Wuhan artists are beginning to pay homage to their city

Wuhan is arguably China's punk capital, its historically feisty reputation reflected in the writhing mosh pits and live venues of a vibrant music scene.

Ils font la queue avant d’ouvrir grand la bouche pour un prélèvement au fond de la gorge : inquiets après l’apparition de nouveaux cas de COVID-19, les habitants de Wuhan se livrent docilement à un dépistage général.

The families accuse the Wuhan and Hubei provincial governments of concealing the outbreak when it first emerged there late last year, failing to alert the public, and bungling the response, allowing Covid-19 to explode out of control.

Just 5 kilometers from Shanghai Disney Resort is a factory village with 100,000 workers. By day, they build iPhones. By night, they get tattoos, hang out in internet cafés, and dream of another life.

The coders, engineers, programmers, software developers, game designers and other IT manpower behind China’s burgeoning digital economy have become known as "996" workers due to the 9am-9pm, six-day week they work, without overtime pay.

Aquaculture took off in the area in the late 1980s, fuelled in part by the decades-long collapse of yellow croaker stocks.

This in-depth reportage examines Yiwu, a city in Zhejiang province known as the world’s largest small commodities marketplace, where over 70,000 shops supply nearly two million products to buyers from across the globe. Once stereotyped as a chaotic bazaar, Yiwu today reflects both the promises and pressures of globalization, e-commerce, and shifting geopolitics.

This year, a new complication emerged: an official crackdown on online lending shuttered thousands of providers that Peng had used to acquire new money to pay old debt, forcing him to go cap-in-hand to his parents for a bailout.

Forget stocks, real estate, even cryptocurrencies — China’s hottest investment nowadays may be the Nike, Adidas, and Puma basketball shoes that “sneakerheads” like Hu Huaiyuan fight to get their hands on.

In 2016, U.S. immigration authorities exposed the University of Northern New Jersey (UNNJ)—a school that never truly existed. Created by Homeland Security Investigations as a fake university, it became the centerpiece of a large-scale sting operation aimed at uncovering visa fraud.

As Britain debated whether to leave the European Union, Initium Media collected voices from across society to reveal how Brexit was experienced in everyday lives.

China’s baijiu industry—home to giants like Moutai, Wuliangye, and Luzhou Laojiao—remains immensely profitable, with revenues in the hundreds of billions of yuan. Yet beneath this success lies an existential challenge: how to connect with younger consumers.

The US retail giant Costco is diving into the thorny area of food retail in China with its first store opening this week, but analysts warn it faces a tough ride as it looks to succeed where a series of international retailers have failed.

China’s craft beer market is still in its infancy—accounting for less than 1% of national beer sales—but it has been expanding rapidly as younger, urban consumers turn away from mass-produced lagers in search of local flavors and lifestyle branding.