411 Archives | Week In China

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WiC 411 (Jun 1, 2018)

Time to take charge

Energy & Resources, Talking Point Why Chinese firms are driving the investment boom in lithium

First discovered in ore at a Swedish iron mine in 1817, lithium was initially recommended as a remedy for gout and it had another unsuccessful stint as ...

Strait to market

Banking & Finance A mega IPO for Shanghai – from Taiwan

It is rare to see a Taiwanese company setting records in mainland China’s capital markets, but such is the case with Foxconn Industrial Internet ...

TAXing times for Robin Li?

Internet & Tech Managerial reshuffle hits Baidu’ s stock price

Baidu, China’s answer to Google, got its name from an 800 year-old poem that compares the poet’s search for a beautiful but elusive woman with the ...

Growth on the menu

China Consumer Sichuan hotpot king Haidilao taps IPO market for expansion cash

Impeccable service is expected in first-class travel and at plush restaurants such as Eleven Madison Park in New York or Holborn Dining Rooms in ...

Wars of the walled gardens

Internet & Tech Video site Douyin launches lawsuit against Tencent over WeChat blockage

Ahead of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation’s coming into effect last week, website operators across the world scrambled to bring their ...

Entertainment, Society Two TV dramas about women getting ahead polarise opinion in China

At first glance, decent roles for Chinese television actresses have become much more abundant in the last few years. The trend has seen many ...

Do Australians ‘get’ China?

China Down Under Our columnist responds to a compatriot critic in Hong Kong

An Australian expat based in Hong Kong wrote to me recently after I published a column about diplomatic developments in the Asia-Pacific. The ...

Hidden in plain sight

Economy Debt-fuelled spending has left some middle-class Chinese feeling poor

One of Xi Jinping’s long list of aspirations for his time in office is to eradicate “extreme poverty” in China by 2020. According to Xinhua, over ...

Fast Food A classic Cantonese condiment

The best-known sauce in the Cantonese cuisine of southern China also happens to be a misnomer. Hoisin sauce, which means “seafood sauce” ...

An unwelcome episode

Entertainment, Society A new row over the depiction of conflict with Japan

In April the Chinese government introduced a law banning “glorification” of the “Wars of Aggression” – a term for the two Sino-Japanese ...

Love put to the test

Planet China Getting divorced is never easy, but in a small county in…

Getting divorced is never easy, but in a small county in Jiangsu province it just got substantially harder. That’s because late last month it said ...

A convenient ride

Cartoons A convenient ride

These days when it comes to pioneering new cashless, smartphone-led business models, China is generally at the vanguard. Yet another instance involves ...

Forward into France

Sino-File “We have to make one place successful, then move on to…

Wang Xiang, the Xiaomi executive in charge of international expansion, talks to the Wall Street Journal after last week’s opening of its debut Paris ...

Uncomfortable remarks

And Finally Relationship guru banned from weibo after comfort women comments

She claims to have an IQ of 145. And she reckons there’s no one cleverer or better-looking than her, because “those prettier than me aren’t as ...