Is the “Western media” biased in its reporting about China? What are the frames and narratives that inform the Anglophone media’s understanding of the county, and what are the misunderstandings about the “Western media” that lead Chinese people into believing Western reporting is more biased than it is?
It was not so long ago that the parts of the globe covered permanently with ice and snow, the Arctic, Antarctic, and Greater Himalayas (“the abode of the snows” in Sanskrit), were viewed as distant, frigid climes of little consequence. Only the most intrepid adventurers were drawn to such desolate regions as the Tibetan Plateau, which, when finally surveyed, proved to have the planet’s fourteen highest peaks.
Taiwan, which its government formally calls the Republic of China (ROC), is a success story for U.S. interests in the promotion of universal freedoms and democracy. Taiwan’s people and their leaders transformed politics from rule imposed from the outside with authoritarian abuses to the relatively peaceful achievement of self-government, human rights, and democracy. The purpose of this CRS report is to succinctly discuss Taiwan’s transformation and current concerns, paying particular attention to the role of Congress and implications and options for U.S. policy.
Following is an English translation of an Internet dialogue between the Dalai Lama and Chinese citizens that took place on May 21. The exchange was organized by Wang Lixiong, a Chinese intellectual known for his writing on Tibet and for theorizing about how China might generate its own kind of democracy in the Internet age.
This paper focuses on two areas that pose the biggest obstacles to progress in bilateral and multilateral efforts to address climate change concerns: the trade-off between emission caps and development goals; and technology transfer and intellectual property (IP) rights. A stark contrast is evident in the underlying American and Chinese assumptions that frame the debate. The two countries differ in their views of their obligations to reduce carbon emissions, their relative willingness to compromise national sovereignty for verification regimes, their contrasting notions of technological transfer from developed to developing countries, and their assessment of the role of IP (including China’s IP system) in the facilitation of such transfers. Politics also play a role. Prospects of climate change legislation in the United States are dim: the divisive battle over health care reform and upcoming mid-term congressional elections have hardened divides within the U.S. And the politics of U.S.-China relations, which have affected mutual perceptions and cooperation in areas such as security and trade, have spilled over to the realm of climate change and clean energy as well.
Notice your friends holding something back? In this Sinica podcast, we talk about the self-censoring phenomenon that’s taken root among the foreign community in China, and discuss a surprising case which demonstrates exactly the opposite: how one of the fiercest critics of Mao’s legacy has emerged within the confines of China’s own educational system. Why is one Chinese teacher going where most foreigners fear to tread, and what does this mean for those of us working and living in China?
After a successful speaking trip to Australia, Kaiser Kuo is back in the studio hosting Sinica this week. He is joined by Jeremy Goldkorn of Danwei fame and Sinica regular Gady Epstein, Beijing bureau chief for Forbes magazine. Joining us as a first time guest is David Moser, translator, essayist, and Sinologist who is currently working as the Academic Director for CET Beijing.
Despite efforts to downplay the story in the face of the Shanghai Expo, news of a recent wave of copycat killings has spread quickly through China, driven in part by the surprising revelation that many of the killers have been middle-aged and apparently well-educated men. Online, some netizens have blamed the government, which in turn blames social contradictions.
The Chinese government in the past several weeks has intensified a subtle but steady tightening over the country’s freewheeling civil society sector, with some nonprofit groups saying they are feeling increasingly harassed, targeted by tax investigations and subjected to new restrictions on receiving donations from abroad.
The Beijing Olympics, the Shanghai Expo, the hundreds of Confucius Institutes and Confucius Classrooms, and Beijing’s new English-language satellite news networks are all part of a grand Chinese soft power push: an effort to win the world through attraction rather than coercion. But how is China’s charm offensive playing around the world? This week, Sinica looks at different facets of soft power and asks whether China is making or breaking its public image.
The development objective of the Jiangxi Integrated Agricultural Modernization Project (JIAMP) for China is to improve the livelihood of the farmers in the project areas through establishment of integrated, sustainable, and market-driven agricultural production systems focusing on productivity and high quality agricultural output. The project was approved on November 20, 2003, became effective on May 14, 2004, and the closing date is June 30, 2010. This report assess a proposed restructuring of the project. The reallocation is necessary to enable the participating local governments to utilize the substantial savings in various categories to carry out additional works as categories with reduced allocations and categories with increased allocation.
