Reports

With the realization of China’s rapid ecological deterioration, partly caused by irresponsible logging, the Chinese government has in recent years taken a series of drastic measures to improve forest coverage. One important approach was to declare...

This paper uses disaggregated trade data to assess how the expansion of China's production capacity and its changing production structure may be affecting its trade linkages with other countries. It finds that China is moving away from...

This report prescribes the fundamental principles to observe in sustainable forestry maintenance, or silviculture, and the basic requirements for the Chinese enterprises engaged in realizing sustainable silviculture. The Guide applies to regulating...

The Hong Kong SAR's government faces the dual challenges of volatile revenue and medium term spending pressures arising from a rapidly aging population. Age-related spending pressures raise long-run sustainability concerns, while revenue...

The Chinese government has recently focused on the need to increase consumption to rebalance the economy. A widely held view is that despite China's remarkably high growth, the share of consumption in total expenditure has been low and...

During his January 2007 visit to Manila, Chinese premier Wen Jiabao and Philippine president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo declared that Sino-Philippine relations are experiencing a “golden age of partnership” as the two countries upgrade bilateral...

Hong Kong returned to Chinese sovereignty on 1 July 1997 after more than one hundred years as a British colony. This report looks at how certain basic human rights have fared since the handover and assesses how far the HKSAR government has taken the...

This report describes and examines the PRC state secrets system and shows how it allows and even promotes human rights violations by undermining the rights to freedom of expression and information, and by maintaining a culture of secrecy that has a...

This report describes the effects on Tibetan herders of Chinese government policies of resettlement, land confiscation, and fencing. The author draws on interviews with about 150 Tibetans from the areas directly affected, including Gansu, Qinghai,...

The rapid aging of China's population over the next few decades makes it important for a new pension system with broad and adequate coverage to be put in place quickly. Pension reforms, first initiated in 1997, have become bogged down in...

The United States has applied a different standard on human rights and dissent to China than it did to the Soviet Union. Several things explain this. First, beginning in 1972, relations with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) were intended to...

On January 11, 2007, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) conducted its first successful direct-ascent anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons test in destroying one of its own satellites in space. The test raised international concerns about more space...

The U.S. policy framework for Taiwan was laid down in 1979 when Washington severed official relations with the Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan and instead recognized the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as the legitimate Chinese government. The...

NRDC is working with China to reduce this reliance on coal—and cut down on coal's accompanying health and safety hazards—by aggressively targeting energy efficiency and renewable energy goals, and promoting coal gasification with carbon capture...

China has launched the most aggressive energy efficiency program in the world to reduce pollution and protect people's health. NRDC is working with key partners at the central and provincial level to help China achieve its ambitious energy...

The Council on Foreign Relations established an Independent Task Force to take stock of the changes under way in China today and to evaluate what these changes mean for China and for the US-China relationship. Based on its careful assessment of the...

Numbering just two million in the 1980s China's internal migrants are now part of the largest peacetime migration in history, with some experts estimating their numbers to swell to 300 million by 2015. While they have served as laborers fueling...

The Joint Declaration signed on July 18, 2005, by President George W. Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has been heralded in some quarters as the equivalent of President Richard Nixon’s opening to China. The opening to China under...

This report documents the serious impediments to the fulfillment of China's human rights obligations, in the areas of ethnic minority political participation, development, and preservation of cultural identity. Given the destabilizing levels of...

The current coal fuel cycle is among the most destructive activities on earth, placing an unacceptable burden on public health and the environment. There is no such thing as “clean coal.” As the two largest coal consumers, the United States and...