How Bad Does the Air Pollution Have to Be Before You’d Wear a Face Mask?
on September 25, 2014
“Mommy, why don’t I wear a face mask?” asked my nine-year-old daughter Maggie nearly every day during the first few weeks of school. Two of her expat classmates had been in Beijing less than a year, but it seemed as if they wore theirs all the time. “Don’t your parents worry about air pollution?” they’d ask Maggie. “Don’t they care about you?”
The Chinese Invade Africa
on September 25, 2014
In early May, China’s premier, Li Keqiang, made a trip to Africa that raised a central question about China’s rise: What effect will it have on the world’s poorer countries? As a big third-world country that has lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty in just a few decades—and has risen so fast that it’s easily the only serious challenger to the United States’ superpower status—China has enormous cachet, with lessons that many countries are eager to learn. But as the trip showed, those lessons are complex and ambiguous.
China Uncovers $10bn Fake Trades
on September 25, 2014
China has uncovered $10bn worth of fake trades as part of a nationwide crackdown on companies. The nation's currency regulator said 15 fraud cases had been handed over to the police for prosecution.
Once-Banned Modi Embraced by U.S. as China Interests Mesh
on September 24, 2014
A decade ago, the U.S. saw Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi as an international pariah. Next week he’ll address a sell-out crowd at Madison Square Garden and stroll down the red carpet at the White House.
UN Climate Summit: China Pledges Emissions Action
on September 24, 2014
China has pledged for the first time to take firm action on climate change, telling a UN summit that its emissions, the world's highest, would soon peak.
A Chinaman’s Chance
on September 24, 2014
From Tony Hsieh to Amy Chua to Jeremy Lin, Chinese Americans are now arriving at the highest levels of American business, civic life, and culture. But what makes this story of immigrant ascent unique is that Chinese Americans are emerging at just the same moment when China has emerged—and indeed may displace America—at the center of the global scene. What does it mean to be Chinese American in this moment? And how does exploring that question alter our notions of just what an American is and will be?
In many ways, Chinese Americans today are exemplars of the American Dream: during a crowded century and a half, this community has gone from indentured servitude, second-class status and outright exclusion to economic and social integration and achievement. But this narrative obscures too much: the Chinese Americans still left behind, the erosion of the American Dream in general, the emergence—perhaps—of a Chinese Dream, and how other Americans will look at their countrymen of Chinese descent if China and America ever become adversaries. As Chinese Americans reconcile competing beliefs about what constitutes success, virtue, power, and purpose, they hold a mirror up to their country in a time of deep flux.
In searching, often personal essays that range from the meaning of Confucius to the role of Chinese Americans in shaping how we read the Constitution to why he hates the hyphen in "Chinese-American," Eric Liu pieces together a sense of the Chinese American identity in these auspicious years for both countries. He considers his own public career in American media and government; his daughter's efforts to hold and release aspects of her Chinese inheritance; and the still-recent history that made anyone Chinese in America seem foreign and disloyal until proven otherwise. Provocative, often playful but always thoughtful, Liu breaks down his vast subject into bite-sized chunks, along the way providing insights into universal matters: identity, nationalism, family, and more. —PublicAffairs
Book Review:
Kate Tuttle, The Boston Globe (August 2, 2014)
Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett, The Seattle Times (July 17, 2014)
Kirkus Reviews (May 21, 2014)
Contact Lenses
Three Art Films on the Chinese-Western Encounter
on September 23, 2014
Will we all become “Chinese?” International New York Times correspondent Didi Kirsten Tatlow ironically asked recently. The question plays both on our fears over China’s economic power and on reflections on the NSA files released by Edward Snowden, which triggered the argument that “we” in the West have long been “Chinese” when it comes to data collection and state surveillance. Ironically, “Chinafication” has its contemporary roots in both East and West. Perspectives matter.
Traces 10
on September 23, 2014
Ngoring Lake. Sanjiangyuan National Nature Reserve, Qinghai, China. 2014
Here on the plateau, at the source of the Yellow, Yangtze, and Mekong Rivers, changes in climate occur at a faster rate than almost anywhere on earth, save the North and South Poles. For millennia, this ecosystem has provided water for life downstream and moderated droughts and floods. Now Beijing relies on cloud seeding to increase rainfall in the region.
Traces 09
on September 23, 2014
New Residential Development. Guide, Qinghai, China. 2014
Approximately 300 miles northeast of Ngoring Lake, an as-yet uninhabited residential development rises from the plateau. In between the buildings grass has begun to regrow and resettled Tibetan nomads let their herds graze on it. The resettlement of once nomadic people has compressed the space humans and animals occupy on the plateau. Homes in brick and mortar move less easily than the huts of woven yak hair nomads once carried with them along their summer grazing routes.
