140 « Week In China

Sorry, you have not enabled Javascript for your internet browser, so some of our website's pages may not render as fully as intended.
Please Click here for easy instructions on how to enable Javascript on your browser or consult your IT support staff for help.

Back Issue

WiC 140 (Mar 2, 2012)

China Consumer, Talking Point If Apple loses iPad lawsuit in Guangdong it could cost billions

Since its early days Apple has had trouble with trademarks. Soon after incorporation, the computer firm was sued by Apple Corps for trademark ...

Internet & Tech Ma offers to take Alibaba.com private

Jack Ma evidently finds some of his shareholders a distraction – and not just the American internet firm Yahoo, with whom he had a public falling out ...

Economy The Chinese economy must reform or stagnate says the World Bank

The pages of the People’s Daily rarely make for gripping reading, but occasionally they do flag a significant shift in Chinese policy. In June ...

M&A Walmart buys lossmaking Chinese online retailer

"When all else fails, put on a costume and sing a silly song,” was the management advice from Sam Walton, founder of Walmart. But it’s unlikely ...

China Consumer Sellers of ‘gutter oil’ to face the death penalty

When WiC first saw gutter oil being collected, your reporter thought that the man had been sent by the local authorities to unblock a troublesome ...

Banking & Finance New concerns over risk management at Chinese banks

Six years ago, Yantai Bank discovered that one of its branch managers had been lending the bank’s money for personal gain. The rogue banker had grown ...

Environment A radical new policy to clean-up Chinese rivers

Last week WiC interviewed an industry expert on China’s growing water crisis (see WiC139). It made for gloomy reading. And almost at the same time a ...

Who’s Hu Zhao Bingxian

Zhao Bingxian was born in Beijing in 1963. Prior to obtaining a Master’s degree in finance from Shanghai’s Jiaotong University in 1991, he’d ...

Society How Chinese netizens flooded the US president’s web page this week

The Great Firewall (or the Golden Shield Project, depending on your preferred title) has been acting mighty strange of late. Early last week Chinese ...

Society Why a stolen Japanese bike caused such a stir in Wuhan

"Give us back our bicycles” is a favourite chant at Holland’s football matches with Germany – referring back to 1940, when invading troops ...

World of Weibo Beida vs Yale

Two promotional clips from Peking University (called Beida in Chinese) and Yale University were among the most talked-about topics online in recent ...

Society Unselfish and public-spirited Lei Feng makes a comeback

The Chinese have a remark – a regretful one – that the country has become a place where “it’s easy to do bad things and hard to do good ...

Planet China As cross-straits tensions with Taiwan subside, bomb shelters in the coastal…

As cross-straits tensions with Taiwan subside, bomb shelters in the coastal province of Fujian are getting a makeover. According to the Economic ...

Cartoons Reality bytes

Between 1769 and 1772 the polemicist Junius wrote a series of letters to a prominent English newspaper in which he lampooned the government of the time ...

And Finally Property scandals dominate Hong Kong politics

When reporters asked Henry Tang, the then frontrunner to become Hong Kong’s next chief executive, about the size of a basement at his city home, he ...