The fire that gutted Notre Dame cathedral has prompted an outpouring of grief in China, among travelers, architecture lovers and fans of Victor Hugo’s “The Hunchback of Notre-Dame.”

But at the same time, it has also resurrected historical grievances over a Chinese symbol in Beijing, a complex of imperial gardens and palaces that was burned down by Britsh and French troops nearly 160 years ago.

On the Twitter-like Chinese social media site Weibo, news of the Notre Dame fire has triggered…

China’s main state pension fund will run dry by 2035 due to its shrinking working population, government researchers have found.

The findings offer a glimpse of a looming demographic crisis, exacerbated by decades of population control policies, that is expected to hit the world’s second-biggest economy in all corners of society.

Despite a reversal of its one-child policy, China isn’t having enough babies to offset its rapidly aging population, meaning there will be fewer workers to support…

Diplomatically speaking, relations between the US and China are “official” and those between the US and Taiwan are “unofficial.”

But this does not prevent Washington and Beijing from seeing each other as major adversaries and rivals while Washington and Taipei treat each other as trusted friends and allies. This is despite Washington switching its diplomatic recognition of China from Taipei to Beijing 40 years ago.

The US-China relationship is now often deemed the world’s most important and…

One of the world’s rarest turtle species moved a step closer to extinction with the death of the last known female of the kind in eastern China over the weekend.

The turtle, named Xiangxiang, was the last female Yangtze giant softshell turtle in China.

Her death left just three others of the species in the world – a century-old male in the same Chinese zoo in the eastern city of Suzhou and two others of unknown sex in the wild in Vietnam, Suzhou Daily reported.

The Yangtze giant softshell…

Former White House adviser Steve Bannon made a splash in Washington last week with his call to brand those who have profited from business relationships with China as traitors.

The audience at the event erupted in cheers, not surprising given that it was comprised mainly of members of the Committee on the Present Danger: China, the latest iteration of a group originally formed in the 1950s to lobby Washington to take a harder line against the Soviet Union – in other words, God-fearing foreign…

As the Titanic slowly sinks in the North Atlantic Ocean in the early hours of April 15, 107 years ago, lifeboat number 14 is sailing in the freezing waters to search for survivors.

The crew scans the water’s dark surface with torches for signs of life, the boat passing debris and floating corpses.

Fifth Officer Lowe, while rowing the boat, yells out: “Is there anyone alive out there? Can anyone hear me?”

A Chinese man is spotted on a piece of wood and then, in Cantonese, yells for help…

China’s online LGBT community has won a victory against China’s Twitter-like Weibo over its recent silencing of lesbian and bisexual women.

Weibo on Monday restored a community titled “les” (short for lesbian), after first shutting it down on Friday, as Chinese internet users have flooded the site with symbols in support of lesbians and messages of solidarity.

The now-reversed ban began almost exactly a year after the site vowed to clamp down on gay-related content, though it was forced to…

In a multi-part series, My name... is complicated, Inkstone looks at names, identity and the stories behind them. Join our conversation by subscribing to the Inkstone newsletter.

In spring 2012, as I hailed to Iowa for my undergraduate studies from my hometown, the eastern city of Hangzhou, a fellow Chinese student took me to an American-style Chinese restaurant called China Star. 

I was first greeted by signage set in a quirky typeface used apparently by all Chinese restaurants in the United States, called chop suey. 

Inside, pictures of dishes like General Tso’s Chicken and Orange Chicken Mongolian Beef looked profoundly unappealing. I ordered beef and broccoli…

There has been an enormous amount of nonsense reported in the last couple of months about the state of economic relations between the European Union and China.

First we heard that the EU was adopting an altogether more assertive, even confrontational, stance towards Beijing.

Brussels had declared China to be a “systemic rival,” European politicians were slamming the Chinese government’s protectionist industrial policies, and the EU was vowing to stop the Chinese from obtaining cutting-edge…