Gwynn Guilford

Each winter in China, more than 220 million people board trains to return home for Spring Festival (the Chinese New Year, which is on Jan. 31 this year). It’s the biggest single human migration on earth. Despite the billions of dollars the government has spent on its railways, trains only have the capacity to handle 10% of the travelers. Tickets are harder to get and more expensive each year.

In 2009, China seized the lead as the world’s top exporter of goods. The slow but steady uptick in imports in 2013 is putting it on track to surpass the US as the biggest trader of goods on the planet, according to data published today (the US releases its December data on Feb. 6). Does that mean its oft-maligned trade gap will finally start shrinking?

Something funny is happening at the Hong Kong border.

One of the only straightforward things about Abenomics, prime minister Shinzo Abe’s plan to save Japan from deflation, was that quantitative easing would batter down the value of the yen. That, in turn, would boost Japan’s swooning export sector, which had been suppressed for many years due to the freakishly strong yen.

China’s the latest to embrace the ivory-crushing trend. Following the leads of countries like Kenya, the US, the Philippines and Gabon, China rounded up 6.2 tonnes (6.8 tons) of ivory today and pulverized it. That was supposed to “demonstrate the country’s determination to discourage illegal ivory trade, protect wildlife and raise public awareness,” as a government official put it.

The Chinese central government may be gearing up for its first comprehensive attempt to take control of the trillion-yuan-plus industry around extending off-balance-sheet loans, known as “shadow banking.” And this could have all sorts of destabilizing knock-on effects.

The biggest risk that the world economy now faces isn’t the stability of the euro zone or the logjam of US politics, according to famed investor and philanthropist George Soros. Rather, China is the reason to doubt optimism about the global economy, he says.

China simply can’t get people off the roads.

For millions of fans, the agonizing wait for the return of the hit detective show Sherlock is over. The BBC broadcast the first episode of the third season at 9pm (GMT) on Jan. 1. A few hours later, Sherlock hit the Chinese internet via Youku, China’s biggest online streaming site. In less than 24 hours, it’s gotten 4.72 million views (link in Chinese). But US fans half way around the world aren’t as lucky: The show’s US premiere is set for Jan. 19.

Macau’s casino business—which includes hedge fund faves Las Vegas Sands and Wynn Resorts—continued to trounce the competition in 2013, pulling in 361 billion Macau patacas, or $45 billion, up almost 19% on 2012. The Las Vegas Strip, by comparison, is on track to bring in less than 15% of that total—just over $6 billion.

What to watch for today

When it comes to GDP growth, China beat the bears again. Analysts expect the country grew somewhere in the ballpark of 7.6% in 2013, just slightly down from 2012’s 7.8%. That’s compared with global GDP growth of around 2.9% (including China), according to the International Monetary Fund (pdf, p.2).

Tack this one onto the slew of incidents that make 2013 China’s year of fake meat: A man surnamed Wang is accusing a Wal-Mart in northern China of passing off fox meat as donkey meat—a regional delicacy.

In China, it’s beginning to look a lot like June—at least in terms of the country’s cash flow. The liquidity shortage that started last week worsened again today, harking back to its worrisome cash crunch last summer. The troubles have persisted despite last week’s 300 billion yuan ($49.4 billion) injection of emergency funds by the People’s Bank of China, the central bank.

If you work at a Chinese bank these days, the thing you’re probably sweating the most is vanishing deposits. Banks are only allowed to lend a certain percentage of their deposit bases. Artificially low government-set deposit rates have driven households and companies to hold their savings instead in higher-yielding products, such as wealth management products (WMPs). Fewer deposits means fewer loans—which means less interest income for banks. (Banks earn commissions off WMPs, so it’s not all bad.)

Americans have been trying hard to eat more healthily. Three decades of bad news about red meat and pork—worries about fat, cholesterol and cancer, for example—mean they’re passing up steaks, hot dogs and hamburgers more often. But they’re clearly not giving up meat altogether: they’re eating more chicken instead.

On Dec. 20, as China’s overnight money-market rate surged to 10%—the level reached during the country’s cash crunch last June—the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) pumped a reported 200 billion yuan into the system. That brought rates down to 7%.

For years now, economists have worried that China’s debt has pushed it to the brink of financial crisis. But if China is insolvent, why haven’t there been any big defaults yet? Here’s why: China’s shadow lending system keeps credit pumping to insolvent companies, so no one can tell that they’re bankrupt. Those loans take place off bank balance sheets, funded largely by retail banking customers via wealth management products (WMPs), which offer a higher return than the government-set deposit rate.

The territorial row over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands has made things tough on many Japanese businesses that rely heavily on sales in China. But those setbacks don’t apply to disposable diapers. For Japan’s leading diaper makers, China sales are booming.

One of the world’s flashiest luxury items isn’t made of gold or sold by Hermès. It adorns the snouts of rhinoceroses. That explains why poachers killed 946 of them in South Africa so far in 2013, 42% more than in 2012.

Antibiotics have saved hundreds of millions of lives and extended billions of others. But paradoxically, the more they are used the more the bacteria they fight get stronger, with potentially lethal consequences.

A language from Asia is rapidly closing in on the West, threatening the longstanding supremacy of the Latin alphabet. This means that one day soon, it won’t be merely alphabet letters that Western mobile users tap onto their screens. It may also be whistling kittens, or a bear dancing the hula.

New York City police ignited a diplomatic firestorm last week when they arrested India’s deputy consul-general, Devyani Khobragade, on charges of visa fraud and making false statements about the employment of her full-time nanny. Khobragade, whom the police reportedly strip-searched, has since been released on $250,000 bail after pleading not guilty to the charges, which carry a maximum sentence of 15 years. (The Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations grants immunity to consular officers, but only for “acts performed in the exercise of consular functions.”)

For anyone not used to bargaining, there’s a keen anxiety that comes with shopping trips to the souks of Marrakech or Beijing’s Silk Market. With every purchase comes the nagging question: “Am I the sucker?” And though standard pricing common in the developed world might give disproportionate pricing power to retailers, at least there are no suckers since everyone pays the same price.