese flag, with what appear to be bodies hidden underneath, a not-so-subtle reference to the accusations against Beijing. BBC
What is clear is there are significant sums of money to be made. Based on channel membership and subscription fees, the BBC estimates AKA alone has earned at least 163,200 Yuan ($22,000, £16,300) since last April. The average annual income in China last year was 43,377 Yuan ($6,200, £4,600) according to China’s Bureau of Statistics. BBC
Trump himself is due to visit China in April, a trip he said he “very much” looked forward to. He added that Beijing was considering buying 20 million tonnes of US soybeans, up from the current 12 million tonnes. “The relationship with China, and my personal relationship with President Xi, is an extremely good one, and we both realize how important it is to keep it that way,” he wrote in a Truth Social post. Apart from Taiwan and soybeans, Trump and Xi discussed Russia’s war in Ukraine, the current…
“In the future we welcome all newcomers. We are keen to see more competition. Comac has got its certification process to go through and at some point in the 2030s, we see that it will be an offering that would be attractive to ourselves and other carriers,” Mike Szucs, chief executive of low-cost Philippines carrier Cebu Pacific told the BBC. BBC
Meanwhile, the state-run Global Times praised “China’s young netizens” for criticising the event, adding: “Any entertainment or leisure activities held at such a site constitute an open affront to historical truth, and staging events aimed at children there is even more egregious.” BBC
China has also prevailed on Thailand and Cambodia to extradite two Chinese business figures accused of running scam empires, She Zhijiang, who built an entire city in Myanmar’s war-torn Karen State, and Chen Zhi, who amassed wealth and power with his Prince Group conglomerate in Cambodia. The Chinese government has also brought tens of thousands of its citizens who were working in scam compounds back to China to face trial. BBC
Last year, the Chinese internet saw a viral search for a small-time Chinese actor who had flown to Thailand for an acting gig but was instead taken to a scam centre in Myanmar. Stories like these added to the frustration in Beijing, which had long been demanding that Myanmar’s junta rein in the scam mafia. BBC