An army of Western luxury-lifestyle purveyors flock to China to teach the country’s new billionaires how to act rich.

How the China National Tobacco Corp., which manufactures 2.5 trillion cigarettes per year, came to make more money than Apple.

Without fanfare—indeed, with some misgivings about its new status—China has just overtaken the United States as the world’s largest economy.

What the Chinese education system can teach America about relying on test scores as the main metric of success.

On former CIA agent John T. Downey, who spent more than 20 years in China as the longest held American captive of war.

On the world’s biggest polluter.

How a Chinese national, with the help of a suspected spy, disappeared with laptops and hard drives that may have contained sensitive information from the Arizona Counter Terrorism Information Center.

On frozen dumplings, industrial freezers, and what the future could hold after China’s burgeoning refrigeration boom.

Tracking a rumored gerbil infestation through China’s bureaucracy.

A season with the American Football League of China.

A surprising trip into the propaganda machine.

Inside the lucrative — and illegal — business of elephant tusk trafficking.

The rise of an expensive, experimental stem-cell treatment in China and the medical tourism it attracts.

Arriving in China at 23, Sidney Rittenberg spent 35 years as a “friend, confidante, translator, and journalist” for the Communist Party’s top leaders. In this interview, he recalls both his friendship with Chairman Mao and the 16 years he spent in solitary confinement.

In the ’90s, a gynecologist named Gao Yaojie exposed an AIDS epidemic in rural China and the ensuing government cover-up. Forced to leave, she’s now 85 and living alone in New York.

In the shallow reefs of Ayungin Shoal sits a rusted-out ship manned by eight Filipino soldiers whole sole purpose is to keep China in check.

On the biggest food fraud in U.S. history.

On the road with Johnson Zeng, who buys up the metal “Americans won’t or can’t be bothered to recycle.”

Tracking the circuitous fall of a Chinese political star.

How the case of a poisoned college student in China, cold for 18 years, has suddenly turned into “what may be the largest amateur online manhunt in history.”

The NFL attempts to set up a beachhead in China.

On the holy city of Canudos, and other attempts at better living “by the dispossessed and marginalized the world over.”

Shanghai, in 1989 and 2013. Excerpted from A History of Future Cities.

Authorities say an American electronics engineer committed suicide after working on a project involving a Chinese telecom giant. His family believes he was murdered.

On the meeting of shaggy-haired American ping pong ace Glenn Cowan and Chinese master Zhuang Zedong (who died this week), and how their fleeting friendship thawed relations between the twon nations during the U.S. team’s historic 1971 tour of China.