Features
12.17.24
Trains: A Chinese Family History of Railway Journeys, Exile, and Survival
6.For educated Chinese people, the late 1910s and early 1920s was a period of intense ideological exploration and political agitation. Both inside and outside China, all sorts of groups were vying to influence the minds of China’s future élite. The...
Notes from ChinaFile
12.13.24
The Paradox of Bride Price in Contemporary China: Q&A with Shirley Xinyi Cai
Shirley Xinyi Cai is a researcher in comparative politics and political theory, pursuing a Ph.D. in Political Science at McGill University. One of her ongoing projects is about the caili (彩礼, i.e. bride price or betrothal gift), a deep-rooted...
Media
11.26.24ChinaFile Presents: ‘Her Lotus Year,’ a Conversation with Paul French
Paul French is a prolific author of books on pre-revolutionary 20th Century China and the stories of foreigners who lived and worked there, including the bestselling true-crime history, Midnight in Peking. His work is based on traditional historical...
Features
11.18.24
‘What Happened, Mama? In 1989, Were You Just Like Me?’
Two things motivated me to come to the U.S. for college in 2021. I believed in the fourth estate and wanted to become an investigative journalist, and I knew China had no space for speaking truth to power. I also wanted to run away from my family,...
Viewpoint
11.13.24
Xi vs. Xu: Two Visions for China’s Future
In late October, Radio Free Asia reported that Chinese civil rights advocate and lawyer Xu Zhiyong, who is serving a 14-year sentence for state subversion, has been hunger striking to protest the conditions of his incarceration. Xu’s imprisonment...
Notes from ChinaFile
11.13.24
‘A Nation Was Forged by Literary Writers’
from Granta
This year, I returned to a Beijing I hardly recognized. It was not the capital I first glimpsed as a child in the 1980s, when groups of men in thin jackets stood smoking in the cold, and tides of cyclists seemed ready to carry me away. Nor was it...
Features
11.12.24
Trains: A Chinese Family History of Railway Journeys, Exile, and Survival
Every morning, I crossed a stretch of railway tracks on the way to my school. The tracks lay less than a hundred meters from the school gate, and a train often appeared in the late afternoon just as we were discharged. Sometimes it was a freight...
Media
11.06.24
ChinaFile Presents: ‘Nikah,’ a Film Screening and Discussion
The film ‘Nikah,’ set in China’s Uyghur region in 2017, spans the months between two weddings. It follows Dilber, a young woman approaching a crossroads amid the Chinese government’s surveilling and detaining of members of her community. As even her...
Viewpoint
10.16.24
Where the Malan Blooms
This October 16 marks the 60th anniversary of the testing of the first Chinese nuclear bomb. When my friends and I coiled up our jump ropes and returned to class, we learned inspirational tales about the earliest generation of Chinese nuclear...
Features
09.27.24
Is China’s Cultural Outreach to Muslims in Indonesia Working?
Indonesia is the world’s largest Muslim-majority country. So as Beijing ramps up its engagement with the Global South and with the Muslim world, it is unsurprising that it has been reaching out to various Muslim organizations and strengthening its...
Features
09.26.24
Can China’s Scholarships and Cultural Diplomacy Efforts Succeed in Pakistan?
In Washington, D.C., China has a bad reputation for the way it treats its Muslim minorities. But views differ greatly in many majority-Muslim countries in Asia. Educational programs and exchanges are a key part of this. Pakistan is an exemplar:...
Viewpoint
09.26.24
How a Crackdown Transformed LGBTQ Activism in China
In 2020, events took a turn. Soon after wrapping up Pride Month festivities, Shanghai Pride announced it was ending its 12-year run. Organizers soon revealed the reason for the closure was that they no longer felt safe under intensifying harassment...
Notes from ChinaFile
09.24.24
From Wild Exuberance to State Control in China’s Art Market
The scholar and journalist Kejia Wu is the author of A Modern History of China’s Art Market, a fascinating book that examines the relationship between the Chinese government’s push for cultural “soft power” and its desire for control. In the book,...
Viewpoint
09.12.24
Southeast Asia Doesn’t Want to Choose between China and the U.S.
If history provides a guide to the future, upholding human rights will continue to be sidelined in the U.S.’ Southeast Asia policy, and priority will be given to relationships and policies that benefit the U.S. as it seeks to build leverage over...
