3. President Xi Jinping traveled to Russia to satisfy with Vladimir Putin this week. The economic relationship between the 2 countries has weakened lately. (Wall Street Journal $)

4. A 12 months after the China Eastern Airlines crash that killed 132 people, the Chinese government still doesn’t have a conclusion about what went mistaken. (Associated Press)

5. Jiang Yanyong, the Chinese doctor who exposed the cover-up of the SARS outbreak in 2003, died on the age of 91. (NPR)

6. Someone keeps cutting the undersea cables connecting a Taiwanese archipelago to the web. Taiwanese authorities blame accidental damage from Chinese ships. (Vice)

7. Guo Wengui, a controversial Chinese billionaire with close ties to Steve Bannon, was arrested in Latest York on Wednesday for a $1 billion fraud scheme. (NBC News)

• “The Latest Federal State of China,” an entity Guo and Bannon launched in 2020, greatly exaggerated its role in helping to rescue Ukrainian refugees in 2022 and used it for political promotion. (Mother Jones)

Lost in translation

In the course of the first two years of the pandemic, Chinese insurance firms popularized “covid insurance”—people pays a one-time premium of a couple of bucks and get 1000’s of dollars back in the event that they catch covid. But as journalist Yu Meng wrote within the Chinese publication Connecting, it may possibly be extremely hard to get that payout. 

Yu bought covid insurance originally of 2022 and tested positive on an at-home antigen test in December, during a national wave of infections after China loosened its pandemic control measures. The insurance company gave her a number to call, but nobody answered. Yu reports there are not less than 60,000 more individuals who filed a claim with the identical company. Some called dozens of times a day, and a few sued the corporate. Some filed complaints with China’s insurance regulator. But only a few people actually got paid ultimately. 

At one point when she finally managed to achieve the corporate, a customer representative told Yu: “Do you already know what number of claims we now have? You’re thinking that the people above me haven’t calculated the prices? In fact, they did. It might reach billions and can cause the corporate to go bankrupt. Do you think that the state will allow a state-owned company to go bankrupt? Are you able to imagine that?” In the long run, Yu, who had expected to get 20,000 RMB ($2,900), accepted 5000 RMB. Her parents, who bought the identical insurance, gave up on getting any a reimbursement.

Another thing

Even kids can’t escape the AI craze now. Recently, the local government in China’s eastern province Zhejiang announced it could incorporate more artificial-intelligence education into the grade school and middle school curricula. How intense the teachings will likely be continues to be unclear, but I’m wondering: will we come full circle and see Chinese kids using Ernie Bot to do their homework on Ernie Bot?