Abortion and Politics in China

By Evan Osnos on June 16, 2012

China convulsed this week around the story of Feng Jianmei, a twenty-three-year-old expectant mother, who was escorted from a relative’s home in Shaanxi province by local family-planning officials, shoved into a van, and driven to a hospital. She was blindfolded and given a document to sign. It didn’t matter that she couldn’t see it; she knew why she was there. She had violated the one-child policy. Two shots were injected into her belly, and on the morning of June 4th she gave birth to a stillborn baby girl.

Health, Politics
Abortion, Sina Weibo, Chen Guangcheng

Jack Ma Is the Loneliest Billionaire in China

By Bruce Einhorn and Frederik Balfour on June 16, 2012

It’s been a rough 18 months for Chinese Internet tycoon Jack Ma, founder and chairman of the Alibaba Group, a sprawling conglomerate of Web companies. Early in 2011 a fraud scandal hit his business-to-business e-commerce site, Alibaba.com. At roughly the same time, the U.S. government publicly shamed Alibaba-owned Taobao, a hugely successful hybrid of Amazon.com (AMZN) and EBay (EBAY), for enabling the sale of counterfeit merchandise. Last fall thousands of small merchants protested online and outside Alibaba’s headquarters in Ma’s hometown, the eastern city of Hangzhou, against a hike in Taobao’s listing fees. “I was so lonely at that time,” says Ma, who considers himself a champion of local entrepreneurs and says the higher prices were necessary to fight piracy. “Nobody wanted to believe Jack Ma.”

Business
Jack Ma, Alibaba, Taobao

Netizens Agree China's Rape Law Must Be Reformed

By David Wertime on June 14, 2012

How can a little girl be a “prostitute?” Many in China are asking this question after a set of government officials in Lueyang, Shaanxi province, were caught having sex with a minor but found guilty of the lesser crime of “patronizing an underage prostitute” (嫖宿幼女罪) rather than statutory

Health, Law, Society
Women, Crime, Prostitution, Rape

Wal-Mart in China Faces New Food-Safety Complaints

By Laurie Burkitt on June 14, 2012

Beijing's Food Safety Administration said Thursday that it accused Wal-Mart of violating food-safety standards in March by selling sesame oil exceeding standard amounts of benzopyrene and squid containing hazardous levels of cadmium. The agency's website said the sesame oil and squid were produced by domestic companies.

Environment, Health
Food Safety, Walmart

Can China's Rust Belt Reinvent Itself?

By Jonathan Kaiman on June 14, 2012

To understand this industrial Chinese city's past, begin with the smoldering crater on the south side of town, an open-pit coal mine as wide as Manhattan and deeper than the height of the Chrysler Building. Known as Haizhou, or "Sea State," it is probably the largest open-pit coal mine in Asia. Wisps of white smoke emerge from its depths, casting a chemical haze over the city's stark concrete mid-rises and dilapidated worker dorms.

Economy, Environment, History, Society, Urban Life
Coal, Dongbei, Tourism

Rio and China’s Global Future

on June 14, 2012

We have a common predicament, and solving it requires humanity to work together. But state actors are, to a large degree, controlled by the confrontational logic of international politics. The dualities and contradictions common in sustainable development discourse, and the failings of the world’s joint efforts in the two decades since world leaders last talked environment in Rio, can be blamed on the nature of the times in which we live. The need to shift our development mode has long been clear, but clarity has not been enough to trigger change.