TheChek News Flow

Elon Musk’s aerospace company plans next test launch of its roughly 400-foot-tall rocket after last three flights ended prematurely

SpaceX is aiming to reignite its 403-foot-tall Starship project.

The rocket—core to founder Elon Musk’s dream of landing humans on Mars—has struggled through a rough stretch, with its spacecraft beset by leaks, propellants mixing together and fires during three other test missions this year.

On Sunday, SpaceX is set to launch Starship on a test flight around 7:30 p.m. Eastern time from its complex outside of Brownsville, Texas. Weekend thunderstorms that are expected in the region could prompt SpaceX to delay the flight.

The spacecraft’s failures have set back SpaceX’s ambitions to use Starship to accelerate its Starlink satellite business. They pose challenges for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and other customers planning missions with the vehicle.

“It’s time to be successful. The company needs it. The program needs it. NASA needs it,” said Hans Koenigsmann, a former high-ranking SpaceX engineer who spent around 20 years at the company. He defined success in part as the company returning the Starship spacecraft to Earth.

Similar to past launches, SpaceX plans a series of experiments during the launch, aiming to fly the Starship spacecraft through space before attempting to speed it through the atmosphere for a landing in the Indian Ocean.

The fiery endings to Starship’s recent test flights have hindered SpaceX engineers from gathering data on the rocket, a towering booster designed to propel a spacecraft into orbit.

Musk said before the previous Starship launch in May that evaluating a tiled heat shield on the spacecraft was the mission’s priority, but the vehicle tumbled out of its flight path before the shield could be tested.

For Sunday’s flight, the company aims to deploy simulated Starlink satellites and try out alternative materials designed to protect the spacecraft during re-entry, among other tests. It has removed a significant number of tiles from the spacecraft to see how several parts of the vehicle perform when it is flying back to Earth.

Shana Diez, a top engineer working on the Starship program for SpaceX, on Saturday said the craft will face a tough challenge during re-entry. “Many hard lessons rolled into this ship,” she said in a post on X.

SpaceX won’t try to catch the booster at the launchpad, an engineering feat it has completed three times. Instead, it plans to conduct a flip maneuver with the booster that requires less propellant. One booster engine used for the last part of landing will be intentionally disabled, allowing the company to gather data on using a backup engine during the landing sequence.

SpaceX has faced other problems with the vehicle. In June, a Starship spacecraft exploded during an engine test on the ground. That caused delays while SpaceX investigated what happened and hampered the company’s ability to launch more frequently this year.

No one was hurt or killed in the accident, which scorched a testing area at the company’s facility in Texas, shook homes miles away and sparked tension with Mexican authorities. Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico’s president, said the explosion caused contamination in the neighboring country.

Starbase, the company property and city where SpaceX builds and launches Starship, is located near the southeastern tip of Texas, next to the U.S. border with Mexico. The company has said it offered assistance in cleaning up debris.

President’s attempts to control monetary policy became dominant—but unspoken—theme at annual central bankers’ retreat

JACKSON HOLE, Wyo.—Central bankers debated artificial intelligence, demographics and interest rates during their annual conference here this weekend. But institutional survival became the unmistakable and pervasive undercurrent at what is normally a staid academic gathering.

On Friday, the first full day of the conference, President Trump escalated a brazen and relentless campaign to remake the Federal Reserve, when he said he was considering firing governor Lisa Cook over mortgage-fraud allegations made by a Trump administration housing official.

For months, Trump and his confidants have been lambasting Fed Chair Jerome Powell for not lowering rates at the speed they would like to see, calling him either incompetent or politically motivated—or both.

The attacks all fit within a broader effort by Trump and his allies to make life so uncomfortable for Fed officials—first Powell, and now Cook—that they cave or quit, clearing the way to get the lower rates Trump craves or to install more loyalists who will deliver.

“This should be seen for what it is: a blatant shakedown and an attempt to strong-arm policymakers into lowering rates,” said Tim Mahedy, a former senior adviser at the San Francisco Fed who runs an economic consulting firm in San Diego.

