Hong Kong’s top jobs now require Mandarin. Who translated?
Hong Kong’s top jobs increasingly require Mandarin. The strange part is that it took nearly 30 years.
Jaime Xiao
China’s Cities Are Run by Venture Capitalists
Chinese city governments behave like venture capital partnerships: they pick companies, back them with equity, cash and free flats, then wait for the taxes to come back. The property slump and the DeepSeek moments are the same balance sheet seen from opposite ends.
The Corpse That Sells Out Cinemas
The Economist sent a reporter to Shantou to cover a hit film. What came back was an autopsy. They are wrong about the patient. The piece (”Bottom of the class”, July 23) declares Shantou the special economic zone that failed, the odd one out among four. GDP per person of 54,000 yuan. Growth of 0.1% … Read more
The hottest IPO of 2026 was built from other people’s rubbish bins.
ChangXin Memory Technologies, Inc. (CXMT) listed on Shanghai’s STAR Market this morning. Open: RMB 49.50 against an offer price of 8.66. Up 471.6%. Market value: RMB 3.3 trillion, straight past ICBC to the top of the A-share table. The biggest winner is the city of Hefei. Its state funds hold more than a third of … Read more
No Government Penny
“The government will not give us a penny.” Liang Wenfeng just broke Washington’s favourite DeepSeek story. A transcript of 118 investor answers reveals a very different narrative.
China’s Two-Front European War
China is fighting a European war on two fronts. The first front is the product. The second front is the buyer. Marco Girometti has stood on both sides.
Open Weights: The Policy Split
NVIDIA, Microsoft, Meta and 22 others signed a letter that, read carefully, is a lobbying front to keep Chinese open-weight models legal in America. Washington sees a geopolitical threat. Silicon Valley sees a supply chain opportunity.
The Automaton Dividend
IF DEMOGRAPHY IS DESTINY, then the recent headlines from Beijing read like a eulogy. China’s population has fallen for two consecutive years, shedding millions of citizens in a statistical retreat that Western observers often mistake for an economic surrender. The logic is seductive in its simplicity: fewer workers mean lower growth, collapsing pensions, and the … Read more
The Wuhan-Paris Axis: 2030, The Kill Switch for American Autos
Part II of How Stellantis Rewrites the Transatlantic EV Playbook In Part I, we mapped the Wuhan-Paris axis — a dual arbitrage allowing Stellantis to shore up its European defences using Chinese engineering. That was the dress rehearsal. The ultimate prize lies across the Atlantic, where Detroit continues to slumber inside its tariff-protected greenhouse. Stellantis … Read more
Curry’s New Deal
Stephen Curry just pulled off the most strategically brilliant move of his career—and it didn’t happen on a basketball court. On June 2, 2026, Curry announced a landmark 10-year partnership with Li-Ning, reportedly worth north of $400 million. But calling this a “shoe deal” misses the point entirely. This is an empire-building move that positions … Read more