Viewpoint
11.03.17The Future of Particle Physics Will Live and Die in China
from Foreign Policy
“Don’t you dare kill my project.”My phone interview with a senior official at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) had started with bland, yet polite, responses. But it took a sharp turn toward audible agitation and hostility as I raised my final...
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10.26.17Life Is about to Get Even Harder for Foreign Media in China
Diplomat
It is widely known that foreign journalists encounter various strict restrictions when reporting on China — particularly since Chinese President Xi Jinping came into office five years ago. But China just sent another strong message to the “trouble-...
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10.10.17Diplomat's China Speech Renews Australia University Debate
BBC
Australia's education minister has urged universities to maintain academic integrity after a diplomat renewed a discussion about possible Chinese influence on campuses.
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10.10.17In China, Scholars Are Being Punished amid Growing Squeeze on Public Expression
NPR
In late July, Beijing Normal University authorities fired Shi Jiepeng, an assistant professor, citing a number of offenses, including "expressing views outside the mainstream of society."
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09.25.17Touching on History, a Chinese Film May Have Been Burned by It
New York Times
One of China’s most popular directors, Feng Xiaogang, was determined to triumph at the box office with the release of his new film “Youth” during the weeklong National Day holiday. But then Mr. Feng’s premiere was abruptly canceled.
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09.21.17China Lifts Travel Ban on Feminist Activist
Financial Times
A Chinese feminist activist who was banned from leaving mainland China for a decade has been given back her travel documents and allowed to travel. Wu Rongrong will fly to Hong Kong on Sunday, where she will begin a post-graduate degree in law.
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09.05.17Google Continues to Hire in China Even as Search Remains Blocked
Bloomberg
Google’s search service may be banned in China but parent Alphabet Inc. is hunting for workers in a further sign it has ambitions in the world’s biggest internet market.
The NYRB China Archive
09.05.17Beijing’s Bold New Censorship
from New York Review of Books
Authoritarians, in China and elsewhere, normally have preferred to dress their authoritarianism up in pretty clothes. Lenin called the version of dictatorship he invented in 1921 “democratic centralism,” but it became clear, especially after Stalin...
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08.29.17In China You Now Have to Provide Your Real Identity If You Want to Comment Online
Quartz
The Chinese government under president Xi Jinping is continuing to make life on the internet difficult for its potential detractors. Yesterday (Aug. 25), the country’s highest internet regulator released new rules that govern who...
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08.23.17‘China Quarterly’ Publisher Restores Articles Following Backlash from Scholars
NPR
The British publisher of an academic journal has reversed a decision to take down hundreds of articles from its Chinese website. In a statement released Monday, Cambridge University Press said it’s reposting the more than 300 articles to The China...
Viewpoint
08.22.17Burn the Books, Bury the Scholars!
Chinese censorship has come a long way. During his rule in the second century B.C.E., the First Emperor of a unified China, Ying Zheng, famously quashed the intellectual diversity of his day by ‘burning the books and burying the scholars’. He not...
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08.22.17Chinese Activist Jiang Tianyong's Subversion Trial Dismissed as Sham
Guardian
China’s Communist party–controlled media claimed Jiang — whose past clients include activists such as the exiled dissident lawyer Chen Guangcheng — had confessed to the crime of ”inciting subversion of state power”.
Conversation
08.21.17Should Publications Compromise to Remain in China?
The prestigious “China Quarterly will continue to publish articles that make it through our rigorous double-blind peer review regardless of topic or sensitivity,” wrote editor Tim Pringle on Monday after days of intense criticism of the brief-lived...
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08.21.17Cambridge University Press Faces Backlash after Bowing to China Censorship Pressure
Washington Post
Cambridge University Press announced Friday it had removed 300 articles and book reviews from a version of the “China Quarterly” website available in China at the request of the government.
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08.15.17Facebook Tests Way Into China Via Secret Photo—Sharing App
Financial Times
A photo—sharing app has appeared on Apple’s App Store in China that looks exactly like Facebook’s Moments app, and analysts say it may be a way for the US tech group to finally break into its most coveted market.
