Troubles and Ambitions in China

By Jeremy Goldkorn, Gady Epstein & more on February 26, 2011

Watch your rice, folks. That’s our takeaway from this week’s Sinica, which ruminates on troubles old and new in the Middle Kingdom. Up for discussion in particular are Chinese activities in Rwanda, dodgy rice, ongoing worker troubles at Apple subsidiaries in China, and two new search engines owned by the People’s Daily and Xinhua. Our panelists also discuss the surprise appearance of American Ambassador and Republican presidential hopeful Jon Huntsman at an ephemeral political protest in downtown Beijing.

Dawn in China

By Perry Link on February 19, 2011

My father was a radical leftist professor. He led study tours to the Soviet Union in the 1930s and later admired Mao Zedong. That influence, in addition to the passion in the late 1960s and early 1970s within the American student movement against our country’s war in Vietnam, a movement in which I was not only a participant but an activist, led me to look at socialist China with very high hopes.

Turmoil in Egypt and Groupon

By Kaiser Kuo, Jeremy Goldkorn & more on February 18, 2011

Welcome back to Sinica after our New Year’s break. And what could headline our first podcast of the New Year but Egypt, where an unexpected political uprising has raised obvious parallels for China-watchers worldwide. Moving beyond the politics of protest, we also delve into the story of group-purchasing site Groupon, whose tongue-in-cheek Tibetan advertisement during the Super Bowl has tarnished the company’s image in China and damaged its largest strategic partnership in the country.

Middle East Revolutions: The View from China

By Perry Link on February 17, 2011

Chinese authorities have done what they can to block news of Egyptian people-power from spreading to China. Reports about Egypt in China’s state-run media have been brief and vacuous. On February 6, at the height of the protests, the People’s Daily informed readers that “the Egyptian government is continuing to carry out its various measures to support restoration of social order.” But on the Chinese Internet, which despite vigorous policing is hard to stifle, Mubarak has received a drubbing: “autocrat,” “corrupt thug,” and so on.

The Worst Man-Made Catastrophe, Ever

By Roderick MacFarquhar on February 9, 2011

When the first waves of Chinese graduate students arrived on American campuses in the early 1980s, they were excited at entering an unfettered learning environment. After the recent ravages of the Cultural Revolution, political science students had few inhibitions about studying what had gone wrong in China as they were growing up. Especially after the Tiananmen massacre, many stayed on after their Ph.D.s, some to become professors.

Beyond Symbolism? 

The U.S. Nuclear Disarmament Agenda and Its Implications for Chinese and Indian Nuclear Policy

By Lavina Lee on February 8, 2011

The Obama administration has elevated nuclear disarmament to the center of its nuclear agenda through the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) with Russia and the release of the U.S. Nuclear
Posture Review (NPR). The administration also expects that its professed goal of
“getting to zero” has symbolic value and will encourage reciprocity in terms of disarmament
and nuclear arms control by other nuclear weapons states, as well as
cooperation on measures to limit nuclear proliferation and the threat of nuclear terrorism. This paper analyzes Chinese and Indian responses to the U.S. global zero proposal and their reactions to the United States' current and future nuclear posture.

Embed Code: 
View the PDF on Document Cloud
Topics: 
Military
Politics
Keywords: 
Security
Nuclear Disarmament
Weapons
China-India Relations
Organization: 
Cato Institute

China Naval Modernization: Implications for U.S. Navy Capabilities

Background and Issues for Congress

By Ronald O'Rourke on February 3, 2011

The question of how the United States should respond to China’s military modernization effort, including its naval modernization effort, has emerged as a key issue in U.S. defense planning. This issue is of particular importance to the U.S. Navy, because many U.S. military programs for countering improved Chinese military forces would fall within the Navy’s budget. Decisions that Congress and the executive branch make regarding U.S. Navy programs for countering improved Chinese maritime military capabilities could affect the likelihood or possible outcome of a potential U.S.-Chinese military conflict in the Pacific over Taiwan or some other issue. This report offers an overview of China’s naval modernization efforts and suggests ways that the U.S. might respond to those actions.

Embed Code: 
View the PDF on Document Cloud
Peony Lui
Topics: 
Military
Keywords: 
U.S.-China Relations
Organization: 
Congressional Research Service

Prospects for Democracy in Hong Kong: The 2012 Election Reforms

By Michael F. Martin on February 1, 2011

Support for the democratization of Hong Kong has been an element of U.S. foreign policy for over seventeen years. The democratization of Hong Kong is also enshrined in the Basic Law, Hong Kong’s quasi-constitution that was passed by China’s National People’s Congress (NPC) prior to China’s resumption of sovereignty over the ex-British colony on July 1, 1997. On November 18, 2009, Hong Kong Chief Executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen released the long-awaited “consultation document” on possible reforms for the city’s elections to be held in 2012. The document was immediately met by sharp criticism from representatives of Hong Kong’s “pro-democracy” parties. The 2012 election reforms are important to Hong Kong’s democratization for two reasons. First, they are an indication of the Hong Kong government’s willingness to press for democratic reforms. Second, the Chief Executive and Legco selected in 2012 will have the power to implement universal suffrage for the Chief Executive election in 2017 and the Legco election in 2020, if they so choose.

Embed Code: 
View the PDF on Document Cloud
Peony Lui
Topics: 
Politics
Society
Keywords: 
Democracy
Election Reforms
Hong Kong
Organization: 
Congressional Research Service

A Seventeen-Province Survey of Rural Land Rights in China

2010 Findings

on February 1, 2011

China continues to boost economic development in the countryside by extending secure land tenure rights to its 200 million farming families, according to findings from a seventeen-province survey, published in the 2011 Chinese Academy of Social Sciences’ Rule of Law Blue Book. The survey highlights continuing successes and significant emerging challenges to sustainable economic development in China’s rural areas. China’s modern-era land tenure reforms, which began with the break-up of the collective farms into individual smallholdings in 1979-84, are ongoing. At its foundation, China’s current land tenure reform program—embodied in a series of laws adopted beginning in 1998—gives farmers thirty-year, extendable rights to their parcels. Land rights certificates and land rights contracts distributed by local governments are intended to provide farmers further assurance that they can stay on their present parcels for the long term. These measures are meant to create an environment of secure land tenure and thereby lead to increased investment, increased productivity and higher farm incomes.

Embed Code: 
View the PDF on Document Cloud
He Jianan
Topics: 
Economy
Rural Life
Society
Keywords: 
Land Tenure Rights
Farming
Reform and Opening-Up
Organization: 
Landesa