DeepSeek hints that China has mastered the art of ‘kaizen’ — the west should be worried (January 30, 2025, Financial Times)
Did the “Space Pen” meme return this week as investors and governments gawped at China’s supposedly low-cost DeepSeek AI model, wondered whether US export controls had backfired, then lost their nerve around the billions invested in the more costly American approach to the same problem? Of course it did.
A tale of two Spring Festival destinations (February 8, 2025, Jing Daily)
Despite strong visitor growth during the 2025 Spring Festival, Hong Kong and Macau face diverging tourism trends and lingering economic challenges.
The Hong Kong Company at the Center of Panama’s China Problem (February 9, 2025, The Wire China)
Does China control the Panama Canal? It’s a question that has unexpectedly come to the fore in the early days of President Donald Trump’s new administration. At the heart of the answer lies CK Hutchison, a company with a history dating back some two centuries that is owned by Hong Kong’s richest man, and which operates infrastructure assets around the world — including port terminals at the Atlantic and Pacific ends of the canal, through which 40 percent of U.S. container traffic transits annually.
We tried out DeepSeek. It worked well, until we asked it about Tiananmen Square and Taiwan (January 28, 2025, The Guardian)
The AI app soared up the Apple charts and rocked US stocks, but the Chinese chatbot was reluctant to discuss sensitive questions about China and its government.
China installs deep-sea detector to hunt mysterious ‘ghost particles’ (February 8, 2025, Indian Express)
Chinese scientists have placed special detectors deep in the South China Sea to explore the possibility of building a huge underwater observatory, reported SCMP. Their goal is to find neutrinos—tiny, nearly invisible particles that come from outer space and may hold clues about the origins of the universe.
Why many Hong Kong youth feel like failures – and how to build resilience instead (February 10, 2025, South China Morning Post - Young Post)
According to a recent survey conducted by the Hong Kong Christian Service, 48.3 per cent of participants – aged 12 to 24 – rated themselves at least a six out of 10 on a failure index. Many of them pointed to academics as the reason for their rating.
Seeking the Good in DeepSeek (February 3, 2025, ChinaSource)
I had always thought that AI couldn’t replace artistic creations—those AI-generated texts, music, drawings and videos tend to repulse people after being watched a few times. But this time, honestly speaking, after reading the wuxia novels (Chinese stories about knights doing kung fu) and a few modern poems generated by DeepSeek, as a die-hard literature fan I was in a trance, shocked by its “creativity.”
How Global Believers Can Pray for China (February 3, 2025, China Partnership)
We want to pray for China in 2025 — but how? Today, a Chinese believer follows up last week’s post on why it is important for global believers to pray for China and shares how we can concretely do so. Pan Xihong uses China Partnership’s prayer guides on various Chinese cities to help his church pray for the needs in those cities. As he prays for specific needs and learns more about the history of these cities, he sees God move.
More than Conquerors (January 31, 2025, ChinaSource)
Focusing only on “what China is doing to Christians,” as seen in its draconian laws, or on individual cases, which concern only a tiny fraction of China’s sizable Christian population, obscures the more complex picture of Christian life in China’s current environment.
Why Global Believers Should Pray for China (January 30, 2025, China Partnership)
A Chinese Christian shares how he has seen God use the prayers of the church around the world to bless China — and why he longs for those prayers to continue. There are many needs in Chinese society right now. As some Chinese acknowledge the futility of life apart from God, Pan Xihong believes this is a crucial time for the church to step in and show people God’s love. But Chinese believers cannot do this alone! Revival is built on prayer, and the prayers of other Christians around the world are a crucial part of what God is doing in China now.