THE NEWS CORNER
The high court refused to immediately intervene in a case involving 20,000 people the Republican administration flagged as likely noncitizens on the largely Democratic state’s voter rolls. The swift rejection capped a string of losses for the president’s effort to intervene in the election before the counting of ballots to decide who controls Congress in the last two years of his second term. No justices publicly dissented. “The Court rejected Trump’s emergency request without even asking the other side to respond,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, posted on X. “Democracy won.” Several lower courts also rejected the Justice Department’s push to set aside the challenged California ballots until the voters’ citizenship status could be verified. And in a case that revolved around the future certification of Alaska’s election results, a judge did not even hold a hearing before dismissing a Trump-ordered suit to prevent a possible Democratic Senate win.
China imports millions of donkey hides from Africa every year: new book traces the drivers and impact
What drives the demand? Which countries have the biggest markets?
The demand is driven almost exclusively by China. The reason is that there’s an ancient traditional Chinese medicine called ejiao, pronounced “e-jyow”, that is now consumed by tens of millions of Chinese women. Ejiao is a donkey hide gelatin-based tonic for the blood. For millennia, it has been used to treat fatigue, dizziness, dry cough and irregular bleeding, and to support female wellness. For most of that time the elixir was handmade and consumed by a small circle of imperial elites. Only over the last few decades did production become industrially scaled.
I’m an economist rather than a nutritional scientist, but my understanding is that ejiao’s medicinal reputation is associated with its collagen-rich composition and the bioactive peptides produced during processing, alongside claims about the mineral properties of the water used in its production. While pharmacological research has identified potentially beneficial properties, the extent to which these translate into clinically established therapeutic effects remains contested. There is also a broader question as to whether comparable benefits could be obtained from alternative, more sustainable sources of collagen or related compounds.
The market for ejiao was until recently mainly medicinal. My book details the very recent – and stunning – commercialisation of ejiao and its transformation into an array of products, from cakes and drinks to cosmetics and other wellness products. Where ejiao sells at accessible prices in pharmacies both over the counter and by prescription, it also sells for thousands of renminbi at the premium end of the market. The lead producer, Dong'e Ejiao, spearheaded premium-end price increases greater than those enjoyed by Shanghai and Beijing property owners over the 2000s and 2010s.
There is also demand for it in Hong Kong, Taiwan, the US, Europe, Australia and south-east Asia.
Rank | Country | Active Personnel |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 🇨🇳 China | 2,035,000 |
| 2 | 🇮🇳 India | 1,431,000 |
| 3 | 🇺🇸 U.S. | 1,333,030 |
| 4 | 🇷🇺 Russia | 1,320,000 |
| 4 | 🇰🇵 North Korea | 1,320,000 |
| 6 | 🇺🇦 Ukraine | 900,000 |
| 7 | 🇵🇰 Pakistan | 660,000 |
| 8 | 🇮🇷 Iran | 610,000 |
| 9 | 🇪🇹 Ethiopia | 503,000 |
| 10 | 🇹🇷 Türkiye | 481,000 |