China Decode: Microsoft's China Retreat, Remembering Zhu Rongji, and Typhoon Dolphin's Aftermath

Alice Han and James Kynge of China Decode analyze Microsoft's five-year pullback from China, which has involved shuttering offices, closing retail stores, and winding down thousands of jobs, even as the company quietly continues selling Azure and AI services to Chinese firms like ByteDance and Shein. They explore what is driving the retreat and whether it signals the long-anticipated US–China economic decoupling, noting the irony that Microsoft's Beijing R&D center trained alumni who now lead Chinese AI competitors like DeepSeek and SenseTime. The conversation then turns to the death of former Chinese premier Zhu Rongji at 97, assessing his legacy as the architect of China's WTO entry who oversaw both a 12x increase in global trade and the layoff of tens of millions of state-enterprise workers, as well as what the unscripted grief on Weibo reveals about contemporary China. The episode closes with a brief look at Typhoon Dolphin's aftermath, including over a million evacuations and record heat in Hong Kong.