Books
08.08.18Poisonous Pandas
Stanford University Press: A favorite icon for cigarette manufacturers across China since the mid-20th century has been the panda, with factories from Shanghai to Sichuan using cuddly cliché to market tobacco products. The proliferation of panda-branded cigarettes coincides with profound, yet poorly appreciated, shifts in the worldwide tobacco trade. Over the last 50 years, transnational tobacco companies and their allies have fueled a tripling of the world’s annual consumption of cigarettes. At the forefront is the China National Tobacco Corporation, now producing 40 percent of cigarettes sold globally. What’s enabled the manufacturing of cigarettes in China to flourish since the time of Mao and to prosper even amidst public health condemnation of smoking?In Poisonous Pandas, an interdisciplinary group of scholars comes together to tell that story. They offer novel portraits of people within the Chinese polity―government leaders, scientists, tax officials, artists, museum curators, and soldiers―who have experimentally revamped the country’s pre-Communist cigarette supply chain and fitfully expanded its political, economic, and cultural influence. These portraits cut against the grain of what contemporary tobacco-control experts typically study, opening a vital new window on tobacco―the single largest cause of preventable death worldwide today.{chop}Related Reading:“In China, Industry Push-Back Stubs out Anti-Smoking Gains,” Christian Shepherd, Reuters, May 31, 2018“China’s Ministry in Charge of Tobacco Control Had Ties to the Tobacco Industry. Not Anymore,” Sidney Leng, South China Morning Post, March 15, 2018“The End of China’s ‘Ashtray Diplomacy’,” Heather Timmons and Quartz, The Atlantic, December 30, 2013“The Political Mapping of China’s Tobacco Industry and Anti-Smoking Campaign,” Cheng Li, Brookings, May 30, 2012Author’s Recommendations:Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor, Rob Nixon (Harvard University Press, 2013)Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable?, Judith Butler (Verso; Reprint edition 2010)Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, Giorgio Agamben, Translated by Daniel Heller-Roazen (Stanford University Press, 1998)
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08.06.18How China Is Evolving From a Maker of Copycat Medicines Into a Producer of Complex Drugs
Wall Street Journal
At a cancer conference in Chicago in June last year, a little-known Chinese startup stunned researchers with early results showing its experimental gene therapy was abating an aggressive form of blood cancer in patients back home.
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01.25.18Online Sales of Illegal Opioids from China Surge in U.S.
New York Times
Nearly $800 million worth of fentanyl pills were illegally sold to online customers in the United States over two years by Chinese distributors who took advantage of internet anonymity and an explosive growth in e-commerce, according to a Senate...
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08.30.17Green Gold: How China Quietly Grew into a Cannabis Superpower
South China Morning Post
Every year in April, Jiang Xingquan sets aside part of his farm in northern China to grow cannabis. The size of the plot varies with market demand but over the last few years it has been about 600 hectares.
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02.16.17China Moves to Keep Its Deadly Opioids out of U.S.
Wall Street Journal
China moved to stem its flow of deadly drugs to the U.S., adding four lethal heroin-like narcotics to a list of controlled substances after Washington had urged it to help combat a growing opioid epidemic.
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12.07.16China’s ‘Walter White’ Sold $600k of Illegal Drugs Every Month to the US and Europe
Time
A chemistry professor in China has been convicted in a case that has drawn comparisons with the hit TV show "Breaking Bad"
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07.01.16Tornados and Drag Queens
from Yuanjin Photo
Being a photojournalist involves reacting to breaking news, a dedication to long-term projects, and everything in between. This month’s showcase of work by Chinese photographers published in Chinese media underscores this range of angles: from the...
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05.19.15In China, ‘Breaking Bad’ is Real
Wall Street Journal
Chinese police have arrested a Chinese college chemistry professor for joining forces with a drug kingpin.
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04.23.15China’s Big Plunge in Pakistan
New York Times
If China can advance a stable Pakistan through development programs, the whole region would benefit.
Sinica Podcast
02.16.15Business and F*cking in China
from Sinica Podcast
This week's show starts with us grilling James on "what you have to do to be part of Chinese business culture" and descends from there into stories of the sort of booze-and-ketamine-fuelled business deal-making that seems to consist...
