https://www.scmp.com/rss/500398/feed en https://assets.i-scmp.com/static/img/icons/scmp-meta-1200x630.png https://www.scmp.com Twenty-five years ago, to get to school in the morning, Godfrey Molwana would walk more than 3km from his home in Witrandjie, a small village in South Africa. His route passed through communal grazing lands for cattle and goats – a rolling expanse of acacia trees and hardy shrubs, interspersed with the corn plots of subsistence farmers. Some families had graves on the land. “This area was for everyone,” Molwana recalled. Close to the village lay the remains of a chrome mine, with derelict... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3233679/how-illegal-mining-gangs-south-africa-feeding-chinas-demand-stainless-steel-scar-land?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3233679/how-illegal-mining-gangs-south-africa-feeding-chinas-demand-stainless-steel-scar-land?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 09 Sep 2023 10:15:19 +0000 At the former site of a Soviet-era sock factory in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, NordSec’s new headquarters is rising in a clatter of construction workers and scaffolding. Soon, the start-up’s roughly 2,000 employees will gather near the remains of a brick chimney for basketball and rooftop barbecues at a sleek complex that would not look out of place in San Francisco. When co-founders Tom Okman and Eimantas Sabaliauskas invested in the factory property four years ago, it was still making... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3221751/how-safe-your-vpn-nordvpn-expressvpn-rise-virtual-private-networks-and-whether-users-are-ever-truly?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3221751/how-safe-your-vpn-nordvpn-expressvpn-rise-virtual-private-networks-and-whether-users-are-ever-truly?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 26 May 2023 20:15:14 +0000 Ever since founding Beyond Meat in 2009 with the idea of making meat without animals, Ethan Brown has been giving the equivalent of one extremely long TED Talk. In 2013, he took the stage at the Wired Business Conference in New York, explaining that the world had a very real greenhouse gas-emitting meat problem and that venture capitalists could make a bigger impact investing in fake meat than in solar energy. At the annual Ideacity gathering three years later in Toronto in Canada, he said his... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3211076/beyond-meat-and-impossible-foods-were-supposed-end-global-meat-industry-what-happened?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3211076/beyond-meat-and-impossible-foods-were-supposed-end-global-meat-industry-what-happened?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 24 Feb 2023 20:15:12 +0000 Spectators at the United States’ Nascar Cup Series race in November last year had front-row seats for a debate over the auto industry’s future. A plane sponsored by non-profit group Public Citizen flew past Phoenix Raceway in Arizona carrying a banner that read: “Want exciting? Drive electric. Want boring? Drive Toyota.” The fly-by followed an open letter to Akio Toyoda, CEO of one of the world’s largest carmakers, from groups including Public Citizen criticising its slow roll-out of electric... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3210395/how-toyota-honda-and-nissan-ceded-electric-vehicle-market-tesla-byd-gm-and-volkswagen?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3210395/how-toyota-honda-and-nissan-ceded-electric-vehicle-market-tesla-byd-gm-and-volkswagen?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 18 Feb 2023 23:45:13 +0000 China’s housing affordability problem is so entrenched that the massive crackdown on the once-frothy real estate sector has made little difference for residents such as Qian, a teacher in the hi-tech centre of Shenzhen. For nine years, she has been sharing a two-room school dorm while saving to buy a flat in one of China’s most expensive cities. Although prices came down about 10 per cent after the recent market crash, her salary has been cut by 9 per cent. She still needs to save for a few more... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3209060/why-housing-china-so-unaffordable-and-how-beijings-attempts-fix-it-have-failed?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3209060/why-housing-china-so-unaffordable-and-how-beijings-attempts-fix-it-have-failed?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 05 Feb 2023 23:15:11 +0000 Britain has sanctioned Iran’s prosecutor general after the “barbaric regime” executed a dual British-Iranian national on spy charges. British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said the move “underlines our disgust” at the decision to put Alireza Akbari to death. Prosecutor general Mohammad Jafar Montazeri is at the “heart of Iran’s use of the death penalty”, the Cabinet minister added. It comes after Iranian state media on Saturday announced that Mr Akbari, a former Tehran defence official who... https://www.scmp.com/news/world/middle-east/article/3206859/britain-sanctions-iran-chief-prosecutor-following-execution-dual-national?