3. President Xi Jinping traveled to Russia to fulfill with Vladimir Putin this week. The financial relationship between the 2 nations has weakened in recent times. (Wall Road Journal $)
4. A yr after the China Japanese Airways crash that killed 132 folks, the Chinese language authorities nonetheless doesn’t have a conclusion about what went flawed. (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 unintended 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 function in serving to to rescue Ukrainian refugees in 2022 and used it for political promotion. (Mom Jones)
Misplaced in translation
In the course of the first two years of the pandemic, Chinese language insurance coverage firms popularized “covid insurance coverage”—folks pays a one-time premium of some bucks and get 1000’s 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 onerous to get that payout.
Yu purchased covid insurance coverage at first of 2022 and examined constructive 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 studies there are a minimum of 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 folks really received 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 have now? You suppose the folks above me haven’t calculated the prices? In fact, they did. It may well 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.
Another factor
Even youngsters can’t escape the AI craze now. Not too long ago, the native authorities in China’s japanese province Zhejiang introduced it might incorporate extra artificial-intelligence training into the grade college and center college curricula. How intense the teachings will probably be continues to be unclear, however I’m questioning: will we come full circle and see Chinese language youngsters utilizing Ernie Bot to do their homework on Ernie Bot?
