In July 2024, new energy vehicles made up 51.1 percent of retail car sales in China, according to the China Passenger Car Association. It was the first month in which they passed half. A year earlier, their share had been 15 points lower.
Shared Bikes
In June 2015, the graduate student Dai Wei bought 200 yellow bicycles with his own money and put them on the Peking University campus. This was the start of ofo. By one industry count, 23 million shared bikes were put on the streets in 2017, and ofo and Mobike held more than 90 percent of the market.
In April 2018, Meituan bought Mobike for 2.7 billion dollars. Under ofo’s official Weibo account, more than half of the comments were questions and complaints about deposit refunds.
DeepSeek in Government Offices
In February 2025, Shenzhen began to offer DeepSeek model services on its government cloud to all districts and departments. Guangzhou deployed DeepSeek-R1 and DeepSeek-V3 on its government network. Nanjing, Suzhou, Zhengzhou, Foshan, Ganzhou and Linyi connected to DeepSeek one after another.
By February 25, China News Service counted more than 12 provincial-level government bodies that had announced DeepSeek applications, and it called the count incomplete.
Reading the Times
识时务者为俊杰 Whoever understands the times is a true hero.
随机应变 To act according to circumstances, and adapt as they change.
因地制宜 To fit measures to local conditions.
实事求是 To seek truth from facts. The phrase comes from the Book of Han. In the Yan’an years, Mao Zedong made it the summary of the Party’s ideological line.
The Tea Goes Cold
人走茶凉 When the guest leaves, the tea goes cold. When an official leaves a high post, people turn cold toward him, because he can no longer grant them favors.
In August 2015, a People’s Daily commentary called the saying a vivid image of how warm and cold human relations can turn. It told retired officials to accept the cold tea and not interfere in the work of their successors.
The saying is about ties that rested on the post and not on the person.
The Founder Returns
At the time of Lenovo’s purchase of IBM’s PC business, its founder Liu Chuanzhi handed the chairmanship to Yang Yuanqing, his longtime protégé. In 2009, with Lenovo in losses, Liu returned as chairman, and Yang became CEO.
“In this situation, I had no choice but to go back as chairman,” Liu said later. “Yang Yuanqing changed from chairman to CEO.”
Strong Ties
In a 1988 survey in Tianjin, the sociologist Bian Yanjie found that jobs were obtained through strong ties more often than through weak ties. Job seekers often reached their helpers through an intermediary to whom both sides had strong ties, and those who used such indirect ties got better jobs. He published the study in 1997 in the American Sociological Review as “Bringing Strong Ties Back In.”
Ties for Life
一日为师，终身为父 Teacher for a day, father for life. An old saying: whoever was one’s master even for a day deserves lifelong respect as a father. It appears in a Yuan play by Guan Hanqing.
老乡 A person from the same home region.
战友 A comrade-in-arms. Someone who fought side by side with one.
Patron and Disciple
Under the Tang imperial examinations, a successful candidate regarded the chief examiner who passed him as his zuozhu, his patron, and himself as the examiner’s mensheng, his disciple. In the words of the literary historian Hu Kexian, “the patron regarded his disciples as his ‘estate fields,’ and the disciples regarded their patron as the ‘owner of the garden.'”
Candidates who had failed many times felt especially grateful once they passed. After the examiner Gao Ying died, Bai Juyi passed his old house and still wrote a poem of gratitude.
The Entrustment at Baidi
In 223, the dying Liu Bei, ruler of Shu Han, called his chancellor Zhuge Liang and entrusted his son to him. “Your talent is ten times that of Cao Pi,” he said. “If my heir can be helped, help him. If he has no talent, you may take the throne yourself.”
Zhuge Liang wept: “I will give all the strength of my limbs and the loyalty of my heart, until death.” Liu Bei told his sons to serve the chancellor “as a father.”