137 Archives | Week In China

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Back Issue

WiC 137 (Feb 10, 2012)

Ich bin ein Beijinger

China and the World, Talking Point German GDP growth is becoming increasingly dependent on China

Kudos where it’s due. WiC sometimes chuckles at the heavy-handedness of the editorial opinion in the Global Times, a spiky observer at the best of ...

Wanted: 500 million friends

Internet & Tech Facebook’s IPO reignites discussion about its absence from China

At long last, Facebook is filing for an IPO. If successful, it promises to be the biggest offering yet by a technology company. The IPO is also one ...

Shipping Vale’s behemoth ships still barred from China

Companies in the resources industry know mistakes can be costly ones, as BP’s experience in the Gulf of Mexico illustrates. More often than not, the ...

The right (or wrong) of veto

China Ink China sided with Russia in vetoing a UN resolution condemning Syria’s…

What was the reaction to the news of China's UN veto? The People’s Daily defended Beijing’s rejection of the UN resolution, ...

2015: a yuan odyssey

Banking & Finance Shanghai plans to become the hub for global renminbi transactions

Command economies are all about targets. One of China’s most famous plans came about during the Great Leap Forward, in the late fifties, when Mao ...

Holiday spending

China Tourist Japan, Canada and Korea see China tourist surge

This year more than a million tourists turned up on Hainan island, often referred to as China’s Hawaii, for R&R over the Lunar New Year – which ...

Society Media gets excited by vote in small village

Historically the southern province of Guangdong has acted as a bellwether for change in China. It was in Guangdong that the founder of the modern ...

China and the World Kidnapped Chinese workers released in Sudan

Only the most adventurous would see a posting to South Kordofan as an attractive opportunity. Located along Sudan’s border with its new neighbour ...

Not so shipshape

Shipping Why January was a “perfect storm” for shipowners

When you are looking for examples of precipitous declines, it’s hard to beat the plunge in value of Greek bonds. But in January the Baltic Dry Index ...

Restoration tragedy

Society More bad news for heritage lovers in Beijing

For the last 700 years residents of a neighbourhood in central Beijing have relied on a pair of huge bell towers north of the Forbidden City to keep ...

Demolition derby

Society Furore as home of famed Chinese architect gets bulldozed

It is said that on the night before Beijing’s imperial walls were due to be torn down in 1951, architect Liang Sicheng climbed up astride them and ...

China Consumer Chinese New Year offers billion dollar opportunity for pawnbrokers

If someone gives you a gift, you should come up with something in return, goes the Chinese proverb. And the tradition of “li shang wang lai”, or ...

Planet China When the US blacklisted e-commerce site Taobao last year for facilitating…

When the US blacklisted e-commerce site Taobao last year for facilitating trade in fake goods it probably wasn’t the sale of artificial hymens that ...

Buying your way into university

Cartoons Buying your way into university

For the Chinese the University of Cambridge is known as Jianqiao, which translates as ‘Sword-bridge’ (less flatteringly, Oxford’s name is Niujin, ...

Not a smart idea

And Finally Intelligence tests for kids prove controversial

Could their toddler end up coding software like a young Bill Gates or play the piano like Lang Lang? It’s a question many parents will occasionally ...