Soft Recruits Hinder China’s Military Modernization
on February 17, 2015
Many of China's army conscripts have been raised as spoiled children of the one-child policy and need toughening up, a RAND report says.
Is India’s Economy Really Growing Faster Than China?
on February 17, 2015
At 7.5%, India’s revised growth estimate for the fourth quarter of last year beat China’s 7.3%.
With Lunar New Year Show, Another Link to China for a New York Fireworks Family
on February 16, 2015
The Central Academy of Fine Arts, China’s largest art academy, is involved in the celebrations this year.
Business and F*cking in China
A Sinica Podcast
on February 16, 2015
This week's show starts with us grilling James on "what you have to do to be part of Chinese business culture" and descends from there into stories of the sort of booze-and-ketamine-fuelled business deal-making that seems to consist of a large amount of male business culture in China. But why? And what is happening to the whole industry under Xi Jinping's recent crackdown?
Stanley Lubman
on February 13, 2015
Stanley Lubman (AB, LLB, LLM, JSD, Columbia University) has specialized on China as scholar and practicing lawyer for over fifty years. He is Resident Lecturer (retired) and Research Associate at the Berkeley Law School, University of California, and previously taught at the law schools of Stanford, Columbia, Harvard, and Yale as well as others in Europe. His online column on Chinese law ran in the "China Real Time Report" at The Wall Street Journal.
From 1978 to 1997, while continuing his academic activities he headed the China practice at two major San Francisco law firms and a large English firm of solicitors.
He was advisor to The Asia Foundation on legal reform projects in China from 1998 to 2011.
Among his publications are Bird in a Cage: Legal Reform in China After Mao (Stanford University Press, 1999), and The Evolution of Law Reform in China: an Uncertain Path (editor, Edward Elgar, 2012).
Suisheng Zhao
on February 13, 2015
Suisheng Zhao is Professor and Director of the Center for China-U.S. Cooperation at Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver. He was a Campbell National Fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University, an Associate Professor of Political Science and International Studies at Washington College in Maryland, an Associate Professor of Government and East Asian Politics at Colby College in Maine, and a visiting Assistant Professor at the Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies (IR/PS) at the University of California, San Diego.
Zhao is the founder and Editor of the Journal of Contemporary China and the author and editor of more than a dozen of books, including The Construction of Chinese Nationalism in the Early 21st Century: Domestic Sources and International Implications (2014); The Rise of China and Transformation of the U.S.-China Relationship: Forging Partnership in the Age of Strategic Mistrust (2013); China’s Search for Energy Security: Domestic Sources and International Implications (2012); China and East Asian Regionalism: Economic and Security Cooperation and Institution-Building (2012); In Search of China’s Development Model: Beyond the Beijing Consensus (2011); Village Elections in China (2010); China and the United States, Cooperation and Competition in Northeast Asia (2008); China-U.S. Relations Transformed: Perspectives and Strategic Interactions (2008), Debating Political Reform in China: Rule of Law versus Democratization (2006); A Nation-State by Construction: Dynamics of Modern Chinese Nationalism (2004); Chinese Foreign Policy: Pragmatism and Strategic Behavior (2003); China and Democracy: Reconsidering the Prospects for a Democratic China (2000); and Across the Taiwan Strait: Mainland China, Taiwan, and the Crisis of 1995-96 (1999). His articles have appeared in Political Science Quarterly, The Wilson Quarterly, Washington Quarterly, International Politik, The Hague Journal of Democracy, European Financial Review, China Quarterly, World Affairs, Asian Survey, Asian Affairs, Journal of Democracy, Pacific Affairs, Communism and Post-Communism Studies, Problems of Post-Communism, and elsewhere.
Jude Blanchette
on February 13, 2015
Jude Blanchette holds the Freeman Chair in China Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Previously, he was Engagement Director at The Conference Board’s China Center for Economics and Business in Beijing, where he researched China’s political environment with a focus on the workings of the Communist Party of China and its impact on foreign companies and investors. Prior to working at The Conference Board, Blanchette was the Assistant Director of the 21st Century China Center at the University of California, San Diego.
Blanchette has written for a range of publications, including Foreign Affairs and Foreign Policy, and his Chinese translations have appeared in the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times. His book, China’s New Red Guards: The Return of Radicalism and the Rebirth of Mao Zedong, was published by Oxford University Press in 2019.
Blanchette is a public intellectual fellow at the National Committee on United States-China Relations and serves on the board of the American Mandarin Society. He is also a Senior Advisor at Crumpton Group, a geopolitical risk advisory based in Arlington, Virginia. He holds an M.A. in modern Chinese studies from the University of Oxford and a B.A. in economics from Loyola University in Maryland.
China’s Mystery Transportation Infrastructure Deal with the African Union
A China in Africa Podcast
on February 12, 2015
It’s not really news anymore when China announces yet another massive infrastructure construction deal in Africa. Typically these deals are done at the national level, so when Beijing and the African Union signed a major transport infrastructure MOU in late January it raised some eyebrows. Both sides praised the deal as a major event, but neither revealed any specifics of how much it was worth or who would actually benefit. James Schneider, Editorial Director at New African magazine was at the PRC/AU signing event and joins Eric and Cobus to shed some light on this mysterious MOU.
Eats on the Street
on February 12, 2015
It doesn’t matter how many times you tell the cook not to add hot peppers, anything you order in Chongqing is going to be mouth-numbing and hotter than anything you’ve ever tasted before. It will be good, but it will be hot. From hotpot joints and street-corner barbecues to cold noodles served out of buckets dangling from a bamboo pole, Chongqing’s street vendors operate late into the night. You’ll be lucky to get a table at the restaurants on Tiyu Road, an area in Chongqing’s central Yuzhong district and ground zero for the city’s street food scene.
Michael Schoenhals
on February 12, 2015
Michael Schoenhals is a Professor of Chinese in the Centre for Languages and Literature, Lund University, Sweden. A former Berkeley and Harvard post-doc, he is known as the founder of the garbology school of Cultural Revolution research. Among other books, he is the author of Mao's Last Revolution (co-authored with Roderick MacFarquhar) (Harvard University Press, 2006), available in English, Spanish, French, Chinese, and Japanese. He recently concluded a decade of work on book called Spying for the People: Mao's Secret Agents, 1949–1967 (Cambridge University Press, 2013), described by the CIA’s Hayden Peake in Studies in Intelligence as “an extraordinarily fine work of historical scholarship on a topic about which little had been known.” He is an advisor to the PRC History Group, a trans-national network of scholars managing H-PRC, an H-Net channel that hosts scholarly discussions in addition to distributing news and announcements of interest to People's Republic of China historians.