Chinese Dreams and the African Renaissance

Eric Olander, Cobus van Staden & more
Leaders in both China and Africa have articulated new visions for their respective regions that project a strong sense of confidence, renewal, and a break from once-dominant Western ideologies. In both cases, argues East is Read blogger Mothusi...

We Traveled Across China and Returned Terrified for the Economy

Timothy Coulter
Bloomberg
China’s steel and metals markets, a barometer of the world’s second-biggest economy, are “a lot worse than you think.”

Books

04.09.15

Revolutionary Cycles in Chinese Cinema, 1951-1979

Zhuoyi Wang
A comprehensive history of how the conflicts and balances of power in the Maoist revolutionary campaigns from 1951 to 1979 complicated and diversified the meanings of films, this book offers a discursive study of the development of early PRC cinema. Wang closely investigates how film artists, Communist Party authorities, cultural bureaucrats, critics, and audiences negotiated, competed, and struggled with each other for the power to decide how to use films and how their extensively different, agonistic, and antagonistic power strategies created an ever-changing discursive network of meaning in cinema. —Palgrave Macmillan{chop}

Sinica Podcast

04.07.15

Cyber Leninism and the Political Culture of the Chinese Internet

Kaiser Kuo, David Moser & more from Sinica Podcast
Kaiser Kuo and David Moser speak with Rogier Creemers, post-doctoral fellow at Oxford with a focus on Chinese Internet governance and author of the China Copyright and Media blog.{chop}

Born Red

New Yorker
How Xi Jinping, an unremarkable provincial administrator, became China’s most authoritarian leader since Mao.

Caixin Media

04.06.15

Tycoon Said to Bring Down a Deputy Mayor, Control Key Beijing Land Deal

A recent business dispute between a state-owned technology conglomerate and a private property developer has put a low-profile but powerful businessman in the spotlight. The businessman is believed to have brought down a former Beijing deputy mayor...

China Escalates Hollywood Partnerships, Aiming to Compete One Day

David Barboza
New York Times
Chinese studios are moving up the value chain, helping to develop, design and produce world-class films and animated features.

The Chinese Billionaire Zhang Lei Spins Research Into Investment Gold

Alexandra Stevenson
New York Times
Starting 10 years ago with $20 million from Yale’s endowment, Zhang was an early backer of Tencent and JD.com.

Books

04.02.15

Muslim, Trader, Nomad, Spy

Sulmaan Wasif Khan
In 1959, the Dalai Lama fled Lhasa, leaving the People's Republic of China with a crisis on its Tibetan frontier. Sulmaan Wasif Khan tells the story of the PRC's response to that crisis and, in doing so, brings to life an extraordinary cast of characters: Chinese diplomats appalled by sky burials, Guomindang spies working with Tibetans in Nepal, traders carrying salt across the Himalayas, and Tibetan Muslims rioting in Lhasa. What Chinese policymakers confronted in Tibet, Khan argues, was not a "third world" but a "fourth world" problem: Beijing was dealing with peoples whose ways were defined by statelessness. As it sought to tighten control over the restive borderlands, Mao's China moved from a lighter hand to a harder, heavier imperial structure. That change triggered long-lasting shifts in Chinese foreign policy. Moving from capital cities to far-flung mountain villages, from top diplomats to nomads crossing disputed boundaries in search of pasture, this book shows Cold War China as it has never been seen before and reveals the deep influence of the Tibetan crisis on the political fabric of present-day China. —The University of North Carolina Press{chop}

Features

04.02.15

Frank Talk About Hong Kong’s Future from Margaret Ng

Margaret Ng, Ira Belkin & more
Following is the transcript of a recent ChinaFile Breakfast with Margaret Ng, the former Hong Kong legislator in discussion with Ira Belkin of New York University Law School and Orville Schell, ChinaFile Publisher and Arthur Ross Director of the...

Media

04.02.15

‘Obama Is Sitting Alone at a Bar Drinking a Consolation Beer’

Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian
Danish and Chinese netizens have just shared in a collective guffaw at America’s expense. The online lampoonery came after Denmark announced on March 28 its intent to join the Asian Investment Infrastructure Bank (AIIB), a China-led initiative...

New App Collects Xi’s Wisdom

Xinhua
The free app makes available Xi’s books including “The Governance of China.”

Taiwan’s Rash Decision to Join AIIB

Ricky Yeh
Diplomat
Taiwan’s legislative branch was never able to approve the application or review the evaluation reports and proposals.

Conversation

04.01.15

New Chinese Cyberattacks: What’s to Be Done?

Steve Dickinson, Jason Q. Ng & more
Starting last week, hackers foiled a handful of software providers that promote freedom of information by helping web surfers in China reach the open Internet. The attacks that drastically slowed the anti-censorship services of San Francisco-based...

Claims of Retaliation in Detention of Chinese Anticorruption Campaigner

Patrick Boehler
New York Times
Ou Shaokun, 61, gained prominence by advising Guangzhou petitioners protesting government land seizures.

