In Asia, middle managers such as department heads make more than 14 times as much as operational employees such as clerical workers--the biggest such pay disparity in the world, according to a report by global management consulting firm Hay Group. de…

33. Pay Gap for the Brightest Female Graduatea 最聪明的大学女毕业生面临的工资差距 ① When young women were found to make only 82 percent of what their male peers do just one year out of college,many were at a loss to explain it. ② All the traditional reasons put forwa…

The big push in office design is forcing co-workers to interact more. Cubicle walls are lower, office doors are no more and communal cafes and snack bars abound. cubicle:小卧室,小隔间 communal:公共的,公社的 Like most grand social experiments, though, open-plan o…

Li Shan's oldest son was the perfect candidate to join the throngs of Chinese students studying abroad. But he chose Tsinghua University in Beijing. throng:人群,拥挤,众多 That is an unusual choice for a graduate of the elite Hong Kong International School,…

The appointment of India-born Satya Nadella as Microsoft Corp.'s CEO has caused a bit of a stir in China, where people are questioning why Indians but not Chinese are getting top jobs in the U.S. Language and familiarity with Western culture are the…

The conference call is one of the most familiar rituals of office life -- and one of the most hated. ritual:典礼,宗教仪式 Abuses are rife. People on the line interrupt others, zone out or multitask, forgetting to hit 'mute' while talking to kids or slurpin…

The mass uprisings this summer in Egypt, Turkey and Brazil are powerful reminders that the middle classes drive history. What remains unclear, however, is where they are driving it. uprising:起义,升起 The world today is witnessing its third great surge o…

BEIJING—Chinese government officials destroyed more than six tons of ivory that had been illegally smuggled into the country, signaling that Beijing is willing to play a greater role in protecting dwindling elephant populations. smuggle:走私       dwin…

"I used to think I was this made man," says entrepreneur Glenn Kelman. "That's what they tell you after you take a company public." In 1996 Mr. Kelman co-founded Plumtree, a business-software firm that went public in 2002. After that,…

The long-running patent war among the technology industry's heavyweights just grew a whole lot bigger-and more controversial. After a brief hiatus for major new litigation, a joint venture owned by Apple Inc., Microsoft Corp., BlackBerry Ltd. , Erics…

Opening up a Korean restaurant among the rice fields and limestone karsts north of Hanoi might seem a risky business, but Le Thi Huyen is doing a roaring trade at her bistro here. bistro:小酒馆 The reason? Samsung Electronics Co., the South Korean firm,…

China's appetite for coal, once seemingly unlimited, is starting to wane, and the effects are rippling far from the Middle Kingdom. wane:衰落,退潮,衰减 ripple:波纹,涟漪 With the world's second-largest economy, China in recent years has been driving demand for…

In China, consumers pay nearly $1 more for a latte at Starbucks than their U.S. counterparts. A Cadillac Escalade Hybrid Base 6.0 costs $229,000 in China, compared to just over $73,000 in the U.S. Welcome to China's modern retail world, where the pri…

The politically explosive issue of the official retirement age has drawn academics from two of China's most august educational institutions into a public standoff, signaling how closely fought the policy contest over how to cope with the country's sh…

Americans have long taken pride on their willingness to bet it all on a dream. But that risk-taking spirit appears to be fading. Three long-running trends suggest the U.S. economy has turned soft on risk: Companies add jobs more slowly, even in good…

Billions of dollars are flowing into online advertising. But marketers also are confronting an uncomfortable reality: rampant fraud. rampant:猖獗的,狂暴的 About 36% of all Web traffic is considered fake, the product of computers hijacked by viruses and pro…

AT THE ACADEMY AWARDS earlier this month, Kerry Washington, the star of the ABC-TV series 'Scandal,' wore a lilac Jason Wu gown, tailor-made to accommodate what she playfully called her little 'accessory'-a growing baby bump. These days, that's just…

The default background for Microsoft's Windows XP operating system -- a perfect blue sky full of cotton-candy clouds above rolling hills with impeccably trimmed grass and daffodils -- is the spring day we wish could last forever. rolling hills:起伏群山  …

Some drink only vegetable juice. Others soak in Epsom salts. It's all in the pursuit of ridding the body of months or years of accumulated toxins, said to be the cause of fat, fatigue, diabetes, memory problems and countless other conditions. soak in…

Much has been said about what the 'China Dream' really means to many Chinese -- whether it is national strength, cultural renewal or more modest personal goals. For many of those living in the vast countryside, the dream is a life in one a city and s…

If you find yourself needing to sit down to take off your shoes, it might be time to start paying attention to your sense of balance. People don't usually think about balance until they fall, but little signs such as relying on handrails to go up and…

In the war for the Chinese Internet, messaging giant Tencent is taking the battle to rival Alibaba's territory as never before. Tencent, a leader in online messaging and gaming, said Monday it will pay $215 million for a 15% stake in online retailer…

The hottest showcase for new technology at this year's Mobile World Congress wasn't in the event's cavernous exhibition halls. It was actually about two miles away, at an affiliated show for startups and venture capitalists. showcase:展示,作品欣赏        …

Blue skies were finally visible in the capital on Thursday after the region suffered fromseven straight days of intense pollution, sending consumers out in droves to buy pollution masks. in droves:陆陆续续,成群结队 Although Thursday’s weather brought a colle…

Where are Chinese tourists going to next? Pop culture may hold some clues, from blockbuster rom-com 'Finding Mr. Right' to U.S. sitcom 'The Big Bang Theory.' blockbuster:轰动,巨型炸弹 China is the source of most of the world's tourists as well as its bigge…

Sam Su for years ran one of the highest-flying foreign business operations in China. These days, he's trying to pull it out of a tailspin. tailspin:混乱 As China head for Yum Brands Inc. for the past 16 years, Mr. Su built its KFC arm into the biggest…

Detroit is beautiful-though you probably have to be a child of the industrial Midwest, like me, to see it. As you may have heard, the city is in trouble. At the end of the 2013 fiscal year, Detroit had a balance sheet with liabilities of $9.05 billio…

Forget the breathless coverage of China Mobile offering the iPhone for a moment. Yes, it's huge news for China's biggest wireless carrier and Apple (AAPL) -- and we've heard plenty to the point. But the real game changer for China is another mobile m…

In a year that featured one of history's biggest corporate buyouts, a stock-market surge reminiscent of the dot-com bubble and an American energy boom that kept on booming, there was plenty to write about in the business world. buyout:收购,买断 reminisce…

Internet giant Google Inc. has scrapped a plan to build its own data center in Hong Kong and will instead expand its facilities in Taiwan and Singapore. “While we see tremendous opportunity and potential in Hong Kong…we will not be moving ahead with…