The onshore yuan slipped 0.17 percent to 6.8402 per dollar as of 4:02 p.m., while the Shanghai Composite Index closed down 1.3 percent at its lowest since February 2016. The ChiNext gauge of small caps and tech stocks fared even worse, tumbling 2.8 percent -- its worst day in seven weeks -- to its lowest in nearly four years. The Hang Seng Index, which fell every day last week, held a 0.6 percent gain.
At a cancer conference in Chicago in June last year, a little-known Chinese startup stunned researchers with early results showing its experimental gene therapy was abating an aggressive form of blood cancer in patients back home.
Mr Wang is part of a generation of young consumers who have rejected the thrifty habits of their elders and become used to spending with borrowed money. Outstanding consumer loans — used for vehicle purchases, holidays, household renovations and buying expensive household goods — in China grew nearly 40 per cent last year to reach Rmb6.8tn, according to Chinese investment bank CICC.
Growing up in Singapore, Chan Kian Kuan always took pride in his Teochew heritage — the dialect, the cultural traditions and the famous steamed fish. But after visiting his ancestral village in Teochew, in Guangdong Province, China, and seeing the progress there, he became truly proud to be not just Teochew, but also Chinese.
Over on the main ChinaFile site, Dr. Shawn Shieh offers his view on the current environment and possibilities for civil society under Xi Jinping's effort to “remake civil society in the Party-state’s image.” Shieh wonders if Xi's grand ambitions for the Party in China and for China in the world can be fully realized without an independent civil society to help ensure a modicum of government accountability. He also takes stock of Chinese civil society in this politically charged landscape, terrain, he writes, that is like a "forest that has experienced a major fire.
Given his past animosity towards civil society, Xi’s actions have been seen by some as moving China towards a new form of totalitarianism and a closing of the space for civil society. I would argue instead that we should see Xi’s ascendancy, together with previous policies carried out during his last five years as General Secretary, as advancing an ambitious effort to remake civil society in the Party-state’s image. Whether he succeeds will depend to a large measure on civil society’s response to this transformed political landscape.
China’s currency slide is graduating from benign neglect to something more deliberate. Whether or not you deem it currency warfare, it is playing with political and financial fire.
In a 95-page document that circulated widely on social media this week, two male monks accused the Venerable Xuecheng, the abbot of Longquan Monastery in Beijing and a powerful religious official, of sending explicit messages and making unwanted advances toward women.
Imran Khan, Pakistan’s former cricket captain and newly elected prime minister, is on a sticky wicket. His victory in last week’s polls was secured in part on a pledge to ramp up spending on public services. Yet the coffers are empty and a balance of payments crisis looms. Instead of the “Islamic welfare state” he hoped to create, his aides are forced to ponder the prospect of an IMF deal. Even that safety net may not be at hand. Mike Pompeo, US secretary of state, says Washington will oppose any bailout that pays off Chinese loans on grounds that this would be unfair to US taxpayers.
Merkel's cabinet on Wednesday voted to block the potential purchase of German machine tool manufacturer Leifeld Metal Spinning by a Chinese investor. The government took the precautionary measure even though the Yantai Taihai Group indicated at the last minute it would withdraw.
