China’s Typing Triumph

An Excerpt from ‘The Chinese Computer: A Global History of the Information Age’

By Thomas S. Mullaney on June 26, 2024

A standard QWERTY keyboard has a few dozen keys. How can Chinese—a language with tens of thousands of characters and no alphabet—be input on such a device? To answer this question, one needs to return to the beginnings of electronic Chinese technology in the wake of World War II, and follow up through to its many iterations in the present day. In particular, we need to examine the development of Chinese “input methods”—software programs that enable Chinese characters to be produced using alphanumeric symbols—and the profound impact they have had on the way Chinese is written. Today’s dominance of predictive text input, along with its unprecedented speed and ubiquity across both ideographic and alphabetic languages, owes its direct lineage to these input methods.

“The Police’s Strength Is Limited, but the People’s Strength Is Boundless”

To Supplement Law Enforcement, Local Governments across China Are Recruiting Citizen “Vigilantes”

By Jessica Batke on June 17, 2024

In some ways, “vigilantes” are the opposite of what their name suggests: rather than rogue agents meting out street justice, they are individuals deemed trustworthy by authorities, working under the guidance of local police forces, deputized to surveil their fellow citizens. In recent years, as Beijing has encouraged the “masses” to take a greater role in public safety, vigilante groups—and their close cousins, “safety promotion associations”—have sprung up across the country, working with the police to conduct traffic stops, mediate disputes, or even “catch [suspects] on the spot.” Indeed, China’s police are likely in need of some help.

The Committee that Ended the Age of Engagement?

By Charles Hutzler on June 10, 2024

The U.S. Congress’ special China committee has a packed agenda for the few months left this term. But its most consequential work may be done: a more confrontational U.S. policy towards China. The Select Committee on the Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party has racked up notable successes in its brief existence. Its scrutiny put Wall Street and Silicon Valley on notice to police their investments into China. Its investigations showed that Chinese tax programs support the export of ingredients for fentanyl, and got the Department of Homeland Security to step up inspections of small packages, tightening a loophole potentially used to import goods made with forced labor in Xinjiang.

Charles Hutzler

on June 6, 2024

Charles Hutzler is a journalist covering China and its complex relations with the U.S. Now based in Washington, D.C., he spent 25 years as a reporter in China based in Beijing, covering politics, the economy, trade, and other issues for The Wall Street Journal and The Associated Press. He oversaw large teams of reporters as China Bureau Chief for both the Journal and the AP, during a pivotal time when China boomed economically and then began to spread its influence globally. He helped oversee coverage at the Journal’s China bureau on the rise of China’s surveillance state that won a 2018 Gerald Loeb award. He was also part of an AP team that won a Society of American Business Editors and Writers award in 2013 for a series explaining China’s growing global reach.

35 Years Later: A Retrospective of Our Work on the 1989 Tiananmen Protests and Crackdown

on June 3, 2024

This year is the 35th anniversary of the 1989 mass demonstrations in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, and elsewhere around China, and their brutal suppression on June 4. The memories of these events are receding into the past, a process greatly aided in China by censorship. And even when remembered, the crackdown that ended the optimistic 1980s in China is viewed by some Chinese government supporters as justified.