The State Council has announced it will extend the lunar festival holidays till February 2, while more extensions are not excluded as more information on the Wuhan virus emerges. The activities of the China Speakers Bureau in China itself are limited, but we will also take the extension into account. Shanghai has announced an extension till February 9, according to a Facebook post by Rich Brubaker.

By trying to take on China alone on trade, the US failed to achieve real results in its first trade deal, says trade-veteran Harry Broadman to Bloomberg. China did not adhere to the multilateral trade deal it closed by joining the WTO, but Donald Trump failed to address the issues related to that.

China’s former leader Deng Xiaoping allowed the country to embark on a liberal economy, while repressing communist ideology. That “China Model” helped economically, but it was only useful in a temporary transition, writes political analyst Shirley Ze Yu in the Interpreter. Now president Xi Jinping swallows Deng’s bitter capitalist poison pill, she writes.

Content-providers have been trying to lower costs for the notorious censorship in China, for example by introducing more AI-driven tools. But the government is fearing too much unwanted content if falling through the cracks, asks for tougher censorship, adding dramatically to the costs, says business analyst Ben Cavender to MSN.

President Xi Jinping decided to stay away from the signing ceremony, and that was an ominous sign, writes political analyst Shirley Ze Yu in the South China Morning Post. China will stick to the trade deal, as long as the country’s economic stability is not under threat, she argues.

China has announced the ban on micro beads – solid plastic particles of less than one millimeter – in cosmetics by the end of 2020, writes China lawyer Mark Schaub at the China Law Insight. “The clock is ticking for cosmetics companies – domestic and international alike. Alternative ingredients need to be sourced quickly,” says Mark Schaub.

We are setting up our WeChat work account, and up to now pleasantly surprised. Service looks solid and – while the basic setup is in Chinese – translation service works excellent, so also for non-Chinese speakers the instructions are very doable. Customer service is also very active, although outside the regular office hours in China, you might have to bear a chat robot.

If you want to join our journey at this upcoming global social platform, you can download the software best here. The link below you can use to join our account. Officially WeChat work has started as a service for larger companies to communicate with their employees, but it looks like we can also sign up our larger network at this stage.

Gamers are increasingly becoming a group of luxury buyers in China, overlapping other segments, says marketing expert Arnold Ma at OZY. “Chinese luxury buyer demographics overlap with hobbies normally associated with a younger audience, such as gaming,” Arnold Ma says.

William Bao Bean, partner at SOSV managing director at the Shanghai-based Chinaccelerator, discusses the investment climate in the US, China and Europe at the F50 Global Capital Summit 2019 Fall.  He does not fear the Trump administration, he says, “governments cannot stop businesses even if they want to,” he adds.