Why India Will Soon Outpace China

James Gruber
Forbes
India’s decentralized, often chaotic economic model has been seen as inferior to China’s authoritarian, top-down model. A reappraisal of that view may soon be in order.

China's Half-Year Report Card on Economic Reform: Slow, Safe and Steady

Kevin Yao and Tomasz Janowski
Reuters
Incremental steps promise to reach enough critical mass to sustain reform momentum and help the world's second-largest economy shift down fairly smoothly after decades of red-hot growth.

Conversation

04.30.14

Will China’s Economy Be #1 by Dec. 31? (And Does it Matter?)

William Adams, Damien Ma & more
On April 30, data released by the United Nations International Comparison Program showed China’s estimated 2011 purchasing power parity (PPP) exchange rate was twenty percent higher than was estimated in 2005. What does this mean? China's...

Environment

04.30.14

China’s Environmental Law Good on Paper

from chinadialogue
China’s environmental protection law, which stirred great controversy during its amendment process, has finally been passed. The updated law makes significant progress in the area of public interest litigation and strengthens the legislative tools...

Media

04.30.14

Five Lessons From the Axing of ‘The Big Bang Theory’

It’s a plot twist few saw coming. Not long ago, China’s video streaming sites were trying to clean up years of copyright violations by paying big bucks to license popular U.S. television shows. For their part, Chinese fans had begun to abandon the...

China Breaks Into Las Vegas Show Business

Michelle Rindels
Associated Press
The privetely funded, wordless, loosely plotted "PANDA!" is China's latest soft power incarnate. 

Why China is Censoring ‘The Big Bang Theory’ but not ‘Game of Thrones’

Lily Kuo
Quartz
While authorities speak of “cleaning the web” of offensive content, they may be more worried about reminding the country’s flourishing private internet firms that the government is still in charge.

Media

04.28.14

A Guide to Social Class in Modern China

Class is a sensitive word in China. Marxist-Leninist rhetoric like “class enemies,” “class conflict,” and “class struggle” are rarely seen in the country’s media these days, but since China began its market reforms in 1979, stratification has...

Bill Gates Urges China’s Wealthiest to Give to Charity...Again

Jonathan Kaiman
Guardian
Businessman makes plea in People's Daily for country to improve bad philanthropic record by investing in the poor.

Apple, Be Afraid: China's Xiaomi Going Global

Gordon G. Chang
Forbes
Xiaomi’s Mi3 in China is cheaper than the iPhone 5c—1,999 yuan versus 4,488. No wonder Xiaomi outsells Apple, shipping 7.3 million phones in the fourth quarter of last year over Apple's 7 million.

Alibaba Works Magic for China's Taobao 'Treasure Hunters'

Callum MacLeod
USA Today
Alibaba's eBay-like marketplace Taobao allows budding entrepreneurs to set up and run an online store, for free. The site has steven million sellers offering hundreds of millions of items.

The Chinese Take Manhattan: Replace Russians as Top Apartment Buyers

Michelle Conlin and Maggie Lu Yueyang
Reuters
Many Chinese buyers are switching their interest away from markets like Shanghai, Hong Kong and Singapore amid fears that prices have soared to frothy levels in those cities.

Sinica Podcast

04.25.14

Trash Talk with Adam Minter

Jeremy Goldkorn & 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...

Degrees of Influence Peddling in China and U.S.

Neil Irwin
New York Times
The people who hold the levers of state power control the deployment of vast riches; every decision about a change in the tax code or the issuance of oil drilling licenses is worth billions to someone.

China Court Frees Japanese Ship After Unprecedented Seizure

Chris Cooper and Kiyotaka Matsuda
Bloomberg
A Chinese court released a Japanese ship owned by Mitsui O.S.K. Lines Ltd. after the cargo carrier paid compensation for the loss of two vessels leased from a Chinese company before the two countries went to war in 1937.

I Sold Out to China

Leslie Anne Jones
Aeon Magazine
You know that censorship has won its war on truth-telling when journalists happily police themselves.