Viewpoint

04.01.15

China’s Government Is Serious About Fundamentally Reshaping Itself

Rebecca Liao
Respected China scholar David Shambaugh recently set off a firestorm among other China specialists when he predicted the collapse of China’s ruling Communist Party in an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal. Beneath many of the arguments in his defense...

Xi Jinping Forever

Willy Lam
Foreign Policy
Is China’s increasingly powerful president angling to break tradition and extend his rule indefinitely?

U.S. Navy Alarmed at Beijing’s ‘Great Wall of Sand’ in So China Sea

Simon Denyer
Washington Post
US Admiral says competing territorial claims in the South China Sea are “increasing regional tensions and the potential for miscalculation." 

Reports

04.01.15

Revising U.S. Grand Strategy Toward China

Robert D. Blackwill, Ashley J. Tellis
Council on Foreign Relations
China represents and will remain the most significant competitor to the United States for decades to come. As such, the need for a more coherent U.S. response to increasing Chinese power is long overdue. Because the American effort to “integrate”...

Reports

04.01.15

U.S.-China 21: The Future of U.S.-China Relations Under Xi Jinping

Kevin Rudd
Harvard University
We are, therefore, seeing the emergence of an asymmetric world in which the fulcrums of economic and military power are no longer co-located, but, in fact, are beginning to diverge significantly. Political power, through the agency of foreign policy...

China Regulates Against Officials’ Judicial Meddling

Xinhua
To advance the rule of law China plans to name and shame officials who commonly interfere in judicial cases.  

Mystery Surrounds Disappearance of Xinjiang Article and Related Apology

Dan Levin
New York Times
An article on a Muslim couple jailed for beard and burqa appeared Sunday in state media but was gone Monday.

Chinese Authorities Compromise Millions in Cyberattacks

Charlie Smith
Great Firewall of China
Hijacking the computers of millions of innocent Internet users around the world shows China's disregard for Internet governance norms.

Why Chinese Students Find it Hard to Make Friends on US Campuses

Ray Kwong
Hong Kong Economic Journal
Chinese students complain that American students are misinformed, prejudiced and offensive on Chinese current events.

Reports

03.31.15

Navigating Choppy Waters

Matthew P. Goodman, David A. Parker
Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)
China faces increasing economic headwinds that call into question not only its near-term growth outlook but the longer-term sustainability of its economic success. At a time of leadership transition in Beijing, global markets and policymakers alike...

China Appears to Attack GitHub by Diverting Web Traffic

Paul Mozur
New York Times
In recent attacks on sites that try to help Internet users in China circumvent censorship, the Great Firewall appears to have been used as a weapon.

How China Plans to Shape New Asian Order

Charles Hutzler
Wall Street Journal
At the center of these efforts is the new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and plans for pan-Asian infrastructure .

Caixin Media

03.30.15

Plan for Next Five Years Must Free Up Disposable Income

The government's 12th Five-Year Plan concludes this year, and work on drafting the 13th will begin soon.Which way will China turn? In its work report to legislators at the National People's Congress meeting in March, the government pledged...

Iran Nuclear Talks: What China Brings to the Negotiating Table

Peter Ford
Christian Science Monitor
China is reportedly proposing a compromise between Iran's insistence on an end to all UN sanctions and US desires for gradual relief.

Fifty Shades of Xi

David Bandurski
Medium
China’s confessional politics of dominance.

Full Text of Chinese President’s Speech at Boao Forum for Asia

Xinhua
Xi's speech, entitled, "Towards a Community of Common Destiny and A New Future for Asia"

China’s Zhou Says PBOC Has Room to Act on Growth Slowdown

Malcolm Scott
Bloomberg
The central bank chief's remarks follow China's weakest expansion since 1990.

Beyond Ai Weiwei: How China’s Artists Handle Politics (or Avoid Them)

Christopher Beam
New Yorker
Westerners are often criticized for looking at Chinese art through a narrow political lens.

Lee Kuan Yew, the Man Who Remade Asia

Orville Schell
Wall Street Journal
He preached ‘Asian values’ and turned a tiny, poor city-state into an astonishing economic success. Is Lee’s ‘Singapore model’ the future of Asia?

U.S. About-Face on AIIB Would be Welcomed

China Daily
US leaders have for years said Asia-Pacific nations do not have to choose between China and the US.

South Korea Says It Will Join China-Led Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank

Wall Street Journal
Seoul makes assurances about AIIB’s governance, which U.S. has been wary about.

Media

03.25.15

Was Lee Kuan Yew an Inspiration or a Race Traitor? Chinese Can’t Agree

Rachel Lu
When Lee Kuan Yew, the founding father of Singapore, passed away at the ripe age of 91 on March 23, the elderly statesman was as controversial in death as in life—and nowhere was the debate more vigorous than in China. While state media was full of...

China Eyes Innovation in Face of Economic “New Normal”

Xinhua
The growth target for 2015 was set at "approximately 7 percent," down from 7.5 percent in 2014.

Seeing Through the Smog

Wenjuan Zhang
China Open Research Network
Potential impacts of the documentary Under the Domes on China’s Civic Participation.

China Reiterates Openness of AIIB After Shift in US Attitude

Xinhua
The China-proposed AIIB, has an expected initial subscribed capital of $50 billion.

