Eva Chin writes for RECATOOLS on business and commerce in Southeast Asia: the commercial decisions small businesses actually face, and the markets and regulation around them. She also covers Chinese naming and cultural practice, education and qualifications across the region, and the arithmetic of a tropical home. Coverage of cultural practice is educational — it explains what a tradition holds and where it came from, and does not make predictive claims.

194
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Business
Primary beat
Jul 2026
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~1230 min
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Articles Showing 41–50 of 194

A hand moving a piece on a wooden Chinese chess board
Home & Living

Writing a xiangqi move in Chinese, WXF and ICCS notation

How Chinese chess (象棋) moves such as 炮二平五 are written, why Red and Black number the files differently, when 前 and 后 replace the file, where the conventions for pawns disagree, and the same moves in ICCS and WXF letters.

1 Oct 2026 · 6 min read
People cycling and walking through a flooded street
Business

Thailand's Floods Shut Four Toyota Plants. The Government Asked Thai Airways Not to Stop Cargo.

Missing parts idled Toyota's factories and absent staff stalled Bangkok's main airport. The airline announced a week-long freight halt; the transport minister asked it to slow down instead.

30 Sep 2026 · 4 min read
Incense coils hang above rows of burning joss sticks at a temple altar while a man tends the offerings
Chinese Culture

Fan Tai Sui 2027 and why the lists of signs disagree

Four of five counting schemes name the same four animals for 犯太岁 in the 2027 Goat year: the Goat, Ox, Dog and Rat. What they disagree on is the labels, the day the year starts, the general's name, and what Singapore temples list.

30 Sep 2026 · 7 min read
Three generations of a family seated along one side of a long dining table
Home & Living

What to call your relatives in Chinese, and why one in five has more than one answer

Of 1,195,740 family relationships up to six steps, about 53% have one standard Chinese term, 20% could be several people with different terms, and 26% have no single word. The terms, the in-law words you will meet, and where Taiwan's dictionaries disagree with each other.

30 Sep 2026 · 4 min read
Rows of gold and silver coins stamped with cryptocurrency symbols
Business

Bitget Lost About $388 Million From Its Hot Wallets and Says Its Reserve Fund Will Pay

The exchange traces the break-in to a flaw in a third-party security product. Its CEO pointed to North Korea; its incident page will not speculate.

29 Sep 2026 · 4 min read
A calligraphy brush resting on an inkstone over a practice sheet of Tang verse characters
Home & Living

How many poems are in 300 Tang Poems, and how many Tang poems survive

The Three Hundred Tang Poems holds 320 poems in the editions we counted, and its preface only ever promised "three hundred and some". The imperial collection of 1707 counted more than 48,900, and the best current estimate of surviving Tang poems is about 53,000.

29 Sep 2026 · 6 min read
A crane lifting a shipping container at a port stacked with containers
Business

Thailand's Deficit With China Reached $62.7 Billion as Its US Surplus Grew to $45.5 Billion

Commerce ministry figures for January to August show both gaps widening. Telecom equipment tops the list of goods behind each one.

27 Sep 2026 · 4 min read
A hand holding a smartphone that displays a payment QR code
Business

Indonesia's DOKU Becomes 'DOKU by Antom' and Makes Its Co-Founder Chief Executive

Himelda Renuat also heads Antom Indonesia. Ant International's payments arm says its investment has deepened but gives no stake or price.

27 Sep 2026 · 4 min read
A scroll of Chinese characters held flat by two wooden paperweights
Chinese Culture

Who wrote the Zhou Gong dream book, and why copies disagree

No dream book can be traced to the Duke of Zhou. His name most likely came to the genre through a line of Confucius. The only complete early copy is a 10th-century Dunhuang booklet in Paris, a different book from the one online, and two public copies of the web text differ on 330 of 952 lines.

27 Sep 2026 · 7 min read
A laptop showing an analytics dashboard beside a notebook
Business

What CPM, CPC and CPA actually count

The industry's own guideline for a served ad impression says it does not require any part of the ad to be visible. CPM, CPC and CPA are simple division; what makes them slippery is that Google, Meta and the standards bodies count the thing underneath differently. At 50% viewability, every thousand ads actually seen costs double the quoted CPM.

27 Sep 2026 · 7 min read
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