A deadly swine disease that’s plagued parts of Africa and Europe is spreading across Asia, infecting millions of pigs and causing unprecedented losses. Hardest hit by African swine fever is China — home to half the world’s hogs — where prices of pork, a dietary staple, have soared. And the virus has emerged in at …
By one humble metric, the Chinese economy is changing quickly – and perhaps permanently. For 30 years, perhaps the most revealing prognosticator of the Chinese economy has been the humble $0.25 instant-noodle bowl. Between 2001 and 2011, the peak of China’s boom, instant-noodle sales increased 140%, to 43 billion bowls and packets, as …
DECADES of astonishing economic growth have given China new tools for extending its influence abroad and achieving its political goals. Some of these tools are inducements, including Belt and Road Initiative projects and new development financial institutions. But China has demonstrated that it will use its new economic leverage in …
Ruling party nears 70th anniversary juggling multiple threats Economic slowdown, trade war, swine fever weigh on celebration Shopkeepers in Shenzhen. Pork sellers in Nanning. Factory workers in Dongguan. All across China’s southern industrial belt, the working class is under pressure — and so is President Xi Jinping. A protracted U.S. …
A popular giant panda has died unexpectedly in a Thai zoo – prompting China to send experts to investigate. Chuang Chuang had been at the Chiang Mai zoo on loan from China since 2003. The 19-year old bear was widely popular across Thailand, especially due to repeated efforts by the …
The accidental discovery of the first emperor’s Terracotta Army in 1974 is considered to be one of the greatest archeological finds of the 21st Century. In recent years, the discovery of a trigger mechanism has revealed new evidence on how the scale of this impressive site was created to such …
Beijing’s halting response to the protests in Hong Kong has raised questions about President Xi Jinping’s imperious style and authoritarian policies. BEIJING — China’s leader, Xi Jinping, warned a gathering of senior Communist Party officials in January that the country faced a raft of urgent economic and political risks, and …
NANNING, China — The shopkeeper quickly scanned the traditional Chinese medicine market, looking for undercover police before she unlocked a desk drawer and dug out what looked like a clam shell, palm-sized and coffee-brown. “It cures cancer,” she said. The contraband was a scale from a pangolin, an armored anteater …
A bishop has been ordained with the blessing of both the Pope and the Chinese state for the first time under a new deal. Religious organisations in China must be approved by the state, leading to a decades-long row with the Vatican. But a deal was agreed last September, giving …
It is fiercely enforcing its monopoly on gambling There was no violence and there were no victims, unless you count the crickets, which rushed at each other, mandibles agape, for a few seconds. But that did not stop the police raiding the barn on the outskirts of Shanghai, abruptly halting the …
BEIDAIHE, China — Most summers, the founder of Communist China, Mao Zedong, made big and fateful decisions at a funky stretch of beach a few hundred miles east of the nation’s sweltering capital. He swam in weather fair or foul. He sat cross-legged in the sand, dressed only in black …
SOME 85 percent of world GDP is now derived from countries facing an unprecedented reversal of their population pyramids. Failure to comprehend the consequences of this newly rapid process of population ageing has influenced our perspectives on sluggish growth since the Financial Crisis of 2008. Ageing-related fears for China’s long-run development in the …
