209 « Week In China

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WiC 209 (Sep 20, 2013)

China and the World, Talking Point Will Australia’s new leader be less friendly to Chinese business interests?

Politicians have often been keen to take the plunge to get a bit of publicity. Mao Zedong was reported to have swum so rapidly down the Yangtze in 1966 ...

Internet & Tech Xiaomi surprises market with cheap smart TV

A week before Apple unveiled two new iPhones, Xiaomi – sometimes touted as China’s answer to the Californian tech giant – wowed fans and ...

Economy China’s cement industry is in crisis, facing massive overcapacity

The term ‘skyscraper’ wasn’t originally used in an architectural context. As the author Neal Bascomb points out in his book Higher, it ...

Economy All ears on Premier Li’s speech

Zhu Rongji was the last Chinese prime minister to fail to meet an annual growth target. That was in 1998, the year he took office, and which (to be ...

China Consumer The latest foreign brand to be hit by scandal: Danone’s Dumex

Salaries for doctors and nurses in China are often pitifully low. A recently graduated medical student earns about $500 a month. All of which makes ...

Banking & Finance The biggest Hong Kong IPO for months is for a Chinese…

Does Yang Kai know something we don’t about China’s single-child policy? Last week, the chief executive of Huishan Dairy, which is about to IPO ...

Auto Industry BMW’s marketing savvy sees surge in sales of iconic British car,…

Fans of the Michael Caine movie The Italian Job typically remember two scenes most. The first features Caine and his explosives expert trying ...

Entertainment Debate sparked over rising divorce rate as celebrity couple end marriage

The Singapore audience sat in stunned silence as the lights came up, signalling the concert had ended. After finishing a song, Faye Wong had simply ...

Society Let them not eat cake...

It’s the time of the year that mooncakes make their annual appearance. They come stuffed with anything from lotus paste to salted egg yolk as the ...

Society Control of internet escalates

In 1950 an unlikely rumour spread across China. The whisper was that one of the ingredients fuelling atomic bombs was testicles, and that Mao Zedong ...

Entertainment LeTV online drama pulls in record 200 million viewers

After Mo Yan won the 2012 Nobel Prize for Literature, an old photo of him with film director Zhang Yimou soon went viral. The picture was taken 25 ...

Planet China Goodbye luxury watches, designer ties and vintage wine. Chinese government officials…

Goodbye luxury watches, designer ties and vintage wine. Chinese government officials are keen on a new gift: stuffed animals (and not the type you give ...

Cartoons Li sounds Shanghai warning

The annual press conference for Cheung Kong Holdings and Hutchison Whampoa has traditionally been one of Hong Kong’s most anticipated media events. ...

And Finally Why Chinese cities have been invaded by giant yellow birds

When a 16.5-metre duck made Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbour its temporary home earlier this year, people flocked to see the enormous visitor. The mood ...