China Sentences ‘Deeply Evil’ Billionaire Liu Han to Death
on May 23, 2014
Billionaire Liu Han was a man with two lives. There was the philanthropist and political adviser, and then there was the warlord and murderer.
Residents Try to Move On After Terrorist Attack in China
on May 23, 2014
By the time the vehicles exploded at opposite ends of the block, 43 people were dead and more than 90 people were wounded, according to an updated casualty list.
Special Report: The Power Struggle Behind China's Corruption Crackdown
on May 23, 2014
When Xi Jinping was named President in March last year, the 48-year-old billionaire Liu Han was detained and surrounded by corruption investigators and prison guards.
Louisa Lim
on May 23, 2014
Louisa Lim is the author of The People’s Republic of Amnesia: Tiananmen Revisited, and a Visiting Professor of Journalism at the University of Michigan. Lim is an award-winning journalist, and a former China correspondent for NPR and the BBC. She opened NPR’s Shanghai bureau in February 2006, and reported for NPR from Tibetan glaciers to the shaft of a Shaanxi coalmine. She made a very rare reporting trip to North Korea, covered illegal abortions in Guangxi province, and worked on the major multimedia series on religion in China, “New Believers: A Religious Revolution in China.” Lim was part of NPR teams that won multiple awards, including the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award, a Peabody, and two Edward R. Murrow awards, for their coverage of the Sichuan earthquake in 2008 and the Beijing Olympics.
Renee Xia
on May 23, 2014
Renee Xia is the International Director of the Chinese Human Rights Defenders network.
A Scholarly Response to ‘Tiger Mom’: Happiness Matters, Too
on May 23, 2014
When a child scores 99 on a test, an American parent will lavish praise. But a Chinese parent will say: “What happened? Why didn’t you get 100?”
“What’s Been Done to My Beautiful Homeland?”
on May 23, 2014
Nigel Maiti, an ethnically Uighur host for Chinese state broadcaster CCTV, is a well-known and popular entertainer with more than 1 million followers on the social media site Sina Weibo.
Killing Pika Won’t Save Tibetan Grasslands
Efforts to Wipe Out a Small, Rabbit-Like Mammal will Further Damage a Fragile Ecosystem
on May 23, 2014
A pest extermination campaign is under way on western China’s Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau. But experts say there is no scientific basis for the killing of the pika, a small rabbit-like mammal, and warn that the campaign may throw the ecosystem further out of balance.
The Smooth Path to Pearl Harbor
on May 22, 2014
In mid-February, as part of the plans for his official visit to Germany, Chinese President Xi Jinping asked to visit one of Berlin’s best-known sites: Peter Eisenman’s Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. The request was declined when it became clear that Xi wanted to use the visit to draw a contrast between Germany’s repentance for Nazism and the alleged refusal of Japan to apologize for its war crimes in China. “The Germans are really uncomfortable with this kind of thing,” a diplomatic source said. “They don’t like China constantly comparing them with Japan and going on about the war.”
Age of Ambition
on May 22, 2014
From abroad, we often see China as a caricature: a nation of pragmatic plutocrats and ruthlessly dedicated students destined to rule the global economy—or an addled Goliath, riddled with corruption and on the edge of stagnation. What we don’t see is how both powerful and ordinary people are remaking their lives as their country dramatically changes.
As the Beijing correspondent for The New Yorker, Evan Osnos was on the ground in China for years, witness to profound political, economic, and cultural upheaval. In Age of Ambition, he describes the greatest collision taking place in that country: the clash between the rise of the individual and the Communist Party’s struggle to retain control. He asks probing questions: Why does a government with more success lifting people from poverty than any civilization in history choose to put strict restraints on freedom of expression? Why do millions of young Chinese professionals—fluent in English and devoted to Western pop culture—consider themselves “angry youth,” dedicated to resisting the West’s influence? How are Chinese from all strata finding meaning after two decades of the relentless pursuit of wealth?
Writing with great narrative verve and a keen sense of irony, Osnos follows the moving stories of everyday people and reveals life in the new China to be a battleground between aspiration and authoritarianism, in which only one can prevail. —Farrar, Straus, and Giroux
Book Review:
John Pomfret, The Washington Post (May 16, 2014)
Mike Revzin, The Christian Science Monitor (May 14, 2014)
Julie Makinen, Los Angeles Times (May 9, 2014)
Mary E. Gallagher, Chicago Tribune (May 9, 2014)
