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How do you compete with Chinese e-commerce giants? A Vietnamese company is deploying housewives

By: Lam Le
9 May 2025 at 05:00
Vietnam’s e-commerce platform Sendo, once seen as a homegrown rival to deep-pocketed foreign competitors, shut down its core marketplace on April 15. While Sendo’s closure stemmed from the dominance of...

© Photography by Linh Pham for Rest of World

Nguyen Lan Huong, 30, receives groceries from a Sendo Farm motorbike delivery rider on May 3, 2025, in Hanoi, Vietnam. (Linh Pham for Rest of World)

The trade war is delaying the future of humanoid robot workers

8 May 2025 at 05:00
As viral clips of robots doing flips, kung-fu, and running a marathon rack up views online, U.S. and Chinese firms are locked in a more high-stakes race: deploying humanoid robots...

© Florence Lo/Reuters/Redux

An employee works on a desk near displays of humanoid robot parts, at the office of developer Ex-Robots in Dalian, Liaoning province, China June 6, 2024. REUTERS/Florence Lo

Chinese sellers and U.S. buyers prepare for the end of ultracheap shopping

23 April 2025 at 05:00
Phillip Dampier, in Rochester, New York, spends up to eight hours a day on Chinese shopping sites, and has already shelled out about $3,500 on electronics and home goods. He...

© Cooper Neill/The New York Times/Redux

FILE -- A shopper at a Shein pop-up store at The Shops at Willow Bend in Plano, Texas, Aug. 26, 2022. Two bipartisan bills were introduced in Congress this week seeking to change a nearly 100-year-old trade law that allows imported packages that fall under a certain price threshold to receive less oversight while moving through the United States customs process. Shein is one of the companies the bills would affect. (Cooper Neill/The New York Times)
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