Global Headlines Express | The US-North Korea summit may be postponed; The Atlantic on what Chinese e-commerce is doing to America

Global Headlines is a new QDaily column for 2018, still in trial run. As ever, it exists to help you know more.

What the Agenda-Setters Are Talking About

The Atlantic: What's Wrong With Buying Cheap Stuff Online?

Alana Semuels, a writer for The Atlantic, recently bought a smartwatch on Wish.com, straight from a Chinese manufacturer. What drew her in were the cut price and the ratings: $896 list, $18 now; 8,000 reviews, four stars on average.

Wish.com is one of a crop of e-commerce companies growing fast by connecting Chinese manufacturers and retailers directly to American shoppers. Shipping is far slower than domestic online shopping in the US, yet analysts think Wish.com is the future of online consumption. Its logo is on the Los Angeles Lakers' jerseys. Its valuation has reached $8.5 billion, nearly the combined value of Macy's, J.C. Penney and Sears. A year ago it had just raised $500 million at half of today's valuation.

The experience these sites offer is nothing like what American consumers have known for decades. First they got used to driving to a store, browsing at leisure and coming home with the car full; then to opening a computer, browsing at leisure and waiting for the goods to arrive at the door. Now that they can deal directly with the cheapest manufacturers and retailers in the world, they mind less about how long shipping takes or where a package comes from, and have got used to ordering the moment a price tempts them.

Juozas Kaziukėnas, founder of the e-commerce research site Marketplace Pulse, gave Alana a number: a third of the third-party sellers on Amazon are now in China. Chinese sellers usually ship goods in bulk to warehouses that Amazon, Wish.com or similar companies run in the US, then wait for the orders.

How big the market for direct China-to-US online selling has grown in recent years is hard to say. The volume of mail the US handles from abroad gives an indirect measure. In the first three months of 2018 the US Postal Service delivered 175 million letters and packages sent from overseas, far more than the 97 million in the same period of 2013. It has also become easier for Chinese sellers to ship to the US: under a program called ePacket, items weighing under 4.4 pounds get a discount at both ends. And mailing a package from China to the US costs less than shipping one within the US.

The new sales channel has alarmed some American retailers, manufacturers and traders. For one thing, their edge is visibly shrinking in front of consumers who have learned to chase low prices. If a good-looking bikini from China costs $4, why pay $40 for an American one? And why pay $20 at Gap for a bikini made in China and then resold by an American retailer?

For another, taxing Chinese sellers online runs into obstacles at every turn. In most states, neither Amazon nor Wish.com collects sales tax from third-party sellers.

The one open question is what American consumers make of the quality and the shopping experience on cheap online marketplaces. Goods from China often arrive oddly packed: shoes wrapped in clear tape rather than boxed; electronics with no English manual; a green bracelet that dyed its wearer's arm. Once the smartwatch arrived, Alana found she could not buy a SIM card to fit it anywhere in San Francisco's Chinatown.

"But you have to be realistic. You're spending $5, not $500. Right?" one of her interviewees told her.

The 24-Hour Newsmakers

The US-North Korea summit may be postponed.

Before meeting South Korean President Moon Jae-in at the White House on the 22nd, Trump said his meeting with Kim Jong Un "may not happen on June 12."

Trump also repeated that Pyongyang carrying out its denuclearization pledge is a precondition for the summit, expected in Singapore next month.

After the meeting, Moon told a press conference that he firmly believed Trump would push the "Trump-Kim summit" to succeed, ending 65 years of armistice on the Korean Peninsula, and would play a constructive part in building a permanent peace mechanism there and in normalizing diplomatic relations between the US and North Korea.

On May 16, North Korea threatened to call off the meeting set for next month in Singapore between President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un if the US made a "unilateral demand" that it give up its nuclear weapons. North Korea was unhappy about a long-planned joint military exercise by the US and South Korea, and rejected the timetable for abandoning nuclear weapons that US National Security Adviser John Bolton had set out for it.

The New York Times then reported that Trump was "surprised and angry" at the North Korean statement, and said he could walk away too.

Bloomberg noted that the biggest sticking point between the two sides appears to be the definition of denuclearization: US officials have said repeatedly that they expect North Korea to accept "complete, verifiable, irreversible" nuclear disarmament, while Pyongyang wants a phased process that could include cutting the US military presence in the region.

What Else Happened in the World

Trump says the US government has not reached any agreement with the Chinese government over ZTE. Speaking at the White House on May 22, Trump said he could see requiring ZTE to pay a $1.3 billion fine, replace its management, form a new board and adopt "very, very strict security rules." He also expected ZTE to buy a large share of its components and equipment from the US in future.

Journalists from China, the US, Russia, Britain and South Korea travel to North Korea to witness the dismantling of a nuclear test site. At 9:45 a.m. on the 2nd, media from China, the US, Russia and Britain left Beijing Capital International Airport on an Air Koryo charter, flight JS622, bound for Wonsan, North Korea. Yonhap News Agency reported that North Korea later accepted a list of South Korean reporters as well. On the 15th of this month, North Korea had sent notice that it would invite four reporters from a South Korean news agency and four from a television station to cover the event on the ground.

