In the run-up to the 70th anniversary of the People’s Republic on October 1, China’s television regulator has mandated that all television channels only air patriotic shows. The ban might be short-lived, but it has kept the news in the headlines and undercut any attempts the Party might make to redeem itself via good storytelling.
Dear People’s Republic, Or should I call you, China? I am writing to you on the eve of your 70th birthday. 70, what an age. “For a man to live to 70 has been rare since ancient times,” the poet Du Fu wrote in the eighth century. You have outlived many kings and countless men, and you have lasted longer than every other state that has espoused the hammer and sickle. Congratulations must be in order.
It’s easy to put oneself in the minds of government propagandists and feel that things are going quite well in China. Yes, faraway Hong Kong is in crisis, with huge anti-government protests going on since March. But it was always going to be tough to absorb the former British colony; we’ll give them a bit more leeway but if necessary will crack down hard. And perhaps the distant territory of Xinjiang has required a firm hand, but have any countries done anything about our reeducation camps there? As for the trade war with the United States, it causes some pain, but it doesn’t matter because we’ve convinced most people that it’s all the Americans’ fault. The world is tumultuous, but we remain a bastion of stability. Our economy and military are growing steadily. Nothing really challenges Communist Party rule.
Grace Charity Foundation has filed for far more temporary activities than any other foreign NGO. Since the Foreign NGO Law went into effect in January 2017, more than 600 foreign NGOs have carried out 2,056 temporary activities in China as of September 13, 2019. The majority of organizations that do not have representative offices in China have filed for only one or two activities. Grace Charity Foundation Limited (慈恩基金会有限公司), however, is an outlier. The Hong Kong-based charitable organization has filed for 148 temporary activities, or 7.2 percent of all the temporary activities filed since 2017.
Foreign companies continue to conduct business in Xinjiang despite widespread evidence of human rights abuse. This list identifies 68 European companies with ties to Xinjiang ranging from building infrastructure and investing in joint ventures to selling cars and running retail shops. The companies all appear on either the Fortune Global 500 list or the Euro Stoxx 50 index.
By what right does the international community insist that the P.R.C. must respect the special constitutional status of Hong Kong? After all, critics of Beijing’s policies toward Hong Kong do not just argue that P.R.C. officials should respect the autonomy of the former British colony; they argue that international law obliges them to do so. The claim that Beijing is constrained in how it acts towards Hong Kong is based upon the idea that the P.R.C. is still bound by the provisions of the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration, a bilateral treaty governing the transfer of Hong Kong from British colonial rule to P.R.C. sovereign control. Because the Joint Declaration is still in force, the argument goes, both parties ought to uphold its provisions as a basic principle of international law. The Joint Declaration, however, remains deeply problematic.
Peter Harris is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Colorado State University, where his teaching and research focus on international security, International Relations theory, and U.S. foreign policy. He holds degrees from the University of Edinburgh, University of London, and University of Texas at Austin. His work has appeared in journals such as Asian Security, Chinese Journal of International Politics, International Affairs, Political Science Quarterly, and Review of International Studies. He is a regular feature contributor to the online edition of The National Interest.
Two recent documents—as well as the critiques they have elicited—furnish the basis for a more nuanced debate on U.S. policy towards China. First, on July 4, a group of roughly 100 figures from the policy, military, business, and academic communities published an open letter arguing that “there is no single Washington consensus endorsing an overall adversarial stance toward China.” The signatories challenged the judgment that China is “an existential national security threat that must be confronted in every sphere,” questioned the conclusion that it will supplant the United States as the world’s preeminent power, and advised the United States against efforts to isolate it economically. The letter is notable in at least two respects. First, it suggests that the commonly perceived demarcation between an ossified consensus of engagement proponents (the “doves”) and an emerging consensus of unblinkered analysts (the “hawks”) is simplistic. Second, many of the signatories to the letter are sharp, vocal, and persistent critics of Chinese conduct.
Harvard University Press: As a vehicle to convey both the history of modern China and the complex forces still driving the nation’s economic success, rail has no equal. Railroads and the Transformation of China is the first comprehensive history, in any language, of railroad operation from the last decades of the Qing Empire to the present.
China’s first fractured lines were built under semicolonial conditions by competing foreign investors. The national system that began taking shape in the 1910s suffered all the ills of the country at large: warlordism and Japanese invasion, Chinese partisan sabotage, the Great Leap Forward when lines suffered in the “battle for steel,” and the Cultural Revolution, during which Red Guards were granted free passage to “make revolution” across the country, nearly collapsing the system. Elisabeth Köll’s expansive study shows how railroads survived the rupture of the 1949 Communist revolution and became an enduring model of Chinese infrastructure expansion.
The railroads persisted because they were exemplary bureaucratic institutions. Through detailed archival research and interviews, Köll builds case studies illuminating the strength of rail administration. Pragmatic management, combining central authority and local autonomy, sustained rail organizations amid shifting political and economic priorities. As Köll shows, rail provided a blueprint for the past 40 years of ambitious, semipublic business development and remains an essential component of the People’s Republic of China’s politically charged, technocratic economic model for China’s future.
The Public Security Bureau of Xinjiang Autonomous Region recently held a training course on the management of foreign NGOs in the region. Police from Foreign NGO Management Offices at various local-level PSBs took part in the training.
