Journalist and academic Ian Johnson reviews a documentary of artist Ai Weiwei with hidden footage of the coronavirus crisis in Wuhan for Plataformamedia. “The public needs to understand that this film is about China,” Weiwei said in a telephone interview with Ian Johnson. “Yes, it is about the coronavirus lockdown, but it is an effort to reflect what ordinary Chinese have experienced.”Read More →

Bytedance is negotiating the sale of popular video streaming app Tiktok with Microsoft, now it became into hot water with an executive ban by US President Donald Trump. Business analyst Arnold Ma tells CGTN why that might be a good deal for Bytedance, since it has 60 apps in China, not just a few like most tech companies, and might focus on those other apps. Even the price, 10 billion US dollars for a company valued at 120 billion, is not bad for an app that only exists for three years, he adds.Read More →

A large number of foreign journalists, mostly Americans, got kicked out of China earlier this year, including long-term veteran Ian Johnson. In-depth journalism is now hurt, he tells the Deutsche Welle, as most media organizations have only one or two correspondents in China, who cannot do more than scratch the surface.Read More →

Donald Trump’s plan to ban Tiktok from the US is straight-up Sinophobia, says former Baidu communications director Kaiser Kuo to Slate. Most successful apps in China will not make a decent following among consumers in the rest of the world, he argues, just because they are too much adjusted to China’s internet rules and customs, he adds.Read More →

Already before COVID-19, American and Chinese internet giants fought for dominance in the booming market for food and grocery delivery, and the coronavirus crisis had cause another boom in the market, says William Bao Bean, managing director of global venture capital firm SOSV in Shanghai in Marketplace. Having dominance in their home market helps the Chinese players.Read More →