The campaign against Cook, who is the first Black woman to serve on the Fed’s board, took an ugly turn on Friday night. An image posted on the president’s social-media account included the portraits of the Fed’s board of governors and Stephen Miran, Trump’s pick for an empty seat on the board. In the center was a larger photo purporting to be Cook. It displayed a red X over the photo and labeled Cook as “The Fraudster.” A post on Saturday included a photo labeled as Cook’s Michigan home.

The threats have Fed officials walking a careful line between defending their institution and avoiding direct political confrontation. Outside the rustic lodge overlooking the Grand Tetons, a stepped-up law-enforcement presence served as a visible reminder of how a once sedate academic seminar had become a high-security event.

At Jackson Hole, answers to questions about their independence were wrapped in extremely diplomatic language. “At the end of the day, I have to look at myself in the mirror every day and do what I know is right,” Boston Fed President Susan Collins said when asked about the president’s statements about Cook.

Kansas City Fed President Jeffrey Schmid told CNBC that “great steel is tested by fire” when asked about Fed independence.

The White House has said that its goal is to turbocharge the economy, and that monetary policy should complement the president’s agenda. Administration officials have said the Fed is overly preoccupied about the risks of inflation from tariffs and should cut rates to boost home sales.

Some Fed policymakers are uneasy about steps that could spur growth at a time when businesses are figuring out whether they can raise prices to avoid a cost squeeze from tariffs.

In a widely anticipated speech Friday, Powell signaled officials are prepared to cut rates at their next meeting because the economic outlook is shifting. Powell has consistently said the Fed’s decisions are based solely on its best economic judgments, but the alignment with Trump’s wishes risks damaging perceptions of Fed independence.

Cook has said she won’t be “bullied” into resigning her seat “because of some questions raised in a tweet.” She has said she would provide more information about two mortgage transactions that a Trump administration official has questioned. At the Jackson Hole conference, she declined to comment further.

The White House hasn’t said what motivated its focus on Cook. Any effort to remove her could be tied up for months in litigation. Fed governors can be dismissed for cause, but it isn’t clear what conduct rises to meet that standard.

The Trump administration’s allegations have placed Cook in a precarious spot. “I think it’s incumbent on Governor Cook to explain what happened,” said Michael Strain, an economist at the American Enterprise Institute. “At this point there’s a lot we don’t know about what happened.”

The effort to oust Cook came less than two weeks after Trump selected his economic adviser Miran to fill the spot of another Fed governor. That seat opened when Adriana Kugler unexpectedly stepped down on Aug. 8. She didn’t give a reason for resigning.

Mahedy said the Cook case showed how the Miran nomination had done little to satisfy the White House’s zeal for Fed control. The Trump administration operates under “schoolyard rules,” he said, where “you give up your lunch money, and they come back for your backpack.”

Former Fed officials say they are less worried about high-profile efforts to pressure Powell because people who know Powell best don’t think those will work. Instead, they are more worried about how Trump and a new chair could methodically dismantle the rhythms and norms of the institution that has tried to stay far outside of the glare of partisan politics. Powell’s term as chair expires in May.

“We’ve seen what’s happened to the staff at the Justice Department, at the FBI,” said Jon Faust, a former senior adviser to Powell. “The next chair could attempt to start the same sort of purge of the board staff as well.”

Right now, Trump has two appointees on the Fed’s seven-person board of governors. With two more nominees, including a new chair next spring, they could gain a majority that could choose to fundamentally remake the entire Fed system.

One way to weaken Fed structure could be to undermine the system’s 12 regional banks.

While the seven Fed governors are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate, the 12 reserve bank presidents are chosen by local boards composed of bankers and business leaders from their respective districts. Both groups vote on interest-rate policy, but governors serve in Washington while regional presidents operate from cities like New York, Chicago and San Francisco.

The Fed presidents serve five-year terms, and the terms run concurrently. The 12 presidents must be reappointed by the governors to new terms before next March.

If Trump has a majority on the board of governors before next March, they could decline to reappoint regional Fed presidents. Dismissing presidents who have served ably would shatter decades of precedent and pierce a key firewall protecting the Fed’s independence that dates to the central bank’s founding in 1913.

