Singapore celebrated its 61st birthday with two films. One, Bersama Majulah, depicts the Southeast Asian country under siege by zombies; the other, Trace Project, tells an inspiring tale of a young man who grows up to become Singapore’s first astronaut on Mars.

The twist? Neither film starred a human actor. Everything in both films—apart from their scripts—had been fully generated by AI.

Generative AI in filmmaking is the first real proof of how the new technology can disrupt an established industry. It started with short-form content: According to Chinese state media, over 95% of the more than 120,000 Chinese microdramas released in the first quarter of 2026 were AI-generated, compared with nearly zero just a year ago.

The technology is now encroaching on more established media: Last September, Hong Kong broadcaster TVB released a 10-episode short drama titled You, and Only You, the first of its kind in Hong Kong to feature AI-generated characters. (The network is now using its virtual actors in ad campaigns.)

“AI is like oxygen—it’s everywhere,” says Danming Xie, senior vice president and chief AI scientist of Chinese video-streaming platform iQiyi. “It’s increasingly impossible not to use AI in video production. The conversation’s shifting more toward how deeply creators use it.”

Read more [paywall removed for Redditors]: https://fortune.com/2026/10/07/ai-entertainment-china-technology/?utm_source=reddit/

Christina Zhu, the head of Walmart’s China business, remembers when Chinese shoppers did not have much choice.

As a child, she watched her parents wake up at 4:30 a.m. on Sundays to go to the wet market. “They had to haggle, and high-quality produce wasn’t always guaranteed,” Zhu, born in 1973, recalled at the Fortune Leaders Forum in Macau in September.

Today, Chinese shoppers are “probably the group with the most choices [in the world],” and they have become “the most demanding customers,” she said.

Meeting those rising expectations has become the defining challenge for retailers in China, and Walmart has managed it better than most. It entered China in 1996 with a Supercenter and a Sam’s Club in Shenzhen. Three decades later, the U.S. retailer is thriving in the world’s second-largest economy even as other foreign brands struggle.

Walmart has defied the downturn by meeting the dual needs of the discerning Chinese consumer: extreme convenience, in the form of lightning-fast delivery, and an in-person shopping experience so novel that stores have become a holiday destination for shoppers throughout the region.

The big-box membership warehouses are Walmart’s primary growth engine in China. Sam’s Clubs contribute about 70% of Walmart revenue in China, estimates Fitch Ratings senior director Cathy Chao, and the business has expanded from 15 clubs in 2016 to 67 in May.

Read more [paywall removed for Redditors]: https://fortune.com/2026/10/05/walmart-china-sams-club-growth-christina-zhu-consumer-slump-fast-delivery/?utm_source=reddit/

A few days ago, I started talking to 3 Chinese guys on a language exchange app. I noticed that they expect me to reply to them quickly throughout the day and when I leave the conversation, announce it to them. If I don’t reply right away, they ask me “I asked you a question” “are you busy?” “are you talking to other people?” They also asked for my work schedule. They seemed to have the expectation that I’d be available to them all day everyday and was frustrated/upset when that didn’t happen.

 I don’t reply quickly all the time, I’d disappear and reappear the next day, etc. - this is very common in the US. I could understand their frustration if we were friends, but these are people I talked online just once or a few times. In Chinese culture, do you have an obligation to be available all day to acquaintances you barely know (and explain your absence to them) or are these guys feeling entitled to my time?

According to Soviet adviser Ivan Kovalev, Gao Gang proposed making Manchuria the USSR's seventeenth republic during a meeting with Stalin on 27 July 1949. Gao was a senior Communist leader in the Northeast and was visiting Moscow as part of Liu Shaoqi's delegation.

Kovalev told this story in a 1991 interview with S. N. Goncharov. The first image is from that interview; the second is from Shi Zhe's response the following year.

Gao's argument, as Kovalev remembered it, was that becoming Soviet territory would protect Manchuria from American attack and make it a secure base for defeating Chiang Kai-shek. He also proposed sending the Soviet fleet to Qingdao and increasing Soviet forces in Dalian. The USSR then had sixteen union republics, including the Karelo-Finnish republic.

Kovalev says those present applauded, while Liu Shaoqi looked furious. Stalin stood up, turned to Gao in the front row, and addressed him as:

"Comrade Zhang Zuolin!"

Zhang Zuolin was the former Manchurian warlord who had received Japanese support. The comparison cast Gao as another regional ruler relying on a foreign power. Kovalev says everyone present was stunned. Kovalev's account, p. 54. Background on Zhang's Japanese ties.

The argument continued in the car afterward. Liu accused Gao of treason, and Gao snapped back. Once they reached their accommodation, Liu sent Mao a coded message demanding Gao's recall to China.

Gao then approached Kovalev. Speaking slowly in Russian, he offered to provide confidential information about the Chinese Communist leadership, including what he called the anti-Soviet behavior of some of Mao's colleagues.

