Xi Jinping has ruled China for over a decade, but the way he rules it is changing. Xi faces domestic and international environments that are markedly worse than when he took office in 2012. The economy is struggling, confidence is faltering, debt is looming, and strategic competition with the United States and its allies is endangering the future of China’s technological advancement and economic growth.
After more than one year of conflict, the Russia-Ukraine War continues to drag on. In May, China’s Special Representative for Eurasian Affairs, Li Hui, traveled throughout European capitals to discuss the potential for a “political settlement” of the Ukraine crisis. Meanwhile, Kiev has launched a counteroffensive in five areas along the front in Donetsk. In the background, China-Russia diplomatic, economic, and military relations remain robust. How is the Ukraine war impacting China-Russia relations? Are there limits to the China-Russia partnership? Will relations between Moscow and Beijing grow more or less asymmetrical in the years to come?
Lai Wai-ling, mother of Yu Man-hon, pictured in August 2022. Her autistic son, then 15, disappeared at the border between Hong Kong and Guangdong in 2000. The overlayed text is of a letter she wrote to her son in October 2022, at Kwok’s invitation.
In a small Chinese town where unemployment has run high during the COVID-19 pandemic, the local government has embraced a surprising remedy to joblessness: public toilets. Fugong Village, in Guangdong province, usually sees nearly half of its small populace of 700 migrate to the Pearl River Delta to seek manufacturing jobs. But during the pandemic, the village has struggled as urban factories shuttered and migrant workers returned to their hometowns. So village officials decided it was time to renovate the village’s public toilet system, using funds from government’s unemployment relief program that aims to mitigate unemployment by hiring workers to build infrastructure.
