Tea Leaf Nation

[The following is a Tea Leaf Nation op-ed, and as such, does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editors.] 欲盖弥彰。 Trying to hide it makes it more conspicuous. –From Zuo Zhuan or Chronicle of Zuo, an ancient Chinese narrative  Political campaigns require mastery of propaganda: retouching images, staging impressive venues, and cherry-picking information. On [...]

This article also appears in Tea Leaf Nation content partner Global Voices. Could the growth of Weixin, China’s hottest new social network, be in danger? Weixin, developed by Chinese Web giant Tencent and marketed globally as WeChat, is a free mobile communications app with about 300 million total users. It allows users to reach out to [...]

Today marked the long-awaited launch of the Smartisan OS, a mobile operating system, by Chinese company Hammer Technologies. Video, pictures, and reports on the event made a big splash among Chinese internet users, with related words accounting for three of the top five trending terms on Sina Weibo, a top Chinese social media platform. Luo [...]

This article also appears on The Atlantic, a Tea Leaf Nation partner site. Yesterday, CCTV, China’ state-run television network, ran an expose on Apple, generating to an outcry against the company on Weibo, a Chinese social media platform. News quickly broke, however, that CCTV had paid celebrities to post anti-Apple remarks. A slip up on [...]

[Update: Tea Leaf Nation subsequently reported that some Weibo users are accusing others of having been paid to criticize Apple Inc. You can read more here.] Will Apple’s share price take another pounding? March 15 — the Ides of March — is a day that strikes fear into the hearts of many of China’s corporate bosses. [...]

[View the map Apple Suppliers 2013 in full screen.] This article was produced in collaboration with Tea Leaf Nation partner site ChinaFile.com. Last month, Apple Inc. released its updated list of suppliers. This report says it includes “the major manufacturing locations of suppliers who provide raw materials and components or perform final assembly on Apple.” The [...]

On Sina Weibo, China’s major Twitter-like platform, a user with the handle “this is America” (@这里是美国) shared the below image on January 23, two days after U.S. President Barack Obama’s second inauguration. The accompanying caption reads: “Who really changed America?” Obama’s second inaugural did not capture the same amount of attention on China’s social media [...]

An open letter went viral on Sina Weibo, China’s Twitter, yesterday, and it wasn’t about Obama’s inauguration. The author of the letter, popular microblogger @留几手, who we’ll simply call Mr. Liu, is known primarily for an online service seemingly modeled on the American website Hot or Not. Weibo users, usually women, send him pictures of [...]

In a high-stakes game marrying geopolitics with big business and international espionage, is turnabout fair play? According to one very opinionated corner of the Chinese Internet, the answer is a resounding yes.  Yesterday, the U.S. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence released a report casting a heavy shadow over Chinese telecom behemoths Huawei and ZTE. [...]

Foxconn, Apple’s largest contractor, suffered another blow to its international image on September 24 when more than 2,000 workers at its Taiyuan factory in Shanxi Province got involved in a massive fight. More than 40 were reportedly injured and 10 were killed.  The details of how the fighting began are sketchy, but most accounts point [...]

Tick. Tick. The release of Apple’s new iPhone is around the corner. Worldwide media has already joined excited Apple fans in speculation about the iPhone 5’s possible sales. Meanwhile in Huai’an (淮安), a municipality of about 4.8 million people in the province of Jiangsu, locals have much more mixed feelings about the debut of the [...]

Microsoft’s new Surface tablet is being billed by some as a potential iPad killer. So what do netizens from China, Apple’s second biggest and fastest growing market (representing over 11% of Apple’s worldwide net sales in 2011, an astounding increase of over 450% compared to net sales in 2010) think about the big M’s bold [...]