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/news/world/middle-east/article/3206859/britain-sanctions-iran-chief-prosecutor-following-execution-dual-national?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 14 Jan 2023 18:44:42 +0000 Tangled coils of waterlogged clothes roll like carcasses in the waves along the coast of Ghana, one of the world’s biggest importers of used clothing. The cast-offs arriving by the bale are known here as obroni wawu, or dead white people’s clothes, a phrase in the local Twi language that seeks to assign a reason to the inexplicable flood of garments from overseas. Surely their owners wouldn’t choose to throw away so much clothing? At Chorkor beach, near the capital, Accra, layer upon layer of... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3201845/fast-fashion-recycling-problem-why-less-1pc-old-clothing-becomes-new-garments-and-countries-being?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3201845/fast-fashion-recycling-problem-why-less-1pc-old-clothing-becomes-new-garments-and-countries-being?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 03 Dec 2022 10:15:13 +0000 Pfizer emerged from the Covid-19 pandemic as the world’s most visible drug maker, but its success has left investors impatient for an encore. The windfall from the pharmaceutical giant’s Covid-19 vaccine almost doubled its revenue in just one year. And now the shot, coupled with Pfizer’s Covid antiviral pill, is poised to make up more than half of its expected US$100 billion of sales in 2022. That’s left Pfizer flush with cash – US$28 billion it could spend on the kinds of deals that fuelled its... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3198422/pfizer-whats-next-covid-19-vaccine-maker-and-its-us28-billion-war-chest?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3198422/pfizer-whats-next-covid-19-vaccine-maker-and-its-us28-billion-war-chest?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 05 Nov 2022 11:45:08 +0000 China’s 2,129km (1,323-mile) border with Myanmar traverses some of the most rugged landscapes in Asia. Mountains rise as high as 5,800 metres (19,000 feet) above sea level, fast-running rivers flow between steep cliffs, and dense forests shelter giant hornbills, snub-nosed monkeys, and elephants. The region has never been an economic development priority for either country, and it has few roads and even fewer large settlements. Ruili, a city in Yunnan province of a little more than a quarter of... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3196750/life-turned-upside-down-ruili-china-worlds-strictest-zero-covid-city?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3196750/life-turned-upside-down-ruili-china-worlds-strictest-zero-covid-city?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 23 Oct 2022 03:15:10 +0000 Under the pale light of a laboratory flow hood, clad in a cleanroom suit, hat and booties, Sarah Neumann gingerly unfolds an aluminium foil packet. An iris-like pattern in dark brown powder reveals itself on the surface inside. It is a fingerprint of sorts: separate a mushroom cap from its stem and wrap it, gills down, in foil overnight, and the next morning you get this. For mycologists collecting samples from the wild, spore prints such as these are aids to identification. For Neumann, whose... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3194248/magic-mushroom-pill-business-goes-overdrive?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3194248/magic-mushroom-pill-business-goes-overdrive?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 30 Sep 2022 11:15:07 +0000 Starting in the early 2010s, getting an invitation to Yuri Milner’s chateau in Los Altos, California, meant you’d made it into Silicon Valley’s most exclusive of exclusive circles. Milner is known for placing what proved to be extremely lucrative bets on Airbnb, Alibaba, Twitter, Facebook and other start-ups – and for being a prolific patron of the sciences. He was friendly with the late Stephen Hawking and is known to socialise with Mark Zuckerberg and actor Edward Norton. When Milner hosted a... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3173616/russian-billionaire-facebook-twitter-and-spacex?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3173616/russian-billionaire-facebook-twitter-and-spacex?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 08 Apr 2022 11:18:13 +0000 Inside a Kansas City courtroom, Peter Zeidenberg is growing frustrated. The wiry, grey-haired American lawyer isn’t making much headway persuading a judge to throw out evidence obtained as a result of what he calls misconduct by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. His client, Franklin Tao, a former University of Kansas chemical engineering professor facing 20 years in prison, is furiously scribbling notes and passing them to his defence team. “They were looking for a spy, looking for evidence... