China’s government tries to raise the number of newborns to offset an aging population, but the latest demographics show Chinese do not follow that lead as the country’s birthrate is dropping. People choose to make a different choice, explains social commentator Zhang Lijia in the Guardian. “And society has become more tolerant.”Read More →
China marketing expert Ashley Dudarenok looks at how luxury brands can survive in China in 2021 at her vlog. “We are building the future in China,” she says about her work as a bridge between Chinese consumers and brands with global aspirations.Read More →
Marketing expert Ashley Dudarenok discusses the origins of the Chinese Spring festival and how it translates into modern times, on her vlog. On red envelopes, the dragon, and much more.Read More →
Spring festival is the time when China’s consumers spend more than any other period during the year. How will their spending behavior in 2021 look like, after the Covid-19 disruptions of 2020. Marketing expert Ashley Dudarenok looks ahead for Technode.Read More →
Overwork in China – called the 996 culture – is rampant, especially in the IT industry. The recent death of a Pinduoduo employee also shocked social commentator Zhang Lijia. For her, this cannot be solved by the industry or employees, but the government should step in, she writes in the South China Morning Post.Read More →
The fur trade focuses on China, as consumers in the rest of the world shun their products, convinced by the animal-rights movement. But China’s consumers are likely to follow, says Shanghai-based business analyst Shaun Rein, and they are likely to heed the anti-fur trend, he tells Vogue Business.Read More →
China watcher Shaun Rein sends his seasonal greetings from the Zhejiang Province tea fields and discusses how the world looks at China as the second-largest economy.Read More →
Panic struck some commentators in China when recent official figures showed the country counted 240 single households, the largest number for any country in the world. While China and the Chinese still might have to get used to this feature, those numbers are not surprising, says author Zhang Lijia in the South China Morning Post.Read More →
Journalist and academic Ian Johnson, author of The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao discusses why religion has become such an important issue in China, both in domestic and international debates at the Bridge Projects.Read More →
The US failed to stamp out the coronavirus, unlike China, says Harry Broadman, a former senior US trade official to the Sydney Morning Herald. And since South Korea and New Zealand also dealt with COVID-19 efficiency, it is not China’s authoritarian regime that made the difference, he adds.Read More →
A hidden problem in China are the 70 million children in the countryside, left behind by their migrant parents who left to work elsewhere in de big cities, says author Zhang Lijia in an interview with the Borgen Project. Many drop out of school and those who remain face dropping quality of their education. Zhang Lijia is currently working on a book on left-behind children (LBC’s).Read More →
Not authoritarian rule but solid support from China’s citizens allowed its government to beat the Covid-19 and effectively deal with the coronavirus crisis, argues Singapore-based journalist Ian Johnson, in the New York Review of Books. He uses the Wuhan Diary: Dispatches from a Quarantined City by Fang Fang, to show the government did not silence critics but did win majority support by its people, helped by indeed heavily manipulated media in China.Read More →