Cissy Zhou

The Chinese government wants to build its own digital currency, but it is unlikely to experience the investment frenzy that launched Bitcoin into the mainstream. The central bank official in charge of the project said the new currency, developed under a project known as the Digital Currency Electronic Payment, would not be open to speculation like other cryptocurrencies, disappointing would-be speculators. Mu Changchun, head of the People’s Bank of China’s digital currency research institute, on Saturday said it would be “a digital form of the yuan,” China’s official currency. There would be no speculation on its value and it would not need the backing of a basket of currencies, according t

Mention of China's controversial family planning policy was curiously absent from National Day celebrations in Beijing on Tuesday, sending a clear signal, according to analysts, that the country’s decades-long policy of birth restrictions could be scrapped altogether. China scrapped its one-child policy in 2016 to allow couples to have two children as its birth rate slows and its population ages. This move has so far proved unsuccessful in boosting births. Analysts said the lack of slogans or delegates related to the policy was a signal China could be about to lift restrictions entirely in a bid to encourage births. “Family planning was an achievement for the People’s Republic at its 60th an

The US Treasury Department has officially labeled China a currency manipulator, causing stock markets to plunge around the world. The declaration was made on Monday afternoon, after the Chinese central bank allowed its currency, the yuan, to sink to its weakest level against the US dollar in 11 years. On Monday, the three major US indices ended the trading day about 3% lower. It was the biggest one-day fall of 2019. Asian shares followed suit on Tuesday. Why is this important? The move signals an escalation in the ongoing US-China trade war, which both sides say they’ve been trying to resolve. Last year, Donald Trump imposed tariffs on $250 billion of Chinese imports. He announced new tariff

It’s not unusual for Chinese universities with international students to organize programs for them to meet and socialize with native Chinese speakers. But a university in eastern China was forced to apologize after its “buddy program” drew a torrent of racist and sexist abuse from online commentators. In recent years, Chinese universities have lured overseas students with scholarships in order to boost their global rankings. The students are often given preferential treatment, such as private dorms or less rigorous academic requirements, leading to tension with some local students. The buddy program at Shandong University was introduced in 2016 to facilitate cultural and language exchange b

Wang Zhenhua, 57, a billionaire Chinese real estate developer, has been officially charged with the sexual molestation of a 9-year-old girl, in a case that has shocked the nation and prompted soul-searching. Wang, the former chairman of Seazen Holdings, a listed company, was formally charged by prosecutors in Shanghai on Wednesday. A 49-year-old woman surnamed Zhou was also arrested under the same charge.  Zhou allegedly brought the 9-year-old girl and a 12-year-old girl from the eastern province of Jiangsu to Shanghai, according to Xinmin Evening News. She checked the two children into a luxury hotel, it reported. The case has sparked an intense debate about child sexual abuse in China. Ma

China’s army of migrant workers, a source of cheap labor that underpinned the country’s growth into the world’s second-biggest economy, is becoming older and less mobile, according to the Chinese government’s latest annual survey. A report published by the National Bureau of Statistics on Monday showed that China had about 288 million migrant workers at the end of 2018, a rise of 0.6% from a year earlier.  That number includes 116 million workers who took local non-farming jobs without actually leaving their hometown. By China’s official classification, these workers still count as migrant.  But among the 173 million who actually migrated, there were 810,000 fewer workers leaving their home

Now hiring: workers at the world’s biggest iPhone factories. Tibetans and Uyghurs need not apply. The exclusion of ethnic minority job seekers was openly stated by a recruiting agency for Foxconn, Apple’s largest supplier, in the central Chinese city of Zhengzhou. In response to an inquiry from Inkstone, Foxconn said on Friday that it had begun an investigation into the agency and vowed to help end discriminatory hiring. “It has come to our attention that an unauthorized recruitment agency may be using our name illegally for recruitment purposes and without Foxconn approval,” the company said in a statement to Inkstone. “We immediately alerted local government officials to this possible illi

On an otherwise unremarkable Saturday in a central Chinese city, hundreds of workers at the world’s largest iPhone assembly plant lined up to quit their jobs. In the years since robust sales of the iPhone turned Apple into one of the biggest companies on the planet, the workers in the city of Zhengzhou had never seen anything quite like this: a slowdown in the demand for their labor. “In 2017, we were churning out iPhone 8s. I was thrilled that I could work 11 hours every day and didn’t take any leave on weekends,” said Haixia, a worker at the factory, which is owned by the contract manufacturer Foxconn. But the days of plentiful overtime, she lamented in an interview in late February, are o