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3164050/how-us-scheme-catch-chinese-spies-american?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3164050/how-us-scheme-catch-chinese-spies-american?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 21 Jan 2022 22:15:20 +0000 Sunny Peninsula, a seaside development in Guangzhou, Guangdong province, southern China, was supposed to house 5,000 families in dozens of towers spread across an area the size of 30 football pitches. Many of the buyers were white-collar workers benefiting from the fastest urbanisation in human history. But the project now looks more like the set of a disaster movie. Half-finished residential blocks stand empty and abandoned. Untouched for months in the humid summer weather, piles of steel bars... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3152304/what-chinas-evergrande-crisis-means-its-real?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3152304/what-chinas-evergrande-crisis-means-its-real?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 16 Oct 2021 03:15:10 +0000 Silicon Valley executives sometimes seem to believe they are proprietors of a post-racial paradise. The industry’s corporate campuses abound with immigrants, its investors say they like to bet on underdogs and its biggest companies preach the gospel of workplace inclusivity. “Diversity is a foundational value for us,” Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google’s parent company Alphabet, said last year. “We probably have more resources invested in diversity now than at any point in our history as a... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3148117/how-racism-silicon-valley-stops-many-asian?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3148117/how-racism-silicon-valley-stops-many-asian?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 10 Sep 2021 21:15:10 +0000 Huang Jiaxue, a business­man in Wenzhou, in eastern China, was thrilled when he got his Tesla Model 3 late last year. The car was good-looking, environmentally friendly and even domestically built, having rolled off the line at California-based Tesla’s vast factory in Shanghai. But in May he sold it, recouping only about 75 per cent of the 249,900 yuan (US$38,530) he paid. “It’s out of safety concerns,” Huang said, citing reports on Chinese social media, vigorously disputed by Tesla, of the... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3141948/teslas-fall-grace-china-shows-even-elon-musks?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3141948/teslas-fall-grace-china-shows-even-elon-musks?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 23 Jul 2021 21:15:13 +0000 Ever since President Xi Jinping pitched the idea of a “global energy internet” to the United Nations six years ago, China has been trying to persuade the world to build the high-voltage highways that would form its backbone. That plan to wrap the planet in a web of intercontinental, made-in-Beijing power lines has gone pretty much nowhere. Yet the fortunes of so-called supergrids appear to be turning, if not on quite the spectacular, Bond-villain scale Xi first envisaged. China has both a... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3139462/chinas-global-energy-internet-plan-growing-power?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3139462/chinas-global-energy-internet-plan-growing-power?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 02 Jul 2021 21:15:09 +0000 Most nights, from around seven till midnight, Sydney Jade is on TikTok, the smartphone app of the moment. The platinum blond teenager films herself singing show tunes, doing jumping jacks and joking around with store clerks at a Walmart not far from her home in Oklahoma, in the United States. Her short music videos and live streams are popular – Jade has 284,000 followers, some of whom periodically send her virtual gifts, such as 99 US cent (HK$7.80) puking-rainbow stickers. Jade’s parents... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3008664/how-chinese-video-app-tiktok-conquered-world?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3008664/how-chinese-video-app-tiktok-conquered-world?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 05 May 2019 03:15:09 +0000 Two hours before the concert was scheduled to begin in Shanghai’s Xuhui district, young women were already lined up outside a coffee shop under a pink neon sign that read, “Please don’t tell my Mom.” One wore a hooded sweatshirt bearing the name and face of the night’s performer, the Danish pop star Christopher Nissen. Others were dressed, for unclear reasons, like Harry Potter and his classmates. Most wore all black, as the invitation instructed. When the doors opened, around 7pm, on a Monday... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3003591/danish-justin-bieber-christopher-nissen-seeks?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3003591/danish-justin-bieber-christopher-nissen-seeks?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 28 Mar 2019 22:00:09 +0000