American Interest

on May 14, 2012

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The American Interest (AI) is a new and independent voice devoted to the broad theme of “America in the world.” Our agenda is threefold. The first is to analyze America’s conduct on the global stage and the forces that shape it–not just its strategic aspects, but also its economic, cultural and historical dimensions. American statecraft is not simply about power but also purpose. What is important to the world about America is therefore not just its politics, but the society from which those politics arise–including America’s literature, music and art, as well as its values, public beliefs and its historical imagination.

Or Maybe Zhou Won't Step Down Just Yet

By Chris Buckley on May 14, 2012

An audacious escape by blind dissident Chen Guangcheng is the second uproar this year to hit Zhou, who has expanded China's policing apparatus into a vast, costly and - now for all the world to see - a flawed tool of Communist Party control. But even one of the biggest domestic security embarrassments in more than a decade is unlikely to knock him out before a party congress late this year that will appoint successors to him and other retiring leaders, said several experts.

China Heritage Quarterly

on May 14, 2012

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The China Heritage Quarterly, previously China Heritage Newsletter, is edited by Geremie R. Barmé. It is a publication covering recent developments and scholarship in areas related to China's heritage, culture, history, and society. This e-journal was established in 2005 under the name China Heritage Newsletter, from 2005-2007 China Heritage Quarterly was jointly edited by Bruce G. Doar and Geremie R. Barmé. Bruce Doar's early contributions to the journal are marked [BGD], while those of Geremie R. Barmé appear as either [GRB] or under his full name. Dr. Doar left the China Heritage Project in late 2007, and relinquished his involvement with China Heritage Quarterly. From 2008, the Quarterly has expanded its purview to include more material on literature, culture (in the broadest sense) and translation.

Each issue of the Quarterly provides readers with a different focus, which is amplified in detail in the Editorial. This is followed by Features, a section which contains articles related to the theme of the issue. Articles contains scholastic and other studies of various aspects of China's cultural heritage or on topics of relevance or interest, while New Scholarship introduces recent scholastic endeavors, conference reports, book reviews, material on recent monographs and, when appropriate, bibliographical material related to the focus of the issue.

This online quarterly is produced under the aegis of the China Heritage Project which was originally based in the Division of Pacific and Asian History, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies at The Australian National University. A series of institutional reorganizations, and the creation in July 2010 of the Australian Centre on China in the World (CIW), have lead to the China Heritage Project being relocated in CIW, which is within the ANU's College of Asia & the Pacific. The project provides a focus for university-wide research on traditional China, its modern interpretations, and recent scholarship. Under the direction of Geremie R. Barmé, the Project advocates a 'New Sinology' that builds on traditional Sinological strengths while emphasizing a robust engagement with the complex and shifting realities of contemporary China.

Violence in Chinese Hospitals

By Allison Carroll Goldman on May 14, 2012

There have been several cases of patients killing doctors in the past few years. In response, the Ministry of Health has issued an emergency notice that requires health administrative departments at all levels to increase public security in hospitals and other medical institutions. Hospitals in particular must have a guard’s room equipped with helmets, shields, anti-stab vests and a long stick.

Diplomats and Dissidents

By Bill Keller on May 14, 2012

The case of the blind Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng is a good occasion to contemplate the perennial tension between our respect for human rights and our need to deal with undemocratic regimes on issues like nuclear proliferation, trade, counterterrorism and climate change.

Keeping an Eye on China’s Bankers

on May 14, 2012

Last August, a major pollution story broke in China: 5,000 tonnes of toxic chromium tailings had been dumped near a Yunnan reservoir, contaminating water supplies and killing livestock. Worse revelations were to come. The company behind the incident, Luliang Chemicals, had been illegally discarding chromium slag by south China’s Nanpan River for more than a decade—280,000 tonnes of it in total.

Children Travel on Zip-line Across Abyss To and From School

on May 11, 2012

All 3,369 inhabitants of Hongde Village in Guizhou province, including dozens of school children, must either somehow cross the gorge, or take a detour by walking for several hours, in order to get out of their village. In 2002, a zip-line was set up over the gorge. Last week, a tourist uploaded to Youku a video of how villagers of Hongde, young and old, used the zip-line.

Midnight in Peking

By Paul French on May 11, 2012

January, 1937: Peking is a heady mix of privilege and scandal, lavish cocktail bars and opium dens, warlords and corruption, rumors and superstition—and the clock is ticking down on all of it. In the exclusive Legation Quarter, the foreign residents wait nervously for the axe to fall. Japanese troops have already occupied Manchuria and are poised to advance south. Word has it that Chiang Kai-shek and his shaky government, long since fled to Nanking, are ready to cut a deal with Tokyo and leave Peking to its fate. Each day brings a racheting up of tension for Chinese and foreigners alike inside the ancient city walls. On one of those walls, not far from the nefarious Badlands, is a massive watchtower—haunted, so the locals believe, by fox spirits that prey upon innocent mortals.

Then one bitterly cold night, the body of an innocent mortal is dumped there. It belongs to Pamela Werner, the daughter of a former British consul to China, and when the details of her death become known, people find it hard to credit that any human could treat another in such a fashion. Even as the Japanese noose on the city tightens, the killing of Pamela transfixes Peking. Seventy-five years after these events, Paul French finally gives the case the resolution it was denied at the time. Midnight in Peking is the un-put-downable true story of a murder that will make you hold your loved ones close, and also a sweepingly evocative account of the end of an era. —Penguin Books

Book Review: 

Fergus M. Bordewich, The Wall Street Journal (April 20, 2012)
Maura Elizabeth Cunningham, The China Beat (March 13, 2012)
Charles Finch, USA Today (May 6, 2012)
Austin Ramzy, Time (April 30, 2012)