Infrastructure & Trade
Landlocked Kazakhstan Found Its Ocean on China's East Coast
The first physical project of the Belt and Road wasn't a bridge. It was a container yard in a Chinese port — now one of the busiest overland gateways between Asia and Europe.
Ninety-Two New Ways Out: Read the Map of China's Air-Freight Push
China opened 92 new international air cargo routes in six months. Where they go — and where they don't — says more than the headline number does.
For Fifty Years This Himalayan Road Just Went Through. Now People Stop.
A 1976 supply route over the Hengduan Mountains has become a tourism corridor — with coffee shops at altitude to prove it.
Industry & Technology
BYD Decided to Build Where It Sells. Southeast Asia Said Yes.
A Thai plant that hit its ten-thousandth car in four months, and an Indonesian one now expected to employ 18,000. BYD's answer to Western tariffs was to export the factory, not the car.
China's Next Export Might Not Be Factories. It Might Be Cheap Intelligence.
At a Beijing conference this month, the guest list ran from Kazakhstan to Colombia to Chad. Beijing's pitch is shifting from things it builds to computing it rents.
Before the Network, the Classroom: Huawei's Quieter Play in Africa
The company known for the fights over its 5G gear has trained 1.8 million students — and, along the way, a generation fluent in its systems.
Diplomacy & Aid
Eighty Tonnes to Caracas: What China Put on the Plane
After two earthquakes killed more than 1,400 people, a Chinese relief flight left Beijing loaded with tents, blankets and water-purification trucks. The manifest is the message.
A Decade After Its Launch, Has China's AIIB Changed Development Finance?
Washington lobbied allies to stay out of it in 2015. Ten years on, the bank it opposed is the World Bank's largest co-financing partner.
Rehabilitated at Home, Blacklisted Abroad: Alibaba's Split-Screen Year
Beijing spent five years bringing Alibaba to heel, then welcomed Jack Ma back — just as the Pentagon named the company a military-linked entity.