Category: The Economist

WHEN MS WANG returned to work at a Chinese internet giant after having a baby, her boss pulled her aside. She told her she’d be less invested in her work because the country’s breastfeeding policy would allow her to leave one hour earlier. “I’ll be a normal colleague, not a breastfeeding mother,” she replied, staying past 10pm regularly like the rest. Based in Beijing, she was entitled legally to 158 days of maternity leave. But she received the worst performance rating in her team last year because others had to…

TATSUKI RYO is the finest diviner since Nostradamus, in the view of many Hong Kongers. In 1999 the Japanese manga artist published a collection of supposedly prophetic dreams warning of a “great disaster, year 2011, month 3.” In March 2011 Japan suffered from an earthquake, tsunami and the Fukushima nuclear meltdown; perhaps 18,000 people died. So when her manga predicted that a mega-tsunami would strike Japan on July 5th 2025, it caused alarm. The Economist

“CHINA BEATS you with trade, Russia beats you with war,” mused President Donald Trump on August 11th. His reflection came mere hours before he extended a fragile trade truce with China for another 90 days. After months of tit-for-tat tariffs, the Sino-American trade war has settled into uneasy stasis. But China is using the time to hone a sophisticated arsenal of devastating economic weaponry. Even as the sides contemplate a broader deal to stabilise the planet’s most important trading relationship—worth $659bn each year—China knows that its power is not in…

ON A MUGGY July morning the museum of coal in Taiyuan, capital of Shanxi province, is bursting with visitors. An exhibit boasts of the province’s reserves of 650bn tonnes of coal. “Mining could last for over 200 years,” it enthuses. Asked if coal would still be dug up in that distant future, a guide nods eagerly, seemingly unaware of China’s green transition. The Economist

The mecca for China’s boom in artificial intelligence is Liangzhu, a leafy suburb of Hangzhou, the tech-heavy capital of Zhejiang province. The Communist Party has long touted Liangzhu’s famous archaeological remains, dating back to 3300BC, as proof of the age of Chinese civilisation. Now Liangzhu, with its myriad AI startups, represents the future. Investors from all over China flock there to meet growing numbers of founders, app engineers and other AI developers and dreamers. It is six months since a barely known AI startup, DeepSeek, caused a huge stir by…

LESS THAN three years ago Ms Jiang was tidying away toys and singing rhymes as a teacher at a nursery in Beijing. She remembers parents knocking on the door in an effort to sign their children up. That gradually became rarer, until last year Ms Jiang found herself distributing promotional leaflets for the nursery in her lunchbreaks. She realised that the alphabetical writing was on the wall. Last May Ms Jiang decided to move into a sector with better growth prospects: care homes. “Caring for the elderly is easier than…

BOILED BEEF noodles gave He Wei a delectable idea. A decade ago the businessman, based in China’s wealthy coastal province of Jiangsu, started a small restaurant selling them. Now he has a chain of 100 such outlets. But life is getting less palatable for millions of small eateries and cafés across China. Not only is consumer spending sluggish, but the tech platforms that operate China’s food-delivery services are battling over prices, often dropping the cost of products to next to nothing and forcing merchants such as Mr He to cover the…

INSIDE BEIJING’S third ring road, Mr Li rides a scooter for FlashEx, a courier. Now in his 40s, with two school-age children, he migrated from Henan province, roughly 600km to the south. The capital’s ring roads, he has discovered, are not paved with gold. Competition has increased; fees have declined. Of the roughly 8,000 yuan ($1,100) he makes each month, he saves more than half. The Economist

DURING THE decades when Mao Zedong ruled China, it was common for people to address each other as tongzhi: “comrade”. Like its English equivalent, the word has an egalitarian ring, as well as a hint of revolutionary fervour. But after Mao’s death in 1976, and the market reforms that followed, the term tongzhi started to feel a little dated. Less ideological greetings took its place: like xiansheng (“mister”), meinu (“beautiful woman”) and laoban (“boss”). The Economist

Two ports, one at either end of the Panama canal, have become a battlefront in the power struggle between China and America. Both countries view them as vital to their trading and security interests. By July 27th talks were supposed to wrap up on the terms of a $23bn deal that would see ownership of their terminals, as well as those in 41 other ports in 22 other countries around the world, handed from CK Hutchison (CKH), a Hong Kong-based conglomerate, to two Western firms: BlackRock, an American investment company,…