Lee Tze-chung 1912-2012
A veteran Hong Kong journalist who, with a colleague, took the decision to publish a historic editorial in a pro-Beijing newspaper criticising the imposition of martial law in Tiananmen Square ahead of the June 4, 1989, crackdown has died.
Lee Tze-chung, who was president of Hong Kong-based Wen Wei Po between 1951 and 1989, died at the age of 100 on Friday. The cause of death was multiple organ failure.
Lee's decades-long career at the leftist newspaper was most notable for the decision he made with then editor-in-chief Kam Yiu-yu on May 21, 1989, to fill its editorial column with four large Chinese characters - reading 'deep grief and bitter hatred' - after Beijing ordered the People's Liberation Army to enforce martial law amid pro-democracy protests by students and political activists.
Later, he publicly condemned the central leadership and Communist Party for the bloody crackdown.
Lee was a liberal leftist who advocated reform on the mainland, veteran China watcher Johnny Lau Yui-siu said yesterday.
China influencer, 24, dies day after revealing not eating for 2 days, unable to pay rent
Tragic cosplay blogger tells army of fans she is ‘on the edge of death’ before passing away, family leave online accounts open for mourning
The death of a 24-year-old cosplay influencer has triggered a massive woe from mainland Chinese internet users who sympathised with her strained financial situation and her suffering from mental illness.
Family of the blogger Maoyouyou, whose real name is Shi Ye, said on social media that Shi died at 5.20pm on February 25, the news outlet QQ reported.
“We know that many people still like her. So we will not revoke her mobile phone number or her social media accounts. Instead, we will leave them there for us to express how much she is missed,” the family’s statement read.
The family stopped short of disclosing the reason for Shi’s death, nor did they provide details regarding the circumstances of her passing; however, many of her fans suspected that she had likely committed suicide due to depression.
Shi, better known as Maoyouyou, is famous in China’s cosplay circle. She often joined anime conventions held across the country and shared her cosplay images on the internet.
On a leading social media platform, Maoyouyou had 51,000 followers.
On February 24, the day before her death, Maoyouyou held a live-streaming session, in which she appeared as an animation character she favoured.
According to some of her audiences, Maoyouyou was in low spirits that day, saying she had a poor mental status, the report said.
She also revealed that she had been living in a rented flat in Beijing for three years, but did not have money to pay for the rent for some months.
Maoyouyou continued to say she was in the situation of “lying flat”, an expression in China referring to doing the bare minimum to get by, and wanted to do nothing.
“I only feel comfortable by lying in bed and doing nothing,” she said during the live-streaming.
Describing herself as being “on the edge of death”, she said she had not eaten for two days, nor did she have any appetite.
She had tried to seek medical treatment, but unfortunately she did not manage to make appointments at the hospital.
Hours before her death, Maoyouyou said on social media “we will never meet again”, hinting that she was planning to kill herself.
Also, her fans noticed she died at 5.20pm, digits which match her birth date, May 20.
Many internet users are in mourning over her death.
“I hope this was fake news. I remember I gained courage to join an anime convention for the first time because I had watched your live-streams.
“You were such an optimistic person in the past. Hope you live happily in another world,” said one of her followers.
“What a pity! We should show more care for people with mental issues,” said another online observer.
Was Manus another DeepSeek moment? Chinese AI agent faces doubts after rapid rise to fame
Manus AI’s product partner apologised on social media, admitting the team underestimated the public’s enthusiastic response
General-purpose artificial intelligence (AI) agent Manus, which was developed by a Chinese team, faces doubts about its technological capabilities, as very few people were able to test the product owing to an apparent shortage of server capacity after a surge in popularity.
While Manus has gained attention for its claimed ability to handle complex tasks, and is being hailed by investors as another breakthrough following the low-cost AI models from DeepSeek, its availability remains limited a day after launch. The firm’s account on social media X was also suspended on Friday.
The invitation-only arrangement spurred a scramble among users seeking to access Manus. On China’s second-hand online marketplace Xianyu, some vendors were even selling Manus invitation codes or renting out accounts, with some critics accusing the team behind Manus of intentionally deploying scarcity marketing tactics.
“The current invite-only mechanism is due to genuinely limited server capacity at this stage,” Manus AI’s product partner Zhang Tao said in a social media post on Thursday afternoon. Zhang apologised, admitting the team underestimated the enthusiasm of the public response, and initially intended only to share some achievements from the AI agent. Consequently, their server resources were planned to only meet a demonstration level.
“The current version of Manus is still in its infancy, far from what we aim to deliver in our final product,” Zhang added.
Meanwhile, the Manus team’s official account on X was suspended for violating the platform’s rules. “Peak” Yichao Ji, co-founder and chief scientist of Manus, said the team was “actively working with X’s support team to resolve this matter”.
The suspension was potentially linked to cryptocurrency scams by unrelated third-party accounts attempting to capitalise on its traffic.
Manus was also publicly questioned for the originality of its technology, as the product is based on existing large language models (LLMs), details of which the team did not disclose. This is different from the foundation model innovation from DeepSeek. LLMs are the technology underpinning generative AI services such as ChatGPT.
“Manus operates as a multi-agent system powered by several distinct models,” Ji said in the introduction video, expressing gratitude to the open source community and committing to “giving back” by open sourcing some of the models.
According to people close to the team, Manus was developed by Butterfly Effect, a company with a few dozen employees in Beijing and Wuhan, capital of central Hubei province. Following Manus’ sudden rise to fame, Wuhan’s state-owned media outlet Changjiang Daily wrote about the company, as Hubei’s municipal government – along with other regions – has been trying to boost its relevance in China’s AI landscape.
Butterfly Effect’s founding team includes entrepreneurs and experienced product managers, whose influence in China’s tech community helped fuel the product’s overnight fame.
Founder Xiao Hong, 33, is a serial entrepreneur and a 2015 graduate of Wuhan’s Huazhong University of Science and Technology. Xiao previously created a few popular WeChat-based plug-in applications that were subsequently acquired. In 2022, he launched Monica.ai, a popular AI assistant available as both a browser extension and an app across mobile and desktop platforms.
“In the era of AI, application developers should learn from smartphone makers,” Xiao said during a live-streaming session last June. He compared LLM providers to chipmakers, suggesting that AI application developers should learn from companies like Xiaomi and Apple in terms of branding, supply chains, distribution and profit margins.
36 men in China buy ‘love nest’ only to discover they have same lover
