ChinaFile Recommends
05.20.15Liu Xiaobo Locked Up in China, Locked Out of Translation of Paul Auster Novel
New York Times
Liu Xiaobo’s arrest was cut from the Chinese translation of Auster's novel without his knowledge.
ChinaFile Recommends
05.19.15‘Crotch Bomb’ in Anti-Japan War Drama Blasted by Chinese Netizens as 'Lewd, Bizarre'
South China Morning Post
When a prisoner pulls his hand from underneath the heroine's dress, he is holding a bomb, which he then detonates.
ChinaFile Recommends
05.18.15The Worrying Rise of Anti-China Discourse in the US
Diplomat
Forget U.S. patrols in the South China Sea. This is the real threat to U.S.-China relations.
ChinaFile Recommends
04.21.1510 Most Censored Countries
Committee to Protect Journalists
For more than 10 years, China has been among the top 3 jailers of journalists in the world, a distinction that it is unlikely to lose soon.
ChinaFile Recommends
04.02.15New App Collects Xi’s Wisdom
Xinhua
The free app makes available Xi’s books including “The Governance of China.”
Conversation
03.11.15
Is China Really Cracking Up?
On March 7, The Wall Street Journal published an opinion piece by David Shambaugh arguing that “the endgame of Chinese communist rule has now begun...and it has progressed further than many think.” Shambaugh laid out a variety of signs he believes...
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03.11.15China’s Tensions With Dalai Lama Spill Into the Afterlife
New York Times
Chinese Communist Party leaders are deathly afraid that the Dalai Lama will not have an afterlife.
ChinaFile Recommends
03.11.15China’s Tensions With Dalai Lama Spill Into the Afterlife
New York Times
Chinese Communist Party leaders are deathly afraid that the Dalai Lama will not have an afterlife.
ChinaFile Recommends
03.04.15How China Uses J-Visas to Punish International Media for Critical Coverage
Committee to Protect Journalists
A new report finds Chinese authorities are "treating journalistic accreditation as a privilege rather than a professional right."
ChinaFile Recommends
02.26.15Xi Jinping Hopes to Count in Chinese Political History With ‘Four Comprehensives’ -
Wall Street Journal
Chinese President Xi Jinping has uncorked his own ordinal political philosophy.
ChinaFile Recommends
02.25.15China Starts Massive Promotion of Xi Jinping’s Political Theory the ‘Four Comprehensives’
South China Morning Post
Xi has created a slogan and formulated principles to guide his style of government.
Conversation
02.12.15
Is Mao Still Dead?
It has long been standard operating procedure for China’s leaders to pay tribute to Mao. Even as the People’s Republic he wrought has embraced capitalist behavior with ever more heated ardor, the party he founded has remained firmly in power and his...
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02.12.15China’s Internet Censorship Anthem Is Revealed, Then Deleted
New York Times
Cyberspace Administration employees Sang lines like, “An Internet power: Tell the world that the Chinese Dream is uplifting China.”
ChinaFile Recommends
02.11.15In Sharp Words From Xi, Ominous Implications for China’s Legal Reforms
Wall Street Journal
A Communist saying about the role of law states “the handle of the knife is firmly in the hands of the party and the people.”
ChinaFile Recommends
01.27.15A Softer Touch on Soft Power
China Media Project
Soft power has become strategically important for China because cultural productivity and influence are now regarded as important components of comprehensive national power.
ChinaFile Recommends
01.26.15China Communist Party Magazine Blasts Professors Who Spread ‘Western Values’
South China Morning Post
Party journal's commentary targets liberal academics after President Xi Jinping calls for 'ideological guidance' for teachers and students
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01.22.15Study Examines How Overseas Chinese Students Respond to Criticism of Their Country
Inside Higher Ed
Do conversations between domestic and foreign students result in mutual understanding and friendly feelings?
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01.14.15The Colorful Propaganda of Xinjiang
BBC
The government believes religion breeds terror and has been trying to control religious expression in the region by imposing rules on the Uighur community. Critics say it is exacerbating the terror problem.
Conversation
11.12.14
Xi Jinping’s Culture Wars
Given China’s tightening restrictions on film, TV, art, writing, and journalism, and the reverberations from President Xi Jinping’s recent speech on culture, we asked contributors why they think Beijing has decided to ramp up its involvement in the...
