BEIJING—Former Houston Rockets star Yao Ming has stepped down as head of China’s struggling national basketball league. An eight-time NBA All-Star, Yao had been leading efforts to commercialize the top-tier 20-team Chinese Basketball Association Management Company since his appointment in 2017. A notice on the CBA’s website thanked Yao for his service. It gave no…

Many readers of this Substack have doubtless wondered why their “health care providers”—i.e., doctors, repeatedly exhorted them to get the COVID-19 vaccines and boosters. In my extended social circle, I heard many reports of doctors being downright pushy about it—as though getting the COVID-19 vaccine was the single most pressing matter of medicine and health….

A Chinese court sentenced a former chairman of liquor manufacturing giant Kweichow Moutai to life in prison for accepting $17.5 million in bribes. Yuan Renguo, who served on the board of Kweichow Moutai, was convicted on Thursday of taking bribes between 1994 and 2018, according to a statement from a court in the southwestern Chinese…