Sinica Podcast
07.18.14![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/51241284.jpg?itok=YAnB08yL)
Debating Societies in China
from Sinica Podcast
This week on Sinica, we’re happy to welcome back Jeremy Goldkorn in conversation with David Weeks, founder and President of the National High School Debate League of China, a debating society currently established in twenty-seven cities throughout...
The NYRB China Archive
07.16.14![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/451577922.jpg?itok=PgIRNoCL)
Hong Kong Rising: An Interview with Albert Ho
from New York Review of Books
The former British colony of Hong Kong reverted to China on July 1, 1997, and on every July 1 since then Hong Kong citizens have marched in the streets asking for democracy. The demonstrations on this year’s anniversary, however, were on a much...
Books
07.15.14![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/books/system/dan-washburn-the-forbidden-game.jpg?itok=kd19ruMh)
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The Forbidden Game
In China, just because something is banned, doesn't mean it can't boom. Statistically, zero percent of the Chinese population plays golf, still known as the "rich man’s game" and considered taboo. Yet China is in the midst of a golf boom—hundreds of new courses have opened in the past decade, despite it being illegal for anyone to build them. Award-winning journalist Dan Washburn charts a vivid path through this contradictory country by following the lives of three men intimately involved in China's bizarre golf scene. We meet Zhou, a peasant turned golf pro who discovered the game when he won a job as a security guard at one of the new, exclusive clubs and who sees himself entering the emerging Chinese middle class as a result; Wang, a lychee farmer whose life is turned upside down when a massive, top-secret golf resort moves in next door to his tiny village; and Martin, a Western executive maneuvering through China’s byzantine and highly political business environment, ever watchful for Beijing's "golf police." The Forbidden Game is a rich and arresting portrait of the world’s newest superpower and three different paths to the new Chinese Dream. —Oneworld Publications {chop}
Sinica Podcast
07.14.14![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/171528574.jpg?itok=701_rQ33)
Education in China
from Sinica Podcast
This week on Sinica, Kaiser Kuo and David Moser are joined by Jiang Xueqin, deputy principal of Tsinghua Fuzhong Affiliated High School and author of Creative China, for a discussion of the education system in China. Specifically, we’re curious to...
The NYRB China Archive
07.10.14![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/477558755.jpg?itok=2Q0oLFsv)
Tibet Resists
from New York Review of Books
Tsering Woeser was born in Lhasa in 1966, the daughter of a senior officer in the Chinese army. She became a passionate supporter of the Dalai Lama. When she was very young the family moved to Tibetan towns inside China proper. In school, only...
Sinica Podcast
07.05.14![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/6566_sm.jpg?itok=RcQiW_Mj)
Sin 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...
Sinica Podcast
06.27.14![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/486408979.jpg?itok=MwyC-2or)
Narendra Modi and Sino-Indian Relations
from Sinica Podcast
This week on Sinica, Kaiser and Jeremy grab Ananth Krishnanin, correspondent for India’s national newspaper The Hindu, and drag him into our studio for a discussion of the state of Sino-Indian relations. In particular, we’re curious why Sino-Indian...
