Two companies have long dominated online retail in China. Industry leader Alibaba and main competitor JD.com have attracted by far the most online shoppers to their platforms over the years. But they now have to share their place in the sun with a new challenger in the market. The e-commerce platform Pinduoduo, founded in Shanghai […]
China’s first Mars probe, Tianwen-1, is expected to arrive at the red planet this Wednesday. After about nine months in space and some minor course corrections, the probe is expected to enter the orbit of Mars. The first black-and-white images taken by Tianwen-1 on its approach to Mars already reached Earth over the weekend. The […]
Friedolin Strack is a permanent fixture at the Federation of German Industries (BDI). Now 55, he began his BDI career in 1994 – at that time still at headquarters in Bonn. Initially, Strack focused mainly on transatlantic relations, but the impending move to Berlin ensured, in a double sense, that Strack turned east. “There was […]
“Lies and misinformation” – that’s what China’s foreign ministry yesterday called foreign reports of human rights abuses in Hong Kong and Xinjiang province. Earlier, Foreign Minister Wang Yi had spoken with EU foreign affairs envoy Josep Borrell. In the video conference, Wang Yi stressed “China’s opposition to foreign interference”. He hoped “the EU would respect […]
Sabine Yang-Schmidt’s path to China was predetermined a long time ago. She became interested in the country in the Far East while still at school. “I found it fascinating to draw Chinese characters,” she recalls. She enrolled in East Asian studies at the University of Cologne and, after graduation, went straight to her favorite country, […]
For years, there has been constant speculation that a debt bubble could burst in China. Forbes predicted in 2016 that “big bubbles would burst” in China the following year, BusinessInsider saw “a wild debt boom which fueled rapid growth for China and emerging markets ‘may already have burst’” (2019), the South China Morning Post asked, […]
The world’s largest IPO since the outbreak of the Covid pandemic is expected to take place this Friday in Hong Kong. Chinese video app provider Kuaishou Technology is looking to raise the equivalent of $5.4 billion from investors and is targeting a market valuation of around $60 billion at the start of trading. According to […]
These days, Michael Lackner can look back on the hard work of the past ten years. But unfortunately, not in the way he imagined. In 2009, the renowned Sinologist from the Friedrich Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg founded the International Research Consortium in the Humanities with other academics. “Since that time, we have been researching traditional […]
For Margot Schueller, it all began with a film about the Chinese Cultural Revolution. At school, the geography teacher showed footage of singing peasants quoting the Mao book before working in the fields. Margot Schueller was immediately skeptical about the authenticity of the scenes and wanted to learn more about China. The country never let […]
What a year for Tesla and Elon Musk: In 2020, the American EV manufacturer went up by 695 percent on the stock market. Thanks to this extraordinary performance, founder Musk replaced Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos as the richest man in the world, even though Bezos is not exactly one of the losers of the Covid […]
