Lijiaxia reservoir and dam, eastern Qinghai province. Construction of the 500-foot-tall dam was finished in 1996, and began generating electricity in 1997. Lijiaxia is one of eight cascade dams built on the Longliu section of the upper region of the Yellow River between 1977 and 2006. Streamflow velocity on this stretch of the river greatly decreased after the construction of the dams, affecting water availability downstream.
A glacier in the Amne Machin mountains, Qinghai, Tibetan plateau, May 2018.
Mareike Ohlberg is a Senior Fellow in the Asia Program at the German Marshall Fund, based at GMF’s Berlin Office. Before joining GMF, she worked as an Analyst at the Mercator Institute for China Studies, where she focused on China’s media and digital policies as well as the Chinese Communist Party’s influence campaigns in Europe. Prior to that, she was an An Wang Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University’s Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies and a Postdoctoral Fellow at Shih-Hsin University in Taipei. Ohlberg has spent several years living and working in Greater China. She is co-author of the book Hidden Hand: Exposing How the Chinese Communist Party is Reshaping the World (Simon & Schuster, 2020). She has a Doctoral degree in Chinese Studies from the University of Heidelberg and a Master’s degree in East Asian Regional Studies from Columbia University.
In 2015, the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps Public Security Bureau announced it planned to purchase equipment from the U.S.-based biotechnology company Promega for the purpose of analyzing DNA and adding it to a national database, according to Chinese government procurement documents.
Columbia Global Reports: The rise of Hong Kong is the story of a miraculous post-war boom, when Chinese refugees flocked to a small British colony, and, in less than 50 years, transformed it into one of the great financial centers of the world. The unraveling of Hong Kong, on the other hand, shatters the grand illusion of China ever having the intention of allowing democratic norms to take root inside its borders. Hong Kong’s people were subjects of the British Empire for more than a hundred years, and now seem destined to remain the subordinates of today’s greatest rising power.
But although we are witnessing the death of Hong Kong as we know it, this is also the story of the biggest challenge to China’s authoritarianism in 30 years. Activists who are passionately committed to defending the special qualities of a home they love are fighting against Beijing’s crafty efforts to bring the city into its fold—of making it a centerpiece of its “Greater Bay Area” megalopolis.
Jeffrey Wasserstrom draws on his many visits to the city, and knowledge of the history of repression and resistance, to help us understand the deep roots and the broad significance of the events we see unfolding day by day in Hong Kong. The result is a riveting tale of tragedy but also heroism—one of the great David-versus-Goliath battles of our time, pitting determined street protesters against the intransigence of Xi Jinping, the most ambitious leader of China since the days of Mao.
Adrian Ho, The Wall Street Journal (February 17, 2020)
Lan Lin graduated from the University of California, Irvine with a Bachelor’s degree in film and received her Master’s degree in publishing from New York University. During her time in New York City, she also interned for SupChina.
Lin speaks Cantonese, Mandarin, Korean, and English. She now resides in Beijing, where she works as an editor and a part-time podcast producer at the online cultural video program Vistopia (看理想).
Chauncey Jung is a freelance journalist based in Ottawa, Canada, with a special focus on international affairs, technology, and China’s growing influence on liberal democracies. Jung’s work has been featured by media outlets including The South China Morning Post, Huffington Post, Initium Media, The New York Times Chinese, and The Diplomat. He previously worked for several Chinese Internet companies based in Beijing.
Elaine Lu is a Program Officer at China Labor Watch, a New-York based NGO advocating for workers’ rights in China. Her interests include human rights and civil society in China.
Xu Zhangrun was a professor of law at Tsinghua University and the author of a series of prominent essays critiquing the leadership of Xi Jinping.
Overnight, the country found itself in the grip of a devastating crisis; fear was stalking the land. The authorities proved themselves to be at a loss and the cost of their behavior was soon visited upon the common people. Before long, the coronavirus was reaching around the globe and the country found itself becoming rapidly isolated from the world. It was as though the China of the Open Door and Reform policies for more than three decades was being destroyed in front of our eyes. It seemed as is, in one fell swoop, the People’s Republic, and in particular its vaunted system of governance, had been cast back to pre-modern times. Then again, as word spread about the blockades thrown up by towns and cities to protect themselves against contagion, and as doors were slammed shut everywhere, it felt as though we were actually being confronted by a kind of barbaric panic more readily associated with the Middle Ages.