Two Trump-appointed governors, Christopher Waller and Michelle Bowman, abstained from voting to approve the appointment of Austan Goolsbee, a former economic adviser to President Barack Obama, as president of the Chicago Fed in late 2022. Goolsbee took office in January 2023.

Fed officials are haunted by the memory of political pressure that contributed to a series of policy errors in the 1970s. The high inflation that followed required punishing recessions caused by very high interest rates in the early 1980s.

Financial markets have historically rewarded central bank independence with lower borrowing costs and more stable currency values—benefits that could erode if investors lose confidence in the Fed’s ability to make decisions based on economic data rather than political pressure.

Proponents see Ethereum becoming the platform of choice for the financial world

Ether, the cryptocurrency long overshadowed by bitcoin, has surged about 13.5% this month. One big beneficiary: billionaire Peter Thiel.

The venture-capital investor has been among those piling into ether, betting that the token’s underlying blockchain, Ethereum, could become Wall Street’s platform of choice to launch new financial products and services.

Unlike bitcoin, which has limited supply and is largely used as a digital store of value and means of speculation, there is no hard cap on ether’s supply. But the digital token is increasingly being used for transactions on Ethereum, an open-source platform where developers build and operate applications that can be used to trade, lend and borrow digital currencies.

Ether is up around 27% so far this year, topping bitcoin’s roughly 20% gain. The latest bitcoin rally is partly driven by a new wave of companies issuing shares and debt to stockpile the token as a “treasury” asset. The same thing is now happening with ether.

Thiel was a PayPal founder, an early Facebook investor and is a longtime patron of Vice President JD Vance. An investment firm managing his wealth has scored big paper gains on ether-related bets.

Thiel’s Founders Fund owns 7.5% of ETHZilla, which recently transformed itself from a biotech company to focus on selling shares to buy ether. Its stock tripled in value in one day last week after Thiel and his firms disclosed their investment, though it has since fallen some. The company’s market value went from about $18 million in late July to $741 million as of Thursday.

Thiel and his firm also control 9.1% of Bitmine Immersion Technologies, which recently raised $250 million to buy ether and is up more than 1,000% since late June. The company now has a market value of $8.3 billion.

Thiel’s gains on those investments pale in comparison to the billions of dollars added to the value of his stake in Palantir so far this year. Shares of the software firm he co-founded have soared in President Trump’s second term. It couldn’t be learned if Thiel has other nonpublic ether investments. He declined to comment.

Three people who have interacted with Thiel and his team say their recent bets stem from a belief that the Ethereum network will keep growing.

“It’s a broad play on Ethereum,” says McAndrew Rudisill, executive chairman of ETHZilla, who speaks with Thiel’s Founders Fund.

The idea is that if Ethereum becomes an alternative to traditional settlement rails for dollars, stocks and more, ether, as its native token, would benefit from increased activity on the platform. Bulls also hope Ethereum will become a popular platform for launching new financial products.

Tokenized money-market funds from BlackRock and Franklin Templeton already operate on the Ethereum network, as does the Apollo Diversified Credit Securitize Fund. Goldman Sachs and BNY launched digital tokens conferring ownership of money-market funds that operate on a blockchain built by Goldman, suggesting that Ethereum will have competition.

Activity on Ethereum amounted to more than $1.2 trillion this year, compared with $960 billion during the same time frame last year, according to data from The Block. Most of the transactions involve tether and USD Coin, the two largest dollar-pegged stablecoins, as well as deposits and withdrawals to major exchanges such as Binance and Coinbase, according to crypto data provider Nansen.

Betting on ether remains risky. It isn’t clear that Ethereum will become widely used in finance. And some activity on the network appears to be spam-related, such as nefarious phishing attacks.

The surge in ether’s price could also reflect the search for an alternative to bitcoin by speculators rather than a validation of Ethereum’s future.

“At least for now, the narrative of Wall Street rebuilding their financial infrastructure on Ethereum is just a sales pitch to get people to buy ether treasury stocks,” said Nicolai Søndergaard, a research analyst at Nansen.

Still, the Trump administration’s embrace of cryptocurrencies adds momentum.

