389 Archives | Week In China

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Back Issue

WiC 389 (Nov 24, 2017)

Heading for home

Property, Talking Point More talk of a national property tax as Xi starts second…

After Britain took control of Hong Kong in 1841, the authorities in London weren’t pleased to be bearing the new colony’s public expenses. They ...

Banking & Finance CSRC bans “female Buffett” from share trading

For Chinese viewers Zhao Wei is best known for her role as “Little Swallow” in the 1998 TV series My Fair Princess but more recently she ...

Train cancellations

Rail & Infrastructure Construction of subway system halted in Inner Mongolia on debt concerns

A bad reputation can be hard to shake. Despite years of operation almost entirely without incident, China’s high-speed trains are still tainted by a ...

Environment Is China planning on a 1,000km tunnel to turn Xinjiang into…

Since the mid-1800s Chinese scholars have dreamed of bringing water to Xinjiang and making the desert bloom. The first was Lin Zexu, an imperial ...

Under the microscope

Healthcare BGI Genomics in investor focus after huge run-up in share price

“If you are really stupid, I’d call that a disease.” So said the biologist James Watson, during a British television series in 2003. Watson was ...

The kids ain’t alright

Society Ctrip faces creche scandal

2017 hasn’t been a very good year for showcasing the teacher-student relationship at some of China’s schools. In April, two kindergarten teachers ...

Dam those deals

Belt and Road Pakistan and Nepal snub Belt and Road projects

It’s been a terrible month for Chinese hydropower projects in South Asia. On November 13 Nepal announced its government was cancelling an ...

Rise of the underdog

Internet & Tech Sogou heats up competition with Baidu after New York listing

One of the first people to introduce a Pekingese to America was John Pierpont Morgan. The famed banker received a pair of the lap dogs as a gift from ...

Internet & Tech Amazon sells part of its cloud business to meet new rules…

In an interview with NPR this month, the CIA’s former station chief in Beijing warned, “Chinese firms can utilise the open systems of the US and ...

Who’s Hu From tractor driver to Wanfeng boss

In the 1970s tractors were a rare sight in rural China and driving one was deemed as a prestigious job. Chen Ailian was one of the few women given the ...

Shanghai surprise

Entertainment Top Victoria’s Secret models fail to make show as China withholds…

The 2017 Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show, filmed on Monday in Shanghai, was full of milestones: it was the first time it was held outside the US and ...

Almond soup with pig’s lung

Fast Food Good for what ails you

Almond soup with pig’s lungs is a classic delicacy for the Cantonese of southern China and is notoriously difficult to prepare. The lungs need to be ...

Making an entrance

Planet China In 2007 Xu Menghan – then a high school student in…

In 2007 Xu Menghan – then a high school student in Anhui – compared himself to Don Quixote, saying that like the fictional Spanish character who ...

Trump attacks Ball

Sino-File “I should have left them in jail”

A tweet from President Trump, referring to three UCLA basketball players who had been detained in China for shoplifting (see WiC388). Trump was angered ...

Flying off the shelves

Cartoons Flying off the shelves

A month ago we reported that a couple of unlikely items – two cargo jets – were for sale on Taobao, China’s leading e-commerce site. And this ...

The sky is the limit

And Finally Two new driverless deals for Geely, one airborne

“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” There’s no real proof that Henry Ford ever said such a thing, ...