The Association for Barbados-China Friendship celebrated our seventh anniversary with a relaxed evening of eats and drinks at the Maxwell Del Mar restaurant on Barbados’ south coast on May 30. Our special guests for the evening were organisers and presenters at the youth forum series which is organized by student members of the ABCF and students of the Zhejiang International Studies University in Hangzhou, China. Our new friend Lisa did a delightful short interview with Aliyah St Hill and Dejeonique Layne-Yarde, outgoing and current co-ordinators of the forum, and Richellia Stuart, one of the presenters at the most recent forum, held on May15. Take a look at the video at this link, and thanks very much, Lisa. A summary report on the May 15 forum may be found on the ABCF website at this link. Reports on previous sessions of the forum may also be found on the website.
Those who attended the anniversary event enjoyed a delightful evening of food and fellowship.
Joshua Johnson chats with his Mum on his personal YouTube channel
Josh here and I'm starting this newsletter to keep you notified about my life in China and any other related news. I hope you like it.
The link above is to Joshua’s most recent vlog/podcast, where he chats with his mother Donna. Josh is an ABCF representative in China and the Youth Coordinator for the Federation of Latin American and Caribbean Associations for Friendship with the People’s Republic of China.
Also, visit Joshua’s #chinaessentials page on Instagram for useful tips on everyday living in China.
China Taxicab Chronicles 10: Exploring Didi Rideshare Saturation in Hangzhou
… “Uhm. Maybe one. Or more, if they are short. My revenue is about 500 CNY per day. I’ll keep 300 CNY per day, after my expenses.
“So, you’re living on 300 CNY per day?”
“No, what I mean is 300 per day is what I have left, after I pay all my living expenses. I spend about 200 CNY a day on food, rent, expenses, etc.”…
"There are too many drivers now. There's basically no entry requirement to become a driver...anyone can do it (“门槛太低了”). As long as you have a car and want to drive, you can. So now we have too many drivers."…
Witnessing China's Modernization — Cam Rivers Publishing
This anthology of essays invites readers on a journey through contemporary China seen at a human level through the eyes of 18 authors who have lived, worked, or traveled across the country. Their firsthand experiences offer personal insight into China’s development, and the complex narratives surrounding its precipitous rise.
Together, these essays broaden perspectives by offering grounded, experience-based observations rendered in living color, depicting not only the lives of the authors themselves but also the sweeping changes and progress that have transformed China and shaped the lives of the people with whom they interact and build relationships.
From seabed to Gobi: how is China powering the AI age?
…From central Shanghai, drive southeast, cross the Donghai Bridge, and board a speedboat at Yangshan Port. Forty minutes out, a steel platform rises more than 20 meters above the East China Sea. An elevator descends 10 meters below the waterline, where cylindrical steel vaults stand upright on the seabed, thousands of servers humming in the dark -- processing the queries, the transactions, the AI requests of daily life.
Here is the Lingang underwater data center.
It entered full commercial operation in May, with data modules weighing 1,950 tonnes -- roughly the equivalent of 1,300 passenger cars. Electricity runs directly from the turbines of an offshore wind farm to the servers below, without touching the onshore grid.
It is the first facility in the world powered directly by offshore wind in this way. Behind it is a years-long push by Chinese planners to treat power grids and computing infrastructure not as separate problems, but as a single system to be designed together
Ranked: The Countries That Produce the Most Steel
China accounted for 52% of global steel production in 2025, producing more steel than the next 12 countries combined.
India remained the world’s second-largest steel producer, while the U.S. and Japan each contributed roughly 4.4% of global output.
China has reported a second consecutive decline in the number of students sitting the country’s national university-entrance exams, as a graduate jobs crunch leads many teenagers to decide against pursuing an academic degree.
A total of 12.9 million students have registered for this year’s National Higher Education Entrance Examination – known as the gaokao in China – down 450,000 from a year ago, according to data from the Ministry of Education released on Wednesday. In 2025, the number of sign-ups fell by 70,000 compared with the previous year.
n a recent commentary published on the website of the journal Nature, You Xiaoying tells of the phenomenon of junior researchers in Chinese academia establishing satirical journals as a way to vent their frustrations. These journals are given names that are a spin on those of top-tier academic journals such as Science and Nature. For example, there is Call, a take on the prestigious journal Cell.
Then there is the premier satirical journal Rubbish, so named for research deemed to be insufficient or useless by Chinese academics. It accepts a “wide range of submissions”, ranging from “unexplained experiment results, anecdotes that happened during your research or gossip within your research group”.
After Rubbish went viral, more than 200 such “bottom journals” have been established, and many receive daily submissions. The founder of Rubbish cited the pressure to “publish or perish” and the cutthroat competition of academia as the impetus for his journal.
This weekly newsletter is put together by DeLisle Worrell, President of the ABCF. Visit us at Association for Barbados China Friendship | (abcf-bb.com).
Thanks to everyone who sent contributions for this week’s Update. Please send items of interest to me via the contact page at ABCF-BB.com or to info@DeLisleWorrell.com
The ABCF mission is to build a deeper understanding between the Chinese people and Barbadians and Caribbean people from all walks of life. The association’s focus is on personal experiences, people-to-people contact, cultural exchanges and exchanges of ideas, and the facilitation of travel, business and study. From the outset we aim to learn from and build on the experiences of the Caribbean and China, and to develop mutual understandings and support that will be to the benefit of both sides.
