44 « Week In China

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Back Issue

WiC 44 (Jan 8, 2010)

Little fanfare, big promise

Talking Point New trade bloc points to China’s growing regional ambitions

Batik shirts were worn in Indonesia and silky ao dai in Vietnam. They buttoned up barongs in Manila, posed in ponchos in Chile and even donned ...

You’ve got mail

Telecoms Blackberry’s bold new approach to China

President Obama must be one of the world’s best briefed men, but WiC doubts he is aware that he has been endorsing a locally-made Blackberry-style ...

Turtle attracted by nest egg

Banking & Finance Zhu Changhong comes home to guard foreign exchange fortune

They are known as the “sea turtles” – Chinese nationals that return home after a period of studying and working abroad. Returnees have been a ...

The definitive media storm

China Ink Briton Akmal Shaikh was executed for heroin smuggling on December 30th

A matter of sovereignty, above all else? Stop ignoring the laws and dignity of developing nations, fumed Xinhua. Foreign ...

China Consumer Why the government and 120 million electric bike owners are in…

Look for a China topic piquing international press interest in recent months, and sales of passenger vehicles would come out near the top of the ...

Hunan’s green entrepreneur

Chinese Character The tycoon who ditched his private jets to save the world

In 1997, Zhang Yue caused a stir by becoming the first person in China to own a private jet. Later he was one of the first to acquire a private ...

Blonde ambition

Environment Tetra Pak's Chinese goal: to recycle 27 billion cartons a year

Tetra Pak introduced its first beverage carton in 1952. Back in the Fifties, sales to China would not have been high on the agenda for the Swedish ...

The nuclear option

Energy & Resources China’s faith is in the atom

When premier Wen Jiabao took the podium at the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen last month, he quoted the ancient Chinese philosopher Lao ...

Who’s Hu King of casual wear

Getting started Zhou Chengjian is another classic example of a high school dropout becoming a business billionaire. He’s from Wenzhou, arguably ...

Insurance claims

Banking & Finance CCB buys insurance business from ailing ING

To see two very different outcomes of the financial crisis, one need only look at the contrasting fortunes of China Construction Bank (CCB) and ...

Wolf trumps The Donald?

Entertainment The Chinese version of ‘The Apprentice’ is the subject of a…

What would Donald Trump make of it? In an Apprentice-style elimination game, two teams have been assigned the task of selling life insurance policies. ...

Red Star Liu Wen

Liu Wen, 21, started her modelling career at the age of 17. Her big break came when she entered the New Silk Road World Model Contest, which had been ...

Paperback writer

Society China’s Mark Twain in new English translation

It is hard to know how Lu Xun would have reacted to the rapid transformation that has swept China in the past twenty or so years. In disbelief, ...

Bad boys wanted?

Sport Ping-pong tries to spice up its image

We have written before in WiC about how China has dominated the table tennis world for the past 50 years (see WiC15). Nonetheless, the country’s ...

The rosa klebb seamstress

Planet China Airport security is back as a topic on everyone’s lips. However,…

Airport security is back as a topic on everyone’s lips. However, even before Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab tried to ignite his incendiary device on a ...

Oil on troubled waters

Cartoons Oil on troubled waters

The Chinese expression ‘when the Yellow River flows clear’ is the equivalent of the English saying ‘when pigs fly’: i.e. it’s never going to ...

And Finally The Mao suit makes a style comeback

President Hu Jintao is not usually the subject of debate amongst the fashionistas. But he did get the sartorial thumbs-up when he appeared in a crisply ...