The passage of the Genius Act last month spurred interest in stablecoins and the possibility that banks, fintechs and even retailers could widely adopt dollar-pegged digital tokens. And Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has suggested that stablecoins, many of which are traded on Ethereum, could play a role in reining in the national debt by driving demand for U.S. Treasurys.

Thiel has long been an evangelist for cryptocurrencies. Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, was a Thiel fellow, dropping out of college to receive backing from Thiel to launch the network.

Joey Krug, a longtime crypto investor, joined Founders Fund in 2023 to lead its crypto strategy. He left college in 2014 to create Augur, a decentralized prediction market built on Ethereum.

In 1 month, the Fed will CUT rates and blame a "weaker labor market."

Meanwhile, we now have PPI inflation growth at a 3-year high and CPI inflation above 2% for 53-STRAIGHT months.

Don't own assets? You will be left behind. Here's why.

Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, asked Meta

CEO Mark Zuckerberg to help him finance a $97.4 billion takeover of OpenAI in early 2025, court filings on Thursday revealed.

The filing is part of a legal case between Musk and OpenAI that was initiated last year. The case is proceeding in a federal court in Northern California, and a judge recently said OpenAI can move ahead with counter claims against Musk, who co-founded OpenAI as a non-profit with Sam Altman and others in 2015.

When Musk floated his proposal to buy OpenAI in February, he was incensed that the company and Altman, OpenAI’s CEO, were pushing to transform the business into a for-profit entity. Altman and Musk, who were longtime friends, have become bitter adversaries since OpenAI’s emergence as a leader in generative AI with billions of dollars in funding from Microsoft

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Musk started xAI in 2023 and was pushing for it to be a direct competitor to OpenAI. Musk later sued OpenAI, alleging a breach of contract, and tried to stop OpenAI from converting to a for-profit company.

In its counter claims, OpenAI has alleged that Musk and xAI’s “sham bid” harmed its business and that Musk has engaged in “harassment” through litigation and attacks on social media and in the press.

As part of its complaint, OpenAI has filed to subpoena Meta for communications between the company, its CEO and Musk about the bid.

In a statement to the court published Thursday, OpenAI said that when Musk and xAI were trying to form a consortium of investors to finance a takeover, they approached Zuckerberg with a letter of intent and asked “about potential financing arrangements or investments.”

Neither Zuckerberg nor Meta signed the LOI, the filing said.

A Meta spokesperson declined to comment. Marc Toberoff, Musk’s attorney in the case, didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The statement in the filing said that Meta has been “spending heavily to develop its own Al capabilities” and has been “offering pay packages of $100 million or more to leading Al researchers and attempting to poach OpenAI employees.”

Meta has argued that OpenAI’s requests for documents are overly burdensome, and that OpenAI should obtain relevant communications from Musk and xAI, instead.

A foreign driver with an unbelievably high blood alcohol content (BAC), one that would routinely kill most people, decided to drive his car at an unbelievable 220 kilometers per hour (137 miles per hour) on the German autobahn. His passenger had an even higher blood alcohol content.

The man was traveling on the A67 in southern Hesse and was so drunk that most medical literature indicates that he should be dead or in a coma.

One witness followed the car and called the police after noticing the man zigzagging between lanes and driving in an erratic manner late one evening.

Officers stopped the car, which had foreign license plates, and checked both occupants of the vehicle in the parking lot of the A5 autobahn.

Incredibly, the passenger of the vehicle had an even higher blood alcohol level.

“A breathalyzer test carried out on the spot showed a blood alcohol level of 4.16 per mille for the driver and no blood alcohol level for the passenger, as the device switches off when the blood alcohol level reaches 5 per mille!” the police wrote in a statement, including an exclamation mark to indicate their shock.

The driver’s license was immediately confiscated, and he was taken into custody.

German media outlet Welt wrote that “The fact that there were no injuries or deaths was likely due to mere coincidence.”

In Germany, drivers are not permitted to drive with a blood alcohol level over 0.5 per mille or higher. At 1.1 per mille, it is a criminal offense, as the law states there is an “absolute inability to drive.”