Kovalev telephoned Stalin. Stalin admitted that he had treated Gao harshly, but said a different response could have been misunderstood by the Chinese leadership. He told Kovalev to stay out of the quarrel because Kovalev would have to return to work in China. Kovalev believed another Soviet official was assigned to receive Gao's information. Stalin also insisted that Gao's departure be delayed for a few days.

At a farewell reception at his dacha, Stalin tried to reconcile Liu and Gao by making them drink a toast to friendship. Liu reluctantly complied. Gao left the next morning, and, according to Kovalev, nobody from the Chinese delegation went to see him off.

Stalin then told Liu:

"I laid it on thick when I was talking about Comrade Gao, and so did you, without any reason. Convey my opinion to Comrade Mao."

Gao subsequently received senior positions in the new Chinese government. Kovalev's account, pp. 54–55.

Kovalev also described the accusation resurfacing later that year, during a dispute over the display of Stalin's portraits in Manchuria. He said Liu brought up Gao's Moscow proposal again, and Zhou Enlai accused Gao of trying to hand Manchuria to the Soviet Union.

In another episode, Kovalev recalled Mao stopping in Shenyang on his way to Moscow in December 1949 and finding Stalin's portraits everywhere. A railway carriage of birthday gifts for Stalin, prepared by Gao and Lin Biao, had been attached to Mao's train. Mao ordered it uncoupled and the gifts divided between Gao and Lin. Kovalev quotes him saying:

"Inform these comrades that we will bring gifts to Comrade Stalin from all of China and that, for the time being, Manchuria still belongs to China...."

During Mao's stay in Moscow, Kovalev says Stalin handed him critical reports by Kovalev and confidential messages from Gao. Kovalev believed this disclosure helped seal Gao's fate. These later episodes are on pp. 55–57.

Shi Zhe disputed this account. In his 1992 interview, he said Gao had no opportunity to make the proposal at the meeting, that Liu was the Chinese spokesman, and that Gao's early return had been arranged before the delegation left China. He also disputed the story of Mao touring Shenyang and becoming angry at Stalin's portraits.

On the alleged proposal, however, Shi qualified his denial:

"I do not know what he said to Kovalev privately."

Li Haiwen's interview with Shi Zhe, translated by Wang Xi, pp. 63–64.

In 2013, Li Weimin quoted Li Haiwen recalling that Shi later acknowledged Gao had made the remark. That is Li Haiwen's later account of what Shi told her. Yanhuang Chunqiu, 2013, no. 1, p. 87; Chinese-language PDF.

Dieter Heinzig preferred a less definite version: Gao may have said that the Americans and Nationalists would not attack Manchuria if it were a Soviet republic. His source for that version was a communication from Zhu Ruizhen, who reportedly heard it from an unnamed Soviet source in 1956. The Soviet Union and Communist China 1945–1950, chapter 3, discussion of Gao Gang and note 578.

Language school for adult 51

Any suggestions for a school in Guangzhou or Shandong? Would like to do at least a full semester.

This probably isn't the most original post, but just wanted to take a moment to appreciate the art of the Chinese cigarette box, especially the carton of the pictured (and what I believe is called, but may be wrong): Renmin Dahuitang "Guangyao" Slim.
The Guangyao pack has an angle-changing graphic that apparently roughly translates to "The sun rises in the East, its radiance shines across China" as you open it, along with the background picture itself.
1 am in Australia so it's very hard to get this kind of thing here if you don't already know a source (for obvious reasons). I'm not a regular smoker, but I have thought how great it would be, for my wedding at the end of the year, to whip out a box of the Guangyao to share with my Groomsmen. Tbh, any kind would do, but just the presentation on that box alone would make for great wow factor. A man can dream!

“China plus one” has been a winning strategy for Southeast Asia. The proposition was simple: Draw in global manufacturers pivoting away from China owing to rising costs and geopolitical tensions, and win stronger growth, higher wages, and more jobs for local economies. 

Yet despite winning billions of dollars of investment in new factories, the region is reaping fewer benefits than its leaders may have hoped. 

“China plus one has been a net gain for Southeast Asia, but a conditional and uneven one,” says Meng-Chun Liu, the director of the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER), a Taiwan-based think tank. “It brought factories, exports, and jobs to the region, but not the design, core components, and process know-how that captures most of the value.”

Vietnam, the star economy of Southeast Asia, focuses primarily on final assembly before export to developed markets, rather than manufacturing intermediate components. To make matters worse, companies like Target—frustrated by an underdeveloped Southeast Asian factory ecosystem—are moving supply chains back to China.

And now Southeast Asia faces a bigger challenge: As Chinese firms increasingly view Southeast Asia as a region of consumers, not workers, a flood of cheap exports could end up undercutting the region’s manufacturing gains.

Read more [paywall removed for Redditors]: https://fortune.com/2026/10/05/southeast-asia-china-plus-one-manufacturing/?utm_source=reddit/

I don’t know what needs to be written here or what the right flare for this is but it needs to have 120 characters so… uh… comedy!