China and especially Foxconn has been taking the lead in replacing labor by robots in manufacturing. Especially for the low-income jobs that might be bad news, says financial analyst Sara Hsu in the Diplomat. Job creating in the right sector is not going fast enough.Read More →

Experts use different measurements to gauge China´s economic growth, as the official GDP figure is often seen with suspicion. But other measurements like electricity usage and railway transportation also have their limitations, warns China veteran Paul French in Splash 24/7Read More →

China´s country-side has a generation of left-behind children, children who grew up while their parents worked in the big cities, some with their grandparents, some even alone. Author Zhang Lijia visited four-year old Diandian, who lives with his grandparents and writes up his story at her weblog.Read More →

Mostly in Zhejiang province Chinese authorities have been trying to bring the 60 million Christians under state control, and took down between 1,200 and 1,700 crosses from churches, sometimes causing violent clashes. Journalist Ian Johnson investigated for the New York Times the current state of the government action.Read More →

The 50-year anniversary of the Cultural Revolution has passed mostly in silence. China media mentioned briefly the event was with hindsight not a good idea, much of the families of Chinese leader – including the Xi family – suffered from it, but talking to victims is not easy discovered the Globe&Mail. Author Zhang Lijia comments.Read More →

US judicial authorities have arrested the Chinese national Fuyi “Frank” Sun for trying to steal carbon fiber, used for military and aerospace applications, defense analyst Wendell Minnick writes in Defense News. Sun was caught by an undercover unit of Home Land Security (HSI).Read More →

Author Zhang Lijia enthusiastically reviews on her weblog Eight Juxtapositions: China Through Imperfect Analogies: Penguin Specials by Jeff Wasserstrom. “In the final chapter entitled The People’s Pope and Big Daddy Xi, he compared the Chinese Communist Party with the Catholic Church and the president Xi with the Pope.”Read More →

This year the Chinese outnumbered the American billionaires, but by 2020 they will replace the top spots at the global rich list, says China Rich List founder Rupert Hoogewerf in the People´s Daily. Hoogewerf predicts Jack Ma, founder and CEO of China’s E-commerce giant Alibabagroup will overtake Wang Jianlin, the property tycoon, as the wealthiest person on the Chinese mainland.Read More →