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A Chinese influencer monetised viral seductive tutorials into a profitable “sex‑IQ” education business that reportedly earned over 24 million yuan through tiered online and offline courses before her verified account was banned. The episode highlights how the knowledge‑payment market monetises intimate anxieties, blurring lines between empowerment and exploitation and posing fresh challenges for platforms and regulators.

China’s Generation Z is transforming Lunar New Year consumption from bulk, family‑oriented shopping into personalised, social and digital rituals. Micro‑paid digital items, pet‑focused gifts, experience tourism and DIY gold‑making exemplify a broader shift toward emotional and social value over material abundance.

China’s KTV chains are investing heavily in AI to revive a flagging industry: real-time scoring, AI coaching and synthetic music videos aim to attract younger customers and cut costs. The result is a commercial uptick driven by gamified rewards, but also a cultural clash as cold metrics and monetised fixes collide with the convivial, emotional core of karaoke.

The U.S. is buying a roughly 10% stake in USA Rare Earth for $1.6 billion to hasten domestic rare-earth mining and processing and reduce dependence on China. While the investment is sizeable and politically significant, technical, environmental and resource-quality challenges mean breaking China’s dominance will be a slow and uncertain process.

A forged corporate seal and a multi‑layered interbank channel enabled the disappearance of Rmb3.5bn in a loan scheme that implicated multiple banks and asset managers. Criminal convictions followed, but a Supreme People’s Court ruling that the deposit was part of an illegal collusion left the originating bank to absorb the loss and restart litigation against several counterparties seeking partial recovery.

Flight-tracking data show a sharp rise in cancellations on China–Japan routes: 49 routes have no scheduled February flights and January cancellations hit 47.2 percent, up nearly eight points from December. Airlines have extended free refunds through March 28 as they contend with volatile demand and operational uncertainty, a development that could dent Japan’s inbound tourism recovery.

Shuibei jewellery sellers and livestream channels have popularized 1kg copper bars as a quasi-investment, creating a gap between retail prices and industrial valuations. The craze has exposed severe liquidity problems for sellers and buyers alike, with many investors forced to accept scrap-copper prices on resale and regulators moving to tighten market practices.

Gold surged past $5,000 an ounce on January 26 amid expectations of prolonged Fed easing, a weakening dollar and renewed safe‑haven demand from both central banks and retail investors. Central‑bank purchases, sizable ETF inflows and geopolitical jitters have combined to lift prices, but analysts warn of elevated short‑term volatility and key risks tied to future Fed policy and the pace of official buying.

President Trump announced a unilateral increase in tariffs on South Korean cars, lumber and pharmaceuticals from 15% to 25%, citing Seoul’s failure to ratify a bilateral trade deal, while U.S. markets rose as investors focused on tech earnings and Microsoft’s unveiling of its Maia 200 AI chip. The tariff move risks straining a strategic alliance and creating supply‑chain uncertainty even as competition among cloud providers intensifies over in‑house AI hardware.

China’s KTV chains are deploying AI scoring, coaching and synthetic music videos to revive a shrinking industry, with major investments from leading operators. The technology attracts customers with gamified rewards and cost-saving AI MVs, but it also provokes backlash over cold, intrusive judging, diminished emotional experience and ways for users to game the system.

A viral claim that the US is inflating gold prices to convert bullion into cash to pay down national debt is misleading. US debt management relies on rollovers, tax revenues, Fed liquidity and the dollar's reserve status, while gold holdings serve as strategic backing for the currency rather than a ready source of debt repayment.

A surge in precious-metal prices has attracted a wave of young Chinese investors buying physical gold and silver, ETFs and derivatives. Their enthusiasm is driven by portfolio diversification, central-bank buying and social-media-fuelled FOMO, but the rush underscores behavioural risks and the need for investor education amid broader macro shifts.

Tencent’s recent 1 billion yuan Spring Festival giveaway has escalated a familiar marketing ritual into a proxy arena for China’s AI race. Big tech firms are shifting from model-centric competition to full-stack battles that combine massive capital expenditure, distributional advantage and ecosystem playbooks, with 2026 poised as a potential inflection point for AI monetisation.

Moutai’s Horse-year zodiac release cooled quickly as the company deliberately tightened distribution and pricing, shrinking speculative premiums and redirecting the series toward consumption and collecting. The dual-version product design and timed releases aim to broaden access while protecting scarcity, but channel delays and cautious sentiment mean short-term risks remain.

A Nanjing-based network of retired university student soldiers, the Jinling Vanguard, is running volunteer teaching programmes in Jiangxi’s mountain schools, combining military-style management with classroom instruction and patriotic education. Since 2021 the initiative has mobilised thousands of veterans, raised funds and books, built cloud classrooms, and been incorporated into broader municipal and national efforts to integrate veterans into civic life and sustain revolutionary memory.

Sergeant Lei Yaoming, a 23-year veteran stationed in Xinjiang, has become a multi-skilled technical leader in PLA construction units by combining on-the-job learning, innovation and frontline courage. His career underlines the PLA’s reliance on experienced non-commissioned officers to adapt new equipment, solve maintenance challenges in remote areas and train junior technicians as the force modernises.

Soldiers from an Eastern Theatre Command rocket-artillery battalion have spent over a year living and training away from their garrison in improvised sites while operating new long-range containerised rocket systems. Their experience illustrates the PLA’s shift toward dispersed, mobile operations, with implications for logistics, personnel endurance and regional deterrence dynamics.

Hezbollah held a large rally in Beirut on January 26 to publicly back Iran and warn that it would not remain neutral if Israel or the United States launched military action against Tehran. The demonstration underlines Hezbollah's role as both a domestic political force and a regional military actor, increasing the risk that any confrontation with Iran could spill across the Levant.

A surge in demand for AI‑related storage is driving rapid price rises across DRAM and NAND, with suppliers shifting to flexible, quarterly pricing and prioritising high‑margin AI products. Limited capacity growth — because investment is being spent on process upgrades rather than volume expansion — means the shortage looks structural and could persist through 2026–27, benefiting memory vendors but squeezing OEMs and raising the cost of scaling AI services.

Anta has agreed to buy a 29.06% stake in Puma SE for €1.505 billion, a near-30% holding that confers large minority influence while remaining below Germany’s 30% mandatory-offer threshold. The purchase advances Anta’s global expansion strategy and creates scope for commercial cooperation across product, retail and markets, but also invites governance and regulatory scrutiny.