Anti-Vice Click-Bait Spawns Popular Govt. Social Media Feed

By Alexa Olesen on September 2, 2014

The Chinese government institution with the biggest social media following goes to...the nationwide anti-vice campaign called "Strike the four blacks, Eliminate the four harms." Da Sihei, Chu Sihai in Mandarin, the four blacks and four harms are: workshops that make counterfeit or tainted drugs and food; factories that produce fake or pirated goods; black markets that sell stolen products; and black dens of gambling, prostitution, and drugs.

Hong Kong—Now What?

A ChinaFile Conversation

By David Schlesinger, Mei Fong & more on September 2, 2014

David Schlesinger:

Hong Kong’s tragedy is that its political consciousness began to awaken precisely at the time when its leverage with China was at its lowest ebb.

Harry W.S. Lee

on September 2, 2014

Harry W.S. Lee is a journalist based in East Asia. He has written for World Policy Journal and Korea Joongang Daily. His coverage of the Occupy Wall Street protests and New York Police Department's surveillance of Muslim communities at New York University have also been featured in The Nation.

Lee completed an M.Phil. in Modern Chinese Studies at the University of Oxford and holds a B.A. in Political Science and Economics from New York University. Having lived in the U.K., the U.S., and South Korea, Lee will be working as a freelance journalist in Beijing.

Cities and Stability

By Jeremy L. Wallace on September 2, 2014

China's management of urbanization is an under-appreciated factor in the regime's longevity. The Chinese Communist Party fears "Latin Americanization"—the emergence of highly unequal megacities with their attendant slums and social unrest. Such cities threaten the survival of nondemocratic regimes. To combat the threat, many regimes, including China's, favor cities in policymaking. Cities and Stability shows this "urban bias" to be a Faustian Bargain: cities may be stabilized for a time, but the massive in-migration from the countryside that results can generate the conditions for political upheaval. Through its hukou system of internal migration restrictions, China has avoided this dilemma, simultaneously aiding urbanites and keeping farmers in the countryside. The system helped prevent social upheaval even during the Great Recession, when tens of millions of laid-off migrant workers dispersed from coastal cities. Jeremy Wallace's powerful account forces us to rethink the relationship between cities and political stability throughout the developing world. —Oxford University Press