52 mins ago
China grows more wheat than any country on earth, yet its premium bakeries advertise loaves made with Japanese-milled flour. A 36Kr explainer trending across the boards this week walks through why — and the answers say a lot about what 'premium' means in Chinese food retail.
The week's most-liked warning on Chinese social media is addressed to an app: Hongguo, ByteDance's short-drama platform, whose users describe a habit they cannot put down. The phrase is a joke, but the time it describes is real — the app now leads China's screen-time charts.
Pagoda, the chain that persuaded Chinese shoppers to pay several times a market's price for carefully curated fruit, has reported two years of losses totalling 700 million yuan and more than 1,600 store closures since listing — and its own founder's defence of high prices has come back to define the story.
The week's biggest stories from Chinese social media.
At the National Health Conference in Beijing on October 12–13, Xi Jinping set the course for the 15th Five-Year period and a State Council plan laid out 19 indicators and 24 tasks — from clinics closer to home to food safety — on the road to the "Healthy China" goal for 2035.
China's top discipline watchdog announced on October 13 that Huang Qifan, mayor of Chongqing from 2010 to 2016, is under investigation for suspected "serious violations of discipline and law." The probe reaches a 74-year-old who had kept a public profile as an economic commentator a decade after leaving office.
Chinese referee Ma Ning waved on three Ronaldo falls in one Asian Champions League match, drew boos in Riyadh and pride in China — where the 'referee who doesn't look at the name' became the story.
13 Oct 2026
13 Oct 2026
13 Oct 2026
13 Oct 2026
13 Oct 2026