Putting the Pedal to the Metal

Subsidies to China’s Auto-Parts Industry from 2001 to 2011

By Usha C.V. Haley on January 31, 2012

China is currently the largest car market in the world. It is also one of the largest auto-parts producers and exporters in the world, with exports, primarily to the United States, constituting about a third of its production. The Chinese government has provided subsidies for auto-parts manufacturing in China, and strategic decisions by Chinese policymakers and foreign companies have ramifications for the U.S. and global economies. This report summarizes the state of China’s auto industry and the important role that government subsidies have played in its expansion.

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Topics: 
Business
Politics
Keywords: 
Manufacturing
Government Subsidies
Organization: 
Economic Policy Institute

Is Democracy Chinese?

An Interview with Journalist Chang Ping

By Ian Johnson on January 27, 2012

Chang Ping is one of China’s best-known commentators on contemporary affairs. Chang, whose real name is Zhang Ping, first established himself in the late 1990s in Guangzhou, where his hard-hitting stories exposed scandals and championed freedom of expression. As censorship has tightened in recent years, Chang’s pleas for openness and accountability have put him under pressure.

The Elections in Taiwan

By Kaiser Kuo, Jeremy Goldkorn & more on January 20, 2012

If your impression of Taiwanese politics has been dominated by the island’s recurring stories of vote-buying and parliamentary brawls, you’ll probably be shocked to hear what Mary Kay Magistad has to say about her recent trip to cover last week’s elections on the island, in which Ma Ying-jeou of the Kuomintang was re-elected to a second term in a surprisingly sedate process.

Melodies of My Youth

on January 20, 2012

When I was a child, my family had an old-fashioned phonograph that had been passed down from my grandfather. It required hand-winding and used a bamboo needle, and it came with special silver tweezers for cutting the bamboo needles.

On the side of the phonograph was a logo with a large dog, sitting in front of a speaker. We also had a number of German 78 rpm records stored inside an exquisitely embossed volume.

Looking Back from Age Ninety

By Sidney Rittenberg on January 19, 2012

May 1944: Based on a language aptitude test, I was taken out of the infantry, training in the Oregon snows, and shipped down to sunny Stanford, to be trained in Japanese. I opted for Chinese instead, thinking this would bring me home earlier. And then….

And then I totally fell in love with the Chinese language, the culture, my Chinese teachers. And it was two generations and three worlds later before I finally came home.

But that’s another story. This is about my first trip to China.

Year-End Roundup

By Kaiser Kuo, Jeremy Goldkorn & more on January 13, 2012

It was the year of the housing market (up then down), Ai Weiwei’s imprisonment, Wukan, the Wenzhou train crash, air pollution, gutter oil, tainted milk, clenbuterol, China bulls and bears, government transparency, the soaring price of Maotai, Guo Meimei sticking it to the Red Cross, drinking and driving crackdowns, the sixth plenary session, Weibo and the real name system, Shenzhou 8 and Chinese space exploration, the 100th anniversary of the Xinhai revolution, SARFT’s declaration of war on vulgar culture, Yue Yue and Good/Bad Samaritan laws, the anti-child-tracking campaign, the nationwide

Banned in China

By Jonathan Mirsky on January 9, 2012

In late December, a foreign correspondent in Beijing emailed me to say that a four-page article on China I’d written for a special New Year’s edition of Newsweek had been carefully torn from each of the 731 copies of the magazine on sale in China. Now, friends and colleagues are telling me what an honor it is to have one’s writing banned in the People’s Republic.

Preparing for the 18th Party Congress: Procedures and Mechanisms

By Cheng Li on January 6, 2012

By now, just about every China observer knows that the Chinese leadership will undergo a major generational change at the 18th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in the fall of 2012. Knowledge of the leadership transition’s actual procedures and mechanisms, especially the concrete steps and important variables that may shape its outcomes, is less widespread. A better understanding of the inner workings of the system—the rules (both old and new) of the game of Chinese elite politics—is necessary to arrive at a well-grounded assessment of the upcoming leadership change in China. This essay describes the Chinese leadership’s ongoing preparation for the transition on both the personnel and ideological fronts. It aims to address two specific and crucial questions: According to which steps will the delegates to the congress and the members of the new Central Committee be chosen? Through which channels will the party's ideological platform for the congress be formulated?

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He Jianan
Topics: 
Politics
Keywords: 
18th Party Congress
Chinese Communist Party
Leadership Transition
Organization: 
China Leadership Monitor