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02.09.15The Changing Look of China, Myanmar, and Visual Journalism—A Chat With Jonah Kessel
from Sinica Podcast
This week on Sinica, Jeremy and Kaiser are joined by Jonah M. Kessel, former freelance photographer and now full-time videographer for The New York Times who has covered a wide range of China stories, traveled widely through the country, and...
Postcard
02.04.15The Bro Code
Turning down an after-dinner invite to a brothel is always a social minefield. But the city’s Party Secretary, a 50-something man with baby-soft hands, had been gently fondling my thigh underneath the banquet table for the past 45 minutes, making me...
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12.22.14China Indicts Jackie Chan’s Son on Drug Charge
Associated Press
Beijing police detained the younger Chan at his Beijing apartment in August along with Taiwanese movie star Ko Kai. Police said Chan and Ko both tested positive for marijuana and admitted using the drug, and that 100 grams (3.5 ounces) of it were...
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07.05.14Sin and Vice
from Sinica Podcast
This week on Sinica, Jeremy Goldkorn and David Moser turn their attention to vice, in conversation with Robert Foyle Hunwick, a media consultant and editor for Beijing Cream. We talk about everything naughty that happens here, with special attention...
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06.29.14Undercover Sex Tape Deepens GSK’s China Scandal
Telegraph
GlaxoSmithKline has confirmed the existence of a sex tape featuring Mark Reilly, the former manager at the centre of the company's corruption investigation.
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01.03.14Police Seize 3 Tons Meth in South China Village
Los Angeles Times
Call it “Breaking Bad: China Edition.” More than 3,000 police officers equipped with helicopters and motorboats and accompanied by dogs descended on a southern Chinese village notorious for making crystal meth, seizing 3 tons of the drug and 23 tons...
Media
09.30.13China Watches “Breaking Bad”
Why do millions of Chinese care about a fictitious New Mexico meth cook? The soon-to-be-concluded television drama series Breaking Bad, which depicts embattled high school chemistry teacher Walter White’s transformation into a crystal...
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07.23.13Drug Research in China Falls Under a Cloud
New York Times
A leaked document related to the recent G.S.K. scandal underscores the problems that can arise when major drug companies export their scientific development to emerging markets like China.
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07.17.13For Global Drug Manufacturers, China Becomes a Perilous Market
New York Times
Selling pharmaceuticals and other health care products in China is increasingly fraught with peril. China is accusing GlaxoSmithKline of funnelling payments through travel agents to doctors, hospitals and government officials to bolster...
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02.20.13China Considered Drone Strike On Foreign Soil In Hunt For Drug Lord
South China Morning Post
Liu Yuejin said one of the plans to end the manhunt for drug lord Naw Kham was to strafe a hideout in Myanmar using an unmanned aircraft.
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02.18.13Illicit Meth Trade Between China and North Korea Reveals A Lot About Their Relationship
Economist
Border police, especially in the North, are known to take bribes to allow illicit trade to pass. One illegal North Korean export causing social problems is crystal meth, a drug known in China as bingdu, or “ice.”
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01.03.13Opinion: Cheap Meth! Cheap Guns! Click Here
New York Times
How about cracking down on Web sites that sell guns and drugs, while leaving be those that traffic in ideas and information?
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01.02.13Why 'Breaking Bad' Should be Set in China
Motherboard
Records of large drug busts involving meth in recent years--an increasingly common occurrence--tend to show a trail that leads back to China.
Caixin Media
05.25.12Policeman Burned for Dealing With the Devil
On March 17, the Chenzhou Public Security Bureau announced Huang Bailian had been removed as head of the police department’s drug squad.Huang offered a simple explanation for his sacking: “This is retaliation.”Three years earlier Huang, who is forty...
Reports
01.01.10“Where Darkness Knows No Limits”: Incarceration, Ill-Treatment, and Forced Labor as Drug Rehabilitation in China
Sara Segal-Williams
Human Rights Watch
Based on research in Yunnan and Guangxi provinces, this report documents how China's June 2008 Anti-Drug Law compounds the health risks of suspected illicit drug users by allowing government officials and security forces to incarcerate them for...