53 Archives | Week In China

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WiC 53 (May 19, 2010)

A pretty good harvest

China Consumer, Talking Point ‘Buy now, pay less’ rebate campaign sees huge spike in rural…

Haier’s technicians were initially puzzled by a spate of calls from customers claiming their washing machines were faulty. However, after they went ...

Beijing wings it

Economy China’s top leaders angered by timing of capital city’s land auction

"The falcon cannot hear the falconer; things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.” These WB Yeats lines – perhaps his most famous and part of his ...

Facing extinction

Agriculture China’s soya bean industry complains of foreign competition

"You’ve got to do something, they’re putting us out of business!’ It’s a refrain often heard from defunct factory workers in places like ...

Fast food nation

China Consumer KFC could be the first big brand to make more money…

It was the biggest restaurant opening of the year: locals lined up for hours before the doors were finally flung ajar; security guards had to be ...

Chinese Character Scion of prominent political dynasty goes after Hong Kong broadcaster

Michael J Fox first found fame playing Alex P Keaton, a conservative, Ronald Reagan-obsessed teenager who clashed with his liberal, Democrat-voting ...

Converging lines

Telecoms Telecoms giants want to take over the cable TV industry

China already has 320 million broadband users. Indeed, the internet is already so widespread that accessing it on a television or watching TV on the ...

A lack of appreciation

Regulars “We don’t believe the yuan is undervalued,” Wen Jiabao told journalists…

“We don’t believe the yuan is undervalued,” Wen Jiabao told journalists this week. The Chinese premier added: “China will choose the right time ...

Who’s Hu Internet champ saved by a Forrest Gump moment

Born in 1971 in Ningbo, Ding Lei showed so little talent at school that his teacher blamed him for “hindering the whole class”. He blossomed late, ...

China Consumer Computer giant stumbles

Throughout the 1990s, Liu Chuanzhi, chairman of Lenovo, China’s largest computer maker, considered Hewlett-Packard “our earliest and best ...

The invisible loan

Banking & Finance Why trust companies could be the next problem in the financial…

Accounting gimmicks are back in the news this week, with new revelations about how Lehman Brothers managed to disguise its desperate financial ...

History Lessons Straw Boat Borrows Arrows

Zhuge Liang, the Chancellor of Shu during the Three Kingdoms period (221-280 AD), is a legendary figure in Chinese history. And one of the better-known ...

Society Quake rumours strike fear

In February, a netizen posted a blog titled “Have a look at this, if you still want to live” on China’s leading search engine, baidu.com. In ...

Society Official’s journal of misdeeds

Most corrupt officials go to great lengths to cover their tracks. Han Feng, however, wrote a diary that provided people in China with a first-hand ...

A comedy that’s no joke

Entertainment New film shines a light on mental illness in the Middle…

For years Hollywood has exploited mental illness as a grim dramatic device. Schizophrenia, sociopathy and delusional behaviour have been used ...

Planet China If you can handle kids, you can handle outer space. That…

If you can handle kids, you can handle outer space. That seems to be the message coming from the people behind China’s space programme. According to ...

And Finally Why China’s two most popular novelists are feuding

Literary feuds are not a new phenomenon. When Ernest Hemingway wrote that F Scott Fitzgerald “couldn’t think – he never could”, they ...