News & Politics

News & Politics

Lula Wins a Fourth Term and Brazil's Markets Crash: Why China Is Watching

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva won a fourth term as Brazil's president on Sunday with 51.8 percent of the vote; by Monday morning, São Paulo's stock exchange had tripped its circuit breaker and Chinese funds tracking Brazilian stocks had locked at their daily limit. The crash — and Beijing's one-line response — made the election one of the most-read foreign stories on the Chinese internet.

News & Politics

China's Defense Ministry Says Its Satellites 'Looking at Taiwan' Is Perfectly Normal

China's Defense Ministry said it is 'nothing to make a fuss about' that Chinese satellites photograph Taiwan — and then released high-resolution satellite images of Taipei's landmarks, taken by the commercial Jilin-1 constellation, across state media and Weibo. The images show how China's space industry now treats the island's cities as ordinary terrain.

News & Politics

Lao Gan Ma Denies the AI Layoff Story, but Its Own Payroll Records Raise Harder Questions

China's most famous chili sauce brand says a viral claim that AI cameras replaced 600 workers with 48 is untrue. But its own insurance records show the payroll falling for four straight years, and it is now facing multiple labor-dispute cases — a row that has become a national argument about automation and what a beloved brand owes the people it once employed.