As Its Coronavirus Outbreak Abates, China Is Trying out a New Look. Is It Working?

A ChinaFile Conversation

By Daniel R. Russel, Pamela Kyle Crossley & more on March 19, 2020

As the coronavirus spreads globally, China’s government is working aggressively to change its international image. In the span of just a few weeks, China has gone from the embattled epicenter of the coronavirus epidemic to presenting the country as an experienced, charitable international player seeking to stem a worldwide pandemic. On a darker side, Chinese diplomats are amplifying conspiracy theories that suggest the virus originated in the United States. How will these efforts affect international opinion? How is the outbreak and China’s response to it shaping the country’s standing on the global stage?

‘This Is Not Forensic Genetics Anymore. This Is Surveillance.’

A Q&A with Yves Moreau on DNA Profiling in Xinjiang and Corporate Ethics

By Jessica Batke on March 18, 2020

Yves Moreau, a professor specializing in human clinical genomics, had been emailing with Promega since 2016, warning its communications department first about how Promega’s products might be used in a proposed DNA databasing project in Kuwait, and later alerting the company to his concerns about Xinjiang. My interview with Moreau became a wide-ranging conversation about genetic privacy, the true meaning of “free, informed” consent, inconsistent ethics standards for trans-national businesses, and the scientific community’s concerns over the United States government’s use of DNA samples.

China and Intervention at the UN Security Council

By Courtney J. Fung on March 12, 2020

Oxford University Press: What explains China’s response to intervention at the UN Security Council? China and Intervention at the UN Security Council argues that status is an overlooked determinant in understanding its decisions, even in the apex cases that are shadowed by a public discourse calling for foreign-imposed regime change in Sudan, Libya, and Syria. It posits that China reconciles its status dilemma as it weighs decisions to intervene, seeking recognition from both its intervention peer groups of great powers and developing states. Understanding the impact and scope of conditions of status answers why China has taken certain positions regarding intervention and how these positions were justified. Foreign policy behavior that complies with status, and related social factors like self-image and identity, means that China can select policy options bearing material costs. China and Intervention at the UN Security Council draws on an extensive collection of data, including over two hundred interviews with UN officials and Chinese foreign policy elites, participant observation at UN Headquarters, and a dataset of Chinese-language analysis regarding foreign-imposed regime change and intervention. The book concludes with new perspectives on the malleability of China’s core interests, insights about the application of status for cooperation, and the implications of the status dilemma for rising powers.

Book Review: 

Andrew Nathan, Foreign Affairs (April 27, 2018)

‘Our Daily Media Consumption Is Completely Different’

Talking to Relatives in China About Politics

By Muyi Xiao, Yan Cong & more on March 9, 2020

In the 18 years I lived at home, we never had a single conversation about current affairs or politics. I had a very minimal understanding of my country and was in no place to initiate discussion, and my parents were never enthusiastic enough to bring anything up. Then when I turned 18, I ended up at an English language-focused journalism school in Beijing. Since graduating, I have mostly worked in foreign newsrooms, something my parents couldn’t have fathomed when I was a child. Covering China’s domestic social news beat, I was both allowed and required to seek out information not already blocked by the “wall.” I began to share some of it with my parents. When they learned about an event that Xinwen Lianbo didn’t cover they usually welcomed the new information with a bit of astonishment, but never doubt.

Civil Society’s Shifting Role in the Response to Coronavirus

Rule Changes Allowing for More NGOs to Get Involved

on March 6, 2020

In our Analysis section, contributor Holly Snape explains how local and central policies at first hobbled domestic civil society organizations’ ability to respond to the coronavirus, limiting who could receive donations, and, critically, who could disburse them. Subsequent rule changes mean that groups are now freer to play a role in collecting and distributing funds and material goods—a hopeful sign for the management of this epidemic.

China Alters Civil Society Rules, Allowing More Groups to Respond to Coronavirus

By Holly Snape on March 5, 2020

As the COVID-19 epidemic continues in China, so do the efforts of civil society organizations and concerned citizens to mitigate the harm. In the official approach to managing their involvement, there have been clumsy force-of-habit measures from the state, controversies over how donations are collected and deployed, and punishments for cadres-cum-charity leaders. Early government attempts to monopolize the collection and deployment of donated money and materials have caused critical bottlenecks, and weak coordination among departments and policies are blocking efficient deployment of desperately needed protective equipment. But scholars, donors, CSO professionals, and volunteers are constantly probing for ways around constraints.

Playing by the Informal Rules

By Yao Li on March 5, 2020

Cambridge University Press: Growing protests in non-democratic countries are often seen as signals of regime decline. China, however, has remained stable amid surging protests. Playing by the Informal Rules highlights the importance of informal norms in structuring state-protester interactions, mitigating conflict, and explaining regime resilience. Drawing on a nationwide dataset of protest and multi-sited ethnographic research, this book presents a bird’s-eye view of Chinese contentious politics and illustrates the uneven application of informal norms across regions, social groups, and time. Through examinations of protests and their distinct implications for regime stability, Li offers a novel theoretical framework suitable for monitoring the trajectory of political contention in China and beyond. Overall, this study sheds new light on political mobilization and authoritarian resilience and provides fresh perspectives on power, rules, legitimacy, and resistance in modern societies.

China’s New Deserts

By Ian Teh on March 5, 2020

From Madoi county, a settlement near the headwaters of the Yellow River, our two-car convoy headed out to visit a desert Yang Yong had first viewed through binoculars in 1997. From the roadside, the geologist had seen a small, wind-blown patch of sand surrounded by greenery. This time, from the same vantage point, Yang looked out past a stretch of sloping grassland to where a new desert now extended beyond the horizon. That sandy expanse, Yang told me, was where we would sleep that night.

Evacuation from China, Quarantine in the UK: A COVID-19 Dispatch

By Lavender Au on March 2, 2020

I had missed the first British evacuation when my embassy didn’t get me a permit for the checkpoints in time, but I was trying to make the second. My send-off gifts: two instant-noodle pots (hot food safer than cold), a tub of alcohol-soaked cotton balls for cleaning my hands, and tissues for pressing elevator buttons. Ningning had come downstairs to say goodbye and make a trip to the apartment compound’s water dispenser at the same time. She wasn’t allowed to leave the building for the next week.