ShanghaiVerve

@ZeyiYang @WIRED A friendly suggestion: could you take off the red frame on authors’ name? In China the frames are for dead authors…

To read more about the trend and interact with our data, you can go to this page. It's part of @WIRED's January magazine issue all about China. wired.com/story/chinese-…

NEW: I tracked all the Chinese lithium battery factories announced or built in the past decade 𝗼𝘂𝘁𝘀𝗶𝗱𝗲 China's borders. The truth is, companies like CATL and BYD are so technologically advanced that there's little international competition. As batteries receive global spotlight for their roles in EVs and renewable energy storage, European and Asian countries are welcoming these factories with open arms. Last June, @EmmanuelMacron was in a Chinese battery factory in France praising the investment. This week he doubled down in Davos and said China is welcome to invest in Europe if it can “contribute to our growth, to transfer some technologies, and not just to export towards Europe.” With help from @Armd_meyer at the @rhodium_group, I mapped 68 factories in the world that are either set up by a Chinese company, by a joint venture with Chinese stakes, or by licensing the crucial manufacturing technologies from a Chinese battery maker. I also looked at what the batteries' end uses are, how big the production capacity will be, and whether they are up-and-running. I'm really proud of the visualizations we have in the end, showing both the big picture of battery manufacturing activities globally but also the regional nuances. Aside from the impact of these batteries, the trend also poses some difficult questions: if "Made in China" still means cheap gadgets put together in a Shenzhen factory, what should we call the cutting-edge battery manufacturing facilities that Chinese companies are building across the world? And how would people react to the Chinese factories popping up in their neighborhood?

‘If you fancy Sylus from the game @Love_Deepspace, for example, you can buy a mini Sylus cotton baby and raise it as your child. There is a popular saying about such virtual families: Mum is a bunch of cells, Dad is a string of data and the child is a ball of cotton.’

“while capitalists would rather throw away their goods than give them to workers, we workers would rather be idle than give our labour to capitalists.” lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/…

10 billion yuan and climbing

‘According to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the web-novel market in China was worth 40 billion RMB in 2023 and has 24 million writers, 36 million works and more than half a billion readers.’ Yun Sheng on ‘boys’ love’ fanfiction in China: lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/…

‘BL isn’t really about homosexuality (few gay men read it). It's an escape for women. With two men as protagonists, everything is possible and no reader feels offended.’ Yun Sheng on ‘boys’ love’ fan fiction in China: lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/…

‘A generation of schoolgirls are growing up reading BL, just as we read the romance novels of Chiung Yao in the 1980s.’ Yun Sheng on the boom in ‘boys’ love’ fan fiction in China: lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/…

‘Infatuation with animated characters is common for “otakus” – they rarely have the guts to talk to real girls, or if they have, they either failed, or worse, been humiliated.’ Yun Sheng on the rise of virtual relationships. granta.com/paper-people

Yun Sheng on Otome games and ACGN culture, Paper People: granta.com/paper-people/

Three years after the success of "Myth of Love," writer and film director Shao Yihui's new film, "Her Story" will open in cinemas across China on November 22. Shao and the film's cast attended special screenings over the weekend at the Shanghai Film Art Center and the Shanghai Center Theater. #ShanghaiEye爱上海