China’s National Development and Reform Commission, an antitrust regulator, has been looking into potential monopolistic practices by Qualcomm in China, primarily related to its licensing business.
The environmental ministry has published a set of guidelines for citizens, which encourage them not only to reduce their personal environmental imprint, but to also turn in polluting and wasteful neighbors.
In a recent People's Daily op-ed, pet dogs are referred to as a “crude and ludicrious imitation... of a Western lifestyle” and a blight on “social peace and harmony.”
China may be sincere in its belief that its engagement in Africa is not neo-colonial or imperial in nature but author Howard French argues that may be what ultimately happens if Beijing continues on its current path. In his provocative new book, China's Second Continent, French travels across the continent to survey Chinese and African opinions about the PRC's expansive embrace of Africa.
In the late 1970s, when the passing of Mao made it possible for foreign journalists to work in China for the first time in three decades, the first reporters to get in wrote wide-ranging books that addressed nearly everything they could learn.1 Later books by journalists tended to be more specialized. Age of Ambition by Evan Osnos returns to the panoramic tradition, and now, as Chinese society seems to be edging toward a crisis, may be a good time to do it.
It seems counter-intuitive that publicly available data needs grassroots activists to make it accessible. Yet, in a sea of regulations and information, official environmental information can be difficult to parse.
The risk of information overload looms especially large in China, whose rapidly growing economy makes transparent environmental monitoring increasingly urgent and difficult. For instance, is water pollution improving or declining over time? What does all of this mean for public health?
Late last month, news broke that a major Chinese supplier of American fast food brands was peddling meat that violated food safety standards.
How do such scandals affect the way people in China feed themselves and their families? Chang Tianle, a former researcher and China Program Officer for the Minneapolis-based Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy who now runs food cooperatives for organic farmers in Beijing talked to ChinaFile’s Michael Zhao.
The fall of the public security chief, Wu Changshun, of the northern port city of Tianjin has rocked the local public security system and shed light on the graft network cultivated by Wu over 40 years.
The Central Discipline Inspection Commission (CDIC) said in a statement on July 20 that Wu, chief of the Tianjin Public Security Bureau and vice chairman of the city's political advisory body, was being investigated for "serious discipline violations." The phrase usually means corruption.
A dream, in the truest sense, is a solo act. It can’t be created by committee or replicated en masse. Try as you might, you can’t compel your neighbor to conjure up the reverie that you envision. And therein lies the latent, uncertain energy in the concept of the “Chinese Dream.” As the new central motto of Chinese politics, introduced by President Xi Jinping in 2013, it is an expression of the Communist Party’s attempt to acknowledge the aspirations of its people. At the same time, wittingly or not, it is a provocative invitation to the public imagination.