ChinaFile Recommends
08.21.14Reading Howl in China
Aeon Magazine
My generation, once impassioned by the Western literature of rebellion, is now lulled by ‘Wealthy Socialism.’
ChinaFile Recommends
08.19.14China Chides U.S. Over Ferguson Violence, American Racism
McClatchy
State media of the world’s largest country has stepped up coverage of the Ferguson violence and protests, publishing commentaries accusing the United States of hypocrisy in seeking to be a global guardian of human rights.Read more here: http://www...
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08.18.14Mao’s Little Red Book, Meet Xi Jinping’s Collected Speeches
Wall Street Journal
Since its publication not quite two months ago, the somewhat turgidly named “A Reader of General-Secretary Xi Jinping’s Important Speeches” has already sold 10 million copies, its publisher reports.
ChinaFile Recommends
07.17.14Undermining China, One Knockout at a Time
New York Times
While blustering essays stoking Chinese nationalism are nothing new, Zhou Xiaoping’s piece on the “real-life war” being waged on the Internet seems to have enjoyed unusually broad circulation.
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06.24.14China Confirms Deadly Xinjiang Attack, Shows Graphic Footage of October Violence
Globe and Mail
Chinese authorities have confirmed an attack on security personal at a checkpoint in the restive far western region of Xinjiang, which a U.S.-backed radio service said left five dead.
The China Africa Project
06.02.14
CCTV Africa: The Frontline of Soft-Power Diplomacy
Since its launch in 2012, CCTV Africa has grown considerably in its distribution and programming. However, the central question remains as to whether or not anyone is actually watching, to justify the massive investment undertaken by the Chinese...
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05.15.14Don’t Call Me Dude, Boss or Bro. It’s Comrade to You
New York Times
A new notice demands greater “naming discipline” from party members and officials, warning that using “vulgar” terms of address in the workplace was “wrecking inner-party democracy.”
ChinaFile Recommends
10.21.13Propaganda Artists From North Korea Paint a Rose-Tinted China
Guardian
Thrusting China's contemporary icons into the aesthetic landscape of early Communist propaganda provides a striking image of quite how far the country has come since Deng Xiaoping began his policy of Reform and Opening in 1978.
The NYRB China Archive
10.15.13
Old Dreams for a New China
from New York Review of Books
Ever since China’s new leader, Xi Jinping, first uttered the phrase “China Dream” last year, people in China and abroad have been scrambling to decipher its meaning. Many nations have “dreams”; in Canada, the country’s most prominent popular...
ChinaFile Recommends
08.08.13Is This Lazy Panda China’s Zuckerberg?
Bloomberg
State-owned China Network Television has installed more than 30 cameras at a panda reserve in Western China, designed a fancy website providing access to the cameras, launched a mobile app so the pandas can be watched on-the-go, and then...
ChinaFile Recommends
07.16.13A Rising China Needs a New National Story
Wall Street Journal
It is time for China and the more vociferous propagandists in Beijing to move beyond declarations about China’s “one hundred years of national humiliation.” That period has come to an end.
ChinaFile Recommends
07.09.13Beijing Unveils Fresh Campaign to Promote "Chinese Dream" Abroad
South China Morning Post
The Communist Party's propaganda chief has unveiled a new plan for the broad realisation and promotion of the "Chinese dream" abroad, a campaign championed by party general secretary Xi Jinping.
ChinaFile Recommends
04.12.13Can N. Korea Learn From Coca Cola? (China Did)
New Yorker
“The military-first regime derives support from the public perception that it is feared and respected around the world. So international ridicule may well put the regime under more pressure to carry through on at least some of its rhetoric.”&...
Media
04.02.13
China Concerto
Before February 2012, when his name exploded onto the front pages of newspapers around the globe, most people outside of China had never heard of Bo Xilai, the now-fallen Communist Party Secretary of the megacity of Chongqing. But in the years...
ChinaFile Recommends
03.08.13Chinese Cinemas Cancel Propaganda Film Screenings
Hollywood Reporter
Theater operators in several cities called off showings of government-backed “Young Lei Feng” after the film failed to sell a single ticket during its premiere on Monday.
