Gwynn Guilford

When the world ties one on, it doesn’t get drunk on whiskey. Or rum. Or vodka. Nope—year after year, Jinro soju, a South Korean rice liquor, tops the Drinks International list of top-selling spirits, as National Public Radio flags. The liquor, which is owned by Hite-Jinro, sold 65.4 million 9-liter cases in 2012 (pdf), an increase of 6%. Sales are more than twice those of the runner up, a brandy called Emperador, which is owned by Alliance Global Group, and more than 2.5 times last year’s sales of Smirnoff, a Diageo vodka.

Young gourmand-scholars of America have never had it better. Colleges across the US are staffing open-air kitchens with seasoned chefs and offering students Zagats-caliber dining experiences, according to the Daily Meal’s rankings of the “60 Best Colleges for Food in America for 2013.” Bowdoin College, in lobster-lousy Maine, came in first, followed by Washington University in St. Louis, which offers students sushi-rolling classes, among other things.

Climate-change skeptics can always seize on some inconvenient truths about the effect of human carbon consumption on sea levels. On average, the ocean rises only a wee 3.2 millimeters (0.13 inches) a year—about the length of a small black ant. And, in places like Alaska and Canada’s Hudson Bay, sea levels are actually dropping up to 3 centimeters (1.3 inches) a year.

China pumped $3.4 trillion into China’s economy last year, according to a new report by credit rating agency Fitch. And for another fun number: local governments have amassed $3.3 trillion in debt, says a Chinese government-affiliated economist.

As of last week, posting a message that the Chinese government deems inaccurate on social media platforms can get you three years in the slammer, provided it gets 500 retweets (or their equivalent) or 5,000 views. At least, that’s what the law said (link in Chinese). But would the new policy, part of the Chinese government’s draconian crackdown on “online rumors,” be enforced?

Posh diners are swallowing up yet another species from the ocean: the European seabass. The population of the once populous fish has plummeted 32% since 2009 and has hit a 20-year low, according to the International Council for the Exploration of the Seas (ICES), a European science council. The group says fishermen from the UK, Channel Islands, Belgium, Netherlands, Denmark and France should slash their combined catches of seabass by 36%.

For those who worry that China might dump its $1.28 trillion in US government debt and wreak havoc on the US economy, the country’s $1.5 billion investment in US Treasury debt in July might seem heartening, particularly after it sold $21.5 billion in overall US debt in June. But a closer look at the data isn’t that comforting.

China’s one-child policy, which since 1979 has limited most Chinese couples to a single child, is notorious for having accelerated the rate of China’s aging. It’s also created a glut of young men who can’t find Chinese wives; by 2020, bachelor ranks will swell to between 30 million and 35 million—equal to the population of Canada.

The conventional wisdom for foreign food retailers entering China is to cater to local taste. But at Starbucks, the push to make China its second biggest market centers more on local demand for space.

In August, a Chinese zoo became the laughing stock of the internet after it tried to pass off an unusually fluffy dog as an African lion. The zoo may never have had a real lion. Or perhaps it did at one point, and then decided to sell it to a taxidermist for some extra cash. That’s the subject of a recent expose by Southern Weekend (SW), an investigative newspaper: Surging demand for luxury home decor is encouraging zoos to kill their exhibits and sell their pelts to state-licensed taxidermy firms, reports SW, via China Dialogue.

This post has been corrected.

For many environmentally conscious Americans, there’s a deep satisfaction to chucking anything and everything plasticky into the recycling bin—from shampoo bottles to butter tubs—the types of plastics in the plastic categories #3 through #7. Little do they know that, even if their local trash collector says it recycles that waste, they might as well be chucking those plastics in the trash bin.

China will allow its citizens to invest some $300 million worth in yuan in six foreign hedge funds, reports the 21st Century Business Herald (link in Chinese), a leading financial newspaper. The six funds—Man Group, Winton Capital Management, Oak Tree, Citadel, Och-Ziff and Canyon Partners—have received quotas of $50 million apiece to set up shop in Shanghai on a “trial basis,” though the pilot hasn’t had the final green light, a source told the Financial Times (paywall).

It’s that time of year again, when the people of China unite in tearing apart exoskeletons to suck up the flesh of hairy crabs. From August to October, the crabs—which get their name from the hair-like tendrils that grow on their claws—sell like hotcakes throughout China.

In an effort to rein in online extortion and restore control over whistleblowers, China’s government is cracking down on online “rumor-mongering” of the sort that disrupts the “social order.” Today, to forward the latter goal, Cui Shaopeng, a senior Communist party discipline official, announced the launch of a new official Communist Party informant site (link in Chinese). Only those using the site will be protected from any attacks against them, as Reuters reports.

The Louvre Museum in Paris has long wrestled with art forgery. But thanks to the ingenuity of Chinese counterfeiting, its entry tickets are the latest problem.

Premier Li Keqiang is making all the right noises about making China’s economic growth more sustainable. “Reform remains the driving force,” he wrote in the Financial Times (paywall) on Sept. 8. And in Dalian, China, for “Summer Davos,” he pressed the same theme. Here’s our assessment of Li’s three signature policies that he highlighted today in Dalian:

Since last year in China, people have been retiring faster new workers are entering the workforce. Fourteen percent of the population is now at least 60 years old, and at this pace, China’s total population will start to decline in 2030.

China’s antibiotics addiction isn’t just afflicting humans; it’s plaguing animals, too.

China’s wealth gap is widening, and the middle class is griping. But the weird thing is, the wealth gap is growing even within the ranks of the wealthy, according to a new report by Wealth-X and UBS.

At first glance it seems China’s economy is back on track. After some promising signs in the last two months, today’s slew of economic data brought the biggie. Industrial production in August grew 10.4% year-on-year, a 16-month high. Investment in fixed assets—things like factories and infrastructure—soared as well, and retail sales jumped too.

Details of a new law issued by China’s supreme court are bound to make loose talkers on Sina Weibo and other social media platforms think twice before speaking freely. The law says that any libelous posts or messages will be considered “severe” breaches of the law if they are visited or clicked on more than 5,000 times or forwarded (or “retweeted,” in Western parlance) more than 500 times. Those found guilty could face up to three years in jail, reports Reuters, citing Chinese state media.

It turns out that most of the world’s tallest buildings are doing the architectural equivalent of wearing platform shoes. That is, they’re scraping skies courtesy of dozens—sometimes hundreds—of meters of “vanity height,” says a new report (pdf) by the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH), first spotted by io9. That’s the term CTBUH uses to describe the distance between the highest floor occupied and the top of the building. Here are some of the report’s most startling facts:

August trade data offered another sign that the recovery in China is underway, as exports jumped 7% from August of last year, up from 5.1% this July. Imports also expanded by 7% compared with August 2012, down from solid growth of 10.9% in July. While China’s exports and imports seem to be in sync at the global level, its trade balance with the US tells a different story, says Société Générale’s Wei Yao. In fact, it “looks as if China missed out on the US recovery,” she wrote in a note today.