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08.14.17In China, Facebook Tests the Waters with a Stealth App
New York Times
Facebook and many of its apps have been blocked in China for years. To change that, Mark Zuckerberg has made a big point of meeting with Chinese politicians, reading stodgy Communist Party propaganda, studying Mandarin and—perhaps more daunting—...
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08.14.17Facebook’s Secret Chinese App Is a Dud in China So Far
Quartz
Over the weekend the New York Times reported (paywall) that Facebook had stealthily released a photo-sharing app in the Chinese iOS App Store translated as “Colorful Balloons.” The news spread rapidly around English-language media, as it marked the...
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08.03.17Holes close in China’s ’Great Firewall’ as Apple and Amazon snub apps to bypass censors
Los Angeles Times
Moves by business giants Apple Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. to stop people from using censorship-skirting apps in China have renewed questions about the extent to which U.S. companies are willing to work with authorities to operate in the vast but...
Books
08.01.17Globalization against Democracy
Globalization has reconfigured both the external institutional framework and the intrinsic operating mechanisms of capitalism. The global triumph of capitalism implies the embracing of the market by the state in all its variants, and that global capitalism is not confined to the shell of nation-state democracy. Guoguang Wu provides a theoretical framework of global capitalism for specialists in political economy, political science, economics, and international relations, for graduate and undergraduate courses on globalization, capitalism, development, and democracy, as well as for the public who are interested in globalization. Wu examines the new institutional features of global capitalism and how they re-frame movements of capital, labor, and consumption. He explores how globalization has created a chain of connection in which capital depends on effective authoritarianism, while democracy depends on capital. Ultimately, he argues that the emerging state-market nexus has fundamentally shaken the existing institutional systems, harming democracy in the process. —Cambridge University Press{chop}
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08.01.17Joining Apple, Amazon’s China Cloud Service Bows to Censors
New York Times
Days after Apple yanked anti-censorship tools off its app store in China, another major American technology company is moving to implement the country’s tough restrictions on online content.
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07.31.17Chinese Blogger Sorry after Essay Slamming Beijingers’ ‘Fake’ Lives Goes Viral and Is Censored
South China Morning Post
Widely-read blog criticized by state media after it lists complaints about soaring property prices, crowded subways and lack of human warmth in the capital
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07.20.17China Clamping down on Use of VPNs to Evade Great Firewall
CNBC
China is tightening control over foreign companies’ internet use in a move some worry might disrupt their operations or jeopardize trade secrets as part of a crackdown on technology that allows web surfers to evade Beijing’s online censorship.
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07.20.17In China, Despair for Cause of Democracy after Nobel Laureate’s Death
New York Times
Now, the ruling Communist Party’s feverish attempts to erase Mr. Liu Xiaobo’s legacy have raised fears that Mr. Xi will intensify his campaign against activists pushing for ideas like freedom of speech and religion.
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07.17.17Liu Xiaobo’s Death Pushes China’s Censors into Overdrive
New York Times
It came as little surprise when, after the death of the dissident Liu Xiaobo last week, China’s vast army of censors kicked into overdrive as they scrubbed away the outpouring of grief on social media that followed.
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06.27.17Tycoon’s Claims Reverberate in China Despite Censorship and Thin Evidence
New York Times
Since taking office, President Xi Jinping has cultivated an aura of austere probity and stern control. But now a garrulous billionaire living in a lavish apartment in Manhattan, taunting the authorities beyond the easy grasp of Chinese security...
Sinica Podcast
06.23.17Islamophobia in China, Explained
from Sinica Podcast
Islamophobia isn’t a phenomenon limited to Trump’s America or the Europe of Brexit and Marine Le Pen. It has taken root in China, too—in a form that bears a striking resemblance to what we’ve seen in recent years in the West. The Chinese Party-state...
Media
06.21.17American Universities in China: Free Speech Bastions or Threats to Academic Freedom?
from Asia Blog
In 1986, Johns Hopkins University opened a study center in Nanjing University, making it the first American institution of higher education allowed to establish a physical presence in China during the Communist era. Since then, dozens of other...
