Xiao ting wears a short-sleeved white shirt tucked into a pair of blue jeans. He has wavy, coiffed hair and big brown eyes, and smiles gently with the air of a high-school heart-throb. From morning to evening he attends to Ms Zhong, his 32-year-old girlfriend. They do everything together, from discussing the news and playing games to sharing deep thoughts and giving life advice. The Economist
“China was being hurt very badly.” According to Donald Trump, the 90-day trade truce between America and China is a win for his administration and its tactics of kamikaze trade escalation. The view inside China is the exact opposite: America, faced with tanking markets and upset consumers, blinked. The truce is seen as a national triumph that has secured concessions, confirmed America’s low pain tolerance, raised gdp forecasts and made China a hero in the global south. The Economist
“China was being hurt very badly.” According to Donald Trump, the 90-day trade truce between America and China is a win for his administration and its tactics of kamikaze trade escalation. A common view inside China is the exact opposite: America, faced with tanking markets and upset consumers, blinked. The truce is seen as a national triumph that has secured concessions, confirmed America’s low pain tolerance, raised gdp forecasts and made China a hero in the global south. The Economist
As president xi jinping stood shoulder to shoulder with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, watching Russian and Chinese soldiers marching across Red Square on May 9th, they could have been mistaken for equals. The commemorations of the 80th anniversary of Nazi Germany’s defeat in the second world war painted a picture of the two Eurasian neighbours locking arms against the West and the international order that followed that victory. Mr Putin boasted that their strategic co-operation was built on the “unshakeable principle of equality”. China’s president praised their “everlasting” friendship. The…
TO HONG KONGERS, Li Ka-shing is a 97-year-old “Superman”, the tycoon who can turn any crisis into a business opportunity. To pro-Beijing media in the city he is the “Cockroach King”, a traitor who spurns his “patriotic” duties. And Donald Trump seems to consider him an agent of Chinese imperialism: a facilitator for the “soldiers” who are “lovingly, but illegally, operating the Panama Canal”, the American president insists. The Economist
It has been a long time coming. On May 5th a soft-spoken, left-handed 28-year-old named Zhao Xintong (pictured) raised the famed trophy in the legendary Crucible Theatre in the northern English city of Sheffield, and was crowned men’s snooker champion of the world. He had defeated a three-time winner, Mark Williams, by 18 frames to 12, thereby pocketing £500,000 ($660,000) in prize money. “This is going to take snooker to another level,” Jason Ferguson, chairman of the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association (wpbsa), the sport’s governing body, told the…
On april 30th Hong Kong police unleashed a new weapon in their attempt to punish those who have fought for freedoms in the former British territory since 2019. The father and brother of one activist who took part in mass protests that year, Anna Kwok (who fled to America in 2020), were detained on suspicion of assisting an “absconder” by “directly or indirectly” handling her funds or assets. The Economist
Every five years China names hundreds of people as “national model workers”. The latest to receive the honour gathered on April 28th at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People where the country’s leader, Xi Jinping, urged them to “struggle, struggle, struggle to the end”. He avoided any mention of tariffs brought in by America’s president, Donald Trump, but his use of the old Communist rallying cry was clearly intended to show how people should respond. Amid a trade war that could threaten millions of jobs in China, the message is clear:…
As China’s export machine sputters under the weight of 145% tariffs, jobs are at risk. Some 16m workers are involved in the production of goods bound for America, says Goldman Sachs, a bank. Nomura, another bank, projects a possible 5.7m job losses in the near term and 15.8m in the long run as the shock ripples through the economy. The Economist
As China’s export machine sputters under the weight of 145% tariffs, jobs are at risk. Some 16m workers are involved in the production of goods bound for America, says Goldman Sachs, a bank. Nomura, another bank, projects a possible 5.7m job losses in the near term and 15.8m in the long run, as the shock ripples through the economy. The Economist