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China is celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The global infrastructure project is a keystone of Xi Jinping’s foreign policy and he has lauded the huge economic benefits the scheme has brought to the world. But enthusiasm for the BRI is fading at home...

Ten years ago Xi Jinping announced the “project of the century”, China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Over the last decade, more than 150 countries have signed up to Mr Xi’s global infrastructure project. 

In this first episode of a two-part look at the BRI, Alice Su, The Economist’s senior China correspondent, travels to Laos to assess the impact of the project. She rides a train from Luang Prabang to the Chinese border, on a railway built by China...

Chinese social media is awash with disinformation about nuclear wastewater. Ever since August 24, when Japan began to release treated wastewater from the Fukushima plant, China’s state media has pumped out a flood of one-sided reports about the dangers. China’s nationalist netizens have spread them...

Panzhihua used to be a state secret. The steel-making city, buried deep in the mountains of Sichuan, formed part of Mao Zedong’s Third Front, a covert plan to move core industries inland in case America or the Soviet Union attacked. 

David Rennie, The Economist’s Beijing bureau chief, travels to Panzhihua to reflect on China’s ambitious, costly experiment in self-reliance...

The end of China’s zero-covid restrictions was meant to revitalise its economy. But the rebound has fizzled, resulting in weak growth and deflation. Chinese consumers are not spending—and that is a problem for policymakers.

David Rennie, The Economist’s Beijing bureau chief, and Don Weinland, our China business and finance editor, examine what lies behind the dip in consumer confidence...

A harsh custom courses through rural China. If a woman marries a man from outside her village, she becomes a waijianü, or “married-out daughter". Tradition deems married-out women can be stripped of their rights to land that legally belongs to them.

The Communist Party came to power promising to emancipate women from feudalism. Today, the collective financial losses suffered by married-out women are growing...

A growing number of Chinese women are pushing for control over family-planning decisions. That can cause discomfort in a society where traditional households are still the norm and where there are many legal barriers to becoming a single parent. But, faced with a shrinking population, there are signs the Chinese Communist Party could be loosening up...

Xi Jinping has called food security a “guozhidazhe”, a national priority. He’s introduced new policies emphasising China’s need to grow more of its own crops on its limited arable land. But these new plans clash with other signature directives, including pulling farmers out of poverty—and that is causing resentment and confusion...

The South China Sea is full of treasure. Last year, Chinese researchers found two ships from the Ming Dynasty some 1,500 metres down: one loaded with porcelain, the other with timber. But, their discovery is not only of interest to scholars...

China is awash with nationalist education: every student from primary school to university must learn the leader’s political philosophy. Now, Xi Jinping wants to make patriotic education a law. 

The legislation, which was given its first hearing in June, spells out that parents “shall include love of the motherland in family education”. It also lists punishments for offences such as insulting the flag to questioning approved histories about Communist Party heroes...