18 Months in, What Do We Know about Chinese Partner Units?

on August 21, 2018

Chinese Partner Units (CPUs) are critical players in the temporary activity process. Not only are they often the on-the-ground implementers of a temporary activity, and their organizational structure, location, and capacity affect what activities will be possible, it is CPUs—not foreign NGOs—that actually submit temporary activity filings to the Public Security Bureaus. Yet, because there is no “white list” of possible CPUs, the range of potential and actual CPUs is wide and somewhat overwhelming. To try and make more sense of CPUs, our latest analysis breaks down what types of organizations have served as such (non-profits, government agencies, hospitals, and others); whether certain types of CPUs are more prevalent in certain provinces than others; and for CPUs that have their own Chinese government “mother-in-law,” or Professional Supervisory Unit, which government bureaucracy they’re affiliated with.

Chinese Partner Units: Who (and Where) Are They?

By Jessica Batke on August 21, 2018

When considering the impact of the Foreign NGO Law, we often think first of the foreign NGOs themselves—who they are, and where they’re able to gain approval to carry out work in China. Yet, for foreign NGOs carrying out temporary activities in China, Chinese Partner Units (CPUs) are critical players whose organizational structure, location, and capacity affect what activities will be possible. Notably, it is CPUs, and not foreign NGOs, that actually submit temporary activity filings to the Public Security Bureaus.

Tianyu Fu

on August 20, 2018

Tianyu Fu is an associate consultant based in Shanghai. He recently finished his graduate studies in International Relations at New York University. Fu grew up in Shanghai and went to the University of St Andrews for his undergraduate degree in International Relations and Philosophy. He also holds a Master’s degree in Philosophy from the University of St Andrews. He was an Intern at the Asia Society Center on U.S.-China Relations.

How To Fight China’s Sharp Power

A ChinaFile Conversation

By Thorsten Benner, Insa Ewert & more on August 20, 2018

There is a debate raging about China’s sharp power and how to defend against it, whether it’s investment screening, shuttering Confucius institutes, or forcing visa reciprocity for journalists. But how does a fractious, divided world not only resist Beijing’s sharp power but also find ways to constructively engage with China? Or to use a soccer metaphor, how can the international community—governments, civil society actors, and individuals—avoid just saying “no” to Beijing and playing “defense” by protecting rather narrowly defined national interests? To what extent could the lowering of liberal-democratic standards by becoming increasingly illiberal and paranoid about Chinese Communist Party influence operations lead to proverbial “own goals”? And are there new strategies of continued, considered interaction—a new way of playing “offense”—that policymakers could adapt?

Yushan Wu

on August 18, 2018

Yushan Wu is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Pretoria in South Africa and a Research Associate at the Africa-China Reporting Project at Wits University in Johannesburg, and a Research Associate at The South African Institute of International Affairs. She is South African and has a Master’s Degree in International Relations from the University of the Witwatersrand. She also has a background in Media Studies and has assisted at the South African Broadcasting Corporation and contributed to a project on Chinese presence in South Africa for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Wu is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in International Relations, at the University of Pretoria.

Wu’s areas of research are emerging countries and public diplomacy (through media and soft power) and China-Africa Relations (specifically South Africa, social consequences, and the media relationship).

Visualizing China’s Anti-Corruption Campaign

on August 15, 2018

“Catching Tigers and Flies” is ChinaFile’s interactive tool for tracking and, we hope, better understanding the massive campaign against corruption that Xi Jinping launched shortly after he came to power in late 2012. It is designed to give users a sense of the scope and character of the anti-corruption campaign by graphically rendering information about more than 2,000 of its targets whose cases have been publicly announced in official Chinese sources.

Mark Siemons

on August 15, 2018

Mark Siemons is an editor in the cultural section of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung in Berlin and the author of Die chinesische Verunsicherung. Stichworte zu einem nervösen System (Hanser, 2017). From 2005 to 2014, he was Cultural Correspondent of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in Beijing.