• OPINION

  Streaming service gives voice to rural folks in China

  News, Adam Minter, Published on 29/12/2017

  » Yang Yang, a 22-year-old Chinese corn farmer, spends two to three hours a day streaming video of life in his cliffside village to smartphones across China. He spends lots of time clinging to a cliffside ladder, one hand on his selfie stick, while he banters with fans about village life.

• OPINION

  Africa's ban on plastic bags won't solve anything

  News, Adam Minter, Published on 10/11/2017

  » In Africa, the plastic shopping bag is an endangered species. Last week, tiny Benin became the latest African country to restrict the import, production and even use of such bags. It's not messing around, either. Following in the steps of Rwanda (where plastic bag importers are publicly shamed) and Kenya (where bags users can be subject to four years in jail), Benin plans to fine bag importers as much as US$87,000 (2.8 million baht).

• OPINION

  China trashes its recycling industry

  News, Adam Minter, Published on 10/10/2017

  » For 30 years China has recycled more cardboard boxes, plastic bottles and old computers than any other nation. By doing so, it's saved millions of tonnes of resources and indirectly funded thousands of recycling programmes and companies globally. But now it wants to stop. In July, China notified the World Trade Organisation that it will soon prohibit the import of many types of recyclables. As a result, recycling programmes and companies around the world are scrambling to find new destinations for the junk they once sent to China. In an increasing number of cases, that destination is a landfill.

• OPINION

  China bent on carving a space for itself in the skies

  News, Adam Minter, Published on 26/09/2017

  » Last week, the Commercial Aviation Corp of China (Comac) announced that the C919, China's first homemade large passenger jet, had chalked up its 730th pre-order. Those numbers won't necessarily make Boeing or Airbus SE quake; Boeing estimates Chinese airlines alone will require 5,420 new single-aisle planes by 2036. Ultimately, though, they could herald the end of global aviation's great duopoly.

• OPINION

  Why Uber's losing out to locals in Southeast Asia

  News, Adam Minter, Published on 28/07/2017

  » By any measure, the April 2016 decision by Uber Technologies Inc to sell its China operations to rival Didi Chuxing was a defeat. The brief but spectacular battle between the two ride-hailing behemoths had cost Uber at least $2 billion and earned it little more than the enmity of the Chinese government. The only silver lining seemed to be that Uber, free of an expensive price war, could focus its resources on other markets, including rapidly growing Southeast Asia.

• OPINION

  China's anti-addiction drive may ruin video games

  News, Adam Minter, Published on 11/07/2017

  » Shareholders of Tencent Holdings Ltd, the world's biggest video game company, panicked last week. People's Daily, the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party, singled out Honour of Kings, Tencent's biggest game, for an unusually high-profile criticism.

• OPINION

  China's cashless revolution is likely to spread afar

  News, Adam Minter, Published on 20/07/2017

  » On a recent trip to Shenzhen, in southern China, I came across a subway busker with two tip jars. The first was a cardboard box filled with coins and bills; the second was a small QR code taped to the box that allowed passersby to leave a tip by smartphone. On one level, this was simply smart business: Chinese made around $5.5 trillion in e-payment transactions last year. But it also offered a glimpse of the future.

• OPINION

  Used goods shape up as Southeast Asia's 'new thing'

  News, Adam Minter, Published on 05/07/2017

  » On the second floor of a 22,300-square-metre, used-goods superstore in thesuburbs of Kuala Lumpur, Koji Onazawa pauses beside some old Japanese surfboards.

• OPINION

  Has China now raised the 'Great Firewall' too high?

  News, Adam Minter, Published on 13/07/2017

  » Will it be RIP for China's VPNs? On Monday, Bloomberg News reported that the Chinese government had ordered telecommunications providers to block access to individual virtual private networks by Feb 1. VPNs are popular and widely utilised services that allow internet users to bypass web restrictions. In effect, the new rules would block the most popular means for Chinese netizens to see beyond the so-called "Great Firewall".

• OPINION

  China's skyscraper age is likely coming to an end

  News, Adam Minter, Published on 14/06/2017

  » At more than 610 metres, Shanghai Tower is the world's second-tallest building. It looms over its neighbours -- the world's ninth and 19th tallest buildings -- in a supercluster of supertall structures unlike any other in the world. The only problem? Finding people to work there: Only 60% of Shanghai Tower is rented out, and only a third of current tenants have actually occupied their leased space.

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