“A blood alcohol level above 4 per mille poses an acute risk to life,” the ADAC, the German automobile club, the largest in Europe, writes. “Important protective reflexes are lost, those affected fall into a coma, and can suffer shock with progressive circulatory failure, even complete respiratory and cardiac arrest.”

A blood alcohol concentration of more than 5 per mille almost always leads to death.

The fact that the passenger had a blood alcohol level above 5 and did not die is remarkable in itself.

There is speculation about the identity of the foreigners; however, the German media did not indicate their nationality or what country the vehicle was registered under.

Although the 5 per mille level seems remarkable, it is far from the highest blood alcohol level ever recorded. One poorly sourced claim notes a Polish driver recorded an incredible 1.480 percent level, which was recorded after he crashed his car. Despite the level, he survived, only later to die from the injuries from the crash — and not the alcohol. However, the Guinness Book of World Records claims the highest level was 1.374 percent, also set by a Polish man who survived but suffered serious damage to his internal organs.

Experts reveal how monitoring your blood sugar, in moderation, may help avoid spikes linked to intense hunger, cravings and even poor sleep

Fewer food cravings, better sleep and clearer skin – these can all be a result of stable blood sugar levels.

A growing number of social media users are promoting the benefits of blood sugar monitoring to avoid experiencing blood sugar spikes and their adverse effects.

For people with diabetes, a chronic disease characterised by high blood sugar (glucose) levels, keeping their blood sugar levels near normal helps manage the condition and prevent potentially serious complications.

This is also useful for non-diabetics, some experts say.

Glucose, a simple sugar, is the body’s primary fuel source. It comes mainly from the carbohydrates that our digestive system breaks down in the food and drinks we consume. The glucose is then absorbed into the bloodstream and carried to the body’s cells.

“It’s our currency in energy metabolism,” says German nutritional scientist Dr Brigitte Baeuerlein.

A person’s blood sugar level is the amount of glucose in a specific volume of blood, measured in milligrams per decilitre. It typically rises after eating, when the small intestine releases glucose into the bloodstream. Insulin, a hormone released by the pancreas, then helps cells absorb it for energy or storage.

“It docks onto the cells that need energy at the moment,” Baeuerlein says.

Blood sugar levels return to normal within a couple of hours in healthy individuals. In diabetics, however, insufficient production or function of insulin results in chronically high levels.

Stress can cause spikes in blood sugar, too – for instance, Baeuerlein notes, when you are frantically trying to find a parking space during working hours in a big city centre.

Your liver, in a “fight or flight” response, releases glucose into the bloodstream to provide a quick energy boost to deal with the perceived threat.

There are several ways to test your blood sugar. The conventional method is with a blood glucose meter: you insert a test strip into the meter, prick your fingertip with a lancet, and place a small drop of blood onto the strip. After a few seconds, the meter displays your blood glucose level on a screen.

A test often used by medical professionals to diagnose diabetes is a haemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) test, which provides the average blood glucose level over two to three months.

Another method is a continuous glucose monitor (CGM), a device that measures glucose levels in the interstitial fluid of your subcutaneous tissue, which reflects blood glucose levels with a slight delay.

CGMs use tiny sensor wires inserted under the skin of your upper arm or abdomen with an applicator. Readings are displayed on a receiver or your smartphone.

A blood sugar spike is a sharp, marked rise in the amount of glucose in your blood, usually occurring after eating quickly digested, short-chain carbohydrates – sugars, basically, such as those in white-flour products, sweets and fruit juices.

These spikes can trigger cravings for the very foods that caused them: if too much insulin is released to move glucose out of the bloodstream and into cells, blood sugar can rapidly drop, or “crash”, leading to intense hunger.

But Bernhard Kulzer, head of the research institute of the Diabetes-Academy Bad Mergentheim in Germany, says blood sugar measurements are not really needed by non-diabetics, pointing out that a healthy body regulates blood sugar levels itself.

The pancreas releases insulin if it is elevated, or glucagon – a hormone that stimulates the liver to release stored glucose – if it is low.

