3. President Xi Jinping traveled to Russia to fulfill with Vladimir Putin this week. The financial relationship between the 2 international locations has weakened in recent times. (Wall Avenue Journal $)
4. A 12 months after the China Japanese Airways crash that killed 132 individuals, the Chinese language authorities nonetheless doesn’t have a conclusion about what went unsuitable. (Related Press)
5. Jiang Yanyong, the Chinese language physician who uncovered the cover-up of the SARS outbreak in 2003, died on the age of 91. (NPR)
6. Somebody retains reducing the undersea cables connecting a Taiwanese archipelago to the web. Taiwanese authorities blame unintentional injury from Chinese language ships. (Vice)
7. Guo Wengui, a controversial Chinese language billionaire with shut ties to Steve Bannon, was arrested in New York on Wednesday for a $1 billion fraud scheme. (NBC Information)
- “The New Federal State of China,” an entity Guo and Bannon launched in 2020, vastly exaggerated its position in serving to to rescue Ukrainian refugees in 2022 and used it for political promotion. (Mom Jones)
Misplaced in translation
Through the first two years of the pandemic, Chinese language insurance coverage firms popularized “covid insurance coverage”—individuals will pay a one-time premium of some bucks and get hundreds of {dollars} again in the event that they catch covid. However as journalist Yu Meng wrote within the Chinese language publication Connecting, it may be extraordinarily laborious to get that payout.
Yu purchased covid insurance coverage originally of 2022 and examined optimistic on an at-home antigen take a look at in December, throughout a nationwide wave of infections after China loosened its pandemic management measures. The insurance coverage firm gave her a quantity to name, however nobody answered. Yu experiences there are no less than 60,000 extra individuals who filed a declare with the identical firm. Some referred to as dozens of instances a day, and a few sued the corporate. Some filed complaints with China’s insurance coverage regulator. However only a few individuals really obtained paid ultimately.
At one level when she lastly managed to succeed in the corporate, a buyer consultant instructed Yu: “Have you learnt what number of claims we’ve? You suppose the individuals above me haven’t calculated the prices? After all, they did. It might attain billions and can trigger the corporate to go bankrupt. Do you suppose the state will enable a state-owned firm to go bankrupt? Are you able to think about that?” Ultimately, Yu, who had anticipated to get 20,000 RMB ($2,900), accepted 5000 RMB. Her mother and father, who purchased the identical insurance coverage, gave up on getting any a refund.
Yet another factor
Even children can’t escape the AI craze now. Just lately, the native authorities in China’s japanese province Zhejiang introduced it will incorporate extra artificial-intelligence training into the grade faculty and center faculty curricula. How intense the teachings might be continues to be unclear, however I’m questioning: will we come full circle and see Chinese language children utilizing Ernie Bot to do their homework on Ernie Bot?
