South China Morning Post

President Xi Jinping has seen all of China’s problems coming, and he’s got everything under control.

At least, that’s what the Communist Party wants to make people believe.

The party’s propaganda apparatus has released a speech Xi delivered more than six years ago, in what analysts say is an attempt to quell growing distrust over the leader’s authoritarian rule.

In the speech, published Monday on the front pages of most state-run papers and news sites, Xi argued that the party’s current,…

A 12-year-old girl was caught at a customs checkpoint in southern China smuggling a backpack full of blood samples from pregnant women into Hong Kong, most likely for gender testing, officials said.

Prenatal sex testing is banned in China but legal in Hong Kong, and a cross-border business has flourished since China began enforcing a “one-child” policy in the late 1970s and has persisted since the policy’s recent reversal.

The girl was caught on February 23 after her heavy-looking bag raised…

“Workers of the world, unite!”

“Down with all exploitation by capitalists!”

“Arise, ye who refuse to be slaves!”

China’s tech workers are quoting Karl Marx, Chairman Mao and China’s national anthem as they take to the internet to protest long working hours.

The 996 work schedule – which stands for “9am to 9pm, six days a week” – is prevalent in the tech industry in China, as tech giants and start-ups alike compete for users and capital.

Cut-throat competition in China’s tech industry has…

In 2010, China replaced Japan as the world’s second-largest economy. Many economists believe it is just a matter of time before China dethrones the United States as the world’s biggest economy – some have argued that it could happen before 2030.

They have cited the history of other Asian economies which surged ahead as evidence. The nominal per capita gross domestic product of China was just a sixth of America’s in 2018 – a level similar to Japan in 1960, Taiwan in 1978 and South Korea in 1986…

Good friends are forever, except maybe when it comes to friendships between countries.

This is in part the thinking behind Australia’s move to ban two Chinese companies from building a next-generation telecommunications network in the country, according to the former Australian leader whose administration oversaw the ban.

Australia banned tech giants Huawei and ZTE from its 5G network as a “hedge against adverse contingencies” in case relations with China soured in the future, former Prime…

China’s model of authoritarian government could be an alternative to liberal democracy, but only if Beijing manages to control social stresses and maintain economic stability, according to American political scientist Francis Fukuyama.

Academics have not agreed on the definition of a “Chinese model” but debate has intensified over the past decade over whether a mix of a market economy and authoritarian government along Chinese lines could be a viable alternative to Western liberal democracy.

…

China’s “dancing aunties” are the source of derision among the nation’s millennials.

Morning group “square dances” in public parks and squares are a widespread social phenomenon in China among middle-aged women and pensioners, who use the activity to keep fit and socialize.

But the nation’s younger population sees it as an outdated public nuisance.

Yet one group of women in Chongqing in southwestern China have earned praise online for making sure that their morning dance activities do not…

Late Monday night in a residential neighborhood in the southwestern Chinese metropolis of Chongqing, an 11-year-old boy knocked on door after door.

The boy, nicknamed Tongtong, didn’t want to go home. Instead, he wanted a stranger to take him in, because his parents had stopped showering him with attention since the birth of his baby brother.

While this might strike most people as a familiar case of sibling jealousy, this is a new problem for many families in China, which had until recently…

In examining the ills of the American prison system, few things are as sobering as the sheer number of people incarcerated.

The United States, a country with less than one-fourth China’s population, has more people locked up than China does.

That’s the observation made last week in a tweet by Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez criticizing the US’ “for-profit industry” of detention.

This is progress, and there is still work to do.

There should not be a for-profit industry…

What’s one of the trickiest parts of having a population of 1.4 billion people? Making sure they all get an education.

We asked our newsletter subscribers what they wanted to know about China’s education system. Here are the answers to questions on everything from English-language learning to how children study the complex Chinese characters.

Subscribe to our newsletter and let us know what else you want to know about.

Q: Why does China make it mandatory to learn English?

A: As Rammstein…