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Issue 261
WiC 261 (Nov 21, 2014)
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Monopoly money
China Consumer, Talking Point Business booms, as Singles’ Day signals Alibaba’s ascendancy

How was Singles’ Day born? Legend has it that four university students, attending Nanjing University, came up with the idea of celebrating their ...

Mind the gap
Banking & Finance Hyped cross-border trading scheme off to a slow start

The last time that Charles Li, the chief executive of Hong Kong’s stock exchange, was mentioned in WiC he was in an awkward spot. He hoped that ...

Old boy network
Economy Meet China’s up-and-coming business faction from Dongyang

Xu Jiatun was appointed chief of the Hong Kong branch of the Xinhua News Agency in 1983. Becoming China’s unofficial envoy to the British colony, Xu ...

Ringing off
Telecoms Telefonica, the only foreign telco left in China, halves its investment

On the morning of November 15, 1999 Chinese hopes of joining the World Trade Organisation (WTO) were fading fast. Bilateral talks with the United ...

Star man?
Space Programme Man behind Nicaragua canal heads for space

As career paths go, you might wonder how a graduate in Chinese traditional medicine got into the business of launching satellites. Indeed, what do ...

New sibling
Energy & Resources Is Chaori’s bailout bad for GCL-Poly?

It aspires to become the “Huawei of the photovoltaic industry” but so far, investors have given the thumbs down to GCL-Poly Energy’s ...

Car wreck
Entertainment Top Gear’s China adaptation gets thumbs down from fans of UK…

There’s a reason why Jeremy Clarkson has been called the “Simon Cowell of cars”. The host of the hugely popular BBC series Top Gear has ...

Heartbreak, the sequel
Entertainment Don't Go Breaking My Heart 2 sets Singles' Day record

Romance sells. Just ask EL James, the author of the hugely popular novel Fifty Shades of Grey. Despite being branded as “mummy porn”, ...

A la Xinjiang
Others Surprise winner in WiC’s blind wine tasting

Bordeaux, Burgundy… Xinjiang? While the two French regions are famed for producing some of the world’s best wines, the area in China’s northwest ...

Losers’ culture
Society Just what makes a “diaosi”?

Oh, to be twenty-something and living in one of the world’s fastest-growing economies. The opportunities must be endless, right? Not according to ...

Bridal ring
Planet China He wasn’t the apple of her eye. That must be the…

He wasn’t the apple of her eye. That must be the immediate conclusion after a disastrous marriage proposal in Guangzhou on Singles’ Day, when a man ...

Classroom warfare
Cartoons Classroom warfare

WiC has written before about the race to buy property near Beijing’s better schools, following new rules that enrolment should be based entirely on ...

The coal industry’s best friend?
Sino-File “A fifth of the globe doesn’t have access to electricity, we’ve…

Australian leader Tony Abbott’s riposte to climate change talk at the G20 meeting in Brisbane. He told journalists that 80% of China’s ...

Not so funny
And Finally Comedian loses Party favour, and then his fans

There are plenty of us who might consider few things worse than having to sit through a Communist Party conclave on the social importance of art and ...

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