China's Economy & Tech This Week

Again with the breakthroughs!

Gen Z Chinese athletes are a new breed. Zheng Qinwen, the 21-year-old tennis gold medallist, said in her interview that she welcomed the title “Queen Wen.” “This may not align with Chinese culture of humility, but I feel so very proud now. Call me Queen Wen, because I honor the name”.

The 1951 PRC Labour Law set the retirement age at 50 for women and 60 for men, when life expectancy was 43 years—a reasonable policy then. However, by 2023, China's average life expectancy had risen to 77 years. Given this increase, it should be updated to align retirement policies with current realities.

A Guangdong company has banned anyone born in the year of the dog from applying for a job fearing it would bring bad luck to the boss. Sanxing Transportation posted a job description for a clerk’s role with a monthly salary of 3,000-4,000 yuan but an employee told Hubei Television that they wouldn’t consider any applicant born in the year of the dog, no matter how qualified, because the company head was a “dragon” and “dragons and dogs do not get along well”.

80% of the sand used in China’s construction industry is manufactured: solution to a crisis?. Sand has been used in buildings for at least 60,000 years but now, 50 billion tonnes of sand and gravel – stones larger than sand – is extracted for construction every year, enough to build a wall 27 meters (88 feet) wide and 27 meters high around the planet.

Two small town boys got into the Tsinghua and Peking University, the first of their townsmen to make it to a major university. For a thousand years townships have been embarrassing successful scholars this way!

When a scholar rides in a high carriage drawn by four horses, flag-bearers running ahead with a mounted escort bringing up the rear, people gather on both sides of the road to watch and sigh. 

Ordinary men and foolish women rush forward in excitement and humbly prostrate themselves in the dust stirred up by his carriage. This is a scholar’s joy. This is when his ambition is fulfilled. Ouyang Xiu, 1044 AD.

When www.google.cn launched in 2006, the iPhone did not exist, nor Android-based smartphones. Google was one-fifth as large and valuable as it is today, and the Chinese internet was a backwater of knockoff products devoid of innovation. Google’s Chinese search engine represented the most controversial experiment to date in internet diplomacy. To get into China, the young company that had defined itself by the motto “Don’t be evil” agreed to censor the search results shown to Chinese users.

Polluters held liable to restore environment. Restorative justice: China has adopted a restorative justice approach to handling environmental pollution cases as part of efforts to enhance its ecological governance system, the Supreme People’s Procuratorate said on Monday. In the first half of this year, 1,597 individuals were prosecuted in 668 cases for environmental pollution offenses, according to the top procuratorate. It said that environmental pollution crimes present a mix of old and new challenges, requiring comprehensive strategies and intensified governance efforts. In February, the top procuratorate launched a special nationwide operation focused on addressing livelihood issues, including the protection of the environment and natural resources, which will run until December.

China’s FM: the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy (NED) has long colluded with anti-China forces, including Hong Kong rioter Jimmy Lai. In 2020, the NED set