ChinaFile Recommends
03.08.13Sanmao Learns From Lei Feng
Maura Cunningham
Learn how to be a selfless good Samaritan like Lei Feng through Zhang Leping's Sanmao comics.
ChinaFile Recommends
03.07.13Rebel Chinese Newspaper Dares To Challenge Party Line
Telegraph
Operating out of two rooms in a dilapidated pharmaceutical factory, and with a staff of four, the Voice of the People is a muckraking freesheet challenging the local propaganda paper.
Media
01.25.13
Former China State TV Director Bemoans Anti-Japanese Propaganda: “Where’s the Creativity?”
Are Chinese audiences growing weary of anti-Japanese propaganda? It would seem that some, at least, are growing sick of the pathetic villains, superhuman heroes, and lame endings that many Chinese movies and television series about World War II, or...
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12.09.12Mo Yan and the Hazards of Hollow Words
New Yorker
In Chinese, there are an impressive number of ways to describe saying nothing at all. When a person is determined to speak at length but not in depth, he can embark on a long jog of feihua—literally, wasted words—or perhaps pass the time at...
ChinaFile Recommends
11.13.12China’s Great Political Leap Backward
Wall Street Journal
After years of parsing China's political jargon, I wasn't expecting anything dramatic from the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, which opened in Beijing last week. It was foolish, I knew, to look for bold statements...
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11.12.12Xinhua Insight: China Will Never Copy Western Political System
Xinhua
Xinhua says Hu Jintao wants China to support state power and at the same time improve the system of community-level democracy.
ChinaFile Recommends
11.04.12The Five “Vermin” Threatening China
China Story
In Yuan Peng’s 2012 repertoire of what are now popularly known as the ‘New Black Five Categories of People’ were identified as: rights lawyers, underground religious activities, dissidents, Internet leaders and vulnerable groups
ChinaFile Recommends
10.01.12National Identity: Pictures of the Enemy
Economist
The national identity has become so unfortunately bound up with demonstrations against Japan. So we turn from recent differences to subjects less timely. The horrors of the Nanjing massacre of 1937 have long stoked the imagination of...
ChinaFile Recommends
09.14.12Keywords: Preserving Stability
China Media Project
The two-character Chinese phrase weiwen is an abbreviated form of the full phrase, weihu wending, meaning to preserve or safeguard stability. The Chinese Communist Party has many such shortened phrases, compact verbalisms that pack a political punch...
ChinaFile Recommends
09.11.12Watchwords: The Life of the Party
China Media Project
To outsiders, the political catchphrases deployed by China’s top leaders seem like the stiffest sort of nonsense. What do they mean when they drone on about the “Four Basic Principles,” or “socialism with Chinese characteristics”? Most Chinese are...
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09.05.12Searching for a People
China Story
The disaffected characters of Pirandello’s work offer us perhaps a way to understand the complaints and parodies of Communist Party rule that abound on the Chinese Internet. If unelected rule had previously allowed China’s party-state to claim...
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08.27.12Editor Suicide Linked to Pressure
Radio Free Asia
The suicide this week of a top features editor at the Communist Party official newspaper People's Daily has sent shock waves through the tightly controlled world of China's state-run media, commentators said on Thursday. Xu Huaiqian, 45,...
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08.27.12Measuring China’s “National Revival”
Great Flourishing
Citizens of the PRC are accustomed to having reams of statistics thrown at them – indeed, contemporary Chinese rhetoric demands that any important speech begin with a recitation of numbers and percentages. The accuracy of such...
ChinaFile Recommends
08.01.12Beijing’s Growing Credibility Gap
CNN
Authoritarian regimes have traditionally relied heavily on controlling the flow of information that their subjects receive as a critical element of maintaining political power. The Chinese Communist Party is no different: they have an extensive and...
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07.30.12Hong Kong Protests Patriotism Classes
China Digital Times
Amid fears that the mainland is increasing their involvement in Hong Kong politics, the San Francisco Chronicle reports parents, students, and teachers took to the streets in Hong Kong to protest China’s planned curriculum change.
Media
07.24.12Propaganda Chief Leaves a Legacy of Control
Monday’s top story was the torrential rains and flooding that thrashed Beijing over the weekend and left at least thirty-seven people dead. Only one non-flood related news item made the cut for the front page of the Beijing Daily, the local Party-...