Artist at Center of Multimillion Dollar Forgery Scandal Turns Up in China

Jon Swaine
Guardian
Pei-Shen Qian, acccused, along with two Spanish brokers, of conning New York art collectors, will likely escape extradition.

Tesla CEO Makes Smooth Drive into China

Doug Young
Forbes
Tesla’s China launch, accompanied by a well-crafted publicity blitz, could help the company sell up to 5,000 cars in the market this year.

Caixin Media

04.23.14

Graft Inquiry at CNPC Uncovers Shady Deal

A little-known deal related to an equally little-known, yet highly productive oilfield has come to light as a graft investigation unfolds at oil giant China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC). A businessman with strong ties to officials is behind the...

Obama Faces Headwinds on Trans-Pacific Partnership in East Asia trip

Kristine Kwok
South China Morning Post
Negotiations with Japan on a 12-nation transpacific trade liberalisation deal are bogged down, while support for it is waning in Malaysia, which could pull out altogether under pressure from business concerns. Analysts say the negotiations...

Xi’s Corruption Crackdown Hits China's Restaurants

Dexter Filkins
Businessweek
Dirty officials aren’t the only ones getting slammed as Xi Jinping continues his crackdown on corruption and waste. China’s restaurant industry grew 9 percent, to 2.56 trillion yuan ($411 billion), last year, its slowest growth in more than two...

Massive China Shoe Factory Strike Rolls on as Offer Falls Flat

John Ruwitch and Danny Kwok
Reuters
Chinese shoe factory workers shrugged off an offer of improved benefits, prolonging one of the largest strikes in recent years amid signs of increased labor activism as the economy slows.

Bitcoin’s Status in China Not So Black-and-White

Paul Vigna and Michael J. Casey
Wall Street Journal
The Chinese government has disseminated what amounts to a “confidential” policy governing the digital currency, which has led to uneven enforcement.

In China, A Big Jet Becomes a Status Symbol

Joe Sharkey
New York Times
Chinese buyers are enthusiastically opting mostly for so-called heavy metal jets—big, long-range luxury jets that can cost $50 million or more before extras like fancy cabin fixtures.

Caixin Media

04.15.14

New Sichuan Petchem Plant on Shaky Ground

A controversial petrochemical project in the southwestern province of Sichuan quietly went into operation in March, but questions about the China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC) facility continue to linger.The project is in Pengzhou, a city of 763,...

China Cancels Human Rights Dialogue with Britain

Tania Brannigan
Guardian
Beijing accuses UK of using rights issues to interfere in its internal affairs and axes dialogue that resumed after diplomatic freeze over Dalai Lama

China Property Collapse Has Begun

Gordon G. Chang
Forbes
Walmart will be closing its Zhaohui store in Hangzhou on April 23 as a part of its overall plan to dump marginal locations—about nine percent of the total—in China.

Seeking More From Chinese Films

Didi Kirsten Tatlow
New York Times
The China Film Directors’ Guild said it would not award a top prize for film or director of the year because Chinese films need to meet “a higher standard,” said director Feng Xiaogang. 

The Princeling of Private Equity

Steven Aldred and Irene Jay Liu
Reuters
A firm co-founded by the grandson of China's former leader landed a sweet deal in a state-controlled sector of the economy.  Now, many in the industry are flocking to invest with Alvin Jiang.

Viewpoint

04.09.14

Why Taiwan’s Protestors Stuck It Out

John Tkacik
Some might say, “a half-million Taiwanese can’t be wrong.” That’s how many islanders descended upon their capital city, Taipei, on March 30 to shout their support for the several thousand students who have occupied the nation’s legislature for the...

Conversation

04.06.14

Spy Vs. Spy: When is Cyberhacking Crossing the Line?

Vincent Ni, Chen Weihua & more
Vincent Ni: For a long time, Huawei has been accused by some American politicians of “spying on Americans for the Chinese government,” but their evidence has always been sketchy. They played on fear and possibility. I don’t agree or disagree with...

