Articles

My articles are available on the FT website here. (Registration is required, but it’s free.)

Tibet: Life on the Climate Front Line

Jiang Shenglan is hunting for caterpillar fungus, and it is not going well.

Sitting in a makeshift plastic tent in a high pass on the edge of the Tibetan plateau, the 46-year-old farmer gestures to her muddy trousers, evidence of the days she has spent crawling across mountain slopes, belly to the ground, peering into the grass. The caterpillar fungus she has been seeking is prized in Chinese medicine as an aphrodisiac and sometimes referred to as “Himalayan Viagra”. It’s nearly worth its weight in gold. . . (continue reading here)

China: High and Dry

Wang Fuguo, a 63-year-old cotton farmer, does not know when his ancestors began tilling the land in the dusty village of Weijie.

But he is fairly sure he will be the last of his family to do so. “They’ve all fled,” he says, looking out from his gate at the abandoned houses that line the village’s only street.

The reason is simple. “There’s just no water here,” he says. . . (continue reading here)

China’s post-90 generation make their mark

“We will sacrifice ourselves for the people of Shifang,” reads a bold scrawl on the side of a building in the southwestern Chinese town, captured in a picture posted on the Chinese microblogging site Weibo. “We are the post-90 generation.”

The small town of Shifang in Sichuan province is an unlikely place for a Chinese coming of age party. But an environmental protest, sparked by a plan to build a new copper plant, has revealed a potentially important shift in the country’s politics: youth were at the forefront of the three-day demonstration, exposing a new vein of activism in a generation seen by many as apathetic. (Continue reading here)

Central Asia: A rocky road to riches

The story of Mongolia’s mining boom begins billions of years ago, when magma from deep in the earth’s mantle forced its way close to the surface and deposited rich mineral veins across Central Asia. Today those resources are easy to spot. Driving through the Gobi desert, the pebbly plain is punctuated by small mounds of black coal that erupt from below. Further south, a turquoise-coloured rock outcrop called Oyu Tolgoi, or emerald hill, gave its name to one of the biggest copper-gold mines in the world. (Continue reading here)

Wang Jianlin; builder with a global view

As China’s richest shopping mall tycoon strides down the hall in a sharp pinstripe suite, it is hard to imagine him as a teenage soldier who didn’t have enough to eat.

But Wang Jianlin, the founder and chairman of real estate group Dalian Wanda, smiles as he describes the strategies he once used to stave off hunger. “In the early days we really had to scramble to eat,” he says, resting a hand on his silver-coloured tea mug. “The hardship then was unimaginable.” (Continue reading here)

Corporate China hit by unpaid bills

Chinese listed companies have reported a sharp rise in unpaid bills during the third quarter, in one of the clearest signs yet of the toll that China’s economic slowdown is taking on corporate balance sheets. (Continue reading here)