Books
06.25.14![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/books/system/peipei-qiu-chinese-comfort-women-hirez.jpg?itok=OiqTcQCT)
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Chinese Comfort Women
During the Asia-Pacific War, the Japanese military forced hundreds of thousands of women across Asia into "comfort stations" where they were repeatedly raped and tortured. Japanese imperial forces claimed they recruited women to join these stations in order to prevent the mass rape of local women and the spread of venereal disease among soldiers. In reality, these women were kidnapped and coerced into sexual slavery. Comfort stations institutionalized rape, and these "comfort women" were subjected to atrocities that have only recently become the subject of international debate.Chinese Comfort Women: Testimonies from Japan's Imperial Sex Slaves features the personal narratives of twelve women forced into sexual slavery when the Japanese military occupied their hometowns. Beginning with their prewar lives and continuing through their enslavement to their postwar struggles for justice, these interviews reveal that the prolonged suffering of the comfort station survivors was not contained to wartime atrocities but was rather a lifelong condition resulting from various social, political, and cultural factors. In addition, their stories bring to light several previously hidden aspects of the comfort women system: the ransoms the occupation army forced the victims' families to pay, the various types of improvised comfort stations set up by small military units throughout the battle zones and occupied regions, and the sheer scope of the military sexual slavery—much larger than previously assumed. The personal narratives of these survivors combined with the testimonies of witnesses, investigative reports, and local histories also reveal a correlation between the proliferation of the comfort stations and the progression of Japan's military offensive.The first English-language account of its kind, Chinese Comfort Women exposes the full extent of the injustices suffered by and the conditions that caused them. —Oxford University Press {chop}
Books
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Tiananmen Exiles
In the spring of 1989, millions of citizens across China took to the streets in a nationwide uprising against government corruption and authoritarian rule. What began with widespread hope for political reform ended with the People's Liberation Army firing on unarmed citizens in the capital city of Beijing, and those leaders who survived the crackdown became wanted criminals overnight. Among the witnesses to this unprecedented popular movement was Rowena Xiaoqing He, who would later join former student leaders and other exiles in North America, where she has worked tirelessly for over a decade to keep the memory of the Tiananmen Movement alive. This moving oral history interweaves He's own experiences with the accounts of three student leaders exiled from China. Here, in their own words, they describe their childhoods during Mao's Cultural Revolution, their political activism, the bitter disappointments of 1989, and the profound contradictions and challenges they face as exiles. Variously labeled as heroes, victims, and traitors in the years after Tiananmen, these individuals tell difficult stories of thwarted ideals and disconnection that nonetheless embody the hope for a freer China and a more just world. —Palgrave Macmillan {chop}
Sinica Podcast
06.20.14![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/img_3738.jpg?itok=CEX97azh)
Isolda Morillo: Una Vida en China
from Sinica Podcast
This week on Sinica, Kaiser and Jeremy are delighted to be joined by Isolda Morillo, a Peruvian journalist for the Associated Press whose life story is as interesting as they come. Growing up in Beijing in the 1980s, where she attended local schools...
Books
06.18.14![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/books/system/louisa-lim-amnesia.jpg?itok=iNV0NL20)
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The People’s Republic of Amnesia
On June 4, 1989, People's Liberation Army soldiers opened fire on unarmed civilians in Beijing, killing untold hundreds of people. A quarter-century later, this defining event remains buried in China's modern history, successfully expunged from collective memory. In The People's Republic of Amnesia, NPR correspondent Louisa Lim charts how the events of June 4th changed China, and how China changed the events of June 4th by rewriting its own history.{node, 5555}Lim reveals new details about those fateful days, including how one of the country's most senior politicians lost a family member to an army bullet, as well as the inside story of the young soldiers sent to clear Tiananmen Square. She also introduces us to individuals whose lives were transformed by the events of Tiananmen Square, such as a founder of the Tiananmen Mothers, whose son was shot by martial law troops; and one of the most important government officials in the country, who post-Tiananmen became one of its most prominent dissidents. And she examines how June 4th shaped China's national identity, fostering a generation of young nationalists, who know little and care less about 1989. For the first time, Lim uncovers the details of a brutal crackdown in a second Chinese city that until now has been a near-perfect case study in the state's ability to rewrite history, excising the most painful episodes. By tracking down eyewitnesses, discovering U.S. diplomatic cables, and combing through official Chinese records, Lim offers the first account of a story that has remained untold for a quarter of a century. The People's Republic of Amnesia is an original, powerfully gripping, and ultimately unforgettable book about a national tragedy and an unhealed wound. —Oxford University Press {chop}
Sinica Podcast
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The Resurgence of Gender Inequality in China
from Sinica Podcast
This week on Sinica, Kaiser and Jeremy are joined by David Moser and Leta Hong Fincher, newly-minted Ph.D. and author of Leftover Women, a book which gazes into the state of women’s rights in China, and documents the way state-sanctioned propaganda...
The China Africa Project
06.12.14![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/489392593.jpg?itok=Exds1wk6)
Terrorism: U.S. and China’s Common Enemy in Africa
While U.S. and Chinese interests often have divergent interests in Africa, they do share at least one common enemy: terrorism. Chinese nationals have been kidnapped and held for ransom in a number of African countries, including South Sudan, Egypt,...
