The Paper is a new media success story in a fast-changing marketplace for news. It covers contentious issues — such as official corruption and a recent scandal involving improperly stored vaccines — with a clutch of digital bells and whistles. Its smartphone app, it says, has been downloaded about 10 million times.

The two lead actors of popular Korean drama Descendants of the Sun were in Hong Kong on Tuesday for the series’ first overseas promotional activity. The drama will premiere in the city the next day on local channel Viu TV. The show is already available on Viu’s free K-drama streaming site Viu.com, where it is the most-watched show.

It's 9:30 on a Thursday night and Chinese and foreign jazz fans descend on the JZ Club in Shanghai's former French Concession. Glasses clink and the splashing sound of cymbals ripple through a cabaret setting bathed in soft red light. Andrew Field, an American historian, says clubs like JZ represent a return to Shanghai's cosmopolitan past.

The students at the District’s H.D. Cooke Elementary School, in Adams Morgan, are learning Arabic as part of a State Department-sponsored exchange program that places teachers from China and Egypt in classrooms throughout the United States to teach their native languages — languages U.S. officials say will be increasingly important as the country competes in a global economy.

Documents from Mossack Fonseca, [...] reveal offshore companies linked to Deng Jiagui, who is married to Chinese President Xi Jinping’s older sister, as well as Li Xiaolin, the daughter of Li Peng, the former premier. […] that’s not stopping officials around the world from addressing the issue of perception. One way to do that is ordering a media blackout [...]

Xi Jinping’s three-day stopover in Prague on his way to Washington [...] Xi’s visit to the Czech Republic deserves some attention as it indicates Beijing’s approach towards the EU in general. It also offers insight into the limits of Beijing’s soft power, relying mostly on economic incentives and undermined by its own sense of insecurity.

As crowds gathered on Nov. 4, 1972, to catch a glimpse of two adorably rare creatures making their debut at Tokyo’s Ueno Zoo, an orangutan named Miyo unfurled a welcome banner. A curtain was then pulled aside to reveal two anxious giant pandas — Kang Kang and Lan Lan — and Japan fell head over heels in love, both with the bears and what they represented: Sino-Japanese friendship.

One concerning aspect of China’s rising prominence is its troublesome relations with its neighbours. It has fought both real and legal battles on territorial and ideological grounds on several fronts including in India, Vietnam and on the Korean peninsula in the past [...] But one break in this pattern is the country’s long-standing relationship with Nepal.