Bringing Censors to the Book Fair

By Jonathan Mirsky on April 18, 2012

When I arrived at the London Book Fair on Monday, I saw a huge sign outside showing a cute Chinese boy holding an open book with the words underneath him: “China: Market Focus.” The special guest of this year’s fair was the Chinese Communist Party’s censorship bureau. Assisted by the government-funded, but independent, British Council, the fair’s organizers invited the General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP)—the Communist Party’s designated body for ensuring that all publications, from poems to textbooks, are certified fit for the public at home and abroad to read.

Unscathed by Scandals, Official Promoted

on April 18, 2012

(Beijing)—Although sacked once for the coverup of the 2003 SARS epidemic and a second time for blocking media coverage of the 2008 Shanxi mudslides, Meng Xuenong’s career has always bounced back.

According to the website of the China Youth Political College, Meng is now serving as the standing deputy secretary of the Work Committee of Departments under the Communist Party of China Central Committee.

The department is responsible for the management of party officials and grassroots organizations across the country.

Foreign Policy

on April 17, 2012

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The End of Cheap China

By Shaun Rein on April 13, 2012

Many Americans know China for manufacturing cheap products, thanks largely to the country's vast supply of low-cost workers. But China is changing, and the glut of cheap labor that has made everyday low prices possible is drying up as the Chinese people seek not to make iPhones, but to buy them. Shaun Rein, Founder of the China Market Research Group, puts China's continuing transformation from producer to large-scale consumer - a process that is farther along than most economists think - under the microscope, examining eight megatrends that are catalyzing change in China and posing threats to Americans' consumption-driven way of life. Rein takes an engaging and informative approach to examining the extraordinary changes taking place across all levels of Chinese society, talking to everyone from Chinese billionaires and senior government officials to poor migrant workers and even prostitutes. He draws on personal stories and experiences from living in China since the 1990s as well as hard economic data. Each chapter focuses on a different aspect of China's transformation, from fast-improving Chinese companies to confident, optimistic Chinese women to the role of China's government, and at the end breaks down key lessons for readers to take away.  —John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Book Review: 

Alexander Heffner, USA Today (April 24, 2012)
Patti Waldmeir, Financial Times (May 14, 2012)
Nin-Hai Tseng, Fortune (June 15, 2012)
Bill Hayes, The Finance Professionals' Post (April 9, 2012)

Muckraking with Chinese Characteristics

By Jeremy Goldkorn, Li Xin & more on April 13, 2012

In one of the juicier quotes making the rounds on social networks this week, a private equity investor in Shanghai savaged the Chinese media for its unblinking corruption, quipping to The New York Times that “if one of my companies came up with a cure for cancer, I still couldn’t get any journalists to come to the press conference without promising them a huge envelope filled with cash.”

Protest with Chinese Characteristics

By Ho-fung Hung on April 11, 2012

The origin of political modernity has long been tied to the Western history of protest and revolution, the currents of which many believe sparked popular dissent worldwide. Reviewing nearly one thousand instances of protest in China from the eighteenth to the early-nineteenth centuries, Ho-fung Hung charts an evolution of Chinese dissent that stands apart from Western trends.

Hung samples from mid-Qing petitions and humble plaints to the emperor. He revisits rallies, riots, market strikes, and other forms of contention rarely considered in previous studies. Drawing on new world history, which accommodates parallels and divergences between political-economic and cultural developments East and West, Hung shows how the centralization of political power and an expanding market, coupled with a persistent Confucianist orthodoxy, shaped protesters' strategies and appeals in Qing China.

This unique form of mid-Qing protest combined a quest for justice and autonomy with a filial-loyal respect for the imperial center, and Hung's careful research ties this distinct characteristic to popular protest in China today. As Hung makes clear, the nature of these protests prove late imperial China was anything but a stagnant and tranquil empire before the West cracked it open. In fact, the origins of modern popular politics in China predate the 1911 Revolution. Hung's work ultimately establishes a framework others can use to compare popular protest among different cultural fabrics. His book fundamentally recasts the evolution of such acts worldwide.                —Columbia University Press

What Gu Dexin Left

By Philip Tinari on April 9, 2012

Last Saturday the museum I direct in Beijing opened a show by China’s most important contemporary artist you’ve never heard of, Gu Dexin. The opening however had one major difference from the star-studded affairs that have become commonplace in the Beijing art scene over the last five years: the artist was not present.

Dalian Businessman Who Built an Empire Vanishes

on April 9, 2012

(Dalian)—The sudden disappearance of a self-made billionaire in the coastal city of Dalian has unnerved not only bank executives concerned about loans they made to his companies, but also government officials who have lent generous support to the expansion of his business empire.

Xu Ming, chairman of Dalian Shide Group Co. Ltd., has been out of contact with his companies since March 14, a corporation announcement said.

‘Worse Than the Cultural Revolution’

An Interview With Tian Qing

By Ian Johnson on April 7, 2012

Tian Qing may be China’s leading cultural heritage expert. A scholar of Buddhist musicology and the Chinese zither, or guqin, the sixty-four-year-old now heads the Chinese Intangible Cultural Heritage Protection Center, an institution set up by the government to protect China’s native traditions in the performing arts, cuisine, rituals, festivals, and other forms of culture.