Tea Leaf Nation

On May 8, the Japanese government announced it would honor the 1995 war apology, a decision widely interpreted as a diplomatic gesture aimed at smoothing ties with China.  Tensions between the two countries have recently escalated due to events such as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s suggesting a possible revision of the 1995 apology, key cabinet [...]

“Let me not to the marriage of true minds / Admit impediments,” advised the Bard. While no one doubts that their minds are true and the potential synergy is great, in the heady, $586 million marriage of Alibaba, the owner of China’s dominant e-commerce site Taobao, and Sina Weibo, China’s favorite microblogging platform, what might [...]

In April, China’s central government and provincial authorities released data on the country’s economic performance for the first quarter of 2013. On April 15, the National Bureau of Statistics announced that the country’s year-on-year real GDP growth rate had been 7.7 percent. But something baffling arises when one compares the number published by the central [...]

On 8:02 AM, China time, a 6.9 earthquake hit Ya’an, Sichuan province, a city of 1.5 million not far from Chengdu, the provincial capital. In just an hour, a notice about the earthquake had 84,000 retweets and over 7,000 comments. The tremors woke many in Chengdu, Sichuan, a city of 14 million, and were felt [...]

This article also appears on The Atlantic, a Tea Leaf Nation partner site. A recent viral infographic compiled by Chinese news portal Sina shows that more than 150,000 Chinese citizens emigrated from China in 2011, or about 1/10 of the population of Philadelphia. Top destinations were the United States, followed by Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.  Investment [...]

Chinese authorities have confirmed 14 cases of humans infected with bird flu, and of those, 5 have already died. It’s no surprise, then, that “bird flu” and “H7N9” have been trending on Chinese social media sites. Internet users are taking to social media to spread information about preventative measures, the latest news about confirmed infections, [...]

Almost exactly a decade since the outbreak of SARS, the epidemic originating in Guangdong that killed almost 800 people worldwide, China is again in the grips of fear of a super bug. The H7N9 strain of avian flu has jumped to humans and, as of April 2, killed at least three and sickened about a [...]

Whatever serious political signals that Xi Jinping’s first trip abroad as China’s new leader may have sent, Chinese Web users have recently focused on someone else: their new First Lady. Everything about Peng Liyuan seems to have fascinated users of Chinese social media, from Ms. Peng’s designed-in-China clothes and handbags to her mannerisms to her [...]

This article also appears on The Atlantic, a Tea Leaf Nation partner site. Are you a “budget wife”? Despite its name, being a budget wife — or jingji shiyong nv in Chinese — is harder than it seems. According a list published by an anonymous Web user on Sina Weibo, China’s most popular micro-blogging platform, [...]

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 [...]

China’s new leader Xi Jinping has been talking up the idea of the “Chinese dream” since his inauguration. While millions of Chinese may aspire to greater material wealth, what about the “Chinese dreams” of petitioners in Beijing, one of the most disadvantaged groups in China? These petitioners often hail from small towns or rural areas [...]

According to the latest figures from China’s National Bureau of Statistics, about 80% of the country’s more than 250 million migrant workers are between the ages of 21 and 50. More than 73% of them are married, but most live far away from their partners. Yet not many asked themselves beforehand how they would deal [...]