Brook Larmer
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bangkok-based writer. contributor to new york times magazine, national geographic, 1843 magazine. author of operation yao ming.
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Articles by Brook Larmer
China decrece
Ayuda Buscar en la ayuda Buscar en la ayuda China decrece Autores: Brook Larmer, Jane Zhang, Justín Jin (fot.) Localización: National geographic, ISSN 1138-1434, Vol. 52, Nº. 4 (ABR), 2023, págs. 39-59 Idioma: español Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...) Resumen La política del hijo único y el desarrollo económico han hundido la tasa de fecundidad del gigante asiático, provocando un declive demográfico que ya empieza a tener consecuencias y está redefiniendo el futuro del país.
En busca de los otros humanos
Ayuda Buscar en la ayuda Buscar en la ayuda En busca de los otros humanos Autores: Brook Larmer, Justín Jin (fot.), Mark Thiessen (fot.) Localización: National geographic, ISSN 1138-1434, Vol. 56, Nº. 2 (FEB), 2025, págs. 2-39 Idioma: español Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...) Resumen Durante siglos existió una laguna en nuestra comprensión de la historia evolutiva de Homo sapiens.
What Will China’s Green-Tech Ambitions Cost the World? Original
On a remote mountainridge in southeastern Laos, a gigantic white blade emerged from the clouds, seemingly suspended in midair. The blade rose to the height of a 50-story building, more than 600 feet above a nearby cluster of wooden houses, and spun back into the clouds. Another blade followed, then another. The clouds shifted, unveiling a phalanx of giant wind turbines marching down the ridge far into the distance.
How a molar, jawbone, and pinkie are rewriting human history
Deep inside Cobra Cave, in the remote mountains of northeastern Laos, the beam from Eric Suzzoni’s headlamp bounced across barren rock until it flashed on something unusual: dozens of bones and teeth protruding from a layer of sediment and rock. Suzzoni, a tall, 50-year-old caving specialist with a tiger tattoo on his arm, yelled out to his partner, Sébastien Frangeul. This was the French explorers’ first foray into Cobra Cave.
Some of humanity’s greatest evolutionary mysteries are finally being solved-one bone at a time
Deep inside Cobra Cave, in the remote mountains of northeastern Laos, the beam from Eric Suzzoni’s headlamp bounced across barren rock until it flashed on something unusual: dozens of bones and teeth protruding from a layer of sediment and rock. Suzzoni, a tall, 50-year-old caving specialist with a tiger tattoo on his arm, yelled out to his partner, Sébastien Frangeul. This was the French explorers’ first foray into Cobra Cave.
China’s population is shrinking. It faces a perilous future.
China will soon no longer be world’s most populous country—a title it has held for centuries—underscoring the daunting challenge it confronts to maintain its global dominance.
China’s population is shrinking. It faces a perilous future.
It’s early autumn in central China, and the streets of Ding Qingzi’s village are turning into gold. Thousands of husked corncobs lie in orderly rectangles in front of homes, their kernels drying in the sun. The harvest is one of the heartbeats of rural life in Anhui Province, a constant that Ding, 35, has known since childhood. Yet few other rhythms remain. Except for the corn, the streets are almost empty. Houses have been abandoned. The sounds of children have faded.
China’s population is shrinking. It faces a perilous future.
At a postnatal center in Hangzhou, caregivers tend to babies while their mothers recuperate. Private centers like this one offer new mothers who can afford it the time needed to recover, known as zuo yuezi in traditional Chinese medicine. The cost of raising children in modern China is a key factor in the country’s declining population.
Esculturas misteriosas e evidências de sacrifícios humanos descobertas em cidade antiga
Coroada por uma pirâmide em degraus com mais de 60 metros de altura, uma cidade fortaleza com 4300 anos conhecida por Shimao está a desafiar as narrativas tradicionais sobre a história inicial da China. Fotografia de Ben Sherlock, National Geographic. As descobertas feitas neste vasto local alteram a visão que os arqueólogos têm sobre as raízes da civilização chinesa. Texto: Brook Larmer As rochas não revelaram os seus segredos facilmente.