China’s Mobile Commerce Spending to Surpass $50 Billion in 2014, Nearly Double Last Year’s Total

Steven Millward
Tech in Asia
Now that smartphones account for over 80 percent of China’s new phone sales, it’s inevitable that the m-commerce sector is growing faster than the ecommerce industry itself.

Alibaba’s IPO Architect Lays Out Blueprint for E-commerce Empire

Paul Carsten and Matthew Miller
Reuters
Joe Tsai, executive vice chairman of the world's largest e-commerce company, sees an Alibaba future that stretches from banking to education, travel to entertainment.

Apology to Wife in Sex Scandal Breaks Online Record in China

Louise Watt
Associated Press
Actor Wen Zhang’s apology to his actress wife following rumors of his infidelity has set a record for comments and retweets on China’s version of Twitter.

While Warning Of Chinese Cyberthreat, U.S. Launches Its Own Attack

David Davies
NPR
New documents show that the U.S. National Security Agency penetrated the large Chinese telecommunications firm Huawei, gathering information about its operations.

Caixin Media

04.01.14

Eviction by Arson: Land-Seizure Turns Deadly

A village head and the boss of a building company were among the seven people arrested over an arson attack on a protest against a land seizure in Shandong Province in which one man died and three others were hurt.The government of Pingdu, a county...

China’s Alibaba Launches Crowdfunding-Like Service for Film Investment

Clifford Coonan
Hollywood Reporter
China's largest e-commerce company, Alibaba, launched a micro-finance service for movies.

Media

03.28.14

Ang Lee and Zhang Yimou Talk Movies

Jonathan Landreth
Ang Lee, the Oscar-winning American film director with Taiwan roots, and Zhang Yimou, the storied veteran of mainland Chinese moviemaking, joined together on March 27 at Cooper Union in New York in a discussion billed “Chinese Film, Chinese...

Conversation

03.26.14

The Bloomberg Fallout: Where Does Journalism in China Go from Here?

Chen Weihua, Dorinda Elliott & more
On Monday, March 24, a thirteen-year veteran of Bloomberg News, Ben Richardson, news editor at large for Asia, resigned. A few days earlier, company Chairman Peter Grauer said that the news and financial information services company founded in 1981...

Media

03.26.14

A Wrinkle to Those Hot Chinese Tech IPOs

Investors, ready your wallets. In the past week, Sina Weibo, China’s massive microblogging platform with 280 million users, and Alibaba, the operator of China’s largest online marketplace which generated $1.84 billion in revenue in the fourth...

Caixin Media

03.25.14

State-Owned Oil Firms Invite Outside Investors

Since February, state-owned oil majors have taken steps toward pilots in mixed-share ownership, following central government calls for reforms to state-owned enterprises (SOEs).   After the Chinese New Year, China Petroleum and Chemical...

Sinica Podcast

03.24.14

We Will Make You Learn to Love Baijiu

Jeremy Goldkorn & David Moser 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...

Media

03.21.14

“We’ll Know It When We’re There”

Jonathan Landreth
Martin Johnson (not his real name), is a co-founder of the China-based Internet freedom advocacy collective GreatFire.org. On the condition that he not be photographed, he gave the following interview to ChinaFile at an outdoor cafe in Manhattan...

Features

03.21.14

Punching a Hole in the Great Firewall

Jeff South
In January, when the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists published its exposé of the use of offshore tax havens by Chinese politicians and business moguls, the Chinese government blocked access to the consortium’s website and to...

Environment

03.19.14

Is China Underfunding its ‘War on Pollution’?

from chinadialogue
China’s environmental spending showed a year-on-year drop of almost ten percent in 2013, according to the budget report delivered at China’s annual parliamentary gathering.Despite premier Li Keqiang’s vow to declare “war on pollution”, the 2013...

Caixin Media

03.18.14

How Xinjiang Real Estate Takes Its Shape

Police nabbed property developer Zhao Xingru and detained her for more than thirty days in late 2012 and early 2013 based on fraud allegations filed by executives at one of the country's largest developers, Hangzhou-based Greentown China Group...

