Features
06.10.24The Committee that Ended the Age of Engagement?
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...
Notes from ChinaFile
03.30.23For China’s Urban Residents, the Party-State Is Closer than Ever
In a recent working paper, scholars Yutian An and Taisu Zhang argue that local urban governments in China emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic with far more muscle and clout than they have ever had before. Unlike in the past several decades, the sub-...
Viewpoint
07.02.20It’s True That Democracy in China Is in Retreat, But Don’t Give up on It Now
China’s popularity in the world is plummeting, and antagonism between China and the United States is growing. Many blame China for allowing a series of new viruses to emerge, for failing to stop COVID-19 when it first appeared, and for not sharing...
Viewpoint
05.21.20How Will Historians Look Back at the Coronavirus Outbreak?
Imagine that a historian decides to reflect on the pandemic, asking quite simply, “How did it come to this?” There would be many ways of telling that story. But one way would be to chart a series of off-ramps on the road to disaster. Some of these...
Media
06.11.19ChinaFile Presents: Erasing History—Why Remember Tiananmen
On the evening of June 3, ChinaFile hosted a discussion on the Chinese government’s efforts to control, manipulate, and forestall remembrance of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 and the bloody crackdown that ended them. Participating in the...
Viewpoint
08.23.18We Need to Be Careful about How We Use the Word ‘Chinese’
In recent years, the growing reach of the Chinese Communist Party’s (C.C.P.’s) political influence abroad has prompted numerous countries to reappraise their engagement with China. Optimism about Chinese convergence with international norms has been...
Viewpoint
05.30.18Who’s Really Responsible for Digital Privacy in China?
While the United States is reeling from the revelation that political consultancy Cambridge Analytica harvested data from over 87 million Facebook accounts, China’s biggest tech companies and regulators are confronting a wave of of their own...
Features
05.11.18Central and Regional Leadership for Xinjiang Policy in Xi’s Second Term
from China Leadership Monitor
After the 19th Party Congress last fall and the recent “two meetings” in March, the Party-state has now completed its quinquennial leadership turnover and announced a major restructuring of a number of Party and state entities. This institutional...
Viewpoint
04.16.18Has Xi Jinping Changed China? Not Really
Xi Jinping has had an eventful early spring. After he abolished presidential term limits and was unanimously elected—if it can be called an election—to serve another term in that post, Xi got the world’s attention again by holding a meeting with Kim...
Reports
12.12.17Central Planning, Local Experiments
Shazeda Ahmed & Bertram Lang
Mercator Institute for China Studies
The “Social Credit System” is designed to monitor and rate citizens and companies in China and to guide their behavior. “It is a wide-reaching project that touches on almost all aspects of everyday life,” the authors Mareike Ohlberg, Bertram Lang,...
Video
07.27.17Where The Streets Had My Name
If you’re not dead yet and you were never very famous, can you still get a street named after you in Beijing? You can if you’re 27-year-old artist Ge Yulu. Open Google Maps, enter his name, and there you will find a 1,476-foot-long street that...
Books
06.20.17Shadow Banking and the Rise of Capitalism in China
This book is about the growth of shadow banking in China and the rise of China’s free markets. Shadow Banking refers to capital that is distributed outside the formal banking system, including everything from Mom and Pop lending shops to online credit to giant state owned banks called Trusts. They have grown from a fraction of the economy 10 years ago to nearly half of all China’s annual 25 trillion renminbi (U.S.$4.1 trillion) in lending in the economy today.Shadow Banks are a new aspect of capitalism in China—barely regulated, highly risky, yet tolerated by Beijing. They have been permitted to flourish because many companies cannot get access to formal bank loans. It is the Wild West of banking in China. If we define capitalism as economic activity controlled by the private sector, then Shadow Banking is still in a hybrid stage, a halfway house between the state and the private economic. But it is precisely this divide that makes Shadow Banking important to the rise of capitalism. How Beijing handles this large free market will say a lot about how the country’s economy will grow—will free markets be granted greater leeway? —Palgrave Macmillan{chop}
Books
06.13.17Fortune Makers
Fortune Makers analyzes and brings to light the distinctive practices of business leaders who are the future of the Chinese economy. These leaders oversee not the old state-owned enterprises, but private companies that have had to invent their way forward out of the wreckage of an economy in tatters following the Cultural Revolution.Outside of brand names such as Alibaba and Lenovo, little is known, even by the Chinese themselves, about the people present at the creation of these innovative businesses. Fortune Makers provides sharp insights into their unique styles—a distinctive blend of the entrepreneur, the street fighter, and practices developed by the Communist Party—and their distinctive ways of leading and managing their organizations that are unlike anything the West is familiar with.When Peter Drucker published Concept of the Corporation in 1946, he revealed what made large American corporations tick. Similarly, when Japanese companies emerged as a global force in the 1980s, insightful analysts explained the practices that brought Japan’s economy out of the ashes—and what managers elsewhere could learn to compete with them. Now, based on unprecedented access, Fortune Makers allows business leaders in the United States and the rest of the West to understand the essential character and style of Chinese corporate life and its dominant players, whose businesses are the foundation of the domestic Chinese market and are now making their mark globally. —PublicAffairs{chop}
Viewpoint
05.09.17Beijing Is Weakening Hong Kong’s Rule of Law. How Far Will It Go?
