A key data series on China’s fertility rate has been axed from the country’s latest statistical yearbook, depriving the public of crucial figures to judge the effectiveness of the country’s two-child policy.
China urged the United States on Friday not to allow Taiwan’s president to travel through U.S. territory en route to the island’s diplomatic allies in the Pacific, a sensitive visit shortly ahead of U.S. President Donald Trump’s trip to Beijing.
A couple of weeks ago, The Economist put a drawing of Xi Jinping, the President of China, on its cover under a headline that said “The world’s most powerful man.” In an editorial in the same issue, the editors acknowledged that China is still no match for the United States economically or militarily. They noted, however, that America’s President, Donald Trump, “is weaker at home and less effective abroad than any of his recent predecessors, not least because he scorns the values and alliances that underpin American influence.” Xi, by contrast, “walks with swagger abroad,” the editorial continued. “His grip on China is tighter than any leader’s since Mao.”
The People’s Daily is the official mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party, its front pages offering as clear a window as we can get into the message the party leadership want to transmit to its members.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, many economists and policymakers assumed the world would become one happy, prosperous economy. Aided by the spread of capitalism and technology, countries would be increasingly knit together by trade, finance, and the internet. There would, of course, be the occasional setback—such as the 2008 financial crisis. But ultimately the forces of globalization would prove irresistible and ever-tighter integration inevitable.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un sent a rare congratulatory message to Chinese President Xi Jinping on Wednesday at the end of China’s Communist Party Congress, wishing him “great success” as head of the nation, the North’s state media said.
It is widely known that foreign journalists encounter various strict restrictions when reporting on China — particularly since Chinese President Xi Jinping came into office five years ago. But China just sent another strong message to the “trouble-making” foreign media that an even more difficult situation is waiting for them.
Back in December 2016, the Chinese foreign minister traveled to Manhattan to meet privately with Jared Kushner for emergency discussions after President-elect Donald Trump’s unorthodox phone call with the president of Taiwan.
Taiwan and mainland China need to drop historical baggage to seek a breakthrough in cross-straits relations, Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen said in her first public comments since the Communist Party unveiled a new leadership line-up.
The Chinese Communist party congress displayed all the qualities beloved by Leninist institutions over the ages, of deep secrecy mixed with stern pageantry, leveraged in the service of reinforcing their leaders’ inviolate right to rule.
