How cigarettes took over China

A catalog of 3,000 ornate Chinese cigarette boxes and brands

China's vast, state-owned tobacco market has produced enough regional brands and packaging variants to sustain a dedicated collector community. Ciggies.app functions as both a product database and an enthusiast social network, with entries spanning current mainland releases, historical discontinued brands, and international imports.

China is the world’s largest importer of crude oil

China is pushing to reduce its reliance on US oil to limit geopolitical vulnerabilities. It’s rapidly becoming the world’s renewable energy superpower.

WeChat has become China's primary news platform

With an estimated 1.4 billion users worldwide, Tencent's messaging app WeChat has become the most effective distribution channel for news within China. As the company has grown, legacy media in the country have moved onto the platform, representing six of the top 10 WeChat accounts.

Loneliness is more dangerous to your health than smoking

The US surgeon general proclaimed in 2023 that loneliness is a health risk on par with smoking up to 15 cigarettes daily. In an 81-page report, the then-surgeon general noted that loneliness increases the risk of premature death by 26%.

Hormone and peptide compounds imported from China soared in 2025

US customs data indicates that these imports doubled to $328M in the first three quarters of 2025, from $164M in the same period of 2024. The imports include GLPs, among other products. (Some users may experience a paywall.)

China joined the WTO in 2001

After 15 years of negotiation, China joined the WTO as the 143rd member. This move gave it access to the global market in exchange for commitments to economic liberalization, despite skepticism from existing members about integrating a state-controlled economy into a free-market system.

Visualizing the genetics of SARS-CoV-2

The COVID-19 pandemic, caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, began with an outbreak in Wuhan, China in December 2019, and rapidly spread worldwide in early 2020. On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic, leading to widespread lockdowns, travel restrictions, and economic disruptions.

Hong Kong: British colony turned Chinese police state

This 15-minute video explores how Hong Kong has changed since China reclaimed the territory from Britain in 1997. Hong Kong became a British colony after the First Opium War, a conflict arising from Britain's attempt to equalize trade with China through smuggled opium. Democratic rights assumed by Hong Kong residents, such as the right to protest, have been in peril since the 1997 shift, according to this video.

Eight demographic trends to watch

This list highlights eight demographic trends expected to shape the world in the coming decades. The world’s population is projected to hit 9 billion in 2037. In that time, India will overtake China in population, and the Democratic Republic of...

The Chinese market for donkey hides has created a new source of diseases

Since 1992, China’s donkey population has dropped more than 80 percent. This report examines how China’s booming demand for a traditional medicine known as e-jiao, made from collagen from donkey hides, is leading to the slaughter of 6 million African donkeys annually, and providing a new source for zoonotic diseases.

Why China wants Taiwan

Why does China want Taiwan? Money, power, nationalism, regional dominance, and a footstep toward further establishing their position as a superpower. This article explores all the angles of China's sudden push to reclaim/reunify with their neighbor across the strait. But an invasion might not be as easy as they suppose.

'The Chinatown Sting': Unraveling an international drug smuggling ring

In the late 1980s, a group of women connected through the mahjong parlors in Manhattan’s Chinatown were caught in a massive undercover drug bust. But this bust was just the beginning of an even bigger case.

The Lunar New Year is a major driver in China's economy

The annual festival brings in billions of dollars in both foreign and domestic tourism. The 2026 holiday includes an additional day, something Chinese officials hope will provide an even bigger boost to the country's somewhat stubborn national retail sales.

Why Belgium is now the cocaine capital of Europe

Belgium has become Europe’s cocaine-trafficking capital. Recently, Belgian ports have seen record seizures of cocaine. In 2020, the port of Antwerp accounted for 40% of all cocaine seizures in the EU. And local authorities are struggling with the...

China has a ‘ghost town of abandoned mansions’

This video shows how China’s property bubble deflated as new-home sales collapsed and more than 50 developers defaulted. In Shenyang, an abandoned “ghost town” reveals the fallout of a boom built on debt and overbuilding that could no longer be sustained.

Worldwide adoption rates of 5G

The switch to 5G could become the biggest growth driver for the smartphone industry in coming years. This illustration shows the adoption rate of 5G in different parts of the world.

What (and when) was Imperial China?

China's first dynasty arose in 1600 BCE, according to current archaeological evidence, and its last dynasty fell in 1911. Learn more about Imperial China in this Smithsonian collection of articles and artifacts on each dynasty. According to...

Why caviar is still so expensive, even though it's no longer rare

An ounce of caviar can cost more than $250, even though China has flooded the market with a surge in supply over the past decade. As it turns out, the perception of caviar as a luxury good rather than a true scarcity is part of what keeps it so expensive.

