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China: The world’s shopping cart
From wildly popular e-commerce apps to the rise of livestream shopping, China is changing the way the world shops.
Explore the deals:
A graphic treatment with a rectangular photo bubble and small icons of stars, fire, lighting, and e-commerce themed word bubbles. Within the photo bubble is a photo showing a cluster of Shein shipping bags laid out on a yellow background.
How Shein and TikTok Shop are trying to shake the ‘Made in China’ reputation
By Peiyue Wu and Daniela Dib
A graphic treatment with a rectangular photo bubble and small icons of stars, fire, lighting, and e-commerce themed word bubbles. Within the photo bubble is a picture showing a row of small desk spaces with people working in an office environment. Printed on the wall in the background is a picture of people's thumbs and text that reads
Cricket, influencers, layoffs: Alibaba’s risky bet in Pakistan
By Mutaher Khan
A graphic treatment with a rectangular photo bubble and a bright orange background. Within the photo bubble are various colored icons for lighting bolts, fire symbols, and stars. There are also cutout pictures of random objects.
Quiz: Can you identify Temu’s weirdest gadgets?
An illustration showing two boxing gloves, the left red and the right yellow, against a tan background, with the words
40 trailblazing companies that are beating the West
Faster, smarter, more adaptable: these emerging market pioneers are outmaneuvering Silicon Valley for global domination.
Culture guides >
Playlists, streaming guides, book recs and more
The Rest of World Holiday Gift Guide
Turn it up: Rest of World’s 2023 global party playlist
Scammers gonna scam >
From fake product reviews to scam loan apps
Vigilantes for views: The YouTube pranksters harassing suspected scam callers in India
By Andrew Deck and Raksha Kumar
M-Pesa has been huge for Kenya’s economy — and for scammers
A close up photo of a pixelated female face. An X (Twitter) post frame placed over left eye with blue verification checkmark inside it.
Chinese sextortion scammers are flooding Twitter
A photo collage showing a grid of square images with portraits of people, exteriors of buildings, city streets, and plates of food.
How AI reduces the world to stereotypes
Rest of World analyzed 3,000 AI images to see how image generators visualize different countries and cultures.
Digital utopia >
Tech for good
How tiny, cheap smart speakers unlocked the rise of digital payments in India
By Adnan Bhat
WhatsApp voice notes are revolutionizing farming in Senegal
A team from the Center for Natural Resources Conservation inspecting the GPS collar attached to a wild Sumatran elephant in Kampar.
GPS collars are helping save Sumatra’s last wild elephants
Mobile money, money, money >
The global rise of digital payments
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The little-known blockchain firm behind Southeast Asia’s digital payment systems
By Shaun Turton and Bopha Phorn
The irony that’s “Digital India”
Inside Foxconn’s struggle to make iPhones in India
By Viola Zhou and Nilesh Christopher
Read more features:
Heavily persecuted, highly influential: China’s online feminist revolution
BYD conquered China’s EV market. Europe and the U.S. will be a lot tougher
By Viola Zhou and Nanchanok Wongsamuth
Tears of a get-rich-quick guru
By Nilesh Christopher and Zuha Siddiqui
Lost in translation >
Language, translation, and the digital age
What it takes to bring Wordle into other languages
A collage image showing two Kurdish languages within Google Translate, placed over an image of school children looking at a map of Iraq.
The mission to preserve Sorani Kurdish by getting it onto Google Translate
Why Indian universities are ditching English-only education
The future of work >
From power outages to bike shortages
China’s AI boom depends on an army of exploited student interns
By Viola Zhou and Caiwei Chen
Come downstairs or we’ll eat your order, delivery workers tell customers
By Laís Martins
Brazil’s politicians, unions, and workers can’t agree on how to protect gig labor
The World’s Last Internet Cafes
An illustration showing a person reading a paper in the middle of a room with colorful dream sequence filled with buildings, computers, and robots, suspended from above, with pieces of blank paper floating down.
A collage of three vertical video stills showing a man at a desk from behind, a woman setting up a recording and a stack of newspapers on a bicycle.