Endurance athletes are an exception, Kulzer says. Monitoring their blood sugar levels can help keep them from “hitting the wall”, a sudden loss of energy due to depletion of glycogen – the stored form of glucose – in the liver and skeletal muscles. If they know their level is low, they can fuel up on fast carbs.

According to Baeuerlein, people with a family history of diabetes might also want to check their blood sugar level to see how it reacts to certain foods. “Doing it for a few weeks is enough,” she says.

One plus of measuring blood sugar levels, says Kulzer, is that you get “biofeedback”. In other words, you eat something and then see straight away how it affects your blood sugar. Or you exercise and then see how the level drops. This can help you if you want to lose weight by changing your habits, he says.

However, “the readings are just a diagnostic tool and of no use unless you draw conclusions from them”.

This requires knowledge of how to interpret them, so “without instruction and training, they make little sense”, he says.

If you do use a blood glucose measuring device, Kulzer advises that it be temporary.

“There’s no point in wearing a sensor all of the time, especially considering that it’s not cost-free for healthy people,” he says.

Baeuerlein, for her part, warns that constantly worrying about what you eat could become compulsive.

Generalisations need to be treated with caution, she says, since “everyone, whether they’re healthy or have diabetes, reacts differently to sugar in food”. Their reaction depends in part on cell fitness – on their age, in other words. Musculature and exercise play a role, too.

If you want to lose weight, Kulzer says, you have to realise that your calorie intake is decisive. So to shed a few kilograms, you must consume fewer calories than your body burns through your metabolism.

A balanced diet is always a wise choice, says Baeuerlein. That means plenty of fruit, vegetables and dietary fibre, good oils, protein and not too many empty carbs whose calories come with little nutritional value. This will help prevent glucose spikes and food cravings.

She also advises against consuming isolated, dissolved sugars such as those found in soft drinks, juices and smoothies. It is also important to identify sugar sources in your diet and not add sugar to your coffee, for example. This can help you permanently reprogramme your food preferences.

A final tip is to begin a meal by eating vegetables or a salad.

“Everything that falls onto this foundation will then be absorbed into the bloodstream more slowly than if you start by eating noodles.”

Google is rumoured to have completed its first AI-enabled glasses, but has yet to decide on a contract manufacturer

Taiwan’s Quanta and HTC are seen as possible contract manufacturers for Google’s imminent AI glasses, as such products are expected to emerge as essential mobile devices that will drive rapid expansion across the industry.

Google is rumoured to have completed development of its first artificial intelligence-enabled glasses, which are reportedly to be made in Taiwan. But the US search giant has yet to decide on a contract manufacturer. Quanta was in charge of prototype design and is a strong contender, but market rumours suggest HTC may produce the devices.

HTC recently launched its first AI glasses model, the Vive Eagle, which it said were 100 per cent manufactured in Taiwan. The company also recently transferred some R&D personnel with skills in augmented reality and virtual reality (AR and VR), as well as non-exclusive licensed patents, to Google for US$250 million, leaving room for future collaboration between the two companies.

HTC previously sold its Powered by HTC smartphone division to Google for US$1.1 billion in a one-time deal, and some industry sources said it would be less than ideal for HTC if the recent US$250 million transaction is also a one-off.

Although contract manufacturing is no longer HTC’s core business, the company’s production of its own AI glasses shows that it has the capability. If HTC did manage to secure Google’s manufacturing contract, it would be a major boon to the company in improving capacity utilisation at its plant in Taoyuan, near Taipei, and expanding operations.

HTC’s Vive Eagle is the first set of AI glasses to support traditional Chinese voice control and is the world’s first branded wearable device to adopt an open AI architecture, allowing users to personalise their AI assistant experience by choosing from among large language models such as Google Gemini and OpenAI’s GPT.

On August 21, HTC senior vice-president Charles Huang said that the company would continue to expand AI functions and application scenarios through software updates.

The rapid development of generative AI, as well as mature AR and VR, cloud computing, and edge-computing technologies, had brought diverse options and innovations to human-computer interaction, Huang said.

Global smart glasses shipments grew by 210 per cent in 2024 from a year earlier, data showed, with a further increase of 60 per cent projected for 2025 and a compound annual growth rate above 60 per cent through 2029, Huang said.