Books
06.09.14![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/books/system/barnett-law_voicesfrom-tibet.still001.jpg?itok=bTZ5m9yJ)
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Voices from Tibet
Tsering Woeser and Wang Lixiong are widely regarded as the most eloquent, insightful writers on contemporary Tibet. Their reportage on the economic exploitation, environmental degradation, cultural destruction, and political subjugation that plague the increasingly Han Chinese-dominated Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) is as powerful as it is profound, ardent, and analytical in equal measure, and not in the least bit ideological. Voices from Tibet is a collection of essays and reportage in translation that captures the many facets of an unprecedented sea change wreaked by a rising China upon a scared land and its defenseless people. With the TAR in a virtual lockdown after the 2008 unrest, this book sheds important light on the simmering frustrations that touched off the unrest and Beijing’s stability über alles control tactics in its wake. The authors also interrogate longstanding assumptions about Tibetans’ political future. Woeser’s and Wang’s writings represent a rare Chinese view sympathetic to Tibetan causes, one that should resonate in many places confronting threats of cultural subjugation and economic domination by a non-indigenous power. —Hong Kong University Press {chop}
The China Africa Project
06.09.14![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/7006.1.sm_.jpg?itok=ZQOzDgrt)
Sino-African Marriages in China: ‘Til Death Do Us Part’?
A marriage boom of sorts is underway in China, where a growing number of African men are tying the knot with Chinese women. While these new families are breaking long-held cultural stereotypes, they are also confronting a whole set of new challenges...
Sinica Podcast
06.06.14![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/82820869.jpg?itok=QbeUKB1S)
Rice, Wheat, and Air Filters
from Sinica Podcast
This week on Sinica, we're delighted to be joined by Thomas Talhelm, Ph.D. candidate in psychology at the University of Virginia and author of a recent paper proposing a fascinating connection between rice and wheat-growing communities, and...
The NYRB China Archive
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The Ghosts of Tiananmen Square
from New York Review of Books
Every spring, an old friend of mine named Xu Jue makes a trip to the Babaoshan cemetery in the western suburbs of Beijing to lay flowers on the tombs of her dead son and husband. She always plans her visit for April 5, which is the holiday of Pure...
The NYRB China Archive
06.03.14![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/ap890605094_0.jpg?itok=iuJp1eC5)
The Tanks and the People
from New York Review of Books
Twenty-five years ago, before the Tiananmen massacre, my father told me: “Son, be good and stay at home, never provoke the Communist Party.”My father knew what he was talking about. His courage had been broken, by countless political campaigns...
Sinica Podcast
06.02.14![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/5593-2.jpg?itok=0yUIfjq7)
OMG, in Conversation With Jessica Beinecke
from Sinica Podcast
Kaiser Kuo and Jeremy Goldkorn interview Jessica Beinecke, host of the VOA-funded OMG Meiyu, a Chinese show on English slang that has earned Jessica hundreds of thousands of followers in China. Now the owner of her own production company, Jessica is...
The NYRB China Archive
06.02.14![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/hujia-08.jpg?itok=6nhzN-O-)
‘You Won’t Get Near Tiananmen!’: Hu Jia on the Continuing Crackdown
from New York Review of Books
Hu Jia is one of China’s best-known political activists. He participated in the 1989 Tiananmen protests as a fifteen-year-old, studied economics, and then worked for environmental and public health non-governmental organizations. A practicing...
The China Africa Project
06.02.14![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/148472538.jpg?itok=2sxBfPxS)
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...
Reports
06.01.14![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/epsacrop_160x200/public/assets/images/whitepaper/image/csis_decodingchinasemergingpower.png?itok=3TxDPNtP)
Decoding China’s Emerging “Great Power” Strategy in Asia
Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)
The course charted by China’s reemergence as a great power over the next few decades represents the primary strategic challenge for the U.S.-Japan security alliance and for the East Asian security landscape writ large. If China’s economic, military...
Excerpts
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‘Staying’—An Excerpt from ‘People’s Republic of Amnesia’
Zhang Ming has become used to his appearance startling small children. Skeletally thin, with cheeks sunk deep into his face, he walked gingerly across the cream-colored hotel lobby as if his limbs were made of glass. On his forehead were two large,...