The story of the Sackler empire behind highly addictive OxyContin

This investigative report examines how the Sackler family built its fortune through Purdue Pharma’s aggressive marketing of OxyContin, a highly addictive painkiller. Through 2017, the drug had generated more than $30B in sales for Purdue Pharma, controlled by the Sacklers.

Tracking annual working hours per worker in major countries

In 2023, China's workers averaged 2,328 hours per year, far ahead of the second country on the list, the United States, at 1,789. This chart shows the relative decrease of total work time across the world since the late 1800s.

McKinsey cashed in by consulting for both companies and their regulators

While McKinsey worked with e-cigarette maker Juul, it also consulted for the US Food and Drug Administration's department regulating vaping and nicotine.

The medieval influencer who convinced people to drink tea

This article explains how the world shifted from mostly eating tea, whether as leaves to be chewed or caffeinated soup to be slurped, to drinking it. Lu Yu's first exposure to tea in the 700s didn't go so well, with him reviewing the concoction as...

Losing the kids to video games

An estimated 60 million people suffer from internet gaming disorder worldwide, a category created by the World Health Organization in 2018 to help communities support individuals plagued by pathological play. As the world's most-played game of all...

Influenza infects up to a billion people worldwide each year

The World Health Organization estimates that seasonal influenza causes about 1B cases annually, including 3 to 5M severe illnesses and between 290,000 to 650,000 deaths.

How Netflix changed TV

In April 2017, Netflix reached 100 million subscribers worldwide—a figure that hit 300 million by 2025. With 50 million in the US alone, it has revolutionized the way people consume entertainment. Newsweek takes a look into the company's history and how it became the dominant force in entertainment.

US consumers collectively owe more than $1T to credit card companies—almost as much as they owe in auto loans.

The most expensive ad of all time was for Chanel No. 5 perfume and cost roughly $33M to produce in 2004—about $57M in today's dollars.

Electrical grids worldwide must double their power delivery capacity by 2050 to meet surging demand from AI and electric vehicles.

Scientists testing how climate change affects plants found, in a years-long simulation study, that poison ivy grew 70% faster with the resulting extra carbon dioxide.

US housing costs have risen by roughly 175% between 1991 and 2026—but a growing number of Gen Zers are becoming homeowners anyway. In 2025, 4% of homebuyers were Gen Z, up from 3% the year before.

How the most famous Ebola book, The Hot Zone, which sold 3.5 million copies and was translated into 30 languages, got aspects of the disease so wrong.

In 2026, Finland was named the world's happiest country for the ninth consecutive year based on its wealth, social safety network, and high life expectancy, among other factors.

Fast-casual restaurant Chili's is experiencing a resurgence, with its parent company recently reporting a nearly 32% increase in sales, thanks to passionate Gen Z fans on TikTok.

Volcanic activity may have triggered the Black Death by spewing gases that led to crop failures in Europe, thus forcing the import of grain ships with plague-infested fleas.

Louisiana's 'Cancer Alley' is infamous for having some of the highest industrial pollution, toxic air emissions, and cancer risks in the US.

The identity of the Tank Man in the iconic photo from the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests remains unknown and was possibly killed.

US intelligence allegedly pursued more than 600 schemes to assassinate Cuban revolutionary Fidel Castro.

Up to a million Girl Scouts sell about 200 million cookie boxes every spring, generating $800 million, largely because refusing a child is frowned upon

A century of Billboard issues documenting the evolution of popular music.

NBA superstar Victor Wembanyama spent the 2025 summer training with monks in central China to enhance his body and mind.

After the Boston Tea Party, colonists switched to coffee, which became the main morning drink for revolutionaries.

Learn more about the history of fireworks, which dates back to an accidental invention during an alchemist's quest for information about immortality.

The United States is one of only around two dozen countries with a fully federal system of government, in which power is divided between national and state governments.

The name 'Silicon Valley' arose from the founding of Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in Fairchild Semiconductor in 1956-57, founded near Stanford University in Palo Alto

Sony set the standard for cylinder-shaped batteries when it repurposed manufacturing equipment used to make rolls of magnetic recording tape.

A Yale student wrote a profound essay about the consulting industry's influence on elite college students that was published in a book of her writing after she died in a post-graduation car accident.

Art theft is the third-largest source of criminal revenues worldwide, thanks in part to the subjective nature of valuing a work of art.

The hormonal disorder PCOS was renamed PMOS in 2026, a move designed to improve care and research by shifting the focus to the hormonal causes of this condition that affects 1 in 8 women.

See a 3D reconstruction of Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital that was home to an estimated population of 200,000 to 400,000.

Most of the observable universe's volume consists of voids and supervoids—enormous regions of space with little to no galaxies, stars, or light.