Industry findings and trending online comments help explain how Chinese brands are steadily outpacing foreign firms, as their store closures make headlines

The world’s largest jewellery company by volume is facing a wave of store closures across China – a move that serves to illustrate a broader retreat by foreign brands as consumer preferences shift towards practical products that offer more value for the money.

Danish jewellery brand Pandora, known for its fast-paced product launches and global sales of more than 100 million pieces a year, announced in its second-quarter earnings report on August 15 that it would expand its original plan to close 50 stores in China this year to 100 stores.

According to Pandora’s annual financial reports, its sales in China peaked in 2019 at 1.97 billion Danish kroner (US$305.73 million). But since the global pandemic, sales in China have steadily declined, dropping to 1.126 billion kroner in 2021, 737 million kroner in 2022, and 564.2 million kroner in 2023. Last year, Pandora’s revenue in China plummeted to just 416 million kroner, less than a quarter of the 2019 peak.

“Pandora is more about aesthetics and versatility for me; it’s not something to buy for value retention,” said Vicky Wang, a Pandora enthusiast from Jiangsu province.

Over the past three months, she spent 7,500 yuan (US$1,044) on a half-dozen charm bracelets but is now trying to sell what she considers “impulse purchases” on China’s second-hand trading platform Xianyu.

The closures by Pandora, which did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment, are not isolated incidents among foreign retailers struggling in China.

According to the 2025 China Shopper Report released in June by Bain & Company and Worldpanel, Chinese domestic brands have steadily eroded the market share of foreign brands, with local brands accounting for 76 per cent of the market by 2024. That was up from 75 per cent in 2023, 74 per cent in 2022, and 73 per cent in 2021. Back in 2012, it was 66 per cent.

Foreign firms closing stores in China include fast-fashion clothing brands such as GU, owned by Japanese multinational Fast Retailing Group, and Spain-based Zara, as well as beauty and skincare brands such as Australia’s Aesop and Japan’s Decorte. Retail chains such as US-based Walmart and Japan-based Aeon have also announced withdrawals from certain regional markets.

Analysts say these types of retreats can be partly explained by subdued consumer spending amid deflationary pressure, coupled with uncertainties surrounding China’s economic outlook.

“Over the next decade or beyond, we will be in an era of low-price retail; this is a major trend,” said Chen Liping, a professor at Capital University of Economics and Business, in comments posted earlier this month to the social media account of a Chinese retail industry platform. “For some companies, it’s no longer just about operational challenges, but about whether they can survive.”

China’s consumer price index in July was flat from a year earlier, and producer deflation continued, indicating persistent weak demand in the world’s second-largest economy amid trade disruptions.

Wang said she was initially drawn to Pandora’s charm bracelets due to their marketing concept of “one bead, one story”, allowing her to create personalised memories. However, her attention, like that of many young consumers, has been shifting to safe-haven investments.

“I started to lose interest because, compared with gold, Pandora doesn’t hold its value [in terms of resale],” Wang explained. “Many people around me also didn’t understand why I spent so much on silver jewellery.”

Meanwhile, popular Japanese lifestyle brand Muji, which focuses on selling a minimalist lifestyle to the middle class, has made headlines following its string of store closures in China. The Shanghai-based China Business Network recently reported that multiple Muji locations, including in the cities of Beijing, Shanghai, Suzhou and Changsha, as well as in Zhejiang province, have shut down in recent months.

On Rednote, a popular Chinese social media platform, the hashtag “Muji pitfalls” has garnered 1,800 posts and 334,100 views in the past couple of years. The platform’s users have criticised the brand’s products for failing to meet their quality expectations and for offering what some contend are overpriced items that lack practical value for daily use.

One comment from May, liked more than 1,000 times, lamented the 68 yuan (US$9.50) cost of a cardholder, saying the price would have been more fitting for a backpack. “With that kind of money, I’d rather buy two cat bowls - they’d be far more useful,” the person said.

Muji did not immediately reply to an emailed request for comment, but it was quoted by the China Business Network earlier this month as saying that selective store closures were routine adjustments to improve operational efficiency.