“The American Chamber of Commerce has urged Hong Kong’s next government to reach out to international businesses still ‘unclear’ about what opportunities the city can offer under the one country, two systems policy.” —South China Morning Post, April...
Media
04.19.17ChinaFile Presents: Ian Johnson on ‘The Souls of China’
On April 13, ChinaFile and The New York Review of Books co-hosted the launch of author Ian Johnson’s new book The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao at the Asia Society’s New York headquarters. Johnson discussed the book with Ian...
ChinaFile Recommends
02.14.17Foreign Passports Offer Little Protection for China’s Elite
Financial Times
Beijing’s corruption crackdown drives rush for second citizenship
ChinaFile Recommends
10.24.16In China, Close to 8,000 People are Vying for One Government Job
Wall Street Journal
The job — with more than 7,700 applicants vying for a single position as of Sunday — is head of the reception office at the China Democratic League
ChinaFile Recommends
05.12.16Apple's Uphill Battle with China Is a Reminder That There's No Such Thing As "Borderless" Tech
Quartz
Tech companies will have to invest more resources in political risk control.
ChinaFile Recommends
03.07.16Q. and A.: How China’s National People’s Congress Works
New York Times
The annual session of China’s legislature, the National People’s Congress, is intended to convey the image of a transparent, responsive government.
ChinaFile Recommends
10.27.15America’s Society Is Wealthier Than China’s – And It Doesn’t Matter
Diplomat
The large gap in private wealth has limited significance.
Infographics
09.29.15China’s New Roads Are Taking a Toll
from Sohu
On July 21, the Ministry of Transport issued a revised draft of its “Regulations on Toll Road Administration,” outlining planned adjustments to toll collection periods.Four Important Changes:{photo, 19386, 3}How Many Toll Roads Are There in China...
ChinaFile Recommends
09.28.15Chinese Youth Admire American Culture But Remain Wary of U.S. Policy
New York Times
“We really like American culture, but we also like to have a government that doesn’t show weakness abroad.”
ChinaFile Recommends
07.23.15China Targeting Rights Lawyers in a Crackdown
New York Times
Beijing is mounting a broad crackdown on human rights lawyers, contending that they have exploited contentious cases to enrich themselves and attack the party.
Caixin Media
06.22.15Why Fukuyama Still Beats a Drum for Democracy
American author and political scientist Francis Fukuyama has long extolled the virtues of democracy against the backdrop of the Soviet Union’s collapse and the end of the Cold War.Fukuyama’s best-selling book The End of History and the Last Man...
Environment
01.28.15China to Appoint Academic as New Environment Minister
from chinadialogue
The head of Beijing’s Tsinghua University is likely to be appointed to the top environmental job in in China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection, according to reports, as the country’s leadership moves to defuse public anger about worsening air,...
Media
10.29.14Foot Spas, Steamed Buns, and Midday Drinking
It may not be Monty Python’s famous “Ministry of Silly Walks,” but it’s close.The Office of Forbidding Midday Alcohol Consumption, a local government initiative in China’s southern Henan province which seeks to reduce alcohol consumption at...
Viewpoint
02.27.14Why Frank Underwood is Great for China’s Soft Power
In depicting U.S. politics as just as vicious, if not more, sociopathic than its Chinese counterpart, House of Cards delivered a sweet Valentine’s Day gift to the Chinese government. The show handed the Chinese state an instant victory when the...
Media
02.19.14Chinese Netizens (Still) Love ‘House of Cards’
“Everyone in China who works on this level pays who they need to pay.” Mild spoiler alert: These are the words of the fictitious Xander Feng, an influential Chinese billionaire on the Netflix series "House of Cards," a show that follows...
Media
02.06.14Beijing’s State Secrets Law—Still Broad, Still Opaque
Beijing may be whittling back its widely reviled state secrets laws—but given their opacity, it’s hard to say for sure. Chinese Premier Li Keqiang signed a regulation, announced February 2, that would prohibit Chinese government organs from “using...
Media
11.14.13Westerners Aren’t the Only Ones Flummoxed by China’s Reform Plans
After the Third Plenum, a high-level meeting to discuss China’s future, ended on November 12, Beijing released a major document likely to affect many of its 1.3 billion citizens’ lives for years. Western media responded to the 5,000-plus character...
ChinaFile Recommends
12.26.12China's Anti-Corruption Tool Kit: No Flowers, Expensive Booze or 'Empty Talk'
Time
China's new leadership has made combating the country’s endemic corruption one of its publicly stated missions.
ChinaFile Recommends
10.10.12Censorship Reaching 1,000 Miles Exposed on China’s Twitter
Netizens exposing public servants' taste for expensive timepieces has sparked an online and newspaper crackdown. On October 9, Wang Keqin (@王克勤), an Economic Observer (@经济观察报) reporter posted on Sina Weibo, China’s Twitter, that...
Caixin Media
05.18.12Message in a Bottle for Spirits Maker Moutai
A glass of Feitian Moutai packs a wallop, which is one reason why the 106-proof baijiu is a hit among influential government officials.They also like Feitian Moutai because a single bottle, thanks to special arrangements between state agencies and...
Reports
05.10.12Understanding China’s Political System
Peony Lui
Congressional Research Service
China’s Communist Party dominates state and society in China, is committed to maintaining a permanent monopoly on power, and is intolerant of those who question its right to rule. Nonetheless, analysts consider China’s political system to be neither...