Mysterious carvings and evidence of human sacrifice uncovered in Shimao
Please be respectful of copyright. Unauthorized use is prohibited. History & Culture News Discoveries at the sprawling site have archaeologists rethinking the roots of Chinese civilization. The stones didn’t give up their secrets easily. For decades, villagers in the dust-blown hills of China’s Loess Plateau believed that the crumbling rock walls near their homes were part of the Great Wall. It made sense.
Mysterious carvings and evidence of human sacrifice uncovered in ancient city
The stones didn’t give up their secrets easily. For decades, villagers in the dust-blown hills of China’s Loess Plateau believed that the crumbling rock walls near their homes were part of the Great Wall. It made sense. Remnants of the ancient barrier zigzag through this arid region inside the northern loop of the Yellow River, marking the frontier of Chinese rule stretching back more than 2,000 years.
What Just Happened with the NBA in China?
So, here we are, the latest in an increasingly long list of outrage-inducing faux pas by non-Chinese companies. This case involves an American citizen, not in China, using an American social media platform to express a personal opinion, which he has been forced to disavow because it did not accord with Chinese netizens’ own opinion, which precipitated a pile-on from Chinese corporations, media, and, to a lesser extent, the government.
What Soybean Politics Tell Us About Argentina and China
On Money Jan. 30, 2019 It should have been easy, traveling through Argentina, to find a bottle of soy sauce. My sons, born and raised in Asia, have a habit of seasoning their food with a few drops of it, and Argentina happens to be one of the world’s leading producers of soybeans. Flying over the country’s heartland — the fertile expanse known as the pampa húmeda — we could see endless fields of the legume.
One of America’s Most Vital Exports, Education, Never Goes Abroad, but It Still Faces Threats
On Money Jan. 3, 2019 It’s no mere coincidence that Jeffrey R. Brown, the dean of the Gies College of Business, at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, is also a scholar of risk management. At his first faculty meeting four years ago, Brown fretted that his school had become, like many American universities, overly dependent on a single source of money — roughly a fifth of tuition revenue came from Chinese students.
China’s Mixed Messages on the Global Trade in Endangered-Animal Parts
The cryptic declaration from Beijing alarmed and mystified wildlife conservationists around the world. Reversing a 25-year-old ban on the trade of tiger bones and rhinoceros horns, the Chinese government announced in October that it would foster a “controlled” legal market in these goods. The move was unexpected, given that less than a year ago China took a major step in the fight against wildlife trafficking by doing precisely the opposite: banning the domestic sale of elephant ivory.
China’s Mixed Messages on the Global Trade in Endangered-Animal Parts
The cryptic declaration from Beijing alarmed and mystified wildlife conservationists around the world. Reversing a 25-year-old ban on the trade of tiger bones and rhinoceros horns, the Chinese government announced in October that it would foster a “controlled” legal market in these goods. The move was unexpected, given that less than a year ago China took a major step in the fight against wildlife trafficking by doing precisely the opposite: banning the domestic sale of elephant ivory.
What 52,000 Percent Inflation Can Do to a Country
I walked into the empty restaurant in Managua carrying a backpack stuffed with cash, thick stacks of Nicaraguan córdobas bound by rubber bands. The waiter, as expected, asked me to hand over the entire stash. It may have looked like an illicit transaction. But this was Nicaragua, in 1990, at the end of its war with the American-trained contra rebels, and I was only trying to buy a meal before my money lost its value.
Why Does Japan Make It So Hard for Working Women to Succeed? (Published 2018)
Two gray-haired men from Tokyo Medical University bowed their heads in shame before the assembled media in early August. An internal inquiry into one curious case — how did a government official’s son gain admission despite doing poorly on the entrance exam? — had exposed a pattern of fraud and discrimination.
越南能在中美贸易战中幸免于难吗？
The Japanese businessmen may be among the trade war’s first economic victims. But the shift of manufacturing away from China is not a new phenomenon. Over the past few years, as wages in Chinese factories have risen sharply, many companies, foreign and Chinese alike, have begun moving at least some of their operations to Southeast Asia to take advantage of lower production costs.