Sinica Podcast
05.27.14![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/51666204.jpg?itok=hTEUNW1R)
History of the Internet in China
from Sinica Podcast
The Internet has always been near and dear to our hearts here at Sinica. Four years ago, our very first show covered Google China and the fracas that followed their decision to pull out of China. And in the years since, we've frequently talked...
The China Africa Project
05.27.14![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/452185900.jpg?itok=ta_pw90P)
China’s New Diplomatic Strategy in Africa: Humility
Just a few weeks after Chinese premier Li Keqiang admitted that China was going through “growing pains” in its engagement with Africa, Beijing’s central bank chief, Zhou Xiaochuan, acknowledged some of the 2,500 PRC companies operating in Africa are...
The NYRB China Archive
05.22.14![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/mitter_1-052214.jpg?itok=ow5VJ3Bd)
The Smooth Path to Pearl Harbor
from New York Review of Books
In mid-February, as part of the plans for his official visit to Germany, Chinese President Xi Jinping asked to visit one of Berlin’s best-known sites: Peter Eisenman’s Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. The request was declined when it became...
Books
05.22.14![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/books/system/476171495_960.jpg?itok=7VdwB9iG)
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Age of Ambition
From abroad, we often see China as a caricature: a nation of pragmatic plutocrats and ruthlessly dedicated students destined to rule the global economy—or an addled Goliath, riddled with corruption and on the edge of stagnation. What we don’t see is how both powerful and ordinary people are remaking their lives as their country dramatically changes.As the Beijing correspondent for The New Yorker, Evan Osnos was on the ground in China for years, witness to profound political, economic, and cultural upheaval. In Age of Ambition, he describes the greatest collision taking place in that country: the clash between the rise of the individual and the Communist Party’s struggle to retain control. He asks probing questions: Why does a government with more success lifting people from poverty than any civilization in history choose to put strict restraints on freedom of expression? Why do millions of young Chinese professionals—fluent in English and devoted to Western pop culture—consider themselves “angry youth,” dedicated to resisting the West’s influence? How are Chinese from all strata finding meaning after two decades of the relentless pursuit of wealth?Writing with great narrative verve and a keen sense of irony, Osnos follows the moving stories of everyday people and reveals life in the new China to be a battleground between aspiration and authoritarianism, in which only one can prevail. —Farrar, Straus, and Giroux {chop}
The NYRB China Archive
05.20.14![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/52010868.jpg?itok=I5HaIwBW)
Tiananmen: How Wrong We Were
from New York Review of Books
Twenty-five years ago to the day I write this, I watched and listened as thousands of Chinese citizens in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square dared to condemn their leaders. Some shouted “Premier Li Peng resign.” Even braver ones cried “Down with Deng...
The NYRB China Archive
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China: Detained to Death
from New York Review of Books
On May 3, fifteen Beijing citizens—scholars, journalists, and rights lawyers—gathered informally at the home of Professor Hao Jian of the Beijing Film Academy to reflect on the 25th anniversary of the 1989 June Fourth massacre in Beijing. Two days...
Sinica Podcast
05.10.14![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/3066911.jpg?itok=w1IIP3eJ)
Initial Impressions: Three First Trips to China, 1970s-1990s
from Sinica Podcast
In this show: dating tips for hooking up with your Marxist-Leninist thought instructor, advice on what modern music and seasonal vegetables to smuggle in from Hong Kong, the origins of China’s somewhat unorthodox driving customs, and instructions on...
The NYRB China Archive
05.08.14![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/168208585.jpg?itok=fx3Y3Rwa)
The China Challenge
from New York Review of Books
In 1890, an undistinguished U.S. Navy captain published a book that would influence generations of strategists. Alfred Thayer Mahan’s The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660–1783 posited that great nations need potent, blue-water navies backed...
Sinica Podcast
05.03.14![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/woman-umbrella_sm.jpg?itok=fbccT7re)
Shoptalk on Publishing
from Sinica Podcast
This week on Sinica, Jeremy Goldkorn is pleased to be joined by two people navigating the English-language publishing industry as it involves China: Alice Xin Liu, Editor of Pathlight magazine, and Karen Ma, first-time author of the well-received...
