The Destruction of Baishizhou

Inside the Fall of One of China’s Most Important Urban Villages

By Eli MacKinnon on September 13, 2016

Early this spring, the Chinese character for “demolish” (“拆”) showed up in red spray paint on a strip of shops in Shenzhen’s Baishizhou neighborhood. Wang An, 41, has been selling women’s underwear from one of these shops for the last 10 years. “When they knock it down, I guess we’ll just go home to Hubei [province] and grow vegetables,” he joked in April. The spray paint marked Wang’s shop as one of the buildings scheduled to be torn down in the first phase of Baishizhou’s renewal. He responded to the news with a buy-one-get-free sale that continued through the summer.

African Migrants in Guangzhou, Forgetting, Family Planning’s Fate, and More...

The Month’s Best Chinese Photojournalism

By Yan Cong, Ye Ming & more on September 12, 2016

Photographing the aftermath of catastrophic events is challenging—one that photographer Mu Li handles with creativity and grace looking back at the chemical explosion in Tianjin that damaged as many as 17,000 homes August 12, 2015. Another challenge is depicting memory: Muyi Xiao’s patient and delicate photos of an old woman are a great example of how to photograph an abstract idea. Also featured are Chen Liang’s painterly works from flood-stricken Hebei...

Zander Rounds

on September 11, 2016

Zander Rounds is the Nairobi-based Research Manager for the non-profit organization China House Kenya. He is a graduate of Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service and a recent Fulbright scholar. He has traveled repeatedly to China since 2007 and currently lives and works with Chinese communities in Nairobi. Rounds writes and conducts extensive research on Chinese-African relations (economics, politics, and people), democratization in Africa, and international development.