IN the summer of 2006, having just graduated from Brown University with a degree in history and a yearning for travel, Alison Klayman headed to China. She arrived there speaking no Chinese, with only one contact and a vague notion of learning a new language and perhaps finding a job as a journalist
A Chinese court on Friday upheld a $2.4 million fine for tax evasion against the country's most famous dissident, Ai Weiwei, after barring him from attending the hearing, in a case that critics accuse Beijing of using to muzzle the outspoken artist.
Misrepresentations and misunderstandings of “China” is a complicated issue that won’t disappear overnight. The news media you have trusted doesn’t always give you an unbiased perspective, even though they have been trying their best. Even visiting the country personally won’t suddenly make you a China expert. The dream of building a healthy U.S.-China relationship by simply singing a song in Chinese to the American audience is probably too naïve; seeing or hearing “what” without knowing “why” can hardly help people from two countries with completely different cultures understand each other.
In vetoing a U.N. Security Council resolution on Syria for the third time, China and Russia have tested Western diplomats’ capacity for creative contempt. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton already described their veto as “despicable” back in February. This time, U.N. ambassador Susan Rice settled on “dangerous and deplorable.” Britain said it was “appalled,” and ambassador Mark Lyall Grant singled out Moscow and Beijing for having “chosen to put their national interests ahead of the lives of millions of Syrians.”
For the first time, desktop computers are no longer the leading method for the country's 538 million connected citizens to get online. The report from the China Internet Network Information Center (CINIC) said over 50% of the year's new internet users were from rural areas.
On Wednesday it emerged that Lu Yan and Sun Jian, the publisher and deputy editor of Shanghai's often-combative Oriental Morning Post, had been removed from their positions. It is unclear exactly what triggered the editorial changes and some analysts said they could have been the result of internal issues or local problems rather than national ones.
This week on Sinica, Chinese economic growth is on the rocks, ASEAN tensions are breaking through the facade of East-Asian political unity, a major Chinese telecom company is implicated in an international trade scandal, and man-eating fish have escaped into the wilds of Guangxi, prompting a profusion of local get-rich-quick schemes and threatening our plans to take a break from it all with a swimming vacation in southern China.
Emissions of carbon dioxide, the main cause of global warming, reached an all-time high in 2011. The authors of this report summarize and analyze trends in carbon dioxide emissions on a country-by-country basis, finding that China’s continued high economic growth rate has translated into a continued increase in the country’s CO2 emissions. China remains the world’s biggest emitter of carbon dioxide. Improvements in renewable energy sources, however, offer hope for relief of reliance on fossil fuels in the future.
The average Chinese person's carbon footprint is now almost on a par with the average European's, figures released on Wednesday reveal. China became the largest national emitter of CO2 in 2006, though its emissions per person have always been lower than those in developed countries such as Europe.
The jaded Western music establishment can learn a thing or two from China, Jonathan Campbell says. The 37-year-old, who spent four years in Beijing as a band promoter, documents the relatively brief history of Chinese rock in his book “Red Rock: The Long, Strange March of Chinese Rock & Roll.” “The best of Chinese rock music embodies something that isn’t embodied in this part of the world anymore—hope, energy and survival,” says Mr. Campbell, who now lives in Toronto. “Rock did change the lives of a lot of people, and Chinese rock demonstrates that.”
