The Future According to Xi and Putin

A ChinaFile Conversation

By Maria Repnikova, Evan Medeiros & more on May 28, 2024

On May 16 and 17, Russian President Vladimir Putin made a state visit to China, where he met with Chinese leader Xi Jinping. Xi has stood closely by Putin’s side since their announcement of the “no limits” partnership, and this does not look likely to change. But what has been the outcome of Putin’s trip? Did the two leaders make a serious attempt to negotiate on Ukraine, or were the optics of bilateral friendship the main aim? How should we expect the two countries’ trade relationship to change after this visit? What else came out of this trip?

Vita Golod

on May 28, 2024

Vita Golod is a researcher from Kiev, Ukraine. She is currently a visiting scholar at Carolina Asia Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is a Junior Research Fellow at the Modern Studies Department at the A. Yu. Krymskyi Institute of Oriental Studies, NAS of Ukraine, Chairman of the Board of the Ukrainian Association of Sinologists, and co-founder of the Ukrainian Platform for Contemporary China.

Beijing’s Culinary Crusade: Erasing Uyghur Identity through Food

By Timothy Grose on May 13, 2024

Instruction began early on a November 2018 morning. This lesson was not taught in a classroom, but in a makeshift kitchen as part of Xinjiang’s “household school” program. There, a teacher stood before her class of adult women and asked: “What do you like to eat for breakfast?” The students responded in unison, “nan and milk” or “nan and tea.” “You don’t eat a bowl of hot congee?” the teacher interjected. This question sparked additional discussion and “even more curiosity” among the women in attendance.

Why the African Union Stopped the Donkey Hide Trade with China

By Lauren Johnston on May 10, 2024

The African Union’s unprecedented decision to ban the trade of donkey skin ended a hitherto fast-evolving China-Africa business. It also is the result of an unusual agreement between the 55 African Union member countries on a matter that affects rural development, women’s rights, and poverty alleviation. Perhaps most unusually, the ban arose from an implicit unified pushback against a profitable business with China, Africa’s largest trade partner and one of its major investors and financiers.

Traces in the Land

By Sim Chi Yin & Ian Johnson on May 6, 2024

The Xiao River rushes deep and clear out of the mountains of southern China into a narrow plain of paddies and villages. For several weeks in August 1967, more than nine thousand people were murdered in this region of Hunan province. Its epicenter was Dao county, which the Xiao River bisects on its way north toward the Xiang and then the Yangtze.

Spencer Lee-Lenfield

on May 1, 2024

Spencer Lee-Lenfield is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature at Harvard University. Lee-Lenfield’s research focuses on literary translation between Asian and Asian American literatures. His previous research has appeared in journals including PMLA, Acta Koreana, Poetics Today, MLQ, and Criticism. Lee-Lenfield has also contributed reporting, essays, and criticism to The Chronicle of Higher Education, Guernica, The Yale Review, and Harvard Magazine, and literary translations to Kenyon Review, New England Review, Poetry Northwest, Colorado Review, and publications.

Lauren Johnston

on May 1, 2024

Lauren Johnston is a development economist with expertise in China-Africa relations and demographic change and the economy. She is an Associate Professor at the University of Sydney China Studies Centre, and an affiliated Senior Researcher at the South African Institute of International Affairs. Johnston holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Peking University, a M.Sc. in Development Econ from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), and a B.A./B.Com. from the University of Melbourne. Previously, she was a Fellow at the Overseas Development Institute in Sierra Leone and at the World Economic Forum in Geneva, a consultant for the World Bank and the United Nations, and a lecturer and research fellow at the University of Melbourne and Beijing Foreign Studies University.