3. The US authorities is contemplating chopping the so-called de minimis exemption from import duties, which makes it low-cost for Temu and Shein to ship packages to the US. However numerous US firms additionally profit from the exemption now. (The Info $)
4. The Chinese language commerce minister will go to Europe quickly to plead his nation’s case amid the European Fee’s investigation into Chinese language electrical autos. (Reuters $)
5. After three years of unsuccessful competitors with WhatsApp, ByteDance’s messaging app designed for the African market lastly shut down final month. (Remainder of World)
6. The fast progress of AI makes it appear much less essential to be taught a international language. However there are nonetheless issues AI loses in translation. (The Atlantic $)
7. That is the unimaginable story of a Chinese language man who takes his piano to play outside at locations of public grief: in entrance of the covid quarantine limitations in Wuhan, on the epicenter of an earthquake, on a river that submerged villages. And he performs the identical track—the one track he is aware of, composed by the Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto. (NPR)
Misplaced in translation
With Netflix’s March launch of The Three Physique Downside, a sequence tailored from the worldwide hit sci-fi novel by Chinese language writer Liu Cixin, Western audiences are additionally studying a few movie-like real-life drama behind the variation. In 2021, the Chinese language publication Caixin first investigated the mysterious loss of life of Lin Qi, a profitable businessman who purchased the film rights to the e-book. In 2017, he employed Xu Yao, a distinguished lawyer, to work on authorized affairs and authorities relations.
In December 2020, Lin died after he was poisoned by a mysterious combine of poisons. In keeping with Caixin, Xu is a fan of the TV sequence Breaking Unhealthy and had his personal plant in Shanghai the place he made poisons. He would order lots of of various toxins by the darkish internet, combine them, and use them on pets to experiment. Every week earlier than Lin’s loss of life, Xu gave him a bottle of tablets that had been supposedly prebiotics, however he had changed them with poison.
Xu was arrested quickly after Lin died, and he was sentenced to loss of life on March 22 this 12 months.
Another factor
Taobao, China’s main e-commerce platform, introduced it’s experimenting with delivering packages by rockets. Sure, rockets. Made by a Chinese language startup, Taobao’s pilot rockets will be capable of ship one thing as huge as a automobile or a truck, and the rockets will be reused for the following supply. To be trustworthy, I nonetheless can’t consider this wasn’t an April Idiot’s joke.