Venezuela expels two US diplomats. Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro declared two diplomats at the US embassy in Venezuela "persona non grata" on the 22nd and gave them 48 hours to leave the country. In the presidential election on the 20th, Maduro, the incumbent, came first with 6.19 million votes. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement on the 21st that the Venezuelan election was "fraudulent." Trump signed an executive order the same day adding financial sanctions on Venezuela.

Afghanistan's opium poppy cultivation hits a record high. A report the UN Office on Drugs and Crime released on the 21st says the area under poppy in Afghanistan last year was about 328,000 hectares, 63% more than in 2016 and the largest on record. That also pushed the country's opium production to a record 9,000 tons last year, and the illegal economy expanded fast. In 2017 the value of Afghanistan's illicit trade was $4.1 billion to $6.6 billion, or 20% to 32% of GDP.

The number of refugees from Central America is surging. A new report from the UN refugee agency shows that the number of people fleeing Central America rose from 18,000 in 2011 to 294,000 by the end of last year, a 58% increase in the past year alone. Of the 350,000 asylum applications the agency received between 2011 and 2017, 40% were filed last year. The main reason is worsening gang violence in the region. Four of the world's 50 deadliest cities were in Central America last year.

A rare encephalitis virus has killed 10 people in India. Nipah virus, which spreads through fruit bats, has so far led to 18 people being tested in southern India, 12 confirmed infections and 10 deaths. The World Health Organization (WHO) says Nipah can pass through bodily fluids and can cause encephalitis. There is no vaccine against it, and hospitals can offer only supportive care.

Someone Said

"Michael, after discussing it with your mother, we have made a decision: you must leave this house at once and clear out within 14 days. Do not come back. We will take whatever measures are needed to make sure this decision takes effect."

Michael Rotondo, 30, moved back to the town of Camillus to live with his parents eight years ago and has not left since. At a hearing this Tuesday (May 22), Donald Greenwood of the New York State Supreme Court tried to persuade him to leave his parents' house of his own accord and find somewhere else to live.

In court, Michael Rotondo said he had a right to stay in his parents' house another six months. Donald Greenwood called the demand "outrageous" and issued an eviction order on the spot. Michael shot back that the eviction order was the outrageous thing.

Since February his parents had tried every method they could think of to get him to leave. The letter above was one of them. After repeated failures, they gave Michael $1,100 and asked him to find a place of his own: "You have to get a job!"

Michael was unmoved. He even seemed to enjoy his day in court, and asked television crews to interview him outside. In the interview he said he was not living in his parents' basement — he had a bedroom of his own. He did his own laundry. He had a job. As for what the job was, "that's my own business," Michael said.

You Might Also Be Interested In

Humans are 0.01% of all life on Earth, yet have wiped out 83% of mammals and nearly half of plants.

A new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences finds that the world's 7.6 billion people are just 0.01% of all life on Earth. Yet human civilization has so far destroyed 83% of wild mammals, 80% of marine mammals, half of all plants and 15% of fish.

Plants make up the largest share of living things, 82%. Bacteria come next, at 13%. Everything else — insects, fungi, fish, animals — accounts for only 5%.

Poultry are 70% of all birds; only 30% are wild. Among mammals, 60% are livestock, mostly cattle and pigs; 36% are humans; and only 4% are wild animals.

Four in ten new employees in Japan think about changing jobs in their first year.

According to Lianhe Zaobao, DISCO, a Tokyo company, ran an employment survey in January this year among people who had started jobs across Japan in 2017, and got 455 replies. Among those in their first year on the job, 43.1% said they were either "preparing to change jobs" or "thinking about it." Asked whether they would pick their current employer if they were job-hunting again, 12.2% said they would "definitely choose another company" and 45.1% said they "would choose another company if they could."

Some who regretted not researching their employer more thoroughly wrote: "I wish I had visited alumni who worked there and learned about the company's bad side," and "The company briefing showed only the glamorous parts, so after I joined I found a lot of the work dull."

On This Day

May 23, 1928: Mickey Mouse is born.

May 23, 1945: Winston Churchill resigns.

May 23, 1997: China and the Bahamas establish diplomatic relations.

May 23, 2008: The Union of South American Nations is founded.

Born on May 23: the Swedish biologist Carl Linnaeus (1707), Edward Lorenz, the father of chaos theory (1917), Robert Moog, inventor of the synthesizer (1934), and the director Ann Hui (1947).

Died on this day: Henrik Ibsen (1906), Standard Oil founder John D. Rockefeller (1937), Yan Xishan (1960), former South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun (2009), and the Nobel laureate economist John Nash (2015).

Cover image from YouTube @Mickey Mouse