Can Vietnam Avoid Getting Hurt in the Crossfire When the Tariffs Are Flying?
The Japanese businessmen may be among the trade war’s first economic victims. But the shift of manufacturing away from China is not a new phenomenon. Over the past few years, as wages in Chinese factories have risen sharply, many companies, foreign and Chinese alike, have begun moving at least some of their operations to Southeast Asia to take advantage of lower production costs.
Naomi Osaka’s Breakthrough Game (Published 2018)
The temperature in Boca Raton had soared above 90 degrees, but on a side court at the Evert Tennis Academy, Naomi Osaka was just digging into one of her last training sessions before the summer hardcourt season.
When It Comes to a Trade War, China Takes the Long View
Ye Fangsu, a retired Shanghai schoolteacher, doesn’t need any lessons about the dangers of trade wars. For nearly 60 years, she has lived in the former French Concession, a leafy part of Shanghai whose name itself carries the humiliation of China’s biggest trade war. The “concession” was one of many slices of territory, including Hong Kong and parts of other port cities, that China was forced to hand over to foreign powers after its defeat in the mid-19th-century Opium Wars.
The Big Melt
This story appears in the April 2010 issue of National Geographic magazine. The gods must be furious. It's the only explanation that makes sense to Jia Son, a Tibetan farmer surveying the catastrophe unfolding above his village in China's mountainous Yunnan Province. "We've upset the natural order," the devout, 52-year-old Buddhist says.
E-Waste Offers an Economic Opportunity as Well as Toxicity
The precious metals in e-waste, found especially in circuit boards, are more concentrated than in the most productive mines. In 2016, the gold in the world’s e-waste equaled more than a tenth of the gold mined globally that year. And yet much of this treasure is simply reburied in landfills. Based on e-waste disposal rates, Americans alone throw out phones worth $60 million in gold and silver every year.
China Won’t Play in This World Cup. It Still Hopes to Profit.
When the World Cup opens in Moscow on June 14, soccer fans may notice something out of the ordinary. Alongside the slick ad campaigns for famous global brands — Visa, Adidas, Coca-Cola — there will be a proliferation of pitches from obscure companies with names like Mengniu, Vivo and Wanda. These newly minted World Cup sponsors aren’t selling much that is related to soccer; these three, for example, trade in dairy products, electric scooters and movie theaters.
Busted Leaders, Boosted Economies?
As the rogues’ gallery of fallen world leaders grows, you might be tempted to conclude that ours is the most corrupt era in history. Early last month, the former South Korean president Park Geun-hye was sentenced to 24 years in prison and fined $17 million for bribery, extortion and abuse of power. That same day, the former South African president Jacob Zuma, forced to resign in February by his own party, appeared in court to face charges over a $2.5 billion arms deal.
Cómo el aguacate se convirtió en la fruta del comercio global
Sin embargo, la verdadera maravilla del comercio mexicano del aguacate no es tanto su volumen, sino la velocidad de su crecimiento repentino. Los aguacates se han cultivado en México durante cerca de nueve mil años (se dice que cuando los conquistadores españoles vieron por primera vez esta fruta alargada a principios del siglo XVI, lo llamaron “aguacate” a partir de la palabra en náhuatl ahuacatl, que significa testículo).
How the Avocado Became the Fruit of Global Trade
Under the volcanoes in Mexico’s Michoacán state, violent cartels are fighting to dominate a shadowy and lucrative market. One gang, called La Familia Michoacana, announced its presence about a decade ago by tossing five rivals’ heads onto a dance floor in the town of Uruapan. The Knights Templar muscled in next, spouting a chivalric code of honor as it taxed, extorted and kidnapped farmers and usurped their land.
A Malaysian Insta-City Becomes a Flash Point for Chinese Colonialism - and Capital Flight
Within a year of putting its initial offerings on the market in December 2015, Forest City had sold 80 percent of all units on the first island. The project is a relatively cheap alternative to property havens in North America, Australia and China itself. A luxury two-bedroom apartment costs only $180,000 in Forest City, about a third of what it would command in Shanghai. Still, the sheer volume in sales means that Forest City raked in more than $3 billion in 2016 alone, according to the company.