Media

03.17.14

‘Self-Media’ Pushes and Beijing Pushes Back

Michelle Song, twenty-four, studies international relations at Beijing’s prestigious Peking University and lives in a dormitory, so she doesn’t watch television regularly and doesn’t subscribe to newspapers. But this has not hampered her ability to...

Media

03.14.14

The Other Shoe Drops

Welcome to the big leagues, WeChat.For the past year, the mobile chat app WeChat, or Weixinin Chinese, has been the fresh new face in China’s hyperactive social media, stealing millions of members—not to mention mojo—from its wounded but still...

Chinese Social Media Giant Sina Weibo Seeks U.S. Stock Market Listing

Clifford Coonan
Hollywood Reporter
The Twitter-like company is looking to raise around $500 million from the listing, which would give it a valuation of $8 billion.

Caixin Media

03.11.14

Li Ka-shing’s Remedy for ‘Coddled’ Hong Kong

Hong Kong tycoon Li Ka-shing is again in the media spotlight after he mentioned in late February the possibility of publicly listing his retail business A.S. Watson Group, which is part of the Hong Kong-listed conglomerate Hutchison Whampoa."No...

Compliance Becomes Hotter Issue for U.S. Firms in China

Adam Jourdan
Reuters
U.S. companies in China placed greater focus on compliance last year after several high profile probes into corruption and high pricing, but rising costs and a skills shortage remained their main concerns.

Media

03.01.14

China’s Oscar Challenge

Jonathan Landreth
On January 3, the film critics of The New York Times published their Oscar nominations wish list. Many of their wishes came true and on Sunday night, March 2, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will broadcast its annual celebration of...

Media

02.26.14

China, LinkedIn Would Like to Add You to Its Network

LinkedIn is now aiming its bow for the rocky shoals that have claimed Facebook, Twitter, Google, and even eBay: the Chinese market. On February 24, LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner announced the launch of LinkedIn’s Chinese-language site, still in beta,...

Caixin Media

02.25.14

Sichuan Tycoon Charged with Murder Linked to Ex-Top Security Czar’s Son

A Sichuan tycoon who has been charged with a host of gang-related crimes, including murder, was a close business partner of a former top leader’s son, himself caught in a corruption inquiry.Prosecutors say Sichuan Hanlong Group chairman Liu Han, his...

Conversation

02.22.14

What Can the Dalai Lama’s White House Visit Actually Accomplish?

Isabel Hilton, Donald Clarke & more
On February 21, the Dalai Lama visited United States President Barack Obama in the White House over the objections of the Chinese government. Beijing labels the exiled spiritual leader a "wolf in sheep's clothing" who seeks to use...

Media

02.21.14

How the Internet and Social Media Are Transforming China

Shazeda Ahmed
“The Internet has radically transformed China,” said Emily Parker, author of the book Now I Know Who My Comrades Are: Voices from the Internet Underground, in a public discussion at Asia Society in New York on February 19.Talking about the Internet’...

Harvard-Linked Hospital Eyes Expansion With China Billionaire

John Lauerman And Michael McDonald
Bloomberg
Brigham and Women’s Hospital is considering a proposal from real estate billionaire Hui Ka Yan to become the first Harvard-University affiliated hospital to expand to China.

Conversation

02.19.14

China in ‘House of Cards’

Steven Jiang, Donald Clarke & more
China figures heavily in the second season of the Netflix series House of Cards, but how accurately does the show portray U.S.-China relations? Steven Jiang, a journalist for CNN in Beijing, binged-watched all thirteen recently-released web-only...

Caixin Media

02.18.14

Lee Hsien Loong on What Singapore Can—and Can’t—Teach China

As one of the Four Asian Tigers, Singapore is known for its strong economy and orderly society. The city-state, with its population of 5.3 million people, is listed by the World Bank as fourth in the world in terms of per capita income. As a...

Media

02.14.14

A Kapital Idea

Matthew Niederhauser & David M. Barreda
Matthew Neiderhauser is a photographer and artist whose work is influenced by his studies in anthropology. He lived in Beijing for six years and recently returned to the United States. His pictorial book Sound Kapital, published in 2009, documented...