Just two friends grabbing coffee and walking their robot dog on a rainy day in Shanghai. Strange feeling to see something you’d quickly swipe up on Douyin in real life

When I was in Taipei, I shared a room with two locals, a TPP supporter who disliked DPP for perceived corruption, the other a KMT supporter because of family history. It was humbling because of how little I knew of their perspectives having only relied on Western coverage of TW

Breaking: a group of current and former OpenAI employees is speaking out about what they say is a culture of recklessness and secrecy at the company. They are asking for a “right to warn” for employees of frontier AI labs.

“You should go to Inner Mongolia to plant trees,” said Shanghai native Yi Jiefang’s son two weeks before he died in a traffic accident in Japan in 2000, where they were living at the time. Two years later, Yi returned to China to fulfill her son‘s last wish. Since 2002, the

Fantastic to have such a knowledgeable former China journo in the UK Parliament. Would have been even better if the embarrassing conservative Alan Mak, the first ethnic Chinese MP, had not squeaked through with 92 votes (!)

Shed a tear - The ancient temple Narcissus Hall (水仙宫 Shuixiangong) stood in Shanghai old town at least since the year 1351. Now it is being demolished as Shanghai’s war on heritage continues. This is a tragedy of global heritage proportions facebook.com/share/p/LY1UQ7…

The Italian Fencing Federation criticised referee arrangements after Hong Kong fencer Edgar Cheung clinched a gold medal in the foil event at the Paris Olympics. And Pizza Hut Hong Kong offers free pineapple add-on for pizza🤣🤣🤣 The creativity and humour of hongkongers always

"It is both privilege and curse of the diaspora that they can treat their homeland as an academic abstraction and interrogate it without reservation."

Excellent profile. Favorite line is this parenthetical aside, which gave me more delight than it should have: "Since the nineteen-fifties, the People’s Republic has replaced standard Chinese characters with simplified versions, akin to writing “through” as “thru.”"

Great great news: JF Books, a famous bookstore shut in Shanghai in 2017, is going to open soon in Washington DC’s DuPont Circle, selling Chinese language books.📚

A great writeup couched sufficiently in caveats to make clear all the uncertainties re. AI safety in China. Still, it should bury once and for all idea that no such discussions are happening in China (the motivation for the Sixth Tone piece I wrote in Jan)sixthtone.com/news/1014469

Sullivan and Wang Yi confirm second round of China-U.S. dialogue on artificial intelligence, no further details given mp.weixin.qq.com/s/31iHfDg3Q6X9…

Thought there was a glitch in the matrix for a second - then realised its just two big Douglas Adams fans using the exact same sign off. More importantly, two great newsletters which will be missed Mark Scott Mathew Ingram

Shanghai outlet The Paper is doing a series called "Searching for Kissinger", interesting who they've picked to profile as possible candidates: John L Thornton John Kerry Stephen A. Schwarzman James Steinberg Jessica Chen Weiss Gavin Newsom Susan Thornton

Fascinating interview with Jeffrey Ding on why it's important to look at how countries use AI, not just who's ahead in innovating on it thewirechina.com/2024/09/01/jef… The Wire China Eliot Chen