South Korea’s Most Dangerous Enemy: Demographics
On Money Feb. 20, 2018 When the whirlwind of the Winter Olympics spins to a close this weekend, the host city, Pyeongchang, South Korea, will settle down to a life beyond aerial flips, halfpipe pretzels and metronomic North Korean cheerleaders. The place will become, once again, a quiet spot where very few children live — its population a disproportionately elderly one, dependent on an imperiled social-security system.
What Does It Take to Stop Accepting Pollution as the Price of Progress?
Such economic tidings, environmentalists hope, will push India to finally rise above its fractious politics and fragile institutions to tackle endemic pollution. The signs, however, are not all promising. India’s former environment minister himself dismissed what he called a “misleading” W.H.O. report that listed more than 30 Indian cities among the world’s 100 most polluted — and rejected another scientific study linking air pollution to mortality.
Beijing Bids Goodbye to Robert Mugabe
Behind the scenes, though, Beijing was growing alarmed. Mugabe’s disastrous handling of the economy had gone on for years, leaving more than 60 percent of the population below the poverty line — and government debts to China unpaid. But what provoked Beijing’s ire in early 2016 was a decision to enforce an “indigenization” law that required foreign ventures to reserve at least 51 percent of their ownership for local Zimbabweans.
China’s Revealing Spin on the ‘Sharing Economy’
Who can blame China for hanging on to the term “sharing economy”? It fits with the image that Beijing wants to project: warm, generous, egalitarian.
North Korea Is No Longer the Hermit Kingdom - but How Long Will China Be Its Lifeline?
Nor is North Korea as ossified as outsiders might imagine. Kim still wields the instruments of totalitarian power, but he has relaxed the state’s grip on the economy, allowing officials and ordinary citizens greater autonomy to make money and engage in trade, so long as a chunk of the profits flows to Kim’s inner circle. As a result, the North Korean economy grew 3.9 percent last year. Food prices have stabilized. Mobile phones have proliferated.
What the World’s Emptiest International Airport Says About China’s Influence (Published 2017)
The four-lane highway leading out of the Sri Lankan town of Hambantota gets so little traffic that it sometimes attracts more wild elephants than automobiles. The pachyderms are intelligent — they seem to use the road as a jungle shortcut — but not intelligent enough, alas, to appreciate the pun their course embodies: It links together a series of white elephants, i.e. boondoggles, built and financed by the Chinese.
Without a Home, and Without Hope
By Photographs by Since this article was published, the Myanmar military has escalated its attacks on Rohingya villages, spurring more than hundreds of thousands Rohingya to flee their homes as of September 11 and stream toward the overcrowded refugee camps in Bangladesh. On Aug. 25, Rohingya militants attacked security forces, killing at least a dozen. The army has responded in brutal fashion, according to refugee accounts, burning villages and killing hundreds.
Without a Home, and Without Hope
The encounter marked only the beginning of the latest wave of violence against the estimated 1.1 million Rohingya who live, precariously, in Myanmar’s western Rakhine state. The United Nations considers the Rohingya one of the world’s most persecuted minorities. Muslims in a nation dominated by Buddhists, the Rohingya claim that they are indigenous to Rakhine, and many are descended from settlers who came in the 19th and early 20th century.
The Magazine’s Money Issue
Money, it’s said, makes the world go round. While that might not be literally true — Earth, much like its wealthiest inhabitants, moves forward through sheer inertia, a kinetic inheritance bestowed at its creation — money undeniably does make things go around the world. An astonishing number of things, in fact: The weight of goods moved by ship alone each year now surpasses 10 billion tons, or nearly 3,000 pounds of stuff for every human being on the planet.
Has China Become Africa's New Colonial Overlord? | RealClearMarkets
Every weekday before dawn, a morning migration takes place near the desert on Africa's southwestern coast. At 5:30 in the Namibian enclave Swakopmund, whose century-old buildings still bear the imprint of German colonization, solitary men in khaki uniforms emerge from houses and apartment complexes, the white reflective strips on their pants flashing as they walk briskly through the darkness. They are not African but Chinese.