Viewpoint
07.23.24
Sideline Sinology
In August, when I visited Wuhan, I met with a young building-company manager who had worked on the construction sites of various emergency clinics and quarantine facilities during the city’s outbreak. “The pandemic is like a mirror,” the manager...
Media
07.23.24
ChinaFile Presents: Peter Hessler’s ‘Other Rivers: A Chinese Education’
On July 17, ChinaFile hosted the launch of Peter Hessler’s Other Rivers: A Chinese Education, a memoir of his two years teaching at Sichuan University in Chengdu from 2019 to 2021. The book explores elementary and college education, China’s handling...
Features
06.17.24
“The Police’s Strength Is Limited, but the People’s Strength Is Boundless”
In some ways, “vigilantes” are the opposite of what their name suggests: rather than rogue agents meting out street justice, they are individuals deemed trustworthy by authorities, working under the guidance of local police forces, deputized to...
Features
06.10.24
The 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
06.03.24
35 Years Later: A Retrospective of Our Work on the 1989 Tiananmen Protests and Crackdown
This year is the 35th anniversary of the 1989 mass demonstrations in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, and elsewhere around China, and their brutal suppression on June 4. The memories of these events are receding into the past, a process greatly aided in...
Viewpoint
05.13.24
Beijing’s Culinary Crusade: Erasing Uyghur Identity through Food
Instruction began early on a November 2018 morning. This lesson was not taught in a classroom, but in a makeshift kitchen as part of Xinjiang’s “household school” program. There, a teacher stood before her class of adult women and asked: “What do...
Viewpoint
05.10.24
Why the African Union Stopped the Donkey Hide Trade with China
The African Union’s unprecedented decision to ban the trade of donkey skin ended a hitherto fast-evolving China-Africa business. It also is the result of an unusual agreement between the 55 African Union member countries on a matter that affects...
Notes from ChinaFile
04.30.24
Updates to Our Database of Arrests under the Hong Kong National Security Law
We updated our suite of graphics tracking the impact of Hong Kong’s National Security Law. The law, which went into effect on June 30, 2020, and the allegation of “sedition,” have been used to arrest 292 individuals, charge 159, and convict 71 as of...
Notes from ChinaFile
04.29.24
Lessons from Tiananmen for Today’s University Presidents
Thirty-five years ago, in April 1989, Chinese students from Beijing’s elite universities began their occupation of Tiananmen Square. Their issues were different from those of American students today. Chinese demonstrators voiced concerns about...
Viewpoint
04.19.24
A New Round of Restrictions Further Constrains Religious Practice in Xinjiang
Authorities in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region rang in 2024 by announcing an update to the region’s strictures on religious practice. Changes include new rules to ensure that sites of religious worship, like mosques, look adequately “Chinese...
Features
03.08.24
Xinjiang Authorities Are Retroactively Applying Laws to Prosecute Religious Leaders as Criminals
from Foreign Policy
Sholpan Amirkhan and her aunt gasped when the guards carried her brother-in-law Nurlan Pioner into the Jimunai County People’s Court, on the border with Kazakhstan in China’s western region of Xinjiang. He was gaunt, and a fetid smell followed him...
Media
03.07.24
ChinaFile Presents: A Wild Ride through China’s Economy with Author Anne Stevenson-Yang
The 1980s were an extraordinary time of hope in China, both for its citizens and for foreign visitors. Anne Stevenson-Yang first went to China in 1985, where she was enchanted by the lively cultural scene and what seemed to be the growing openness...
Viewpoint
03.05.24
Studying in China May Have Gotten Harder for Americans, But We Shouldn’t Stop Trying
The U.S.-China relationship is the most important bilateral relationship in the world, but it is at its worst point since President Richard Nixon visited in 1972—more than 50 years ago. Getting the relationship right is not easy, but getting it...
Features
03.01.24
“There Is No CPEC in Gwadar, Except Security Check Posts”
The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is one of the major spokes of Beijing’s multi-trillion dollar Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), an ambitious attempt to remake global trade and transport infrastructure. CPEC’s terminus is Gwadar, a port...
Viewpoint
02.21.24
“When It All Comes down to It, China Has No Real ‘New Year’”
I’ve written all of this because friends urged me to offer some reflections on the year gone by and jot down a few thoughts for the upcoming year. But I didn’t want to waste my time looking up data points. Anyway, I don’t see that there was all that...
