Chinese Temu sellers use fake U.S. postage labels to boost their profits

11 February 2025 at 06:00

Some Chinese Temu merchants are padding their profits by using counterfeit postage labels to trick the U.S. Postal Service into delivering packages for free. Posts on Chinese social media openly...

"High postage costs eat into the razor thin margins of small e-commerce shippers.

U.S. tariffs on China can’t slow the impact of Chinese imports worldwide

Rest of World

By: Rina Chandran

6 February 2025 at 08:44

When do the U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods go into effect? The Donald Trump administration imposed new tariffs on China this week, with an additional 10% levy on all Chinese...

Is Google Maps fatally misleading drivers in India? It’s complicated

Rest of World

By: Ananya Bhattacharya

5 February 2025 at 06:00

Earlier this week, an Indian politician urged the country’s Parliament to support homegrown alternatives to Google Maps — blaming the popular navigation app for fatal accidents. Incidents due to Google...

GPS maps in India can fail to account for the realities of the roads.

DeepSeek’s rise shows why China’s top AI talent is skipping Silicon Valley

Rest of World

By: Viola Zhou

5 February 2025 at 06:00

At the end of his internship at Nvidia in 2023, Zizheng Pan, a young artificial-intelligence researcher from China, faced a pivotal decision: stay in Silicon Valley with the world’s leading...

Engineers at DeepSeek have built a generative AI model for far less than competitors.

Indonesia, home to the world’s largest nickel reserves, struggles to achieve its EV dreams

Rest of World

By: Michelle Anindya

3 February 2025 at 06:00

Karawang county, located about 90 minutes by road from Jakarta, has been a major automotive hub in Indonesia for decades, housing factories of companies like Yamaha and Toyota. Last July,...

Brazil’s push for comprehensive AI regulation

Rest of World

By: Rest of World Staff

31 January 2025 at 06:00

This report is adapted from Rest of World’s recent feature “The global struggle over how to regulate AI,” written by Katie McQue, Laís Martins, Ananya Bhattacharya, and Carien du Plessis. ...

The statue of Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Non-Western founders say DeepSeek is proof that innovation need not cost billions of dollars

Rest of World

By: Ananya Bhattacharya

30 January 2025 at 10:15

During a trip to India in 2023, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman sparked controversy when he said it was “hopeless” for a young team with less than $10 million to compete...

DeepSeek has been celebrated by some outside of Silicon Valley as an affordable alternative to ChatGPT

Meet Eva, the AI chatbot based on a woman in prison

Rest of World

By: Santi Carneri

30 January 2025 at 06:00

María Fretes, a Paraguayan social worker, had long wondered about the lives of imprisoned women in the country. Then, one day in November, many of her questions were answered by...

India’s open arms approach to AI

Rest of World

By: Rest of World Staff

29 January 2025 at 06:00

This report is adapted from Rest of World’s recent feature “The global struggle over how to regulate AI,” written by Katie McQue, Laís Martins, Ananya Bhattacharya, and Carien du Plessis. ...

Supporters of Bharatiya Janata party cheer during a felicitation program organised for Gujarat State Chief Minister Bhupendrabhai Patel (not pictured) in Ahmedabad on December 8, 2022. - Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's party won by a crushing landslide in his home state, election results showed December 8, in a strong performance ahead of a national vote due in 2024.

Filipino tech workers demand protections in AI bill after Rest of World report

Rest of World

By: Michael Beltran

28 January 2025 at 06:00

Filipino digital workers launched a coalition to lobby for labor and free speech protections in the workplace as artificial intelligence is deployed. The AI tools raise new risks, and the...

Members of Code AI held a briefing on January 25, 2025 in Quezon City, Philippines.

Vietnam’s unlikely innovator: a military-run postal service

Rest of World

By: Lam Le

27 January 2025 at 06:00

On Christmas Eve in 2024, a warehouse in suburban Hanoi kept pace with the festive season frenzy. Thousands of packages intended for Shopee and TikTok Shop customers were off-loaded, sorted,...

“TikTok refugees” drove a global Xiaohongshu boom

Rest of World

By: Khadija Alam

24 January 2025 at 06:00

Ahead of the short-lived U.S. TikTok ban on January 19, so-called TikTok refugees flocked to popular Chinese social media app Xiaohongshu. In the U.S., the app was number one on...

The secret sauce of Chinese social media apps

Rest of World

By: Tiffany Ap and Kinling Lo

24 January 2025 at 06:00

In the days leading up to the January 19 deadline for TikTok, users in the U.S. scrambled to find alternatives. But instead of YouTube, X, or Instagram, the so-called TikTok...

Chinese owned apps that specialize in social commerce like Lemon8, Xiaohongshu and TikTok have dominated American attention.

The winners of Rest of World’s photography contest

Rest of World

By: Munira Mutaher

23 January 2025 at 06:00

Like last year, the majority of the entries in our 2024 photography contest captured on-the-ground realities of how technology is transforming lives in every corner of the world. We received...

Why Amazon is struggling to crack Argentina

Rest of World

By: David Feliba

23 January 2025 at 06:00

A few weeks before Christmas, Amalia Bulacios found the perfect gift for her daughter. The Disney Princess backpack she wanted was around $40 on Amazon — a fourth of what...

An automated bar code reader scans packages prepared for shipping at an Amazon Fulfillment center on Cyber Monday in Robbinsville, New Jersey, US, on Monday, Dec. 2, 2024. Over the past weekend, US buyers spent a record $10.9 billion online, according to data from Adobe, and the company expects consumers to splurge another $13.2 billion on Cyber Monday.

The global struggle over how to regulate AI

Rest of World

By: Katie McQue · Laís Martins · Ananya Bhattacharya and Carien du Plessis

21 January 2025 at 06:00

In March 2024, a Brazilian senator traveled on a commercial flight to Washington, D.C. Marcos Pontes, a 61-year-old former astronaut, had become a central figure in the effort to regulate...

EV sales in Ecuador are surging despite crippling power cuts

Rest of World

By: Carolina Loza León and Daniela Dib

16 January 2025 at 06:00

In 2020, Priscila Chalán, a taxi driver in the Ecuadorian city of Guayaquil, ditched her gas-fueled car in favor of an electric vehicle made by Chinese company BYD. She was...

A view of Quito before a national scheduled fourteen-hour blackout on October 25, 2024.

Everything you need to know about Xiaohongshu

Rest of World

By: Rest of World Staff

15 January 2025 at 16:00

Xiaohongshu, which translates to “little red book” in Chinese, is a lifestyle e-commerce and social media platform. Think Instagram meets Tiktok: an app whose feed offers an infinite scroll of...

A phone screen showing Xiaohongshu, which translates as "Red Note" or "Little Red Book", on January 15, 2025 in Suqian, China.

Despite tensions, U.S.-China AI research collaborations are alive and well

Rest of World

By: Khadija Alam

15 January 2025 at 06:00

The field of artificial intelligence has long been dominated by the U.S. and Europe. Recently, however, AI research has become more collaborative across countries outside of the West, according to...

U.S. TikTokers flock to Xiaohongshu, baffling and bonding with Chinese users

Rest of World

By: Kinling Lo and Viola Zhou

14 January 2025 at 17:02

American high school student Venus Rios sparked a flurry of chatter when she posted this week on Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu, writing in Chinese characters. “Hi Chinese netizens! I...

Reading view