Is China the World’s New Colonial Power?
Every weekday before dawn, a morning migration takes place near the desert on Africa’s southwestern coast. At 5:30 in the Namibian enclave Swakopmund, whose century-old buildings still bear the imprint of German colonization, solitary men in khaki uniforms emerge from houses and apartment complexes, the white reflective strips on their pants flashing as they walk briskly through the darkness. They are not African but Chinese.
The Superfood Gold Rush
In the aisles of the American supermarket, hierarchies arise and collapse with the velocity of soap-opera drama. The produce section is especially cutthroat; here, because novel products are so rare, it’s the stories that must change to entice consumers. Back in the 1970s, the Chinese gooseberry went global — cultivated in New Zealand and shipped to the world — after being rechristened as the friendlier kiwi.
The Parachute Generation (Published 2017)
When I first met Yang Jinkai, two days before he boarded a plane for America, the smog hanging over his industrial home city, Shenyang, had turned the sun into a ghostly orb. The 16-year-old paced around the family apartment as his mother labeled his suitcases and packed them with the comforts of home: quilted pajamas, chopsticks, instant noodles.
Curry v. James: Superstar Culture in the NBA
While it’s the Golden State Warriors v. the Cleveland Cavaliers in this year’s NBA finals, a casual viewer might be led to believe the event is really a showdown between Stephen Curry and LeBron James. Officially, basketball remains a five-man team game, but the NBA prefers to market individuals. That’s no accident for what has become a sporting international behemoth.
Rethinking Honesty In the Fight for Equal Pay
The Aspen Institute is an educational and policy studies organization based in Washington, D.C. 1. In the fight to close the gender pay gap, is honesty the best policy? By Thea Joselow in the Broad Side 2. Poaching threatens species — and could start the next pandemic. Here’s how to stop it. 3. This is how to make jail better. 4. Can we teach computers to spot lies? 5. How do Chinese students schooled in rote learning make it to the Ivy League?
The Long Shadow of China’s One-Child Policy (Published 2015)
Notebook Chinese parents looking for suitable partners for their children at a marriage market in Shanghai in May 2015.Credit...Johannes Eisele/AFP/Getty Images Nov. 6, 2015 If you get stuck in a crowd in China — it’s not hard to do in a country of nearly 1.4 billion — you may hear someone mutter, “Ren tai duo!”: “Too many people!” It’s a common but misleading complaint.
Can India's Land of Former Headhunters Make Peace?
His facial tattoo has faded over the years, but Nokying Wangnao can’t forget the first human head he took six decades ago. It was the head of a young boy. Wangnao is one of several hundred former headhunters still living in the mist-covered Naga hills along the wild frontier between India and Myanmar. When I met him in his thatched hut in the village of Hongphoi, he was weaving a bamboo basket and wearing a necklace of five bronze skulls—one for each head he took.
How Do You Keep Your Kids Healthy in Smog-Choked China?
A child playing in Qingdao, China, in 2013. April 16, 2015 On a recent morning in Arizona, my two young sons padded out into their grandparents’ garden to marvel at the flowers of a hedgehog cactus. The spectacular pink and yellow blossoms of this particular plant burst open once a year and last for only a day. The boys seemed a bit like those flowers.
Inside a Chinese Test-Prep Factory (Published 2014)
Dec. 31, 2014 The main street of Maotanchang, a secluded town in the furrowed hills of eastern China’s Anhui province, was nearly deserted. A man dozed on a motorized rickshaw, while two old women with hoes shuffled toward the rice paddies outside town. It was 11:44 on a Sunday morning last spring, and the row of shops selling food, tea and books by the pound stood empty. Even the town’s sacred tree lured no supplicants; beneath its broad limbs, a single bundle of incense smoldered on a pile of ash.