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06.18.17‘Islamic State Killings: China’s Censored Social Media Is in Uproar, so What’s Beijing Thinking?
South China Morning Post
The deaths of two Chinese prompt widespread calls for retribution. Beijing, seeking favour in the region with its Belt and Road Initiative, remains curiously silent.
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06.14.17Have a Nice Day, Chinese Gangster Animation, Blocked in France
BBC
The makers of a cutting-edge Chinese film that was pulled from the world's premier animation festival following government pressure from Beijing say they still hope the movie will get a run in cinemas at home later this year.
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05.04.17China Compiles Its Own ‘Wikipedia,’ but Public Can’t Edit It
Seattle Times
It’ll be free. It’ll be uniquely Chinese. It’ll be an online encyclopedia to rival Wikipedia — but without the participation of the public. And don’t expect entries on “Tiananmen Square 1989” or “Falun Gong spiritual group” to come up in your...
The NYRB China Archive
04.28.17Should the Chinese Government Be in American Classrooms?
from New York Review of Books
Since their beginning in 2005, Confucius Institutes (CIs) have been set up to teach Chinese language classes in more than 100 American colleges and universities, including large and substantial institutions like Rutgers University, the State...
The NYRB China Archive
03.29.17Liberating China’s Past
from New York Review of Books
With the closing of this month’s National People’s Congress, China’s political season is upon us. It will culminate in the autumn with Xi Jinping’s almost certain reappointment to another five-year term. With Xi rapidly becoming the most important...
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03.17.17For a Change, China’s Censors Have No Problem with “Gay Moment” in Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast”
Quartz
Unlike other Asian countries, China says it has absolutely no problem with a plotline involving a possibly gay character in Disney’s re-boot of Beauty and the Beast.
Sinica Podcast
03.17.17Big Daddy Dough: Hip-hop and Macroeconomics in China
from Sinica Podcast
By day, Andrew Dougherty is a macroeconomist who manages a China research team for Capital Group, one of the world’s largest actively managed mutual funds. By night, he is Big Daddy Dough, creator of an album of parody hip-hop songs that explain...
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03.14.17Is Google Another Step Closer to Being Unblocked in China?
CNBC
Google is still in talks with Beijing over its plans to return to the mainland Chinese market
Conversation
02.05.17Is The White House Beginning to Resemble Zhongnanhai?
Since Donald Trump was sworn into office on January 20, he has lied repeatedly about the size of the crowd at his inauguration, embraced xenophobic policies, and declareda “running war with the media.” The White House has frozen out the...
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01.31.17Billionaire Is Reported Seized from Hong Kong Hotel and Taken into China
New York Times
A Chinese-born billionaire who has forged financial ties with some of the country’s most powerful families was taken by the Chinese police from his apartment at the Four Seasons Hotel in Hong Kong late last week and spirited across the border
Sinica Podcast
01.19.17The State of Journalism in China—Ed Wong’s Exit Interview
from Sinica Podcast
Edward Wong became a reporter for The New York Times in 1999. He covered the Iraq war from Baghdad from 2003 to 2007, and then moved to Beijing in 2008. He has written about a wide range of subjects in China for the Times, and became its Beijing...
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12.14.16Popular Chinese Muslim Website Down After Posting Letter Critical of Xi
Reuters
Users of China Muslim Net say they have been unable to access the website since Saturday
Media
12.09.16U.S.-China Relations As a Cycle of ‘Rapturous Enchantment’ and ‘Deep Disappointment’
from Asia Blog
In 1872, China’s imperial government began sending teenage boys to the United States to study science and technology. After a series of “humiliating” military defeats at the hands of technologically superior foreign powers, China’s leaders realized...
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12.05.16Two Movies China Desperately Wants to Hide
Boston Globe
In China, prisoners of conscience are literally being butchered. These films take a look inside China's organ harvesting market.
Viewpoint
12.01.16Why I’m Giving Away My Book in China
After a decade covering Asia for The Wall Street Journal, I devoted three years of my life to researching and writing a book about China’s one-child policy, One Child: The Story of China’s Most Radical Experiment. This month, I’m giving away the...