Sinica Podcast
04.25.14![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/5431_sm.jpg?itok=aumMRc4M)
Trash Talk with Adam Minter
from Sinica Podcast
Anyone living in China doubtless has a sense of the unholy number of people who seem to be involved in the trash trade here, and who will ferret away everything from your cardboard boxes to plastic bottles faster than you can unpack them or consume...
Sinica Podcast
04.21.14![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/484437349.jpg?itok=t8ZWC8M-)
American Football in China
from Sinica Podcast
This week we’re delighted to be joined by Christopher Beam, author of the passage quoted above, which we unceremoniously filched from his fantastic New Republic essay about his year with the Chongqing Dockers, one of the many new amateur football...
Sinica Podcast
04.14.14![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/483726499.jpg?itok=zBen_gYg)
Live at the Association for Asian Studies
from Sinica Podcast
This week, Sinica presents a special live recording from the annual meeting of the Association for Asian Studies (AAS) which convened in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Regular listeners, please note that the audio quality here isn’t up to our usual...
Books
04.09.14![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/books/system/steven-schwankert-poseidon.jpg?itok=8fIt_p9M)
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Poseidon
Royal Navy submarine HMS Poseidon sank in collision with a Chinese freighter during routine exercises in 1931 off Weihaiwei. Thirty of its fifty-six-man crew scrambled out of the hatches as it went down. Of the twenty-six who remained inside, eight attempted to surface using "Davis gear," an early form of diving equipment: six of them made it safely to the surface in the first escape of this kind in submarine history and became heroes. The incident was then forgotten, eclipsed by the greater drama that followed in World War II, until news emerged that, for obscure reasons, the Chinese government had salvaged the wrecked submarine in 1972. This lively account of the Poseidon incident tells the story of the accident and its aftermath, and of the author’s own quest to find out about the 1972 salvage. —Hong Kong University Press {chop}{node, 4183, 3}
The NYRB China Archive
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Solving China’s Schools: An Interview with Jiang Xueqin
from New York Review of Books
In December, China stunned the world when the most widely used international education assessment revealed that Shanghai’s schools now outperform those of any other country—not only in math and science but also in reading. Some education experts...
Sinica Podcast
04.07.14![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/77509008.jpg?itok=6_y96ucg)
In Conversation with Timothy Garton Ash
from Sinica Podcast
This week on Sinica, Kaiser Kuo and Jeremy Goldkorn are pleased to host a conversation with Timothy Garton Ash, Professor of History at Oxford University and recent participant in the Capital M Literary Festival in Beijing. As one the world's...
Books
04.01.14![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/books/system/geoff-dyer-contest-of-the-century.jpg?itok=ROl7wrgq)
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The Contest of the Century
From the former Financial Times Beijing bureau chief, a balanced and far-seeing analysis of the emerging competition between China and the United States that will dominate twenty-first-century world affairs—an inside account of Beijing’s quest for influence and an explanation of how America can come out on top. The structure of global politics is shifting rapidly. After decades of rising, China has entered a new and critical phase where it seeks to turn its economic heft into global power. In this deeply informed book, Geoff Dyer makes a lucid and convincing argument that China and the United States are now embarking on a great power–style competition that will dominate the century. This contest will take place in every arena: from control of the seas, where China’s new navy is trying to ease the United States out of Asia and reassert its traditional leadership, to rewriting the rules of the global economy, with attempts to turn the renminbi into the predominant international currency, toppling the dominance of the U.S. dollar. And by investing billions to send its media groups overseas, Beijing hopes to shift the global debate about democracy and individual rights. Eyeing the high ground of international politics, China is taking the first steps in an ambitious global agenda. Yet Dyer explains how China will struggle to unseat the United States. China’s new ambitions are provoking intense anxiety, especially in Asia, while America’s global influence has deep roots. If Washington can adjust to a world in which it is no longer dominant but still immensely powerful, it can withstand China’s challenge. With keen insight based on a deep local knowledge—offering the reader visions of coastal Chinese beauty pageants and secret submarine bases, lockstep Beijing military parades and the neon media screens of Xinhua exported to New York City’s Times Square—The Contest of the Century is essential reading at a time of great uncertainty about America’s future, a road map for retaining a central role in the world. —Knopf {chop}
Reports
04.01.14![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/epsacrop_160x200/public/assets/images/whitepaper/image/high_tech_the_next_wave_of_chinese_investment_in_america_cover.png?itok=kguaTsiW)
High Tech: The Next Wave of Chinese Investment in America
Asia Society
In this report, we explore the advent of Chinese investment in U.S. high-tech sectors in order to provide an objective starting point for debate about this nascent trend. We use a unique dataset on Chinese FDI transactions in the United States to...