Business books of the decade
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The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism
By Iain Martin, James B. Stewart Verified, Ben Horowitz, Amy Wallace, Alan Blinder Verified, Stephen Dubner Verified, James Kynge, Dick Martin Verified, Ruchir Sharma, Brad Stone Verified, Julia Angwin, Andrew Keen, Andrew Ross Sorkin Verified, David Wessel, Daniel Schulman Verified, Thomas Friedman Verified, Nick Davies, Bo Burlingham, Charles Duhigg, John Cassidy Verified, Russell Gold, Bryce Hoffman, Robert Frank Verified, Justin Fox Verified, Kurt Eichenwald Verified, Daniel J. Gross, Bob Lutz, David D. Kirkpatrick Verified, Neil Irwin Verified, Paul F. Roberts Verified, Stephen Green Verified, Ian Fraser, Tim Sullivan, James Robinson Verified, Michael Lewis, Christina Binkley Verified, Bethany McLean Verified, Melody Petersen Verified, Charles Morris, Joe Nocera Verified, ROBERT SHILLER, Walter Isaacson, Carl Cannon Verified, John Browne, Margaret Heffernan, Satyajit Das, Gareth Jones, Mohamed El-Erian, Moisés Naím, Peter Diamandis, William Cohan Verified, Daniel Yergin, Cass Sunstein, Don Tapscott, Jeff Rubin, Hamish McRae Verified, Steven Kotler, Edward Glaeser, Howard W. French, Charles Calomiris, Thomas Piketty Verified, Sendhil Mullainathan, Matt Ridley, Erik Brynjolfsson, Andrew McAfee, Atif Mian, Amir Sufi, Tom Doctoroff, Gary Hamel, Joshua Ferris, Anita Raghavan, Michael Spence, Kenneth Rogoff, Jeffrey Sachs, Roddy Boyd, Steve Coll Verified, Adam Grant Verified, Rita Gunther McGrath, Alan Greenspan, Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Ian Bremmer, Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, Raghuram Rajan, Liaquat Ahamed, Ed Catmull, Stephen Haber, Diane Coyle, Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, Kenneth Cukier Verified, Sheryl Sandberg, Joe Studwell, Eldar Shafir, Angus Deaton, Ray Fisman, John Coates, William Silber, Michael Sandel, Daron Acemoglu, Luigi Zingales, Guy Lawson, Philip Coggan, Christopher Meyer, Julie Kirby, Barbara Kellerman, Richard Rumelt, Sylvia Nasar, Tom Bower, Michael Mandelbaum, Sebastian Mallaby Verified, Sheena Iyengar, Patrick Dillon, Fred Goodman, Anthony Williams, Walter Kiechel, Adam Haslett, George Akerlof, Nandan Nilekani, Frank Partnoy, Rob Goffee, Jim Collins, Carmen Reinhart, Tristram Stuart, William Bernstein, Byron Ousey, Tim Bouquet, Misha Glenny, Alice Schroeder, Clay Shirky, Richard Thaler, Bill Emmott, Joseph Nye, Philip Delves Broughton, Philippe Legrain, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Iain Carson, Richard Bookstaber, Antoine van Agtmael, Phil Rosenzweig, Marc Levinson, Charles Fishman, Daniel Nissannoff, Barton Biggs, Charles Handy, Brook Larmer Verified, Barbara Smit, Debora Spar, Constantinos Markides, Paul Geroski, Steven Levitt, John Battelle, Pietra Rivoli, Corinne Maier, Lucian Bebchuk, Jesse Fried, Sumantra Ghoshal, John Bogle, Philip Augar, Yoshi Sheffi, Paul Ormerod, Vijay Vaitheeswaran, Lawrence Lessig, TED FISHMAN
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Financial Times
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Li Na, China’s Tennis Rebel (Published 2013)
The U.S. Open Issue Credit...Sim Chi Yin for The New York Times Aug. 22, 2013 The patch of Wimbledon grass known as the Graveyard of Champions was supposedly exorcised four years ago, when the blue-blazered gentlemen of the All England Lawn Tennis Club demolished Court 2, built a new grandstand in its place and, in 2011, renamed the haunted space Court 3. But the tennis fans watching the 2013 championships still knew. Li Na, China’s tennis rebel, knew, too.
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