Viewpoint
02.02.24
New Security Measures Curtailing the Study of China Alarm Educators
Late last year, The New York Times reported on a new state-level bill in Florida that was creating unintended consequences for prospective Chinese graduate students. The bill restricts universities from accepting grants from or participating in...
Notes from ChinaFile
02.01.24
“It’s Too Convenient to Say That Xi Jinping Is a Second Mao”
The Chinese Communist Party, an organization of over ninety million members, remains opaque to many outsiders, even within China. Wall Street Journal reporter Chun Han Wong spent years in Beijing documenting social, political, and economic changes...
Viewpoint
01.22.24
Beijing Is Pouring Resources into Its UN Human Rights Review—All to Prevent Any Real Review from Taking Place
On January 23, a large delegation of Chinese officials will appear at the United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC) to try to defend the indefensible. For the first time since 2018, China will undergo a Universal Periodic Review (UPR), in which UN...
Notes from ChinaFile
01.09.24
Updates to Our Database of Arrests under the Hong Kong National Security Law
We updated our suite of graphics tracking the impact of Hong Kong’s National Security Law. The law, which went into effect on June 30, 2020, and the allegation of “sedition,” have been used to arrest 286 individuals, charge 156, and convict 68 as of...
Viewpoint
12.20.23
Hong Kong Finds Its Voice at the UN—And Uses It to Cheerlead for Beijing
Last May, in a meeting room at the United Nations in Geneva, I sat and listened as a delegate from my hometown of Hong Kong called me a liar. I was there as a representative from the civil society organization Hong Kong Watch, participating in a...
Viewpoint
12.20.23
Debating Whether China Is Getting Stronger or Weaker Won’t Make U.S. Policy More Sound
Does the United States have more to fear from a powerful China that continues to strengthen or from a powerful China that begins to decline? While the question takes into account the economic, military, and diplomatic strides China has made over the...
Viewpoint
12.15.23
Does America Have an End Game on China?
from Foreign Policy
This fall, U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan noted that the Biden administration is “often asked about the end state of U.S. competition with China.” He argued that “we do not expect a transformative end state like the one that resulted...
Viewpoint
12.12.23
No One Is Talking About the Plight of Uyghurs with Disabilities in Detention. The World Owes Them More.
In 2016, Chinese authorities began rounding up Uyghur intellectuals. Among those detained was Ababekri Muhtar, the founder of Misranim, a popular social media site used by Uyghurs to debate with and learn from each other. Muhtar relies on a...
Viewpoint
12.07.23
China’s Vision for World Order
In October, in front of leaders from Asia, Africa, Latin America, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East, Xi Jinping stood triumphant in a celebratory keynote address celebrating the tenth birthday of his Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The speech,...
Viewpoint
11.07.23
China-Saudi RMB Settlement Will Insulate the Oil Trade from U.S. Sanctions
In recent years, Beijing has made efforts to facilitate the settlement of China-Saudi oil trade in renminbi (RMB) rather than in U.S. dollars, a move that would steel China’s trade from financial sanctions and disrupt the global market for oil.
Media
11.01.23
ChinaFile Presents: China Reporting in Exile
ChinaFile and The New York Review of Books co-hosted a panel discussion with Chinese journalists working from abroad. Participants included reporter, editor, and digital media entrepreneur Annie Jieping Zhang, New York Times columnist Li Yuan,...
Notes from ChinaFile
10.16.23
What’s Behind China’s Laws to Protect Privacy?
In his article “Authoritarian Privacy” for the University of Chicago Law Review, Mark Jia writes: “Privacy laws are traditionally associated with democracy. Yet autocracies increasingly have them.” In this ChinaFile Q&A, Jia and Samm Sacks...
Notes from ChinaFile
10.10.23
The Global Times Translated My Op-Ed. Here’s What They Changed.
On May 25, 2023, The New York Times published my guest essay “Like It or Not, America Needs Chinese Scientists,” on American higher education’s engagement with China in the STEM fields. The article was subsequently translated by the Chinese State-...
Features
09.28.23
Holding Sway
In most parts of the world, the United Front Work Department is known—if at all—as a secretive Chinese Communist Party organ conducting influence operations abroad. But in Gonghe Village, the local UFWD ponied up nearly one million renminbi in 2022...
Viewpoint
09.06.23
Three Years in, Hong Kong’s National Security Law Has Entrenched a New Status Quo
On March 20, 2023, a Hong Kong court sentenced three people to prison for sedition. Police had arrested them in January, during and after a raid on a book fair in Mong Kok, for the purported crime of selling self-published books about the city’s...