Reports
04.01.14![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/epsacrop_160x200/public/assets/images/whitepaper/image/greenpeace-logo-sidebar.jpg?itok=3g6ZZwN7)
Distribution of Metals in Soils From Uncultivated Land, Soils From Rice Fields and in Rice Grown in the Area of an Industrial Complex With Metal Smelting and Processing Facilities in Hunan Province, China
Greenpeace
Contamination of soil with a number of toxic metals, including cadmium and lead, is known to be an existing problem for many parts of Hunan province, China. High levels of these metals have also been reported for rice grown in many parts of the...
Sinica Podcast
03.31.14![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/chinese_labour_corps.jpg?itok=JUcFaB9P)
The World War One Chinese Labor Corps
from Sinica Podcast
This week on Sinica, Kaiser Kuo and David Moser are delighted to host Mark O’Neill, author of The Chinese Labour Corps, for a discussion of the Chinese contribution to World War One. As a comprehensive look into China’s role in The Great War, O’...
Books
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![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/assets/images/books/covers/wenyidcover.jpg)
Stagnant Water & Other Poems by Wen Yiduo
On June 6, 1946, at 5pm, after stepping out of the office of the Democratic Weekly, Wen Yiduo died in a hail of bullets. Mao blamed the Nationalists and transformed Wen into a paragon of the revolution.Wen was born into a well-to-do family in Hubei, China, and received a classical education. But he came of age as old imperial China and its institutions were being swept away, and the Chinese people were looking ahead to a new China. It was fertile ground for a young poet.In 1922, Wen came to the U.S. and studied art and literature at the Art Institute of Chicago. It was during this period that his first collection of poetry was published, Hongzu or “Red Candle.” He returned to China in 1925 and took a position as a university professor and became active in the political and aesthetic debates of the time. His second collection of poems, Sishui, rendered by previous translators as “Dead Water,” was published in 1928.As political trends shifted from an intellectual, elitist base toward a populist one, changes in literature were just as pervasive. Wen was one of the leaders of a movement to reform Chinese poetry—hitherto written in a classical style with a diction and rhetoric so far removed from everyday usage that it had segregated itself from all but the wealthy and the well educated—by adapting common speech and direct observation, while maintaining a strict, albeit new, formalism.However, Wen never resolved the conflicts that existed within him: The elitist and the proletarian, the scholar and the activist, the traditionalist and the innovator, the personal man and the public man, fought for ascendancy. Yet it was these contradictions that proved so fruitful and give his poetry its singular power. —Bright City Books {chop}
Reports
03.25.14![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/epsacrop_160x200/public/assets/images/whitepaper/image/world-bank_logo_20.jpg?itok=LgFBzWw4)
Urban China
World Bank
This report recommends that China curb rapid urban sprawl by reforming land requisition, give migrants urban residency and equal access to basic public services, and reform local finances by finding stable revenues and by allowing local governments...
Sinica Podcast
03.24.14![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/node_5260.sm_.jpg?itok=TBJDCCWQ)
We Will Make You Learn to Love Baijiu
from Sinica Podcast
Forget our complaints about the pollution, China has an even more intractable public relations problem that has everything to do with the country’s favorite hard liquor. And yes, we are talking about baijiu. In 1854, French Catholic missionary Régis...
The NYRB China Archive
03.24.14![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/107904486-sysphoto.jpg?itok=I-uTrrW0)
Chinese Atheists? What the Pew Survey Gets Wrong
from New York Review of Books
Earlier this month, I came across a fascinating opinion survey by the Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Project. The report asked people in forty countries whether belief in God is necessary for morality. Mostly, the results aren’t surprising...
