A recent Bloomberg report detailing the millionaire assets of the extended family of Xi Jinping, China’s presumptive next leader, has drawn praise from the community of China media observers for its thorough investigative work and fact-based reporting.
The fall of Bo Xilai, once a rising star in Chinese politics, has plunged the country into its biggest crisis since Tiananmen Square. In this documentary, The Wall Street Journal examines how his downfall has altered the debate about China's future.
Xi Jinping, the man in line to be China’s next president, warned officials on a 2004 anti-graft conference call: “Rein in your spouses, children, relatives, friends and staff, and vow not to use power for personal gain.” As Xi climbed the Communist Party ranks, his extended family expanded their business interests to include minerals, real estate and mobile-phone equipment, according to public documents compiled by Bloomberg.
Millions of high school graduates across China have been furiously dialing telephone hot lines or gathering with family members around the home computer in recent days in a nail-biter of a ritual not unlike that of waiting for a winning lottery number.
A calm, confident Robert Diamond discussed financial restructuring in Europe and economic options for the Chinese government during a June 14 interview—thirteen days before the British bank where he serves as CEO, Barclays Group, was fined for manipulating interbank lending rates.
Diamond gave no hint of the trouble brewing at Barclays, where from 2005 to 2008 he headed the bank division linked to what regulators say was a scheme to fix the benchmark London Interbank Offered Rate and the Euro Interbank Offered Rate.
The shale gas revolution in the United States has led to a debate in China over shale gas development. But can the United States really achieve energy self-sufficiency? And if it can, what are the implications for China?
Every spring, migratory birds start arriving at Dali Lake in Inner Mongolia just as the fish-breeding season gets under way. This has been the time—at least until recently—when herders living around the lake have heard the sounds of firecrackers going off. You might think setting off small explosions was against the rules in a designated sanctuary for migratory flocks, and that reserve staff would be battling to stop them. In fact, the people trying to frighten away the birds appear to be the same charged with their protection.
Archers, tiger hunters, and horse-riders from beyond the Great Wall, the Manchu people made their first mark on history as founders of the Northern Jin Dynasty (1115-1234) before consolidating their influence in 1644 when their militaristic society swept south from Manchuria to drive the Ming Dynasty from power, establishing the Qing Empire and an astonishing three-century period of rule over what would become the multicultural, pan-Asian state we today know as China.
On May 6, 1944, U.S. army pilot Glen Beneda of the Flying Tigers was shot at by Japanese fighters while flying a combat mission over China. His plane caught fire, he ejected, and minutes later he landed in a rice paddy, frightening a group of Chinese workers doing manual labor. Injured and fearing for his life, Beneda managed to communicate using a pamphlet of simple translated phrases, persuaded the farmers that he was an American fighting the Japanese invasion, and was thereafter hidden in local homes. The farmers fed him, carried him many miles on a stretcher, and turned him over to anti-Japanese guerrillas, who undertook an even more dangerous journey: braving Japanese lines and an intense firefight, they got him to a Chinese army headquarters. He met military commander Li Zongren, who later became president of China, and was sent back to America with a Japanese pistol and a photograph as a parting gift.
The New York Times this week launched cn.nytimes.com, its first foreign-language website, joining several Western newspapers and media outlets like the BBC, Forbes, Newsweek, and Time that have published Chinese-language editions, with varying degrees of editorial and business success. The site, with staff in Beijing and Hong Kong and a server located outside of mainland China, will feature approximately 20 stories a day from the roughly 200 produced by the New York Times and also include roughly 10 pieces of original Chinese content daily. Philip Pan, a former Washington Post Beijing chief, and Cao Haili, a former Caixin reporter and Harvard University Niemann fellow, will run the site. The New York Times brings its sterling reputation to a place where its competitors have had to make difficult choices between self-censorship and unwanted government interference. "There are a lot of editing choices, but not censorship choices," says Joseph Kahn, the Times' foreign editor and former Beijing bureau chief who will oversee the site from New York. "We're not going to withhold stories."
