Who is responsible for the United States’ opioid epidemic? According to the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, the culprits are “transnational criminal enterprises” who need to be tackled via international law enforcement operations. But according to Chinese state media, “the fentanyl crisis in the United States is demand-driven”, primarily by “the users themselves”. Blinken was speaking at the launch of a US-led coalition to address synthetic drug threats, which gathered virtually last week. China, which many US lawmakers blame for the crisis, declined to participate. As a string of…
Tag: Society
Vietnam bans Barbie film over disputed map of China’s South China Sea claims
Vietnam has banned Warner Bros’s Barbie film from domestic distribution over a scene featuring a map that shows China’s unilaterally claimed territory in the South China Sea, state media have reported. The U-shaped “nine-dash line” is used on Chinese maps to illustrate its claims over vast areas of the South China Sea, including swathes of what Vietnam considers its continental shelf, where it has awarded oil concessions. Barbie is the latest movie to be banned in Vietnam for depicting China’s controversial nine-dash line, which was repudiated in an international arbitration…
Marriages in China drop to record low despite government push
The number of marriages in China last year dropped to 6.83 million, the lowest since records began in 1986. Data released by the Ministry of Civil Affairs showed the number of couples tying the knot in 2022 fell by about 800,000 compared with 2021, beating that year’s record low. China’s marriage rate has declined rapidly over the past 10 years, since peaking in 2013 when nearly 13.5 million couples wed, nearly double last year’s count. Policymakers in China are increasingly worried about the stubborn downward trend in marriage – and…
For better or for worse: is the decline in marriage actually good for relationships? | Devorah Baum
One of the curious things about marriage is the role it’s played in embedding commonly held views about normality. Married people are generally considered normal people. As such, they have possessed inordinate power to dictate the terms of normality in a way that single people rarely can. And yet marriage, clearly, isn’t for everyone. Plenty of people have no desire to do it. Plenty of others have done it and haven’t liked it. The stats only corroborate this. Fewer people over the years have been getting married, while the stresses…
China’s 11.6m graduates face a jobs market with no jobs
With a master’s degree in applied linguistics from one of Australia’s top universities, Ingrid Xie did not expect to end up working in a grocery store. But that was where she ended up after graduating from the University of Queensland in July last year. Xie did her undergraduate degree in China, studying English in the shade of palm trees at Hainan Tropical Ocean University. She went abroad for her master’s because she thought that would help her find a better job. But after working at a Korean supermarket in Brisbane…
Chinese woman appeals in battle for right to freeze her eggs
A single Chinese woman has begun an appeal in her legal battle for the right to freeze her eggs, a procedure only available in China to married couples. Xu Zaozao took legal action in 2019 after a Beijing hospital refused to freeze her eggs but a Beijing court dismissed her case in July 2022. Her case is widely followed in China, where women’s rights have become an increasingly prominent issue and the falling birthrate is of growing concern. Xu says she wants to freeze her eggs to give herself the…
China’s censored feminist movement finds solace in Sally Rooney
When the manuscript of Sally Rooney’s Conversations with Friends first arrived in Peng Lun’s inbox, he hesitated. It was 2017, and Peng – who had worked in publishing for a little over a decade – had just started his own house in Shanghai, Archipel Press. He had heard about the clamour from publishers that resulted in a heated auction for the rights to the young Irish author’s first novel and thought it might be worth having it translated into simplified Chinese. He decided to commission readers’ reports from two women.…
Elderly Chinese people protest in Wuhan against medical benefits cuts
Thousands of older people have staged a rally in the rain in central China to protest against significant cuts to their medical benefits, in the latest outburst of public discontent since nationwide protests against Covid curbs gripped the country late last year. Video clips on social media show a large crowd of elderly protesters in raincoats and holding umbrellas gathering outside the Wuhan city government by the Yangtze River on Wednesday, while police officers form a line to stop them from approaching the gates. The location of the rally has…
‘It was all for nothing’: Chinese count cost of Xi’s snap decision to let Covid rip
When Sunny* thinks back to March last year, she laughs ruefully at the ordeal. The 19-year-old Shanghai student spent that month locked in her dormitory, unable to shop for essentials or wash clothes, even banned from showering for two weeks over Covid fears. In April, the entire city locked down. It was the beginning of the chaos of 2022, as local Chinese authorities desperately tried to follow President Xi Jinping’s zero-Covid decree while facing the most virulent strain of the virus yet: Omicron. “Everyone was panicking, no one was ready,”…
Six lifestyle choices to slow memory decline named in 10-year study
A combination of healthy lifestyle choices such as eating well, regularly exercising, playing cards and socialising at least twice a week may help slow the rate of memory decline and reduce the risk of dementia, a decade-long study suggests. Memory is a fundamental function of daily life that continuously declines as people age, impairing quality of life and productivity, and increasing the risk of dementia. Evidence from previous research has been insufficient to evaluate the effect of healthy lifestyle on memory trajectory, but now a study suggests that combining multiple…