Tea Leaf Nation

With all the furor over Bo Xilai, his family and the suspicious death of Neil Heywood, Tea Leaf Nation brings you a look back at the political calculations that lay behind Bo’s controversial reign in Chongqing and his daring gambit in the form of the “Smash Black – Sing Red” campaign that was to pave [...]

Audis signify a “whiff of corruption”; Buicks, luxury and respectability; BMWs, callous wealth; and in the wake of rumors surrounding a fiery car crash during Bo Xilai’s national downfall, the pitch-black Ferrari is now associated with larger-than-life international political intrigue. The one motif to tie all these car brands together? The graft and arrogance of [...]

Just give up. That’s the message Shaanxi province’s Zhaocun village is apparently sending its children, after government officials there kicked Yifu Elementary School students out of their newly-built school grounds to make way for an authorized car dealership (called 4S car shops in China). In mid-May 2010, approximately 80 students began studying at the newly-built [...]

Listen closely; that’s the sound of wings flapping. China’s migratory birds are in full flight. A recent survey found that over half of Chinese millionaires are either emigrating or thinking of doing so. Netizens of Sina Weibo, China’s Twitter, may not be able to afford that visa application and plane ticket, but they can afford [...]

This is a popular tweet from Mr. Ren Zhiqiang, a real estate tycoon. See Tea Leaf Nation’s previous coverage of Mr. Ren here. As of end of Jan. 10, there were almost 40,000 retweets and 7,000 comments.     NDRC: Excluding taxes, China’s oil prices are lower than America’s. [Ed: NDRC is the most powerful [...]

China’s Red Cross is in trouble. It began in June of last year, when a 20-year-old girl named Guo Meimei, claiming to be an employee of an arm of the Chinese Red Cross, posted pictures of herself on Weibo, China’s Twitter. The images showed Guo driving a Maserati, posing against a wall of Hermes bags, [...]