3. President Xi Jinping traveled to Russia to satisfy with Vladimir Putin this week. The financial relationship between the 2 international locations has weakened lately. (Wall Street Journal $)
4. A yr after the China Eastern Airlines crash that killed 132 individuals, the Chinese authorities nonetheless doesn’t have a conclusion about what went flawed. (Associated Press)
5. Jiang Yanyong, the Chinese physician who uncovered the cover-up of the SARS outbreak in 2003, died on the age of 91. (NPR)
6. Someone retains chopping the undersea cables connecting a Taiwanese archipelago to the web. Taiwanese authorities blame unintentional harm from Chinese ships. (Vice)
7. Guo Wengui, a controversial Chinese billionaire with shut ties to Steve Bannon, was arrested in New York on Wednesday for a $1 billion fraud scheme. (NBC News)
- “The New Federal State of China,” an entity Guo and Bannon launched in 2020, drastically exaggerated its function in serving to to rescue Ukrainian refugees in 2022 and used it for political promotion. (Mother Jones)
Lost in translation
During the primary two years of the pandemic, Chinese insurance coverage corporations popularized “covid insurance”—individuals pays a one-time premium of some bucks and get 1000’s of {dollars} again in the event that they catch covid. But as journalist Yu Meng wrote within the Chinese publication Connecting, it may be extraordinarily exhausting to get that payout.
Yu purchased covid insurance coverage originally of 2022 and examined constructive on an at-home antigen check 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 stories there are no less than 60,000 extra individuals who filed a declare with the identical firm. Some known as dozens of instances a day, and a few sued the corporate. Some filed complaints with China’s insurance coverage regulator. But only a few individuals truly acquired paid ultimately.
At one level when she lastly managed to succeed in the corporate, a buyer consultant informed Yu: “Do you know how many claims we have? You think the people above me haven’t calculated the costs? Of course, they did. It can reach billions and will cause the company to go bankrupt. Do you think the state will allow a state-owned company to go bankrupt? Can you imagine that?” In the top, 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.
One thing more
Even youngsters can’t escape the AI craze now. Recently, the native authorities in China’s jap province Zhejiang introduced it might incorporate extra artificial-intelligence schooling into the grade college and center college curricula. How intense the teachings shall be continues to be unclear, however I’m questioning: will we come full circle and see Chinese youngsters utilizing Ernie Bot to do their homework on Ernie Bot?