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37 dispatches found

October 2026

Economy

The Xiaogang Village Contract and the Household Responsibility System, 1978

On a winter night in late November 1978, in a small village in the hills of Fengyang County in the province of Anhui, the heads of eighteen households gathered in a mud-walled house and put their names and red thumbprints to a short handwritten document.

High-key editorial illustration of a formal ministerial conference hall in the Gulf in 2001, long white-clothed tables with delegates in dark suits seated in two ranks, one rising to speak, tall shuttered windows casting pale gold light, a row of muted indigo, grey and cream flags along the far wall with one cinnabar red flag among them.

Economy

China’s Accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001

On 10 November 2001, at a ministerial conference held in Doha, the capital of Qatar, the members of the World Trade Organization approved by consensus the terms on which the People’s Republic of China would join them.

Watercolour illustration of red-and-white container cranes loading a ship at Yangshan Port in morning haze, with a red pavilion and two workers on a hillside

Economy

China’s Industrial Surplus and the World Economy

China now produces more than a quarter of the world’s manufacturing value added, runs the largest goods trade surplus ever recorded, and holds a commanding share of global output in industries as different as steel, ships, solar modules, batteries and industrial robots.

Painting of turquoise lithium brine evaporation ponds below snowy mountains in the Qaidam Basin

Economy

The Lithium Race Below the Tibetan Plateau

The Qinghai–Tibet plateau holds some of the world’s largest lithium reserves in the form of brine pools — salt lakes where dissolved lithium lies just below the surface.

Painting of workers on scaffolds beside rows of Fuxing high-speed trains in a Qingdao assembly hall

Economy

The Train Factory Outbuilt the High-Speed Era

CRRC — the Chinese state rail-equipment manufacturer — is the world’s largest train maker, producing roughly half of all the world’s locomotives and electric multiple units in any given year.

Painting of merchants with baskets of iron cash trading them for small paper jiaozi notes at a Song exchange counter in Chengdu

Economy

Paper Money Crashed the First Time

The world’s first state-backed paper money appeared in Sichuan around 1024, and the world’s first state-backed paper-money crash followed within seventy years.

Painting of young workers at plastic injection moulding machines and a sorting table in a small shed in Tucheng in 1974

Economy

How Hon Hai Became Foxconn

On 20 February 1974, in a rented shed in Tucheng, a rough suburb of Taipei whose name means earth city and which American reporters later translated as Dirt City, a twenty-three-year-old shipping clerk started a plastics firm.

Hand-painted illustration of the Beilun container terminal at Ningbo-Zhoushan Port, China, seen from a wooded hillside on a hazy morning, with rows of red gantry cranes along the quay, a container ship berthing, a patchwork of stacked containers and misty islands beyond, and two small walkers on a hill path in the foreground

Economy

Why China Makes Everything and Britain Doesn’t

Walk through any British high street or hospital store room and the same pattern repeats.

Hand-painted illustration of Qianmen Street in Beijing in pale morning haze, with ornate red-and-gold shopfronts and blank signboards lining the broad pedestrian street and its tram rails, strings of red lanterns overhead, a vintage tram, the painted five-bay archway and the grey Zhengyangmen arrow tower at the far end, and small figures strolling

Economy

How China Built Its Own Brands

In 2014 Huawei became the first Chinese company to appear in Interbrand’s annual list of the world’s 100 best global brands, at 94th place. Twelve years later the picture looks very different.

Hand-painted illustration of Lee Byung-chul's birthplace in Uiryeong, South Korea, a traditional tiled-roof hanok compound with a sandy courtyard, a round brick well and persimmon trees heavy with red fruit, set against a wooded hillside in pale autumn morning haze, with a few small visitors

Economy

How Samsung Built the Chaebol Model

Samsung began in 1938 as a small trading shop in Daegu selling dried fish, fruit and noodles.

Hand-painted illustration of Jiangnan Shipyard on Changxing Island in Shanghai in pale morning haze, with tall red gantry cranes straddling dry docks, unfinished ship hulls and container ships at the fitting-out quays on the broad Yangtze, and small workers on the quayside

Economy

China’s Shipyards and the Race to Catch Them

In the first half of 2026, more than four-fifths of the merchant-ship tonnage ordered anywhere in the world went to Chinese yards.

Economy

Spain Bets on China as Europe Hardens

On a September evening in Barcelona, a red-and-gold Chinese dragon wound its way through the crowds of La Mercè, the city’s great autumn festival, while acrobats from Shanghai tossed glowing paper lanterns into the air and caught them without ever letting the candles inside tip over.