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12.01.16China is Censoring People’s Chats Without Them Even Knowing About It
Quartz
Censorship in WeChat group chats is prevalent, and is done so that the sender isn’t even aware a piece of text has been scrubbed
Conversation
11.28.16Should Facebook Self-Censor to Enter the Chinese Market?
The social network Facebook has reportedly developed software to suppress posts from users’ feeds in targeted geographic areas, a feature created to help the giant social media network gain access to China, where it is blocked. Facebook Chief...
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11.28.16'Social' Feature Turns China’s Alipay Into a Hook-up App
WSJ: China Real Time Report
Alipay update leads to suggestive content flooding the typically staid financial app
The NYRB China Archive
11.28.16Inside and Outside the System: Chinese Writer Hu Fayun
from New York Review of Books
Over the summer, I traveled to Wuhan to continue my series of talks with people about the challenges facing China. Coming here was part of an effort to break out of the black hole of Beijing politics and explore the view from China’s vast hinterland...
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11.23.16Facebook Said to Create Censorship Tool to Get Back into China
New York Times
The social network has quietly developed software to suppress posts from appearing in people’s news feeds in specific geographic areas
The China Africa Project
11.17.16China’s Controversial, Out-Sized Role in Africa’s Digital Revolution
Africa is home to one of the fastest growing technology markets in the world. In fact, more African households own a mobile phone than have reliable electricity or clean water. The combination of a young population, quickly growing economies, and...
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10.25.16China’s Latest Deadly Industrial Explosion Spotlights Dire Workplace Safety
Time
Explosion that killed at least 14 came during a key meeting of the Chinese Communist Party and was swiftly censored
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10.20.16Trump Thinks China’s Leaders are Smarter. They Didn't Even Let Their People Watch the Debate
Washington Post
Once again, China was cast as the foil to expose the weakness of the Obama administration and, by extension, Hillary Clinton.
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10.06.16Five Ways China Has Become More Repressive Under President Xi Jinping
Time
According to the 2016 report by the U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China, there has been a broad corrosion of freedoms
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10.04.16China’s Rising Threat to the U.S. Movie Industry
Politico
With firms like Dalian Wanda gaining influence in the U.S., would a war movie called South China Sea ever play in one of Wanda’s theaters?
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10.04.16Propaganda and Censorship Remain China’s Favored Tools of Control
South China Morning Post
Recent court rulings rapping people questioning the party-state’s tales about war heroes reflect leaders’ insecurity over their rule
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10.03.16Fate Catches Up to a Cultural Revolution Museum in China
New York Times
The museum was covered up and shut down in the spring, a few weeks before the 50th anniversary of the start of the Cultural Revolution.
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09.30.16A Storied Hong Kong Newspaper Feels the Heat from China
NPR
After recently shutting down its Chinese-language website and deleting archives, the South China Morning Post announced more cuts.
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09.20.16Once a Voice of Young China, Han Han Stakes Out a Different Path
New York Times
Han Han discusses his writings, the turns his life has taken and what people in the West fail to understand about China
Media
09.14.16The Chinese Democratic Experiment that Never Was
Protesters in southern China are up in arms. They feel that Beijing’s promises that they’d be able to vote for their own local leaders have been honored in the breach. They’re outraged at the show of force in the face of peaceful protest, and...
Conversation
09.13.16Can China’s Best Newspaper Survive?
On September 9, the South China Morning Post’s Chinese-language website went dark with little explanation, leading to concerns that censorship might next spread to the newspaper’s English-language coverage. Can Alibaba’s founder, Jack Ma, who has...
Conversation
08.10.16Is Big Data Increasing Beijing’s Capacity for Control?
China’s authoritarian government is using big data to develop credit scoring systems, and is urging data-sharing between companies and governments, putting ordinary Chinese squarely in the digital spotlight. How should Chinese netizens and global...
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08.08.16Week of TV Trials in China Signals New Phase in Attack on Rights
New York Times
Legal experts and supporters of four defendants denounced the hearings, held on consecutive days in Tianjin, a port city near Beijing, as grotesque show trials.