Made in China

THE symbolism was clear last June when Emmanuel Macron, surrounded by factory workers, held up a sleek lithium battery in his right hand and a mining lamp in his left. He was in Douai, a northern French city with a coal mining history…

Indeed, the greatest beneficiaries of China’s renewables revolution may, in fact, be consumers, both inside and outside of China. In sun-blessed Australia, where rooftop solar panels sit atop nearly a third of all households, the country’s…

In case you didn’t get the memo, everyone is feeling very Chinese these days. Across social media, people are proclaiming that “You met me at a very Chinese time of my life,” while performing stereotypically Chinese-coded activities like…

Whether you realize it or not, you’re already living in the Chinese century. From batteries to milk to electric vehicles, China is undoubtably doing it better—while the rest of us kick our feet up and watch. China is soaring ahead of the US…

For Chinese companies, the bet is that lower prices and more AI features will persuade people to wear smart glasses all day, recording their lives through constant video and audio. If you lower the price to around $200, “people will start…

I don’t want to admit it, but I did spend a lot of money online this holiday shopping season. And unsurprisingly, some of those purchases didn’t meet my expectations. A photobook I bought was damaged in transit, so I snapped a few pictures,…

At a 7-Eleven convenience store in Taiwan, you can pick up a 4-inch plushie of Miffy, the bunny character from the Netherlands, a mini bento box charm complete with a realistic chicken drumstick, or a tiny plastic rotary phone. Produced by…

Go high or go wide? DeepSeek and ByteDance, the two leaders of China’s AI industry, are adopting vastly different strategies.On Monday, DeepSeek released DeepSeek V3.2, another open-weight model that anyone can tinker with. The startup says…

At what age should a kid ideally get a smartwatch? In China, parents are buying them for children as young as five. Adults want to be able to call their kids and track their location down to a specific building floor. But that’s not why…

Starbucks opened its first store in China in 1999, when drinking coffee in a Western-style café was still a novel idea to many locals. But in the years since, homegrown coffee and bubble tea brands like Luckin Coffee, Heytea, Chagee, and…