Ctrip is one of China’s successful travel companies, but for most startups, it is a tough market to crack, said William Bao Bean, managing director of the Shanghai-based China Accelerator, last week at a travel conference in Amsterdam, according to Phocuswire.com. Bean did identify some potential success stories, though.

China’s leadership is still trying to figure out how to deal with US president Donald Trump. Making sense out of Trump has been harder than expected, says political analyst Victor Shih, author of Factions and Finance in China. in an extensive interview in the New Yorker.

China’s Belt&Road Initiative (BRI) has been praised and criticized extensively, as the massive investment program moves on. The main problem of BRI is that it fell short of the Chinese characteristics that other foreign investment initiatives characterized, says investment analyst Harry Broadman in a column in the Financial Times.

China’s philanthropists spend most of their money on education, followed by poverty alleviation, says the 2019 Hurun Philanthropist List, according to the Hurun chief researcher Rupert Hoogewerf in a press release. Automotive executive of China’s largest auto components company Wanxiang Group tops the list with US$720 million.

Tradition and an unequal political system hamper women in their development in China, says author Zhang Lijia at the Addison Gazette. “Women are being left behind in terms of political participation and the salary gap between men and women is becoming wider.”

Sequoia, Tencent and IDG are the top investors in Chinese unicorns, says last weeks Hurun report on 202 unicorns, start-ups valued at more than US$1 billion, in China as of the first quarter of 2019. Shanghai’s new tech board would be an attractive listing option for Chinese unicorns, said Rupert Hoogewerf, founder and chief researcher of Hurun at the South China Morning Post.

Organizing public debate in China is challenging, but former Xi’an professor Chen Hongguo does. Journalist Ian Johnson visited the book club Zhiwuzhi Chen established after he decided to leave university, and discusses how he manages to survive, for the NY Review of Books.

There seems very little doubt whether the complaints president US Donald Trump has about China’s trade practices hold ground. But China veteran Tom Doctoroff sees Trump using the wrong methods to correct the trade concerns, he writes at LinkedIn.

China’s retailers, with Alibaba’s Hema at the helm, are leading the AI revolution in online and offline space. Consumer expert Ashley Dudarenok explains how AI, online and offline retail combine at a dazzling pace, at CFOinnovation.

The markets have given up trying to make sense out of the direction of the trade war between China and the US is taking. Economist Arthur Kroeber sees three possible scenario’s for the conflict but is hesitant to pick one, he says in Barron’s.