People

Digital platforms help lesser-known cultural workers find their audience by reducing consumers' search costs, allowing products that struggle in traditional markets to enter at lower costs, thereby fostering a more diverse marketplace. However, as traffic becomes increasingly important, operations of digital platforms are becoming more biased. In China's digital arts and entertainment market, the platform's promotion and manipulation can dictate a creative work's success and may even hinder innovation.

Digital platforms help lesser-known cultural workers find their audience by reducing consumers' search costs, allowing products that struggle in traditional markets to enter at lower costs, thereby fostering a more diverse marketplace. However, as traffic becomes increasingly important, operations of digital platforms are becoming more biased. In China's digital arts and entertainment market, the platform's promotion and manipulation can dictate a creative work's success and may even hinder innovation.

This paper studies how social media affects the dynamics of protests and strikes in China during 2009–2017. Based on 13.2 billion microblog posts, we use tweets and retweets to measure social media communication across cities and exploit its rapid expansion for identification. We find that, despite strict government censorship, Chinese social media has a sizeable effect on the geographical spread of protests and strikes. Furthermore, social media communication considerably expands the scope of protests by spreading events across different causes (e.g., from anticorruption protests to environmental protests) and dramatically increases the probability of far‐reaching protest waves with simultaneous events occurring in many cities. These effects arise even though Chinese social media barely circulates content that explicitly helps organize protests.

With the rapidly changing economic structure nowadays, investing in higher education is no longer a guaranteed way to achieve high returns. This raises the question: is it still worth attending university? Due to the on-going economic restructuring in China, university graduates not only face difficulty in finding jobs, but a more unusual phenomenon is that the graduates with higher education qualifications encounter even more difficulties in securing employment. The author opined that it is because the education industry has expanded excessively in the past 20 years, coupled with uneven economic development and reduced social mobility, which has diminished educational returns. The widespread use of artificial intelligence technology brings greater uncertainty to future educational returns.

With the rapidly changing economic structure nowadays, investing in higher education is no longer a guaranteed way to achieve high returns. This raises the question: is it still worth attending university? Due to the on-going economic restructuring in China, university graduates not only face difficulty in finding jobs, but a more unusual phenomenon is that the graduates with higher education qualifications encounter even more difficulties in securing employment. The author opined that it is because the education industry has expanded excessively in the past 20 years, coupled with uneven economic development and reduced social mobility, which has diminished educational returns. The widespread use of artificial intelligence technology brings greater uncertainty to future educational returns.

One of the indicators of whether a city can be considered as an international metropolis is perhaps the English proficiency of its residents. According to the EF English Proficiency Index report in 2023, Hong Kong ranked fourth among 23 countries and regions in Asia. However, there are two examples of different attitudes towards English in developed areas of Asia.

One of the indicators of whether a city can be considered as an international metropolis is perhaps the English proficiency of its residents. According to the EF English Proficiency Index report in 2023, Hong Kong ranked fourth among 23 countries and regions in Asia. However, there are two examples of different attitudes towards English in developed areas of Asia.

The norm of ‘going north’ distresses local businesses. Yet, the author believes limited long-term impact on Hong Kong's economy. The development of local service industry actually is more correlated with the city's ability to grow its future economy and sustain long-term global competitiveness.

The norm of ‘going north’ distresses local businesses. Yet, the author believes limited long-term impact on Hong Kong's economy. The development of local service industry actually is more correlated with the city's ability to grow its future economy and sustain long-term global competitiveness.

去年2月，筆者在本專欄撰文，剖析新冠肺炎疫情之後出現的東滯西脹現象。一年半之後的今天，西脹回落，東滯猶在。本月9日，中國經濟運行的統計數據公布，7月份消費價格指數比去年同期下降0.3%，出現了自2021年2月以來的首次按年負增長；不僅如此，生產價格指數的按年跌幅為4.4%，延續6月的下降趨勢。