Category: 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,…

Each august the most powerful man in the world drops from view. President Xi Jinping will probably leave Beijing next week and join senior officials at the beach resort of Beidaihe, three hours east of the capital, for a summer retreat. Communist Party grandees have gathered in its villas since the days of Mao Zedong. Even so, extended absences can stir heady speculation outside China about the leader’s grip on power. The Economist

Each august the most powerful man in the world drops from view. President Xi Jinping will probably leave Beijing next week and join senior officials at the beach resort of Beidaihe, three hours east of the capital, for a summer retreat. Communist Party grandees have gathered in its villas since the days of Mao Zedong. Even so, extended absences can stir heady speculation outside China about the leader’s grip on power. The Economist

TRADE TENSIONS are hardly apparent in Qingdao, a bustling port city in eastern China. The roads leading to the port’s terminals are crammed with lorries. A string of cargo vessels can be seen in the blue haze over the bay. China’s other ports seem to be just as busy: on July 14th officials announced that the country’s total exports grew by a healthy 5.8% year on year in June. In the first half of the year, exports grew at the same pace as they did in 2024, helping to keep…

LIKE HIS Greek namesake, Danylo Teslenko, formerly a professional gamer known online as “Zeus”, presents himself as a ladies’ man. On a trip to China in December the Ukrainian had a tryst with a female student and, without permission, shared intimate, though not sexual, videos of her online in a fan group (one clip showed her sleeping). But it is she who has faced a storm over their encounter. The Economist