China's New 'Bad Loan' Managers: Savvy Saviors or Riskier than Ever?

on August 9, 2016

As China's economy slows and defaults rise, 'bad loan' managers say they spot an opportunity to pick up bargains, because lenders are eager to shed toxic debt that might otherwise poison the broader financial system. Yet questions remain about whether these bad loan managers—especially smaller private players—are savvy investors in distressed assets or a risky backdoor for lenders to cleanse their balance sheets at a high cost.

Dennis Wilder

on August 9, 2016

Dennis Wilder is a senior fellow with the Initiative for U.S.-China Dialogue on Global Issues at Georgetown University.  He served more than three decades as a leading China expert working on intelligence and national security for the U.S. government. Most recently, Wilder served as the CIA’s deputy assistant director for East Asia and the Pacific and previous to that had roles as the senior editor of the president’s Daily Brief and National Security Council special assistant to the president and director for East Asian affairs.

How Chinese Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Their Military Again

The P.L.A. Has Emerged from the Darkness of 1989 to Reclaim the Hearts of the Masses

on August 8, 2016

Every evening, as regular and obstreperous as a rooster, the People’s Liberation Army (P.L.A.) soldiers sing from the barracks outside my Beijing home, a chorus of teenage troops reminding the neighborhood when it’s dinner time:

“Unity is strength, unity is strength,
The strength is iron, the strength is steel,
It’s harder than iron, stronger than steel.
Open fire at Fascism and Imperialism
And eliminate all undemocratic systems!”

Free to Love | Netease

on August 8, 2016

As the fight for freedom of expressing their sexuality continues to rage in China, many LGBT Chinese have found a safe haven—and a partner—in America. Cao Mengwen documents the love stories of six couples living in New York. Chinese media in recent years has become more accepting of covering LGBTQ issues. “At its core, LGBT is about love,” one of the subjects says. “How can you derogate love?”

Earthquake Artifacts | Caixin Media

on August 8, 2016

July 28 marked the 40th anniversary of the Tangshan earthquake, which killed more than 240,000 people. Photographer Wan Jia created a photo essay of survivors and their contemporary belongings—including objects such as clocks, radios, and pins decorated with the face of China’s then leader Mao Zedong, who died just six weeks after the earthquake.

Clay Shirky

on August 8, 2016

Clay Shirky studies the Internet’s effects on society. He is a Global Network Professor at New York University’s Shanghai campus, and the author, most recently, of Little Rice: Smartphones, Xiaomi, and the Chinese Dream. Shirky has a joint appointment at NYU as a Distinguished Writer in Residence at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute and Assistant Arts Professor in the New Media focused graduate Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP). Shirky’s courses address, among other things, the interrelated effects of the topology of social networks and technological networks, how our networks shape culture and vice versa.

Shirky has written and been interviewed about the Internet since 1996. His columns and writings have appeared in Business 2.0, The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Harvard Business Review and Wired. He divides his time between consulting, teaching, and writing on the social and economic effects of Internet technologies. His consulting practice is focused on the rise of decentralized technologies such as peer-to-peer, web services, and wireless networks that provide alternatives to the wired client–server infrastructure that characterizes the World Wide Web. He is a member of the Wikimedia Foundation’s Advisory Board. In The Long Tail, Chris Anderson calls Shirky "a prominent thinker on the social and economic effects of Internet technologies."

Clay Shirky on Tech and the Internet in China

A Sinica Podcast

By Kaiser Kuo, Jeremy Goldkorn & more on August 8, 2016

The Internet expert and author of “Here Comes Everybody” gives his take on China's successes and challenges in the online world. In an hour-long conversation Shirky delves into the details and big-picture phenomena driving the globe’s largest Internet market, and includes an analysis of smartphone maker Xiaomi’s innovation, the struggles that successful Chinese companies face when taking their brands abroad and the nation’s robust e-commerce offerings.