The NYRB China Archive
03.20.14![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/108920364.jpg?itok=0kL-eO34)
Paddling to Peking
from New York Review of Books
For Richard Nixon’s foreign policy, 1971 was the best of years and the worst of years. He revealed his opening to China, but he connived at genocide in East Pakistan. Fortunately for him, the world marveled at the one, but was largely ignorant of...
Books
03.19.14![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/books/system/stephen-roach-unbalanced.jpg?itok=Gr9SeHQB)
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Unbalanced
The Chinese and U.S. economies have been locked in an uncomfortable embrace since the late 1970s. Although the relationship initially arose out of mutual benefits, in recent years it has taken on the trappings of an unstable codependence, with the two largest economies in the world losing their sense of self, increasing the risk of their turning on one another in a destructive fashion.In Unbalanced: The Codependency of America and China Stephen Roach lays bare the pitfalls of the current China-U.S. economic relationship. He highlights the conflicts at the center of current tensions, including disputes over trade policies and intellectual property rights, sharp contrasts in leadership styles, the role of the Internet, the recent dispute over cyberhacking, and more.A firsthand witness to the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s, Roach likely knows more about the U.S.-China economic relationship than any other Westerner. Here he discusses:Why America saving too little and China saving too much creates mounting problems for bothHow China is planning to re-boot its economic growth model by moving from an external export-led model to one of internal consumerism with a new focus on service industriesHow America shows a disturbing lack of strategy, preferring a short-term reactive approach over a more coherent Chinese-style planning frameworkThe way out: what America could do to turn its own economic fate around and position itself for a healthy economic and political relationship with ChinaIn the wake of the 2008 crisis, both unbalanced economies face urgent and mutually beneficial rebalancings. Unbalanced concludes with a recipe for resolving the escalating tensions of codependence. Roach argues that the Next China offers much for the Next America—and vice versa.—Yale University Press{chop}
Sinica Podcast
03.17.14![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/459296163.jpg?itok=xpFr2hoF)
Will China Dominate the Twenty-first Century?
from Sinica Podcast
This week on Sinica, we are pleased to present a live show recorded earlier this week at The Bookworm in Beijing, where Kaiser Kuo interviewed Jonathan Fenby, author of the book Will China Dominate the 21st Century?If you haven’t heard of Jonathan...
Sinica Podcast
03.07.14![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/2658945-original_0_0.jpg?itok=99r5Hm92)
Wealth and Power: Intellectuals in China
from Sinica Podcast
This week, Kaiser and Jeremy are joined by David Moser and Orville Schell. While long-time listeners will of course know of David Moser as one of our favorite resident sinologists, if you haven’t also heard of Orville Schell we think you should have...
The NYRB China Archive
03.06.14![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/57559858.jpg?itok=FySgVB3E)
The Brave Catholics of China
from New York Review of Books
Like most pilgrimage sites in China, the shrine in the village of Cave Gulley in Shanxi province is located partway up a mountain, reachable by steep stairs that are meant to shift worshipers’ attention from the world below to heaven above...
Books
03.05.14![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/books/system/yunxiang-gao-sporting-gender-web-screenshot_0.jpg?itok=xezqa0ao)
![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/assets/images/books/covers/gao_covercover.jpg)
Sporting Gender
When China hosted the 2008 Summer Olympics—and amazed international observers with both its pageantry and gold-medal count—it made a very public statement about the country’s surge to global power. Yet, China has a much longer history of using sport to communicate a political message. Sporting Gender is the first book to explore the rise to fame of female athletes in China during its national crisis of 1931-45 brought on by the Japanese invasion. By re-mapping lives and careers of individual female athletes, administrators, and film actors within a wartime context, Gao shows how these women coped with the conflicting demands of nationalist causes, unwanted male attention, and modern fame. While addressing the themes of state control, media influence, fashion, and changes in gender roles, she argues that the athletic female form helped to create a new ideal of modern womanhood in China at time when women’s emancipation and national needs went hand in hand. This book brings vividly to life the histories of these athletes and demonstrates how intertwined they were with the aims of the state and the needs of society. —University of British Columbia Press{chop}
Sinica Podcast
03.01.14![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/ob-yy851_book09_dv_20130919030857.jpg?itok=4A7wE3kX)
In Line Behind a Billion People
from Sinica Podcast
This week on Sinica, Kaiser and Jeremy are joined by Damien Ma, author of In Line Behind a Billion People, a new book for China-watchers looking at how China’s lack of affordable housing, its food and air pollution, and the country’s poor education...