Notes from ChinaFile
08.17.23
What’s Behind the Youth Unemployment Statistics Beijing Just Decided to Stop Publishing?
This week, China’s National Bureau of Statistics announced it would cease collecting data on youth unemployment. The news came after nearly a decade of poor job prospects for Chinese people ages 16-24, often reported on by international media as...
Viewpoint
07.24.23
Xi Jinping’s Three Balancing Acts
from Foreign Policy
Xi Jinping has ruled China for over a decade, but the way he rules it is changing. Xi faces domestic and international environments that are markedly worse than when he took office in 2012. The economy is struggling, confidence is faltering, debt is...
Features
07.10.23
For Beijing, Putting People Back to Work May Prove a Tough Job
In a small Chinese town where unemployment has run high during the COVID-19 pandemic, the local government has embraced a surprising remedy to joblessness: public toilets. Fugong Village, in Guangdong province, usually sees nearly half of its small...
Notes from ChinaFile
06.23.23
‘What Kind of Wish Is This?’
The writer Hao Qun, who publishes under the pen name Murong Xuecun, has spent the past two decades exploring Chinese society through his literature. After studying at Beijing’s prestigious China University of Politics and Law, he worked in the...
Notes from ChinaFile
06.07.23
The U.S. May Be Overstating China’s Technological Prowess
China’s technological prowess is frequently invoked by U.S. policymakers hoping to get votes, attention, or enough bipartisan support to pass a bill. Competition with China was a central motivating factor in federal legislation like the CHIPS and...
Notes from ChinaFile
06.02.23
Covering Tiananmen
The Tiananmen Square crisis in 1989 was a turning point for China. Weeks of student-led demonstrations turned into the largest protest for political reform in the history of the People’s Republic. The bloody military crackdown that crushed the...
Viewpoint
05.22.23
‘They Are Men Who Acted out of Conscience’
from Bu Mingbai Podcast
Last month, a Chinese court sentenced the civil rights activists and lawyers Xu Zhiyong and Ding Jiaxi to fourteen and twelve years in prison for “subverting state power,” a charge arising from an informal gathering of fellow activists the two had...
Notes from ChinaFile
05.15.23Official PRC Place Names
These datasets list the official names of all the places (political units) in China. This information is openly available on the Chinese government’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) website, but not in an easily downloadable or searchable format...
Notes from ChinaFile
05.15.23
‘Beijing’s Global Media Offensive’
Over the past several years, there has been an active debate about Chinese influence overseas. Amidst allegations that Beijing has influenced foreign elections and politicians, state newswire Xinhua has expanded into one of the largest news agencies...
Features
05.12.23
Investing in Tourism in Xinjiang, Beijing Seeks New Ways to Control the Region’s Culture
In a county where authorities ran multiple internment camps in China’s northwest Xinjiang region, the local government has commissioned a new set of buildings for a very different demographic: tourists. These sites and services, which were...
Notes from ChinaFile
04.13.23
Updates to Our Database of Arrests Related to the Hong Kong National Security Law
We updated our suite of graphics tracking the impact of Hong Kong’s National Security Law. It now includes information on the 248 individuals arrested between July 2020, when the law went into effect, and March 31, 2023. Information on these...
Notes from ChinaFile
03.30.23
For 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-...
Notes from ChinaFile
03.17.23
‘A Stone Is Most Precious Where It Belongs’
Gulchehra Hoja is a longtime broadcaster with Radio Free Asia’s (RFA) Uyghur Service. She grew up in Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, and was a successful TV personality and journalist with Chinese state media there. She...
Notes from ChinaFile
03.13.23
‘It Is Especially Scary to See Students’
As in many other aspects of public life in China under Xi Jinping, the space for independent inquiry and discussion within the academy has shrunk significantly in recent years. The Xi administration has released a slew of guidelines and communiques...
Notes from ChinaFile
03.10.23
The Future of China’s Climate Policy
With China accounting for more than a quarter of annual global greenhouse gas emissions, the future pathway of China’s emissions will play a central role in determining the extent to which the world can meet the Paris Agreement’s climate change...
Notes from ChinaFile
03.06.23
Document 9, 10 Years Later
Ten years ago, in April 2013, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) promulgated a critical directive: its “Communiqué on the Current State of the Ideological Sphere.” The document, issued by the CCP’s General Office and not intended for public...