China’s trade surplus with US surges in Q1

China’s trade surplus with the United States surged by a fifth in the first three months of the year, rising  19.4 percent year-on-year to $58 billion in January-March, with exports up 14.8 percent and imports 8.9 percent higher. However, for March the surplus fell to $15.4 billion from February’s $21 billion, while it was also down…

Chinese shoppers spend record $25.3b in one day

Chinese shoppers spent a record $25 billion online on this year’s “Singles Day” promotion run by e-commerce giant Alibaba, up nearly 40 percent from last year, figures showed on Sunday. At the peak, 256,000 payments were being processed per second on Saturday, the firm said, more than 90 percent of them placed via mobile. The…

Chinese dissident Liu dies in custody

Liu Xiaobo, Chinese Nobel Peace Prize laureate and a prominent dissident since the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests, has died. He died on Thursday after being denied permission by the Chinese authorities to leave the country for treatment for late-stage liver cancer. Liu, 61, was jailed for 11 years in 2009 for “inciting subversion of…

Breastfeeding helps moms avoid heart attack, stroke

Breastfeeding is not only healthy for babies, it may also reduce a mother’s risk of having a heart attack or stroke later in life. This is the conclusion of a  new study of 300,000 Chinese women published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Heart Association.. According to Xinhua, the Chinese news agency, women  who breastfed…