Sinica Podcast
02.24.14![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/84113552.jpg?itok=x9cQBynD)
The Disabled in China
from Sinica Podcast
This week on Sinica, Kaiser and Jeremy are joined by James Palmer and John Giszczack for a discussion of the disabled in China. Join us as we discuss how the Chinese language defines the concept of disability, what public attitudes are prevalent...
Sinica Podcast
02.14.14![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/162070059.jpg?itok=j9shx0E4)
Dissecting the 2014 Spring Festival Gala
from Sinica Podcast
A casual survey suggests that ninety-eight percent of Sinica listeners have at some point joined Chinese friends or family in watching the annual television spectacular known as the “Spring Festival Gala.” Sadly, whether from excessive pork...
Books
02.05.14![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/books/system/elizabeth-economy-by-all-means-necessary-web-screenshot.jpg?itok=zxc9Shxv)
![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/assets/images/books/covers/economy_cover.jpg)
By All Means Necessary
In the past thirty years, China has transformed from an impoverished country where peasants comprised the largest portion of the populace to an economic power with an expanding middle class and more megacities than anywhere else on earth. This remarkable transformation has required, and will continue to demand, massive quantities of resources. Like every other major power in modern history, China is looking outward to find them.In By All Means Necessary, Elizabeth C. Economy and Michael Levi explore the unrivaled expansion of the Chinese economy and the global effects of its meteoric growth. China is now engaged in a far-flung quest, hunting around the world for fuel, ores, water, and land for farming, and deploying whatever it needs in the economic, political, and military spheres to secure the resources it requires. Chinese traders and investors buy commodities, with consequences for economies, people, and the environment around the world. Meanwhile the Chinese military aspires to secure sea lanes, and Chinese diplomats struggle to protect the country’s interests abroad. And just as surely as China’s pursuit of natural resources is changing the world—restructuring markets, pushing up commodity prices, transforming resource-rich economies through investment and trade—it is also changing China itself. As Chinese corporations increasingly venture abroad, they must navigate various political regimes, participate in international markets, and adopt foreign standards and practices, which can lead to wide-reaching social and political ramifications at home.Clear, authoritative, and provocative, By All Means Necessary is a sweeping account of where China’s pursuit of raw materials may take the country in the coming years and what the consequences will be—not just for China, but for the whole world. —Oxford University Press{chop}
The NYRB China Archive
02.04.14![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/459296167.jpg?itok=UY0ZwVXe)
China’s Way to Happiness
from New York Review of Books
Richard Madsen is one of the modern-day founders of the study of Chinese religion. A professor at the University of California San Diego, the seventy-three-year-old’s works include Morality and Power in a Chinese Village, China and the American...
Reports
02.01.14![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/epsacrop_160x200/public/assets/images/whitepaper/image/nieman_censored.png?itok=hi4kFCLD)
The State of Journalism in China
The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard
The Communist Party has long striven to control freedom of speech in China. Websites from around the world are blocked. Major social media cannot be accessed, and advanced software is used to delete “sensitive” entries from the Internet. Domestic...
Reports
02.01.14![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/epsacrop_160x200/public/assets/images/whitepaper/image/ssrc-food_safety.png?itok=vgJcesru)
Food Safety in China: A Mapping of Problems, Governance and Research
The Social Science Research Council
Food safety has become an issue of great concern in China over the last few years. Media reporting has tended to focus on extreme cases of poisoning from food additives or contamination by heavy metals, but food safety encompasses a wide range of...
Sinica Podcast
01.24.14![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/shutterstock_23339791.jpg?itok=fRiWFmYC)
Talking About Taiwan
from Sinica Podcast
This week on Sinica, Kaiser Kuo is joined by David Moser and Paul Mozur for an in-depth discussion about everyone’s favorite renegade province. This is a lively conversation that stretches from questions of Taiwanese personal identity to its media...