Global companies have been warning of the major effects of China’s lockdown on their operations, curtailing Shanghai for more than six weeks. But they have very few alternatives apart from sitting out the ordeal, says Shanghai-based business analyst Ben Cavender to CNN. The corporate exodus from Russia after the invasion of Ukraine did not help. For sure, consumption in China is down.Read More →

Strategic consultant Ben Cavender looks back at this 15 years in China and how he helped foreign companies to get a handle on working in the country. Some dynamic decades passed by and the future does not look less challenging, he tells at the Wizard’s Institute.Read More →

Just as the 2022 Olympic Winter Games in Beijing ended, China’s media started to suggest the country is planning beyond the strict zero-covid policies later in the year. International travel has been virtually dead since early 2020, and many – including the China Speakers Bureau – have been waiting for a change in this policy.Read More →

How will people remember the Wuhan lockdown, two years ago at the start of the global coronavirus crisis, asks CFR-scholar Ian Johnson in a debate at the NYU’s Institute for Public Knowledge on the book “The Wuhan Lockdown”, by Yang Guobin. How successful has the state been in suppressing the knowledge of this hiccup in communist rule in Wuhan, Ian Johnson asks the author.Read More →

Author Zhang Lijia talks about the importance of learning English, for herself and for the country, as anti-Western attitudes in China make it today less important for students to dive into learning English and other languages, she tells at the weblog of the China Institute.Read More →

CFR-scholar Ian Johnson discusses the way the West lost its interest in China and missed the wide-ranging intellectual debate in China. He reacts on contributions by David Ownby and Xiang Biao who plead for the inclusion of China’s intellectuals into the global debate, instead of ignoring them, at the Berlin Contemporary China Net (BCCN). You can find the full debate here.Read More →

China’s National Day is the start of its October Golden Week. Business analyst Ashley Dudarenok dives in her vlog into the history and the economic motives behind that weeklong season of travel and celebrations, and its disruptive effects on retail, logistics, and other industries.Read More →

Marketing expert Ashley Dudarenok looks at the recent Autumn festival, China’s second-largest holiday. How did it develop and how does it affect tourism, eating, and drinking, from her digital vlog. 80 million people have been traveling domestically this year, she says, and comparable to America’s Thanksgiving festival.Read More →

China’s central government has tried to fix the country’s toxic work culture, especially banning the “996” — working from 9 am to 9 pm, six days a week. But China expert Arnold Ma does not believe the workers themselves really want this, he tells Jing Daily.Read More →