Conversation

03.24.15

What Went Wrong With U.S. Strategy on China’s New Bank and What Should Washington Do Now?

Patrick Chovanec, Zha Daojiong & more
Now that much of Europe has announced its intentions to join the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), was Washington’s initial opposition a mistake? Assuming the AIIB does get off the ground, what might it mean for future...

Caixin Media

03.24.15

Kissinger: China, U.S. Must ‘Lead in Cooperation’

Henry Kissinger, the former U.S. Secretary of State and the architect of former president Richard Nixon's historic visit to China in 1972, has continued to influence the shaping of the two countries' relations and America's foreign...

In Lee Kuan Yew, China Saw a Leader to Emulate

Chris Buckley
New York Times
Singapore won an outsize influence with China after they embarked on an experiment with controlled capitalism.

Culture

03.23.15

Wordplay

Nicholas Griffin
Way back when, let’s say in 2012, the city of Miami and the country of China rarely mixed in sentences. Since then, connections between the Far East and the northernmost part of Latin America have become more and more frequent. Three years ago, a...

Singapore’s Lee Seen as an Inspiration for Modern China

Christoper Bodeen
Associated Press
Chinese leaders admired Singapore's founder Lee Kuan Yew for toughness, economic pragmatism, and insistence on respect for authority.

IBM to Share Technology with China in Strategy Shift: CEO

Matthew Miller and Gerry Shih
Reuters
IBM must help China build its IT industry rather than viewing the country solely as a sales destination or manufacturing base.

Chinese Relic Experts Claim 1,000-year-old Mummified Monk Was Stolen

Naomi Ng
CNN
Fujian officials found photos and historical records suggesting the statue belonged to a village temple.

Singapore Former PM Meets with Chinese Leaders

People’s Daily Online
Pepople's Daily photo archive of the late Lee Kwan Yew's meetings with five of China's top leaders.

How ‘Old Friend’ Lee Kuan Yew Influenced China

Chun Han Wong and Josh Chin
Wall Street Journal
“Mr. Lee Kuan Yew was an old friend of the Chinese people,” Chinese President Xi Jinping wrote to Singapore President Tony Tan.

Media

03.20.15

China Has Its Own Anti-Vaxxers—Blame the Internet

Alexa Olesen
While health officials in the United States and parts of Europe wrestle with a growing anti-vaccination, or “anti-vaxxer” movement, China is dealing with a less organized but similarly serious fear of immunizations. Social media reveals traces of...

China’s ‘Comfort Women’

Lucy Hornby
Financial Times
Thousands of Chinese women were forced into sex slavery during the second world war. Here is one survivor’s story. 

Chinese High School Students Riot Over Mass Food Poisoning

Wei Ling
Radio Free Asia
Thousands of disgruntled students smashed up their high school campus in Guizhou in the early hours of March 20 .

China on the World Stage: A Bridge Not Far Enough

Economist
China plans a new bank to help match Asia’s vast savings with its even vaster need for infrastructure.

Coal Boomtowns Fade as China Declares War on Pollution

Science
China is headed towards peak coal which means cities reliant on coal mining struggle.

Yahoo to Shutter China Office and Cut “Around 350” Jobs

Martin Patience
BBC
The move not a huge surprise as Yahoo has been retreating since 2013 when it ended email servies in China. 

China Gloats as Europeans Rush to Join Asian Bank

Simon Denyer
Washington Post
Xinhua described the U.S. as “petulant and cynical” for declining to join the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.

Global Push Aims to Change China’s Mind on Bank Rules: U.S. Official

Krista Hughes
Reuters
Lobby wants China to stop rules that would force tech vendors to Chinese banks to hand over source code. 

Environment

03.19.15

World Coal Investments Increasingly Risky, Especially China’s

from chinadialogue
The investment case for coal-fired power is looking increasingly unconvincing, but more plants will need to be cancelled if the world is to avoid runaway climate change, a report published on Monday said.The report which was co-authored by green...

Conversation

03.18.15

Dark Days for Women in China?

Rebecca E. Karl, Leta Hong Fincher & more
With China’s recent criminal detention of five feminist activists, gender inequality in China is back in the spotlight. What does a crackdown on Chinese women fighting for equal representation say about the current state of the nation’s political...

Books

03.18.15

Confucius

Michael Schuman
Confucius is perhaps the most important philosopher in history. Today, his teachings shape the daily lives of more than 1.6 billion people. Throughout East Asia, Confucius’s influence can be seen in everything from business practices and family relationships to educational standards and government policies. Even as western ideas from Christianity to Communism have bombarded the region, Confucius’s doctrine has endured as the foundation of East Asian culture. It is impossible to understand East Asia, journalist Michael Schuman demonstrates, without first engaging with Confucius and his vast legacy.Confucius created a worldview that is in many respects distinct from, and in conflict with, Western culture. As Schuman shows, the way that East Asian companies are managed, how family members interact with each other, and how governments see their role in society all differ from the norm in the West due to Confucius’s lasting impact. Confucius has been credited with giving East Asia an advantage in today’s world, by instilling its people with a devotion to learning, and propelling the region’s economic progress. Still, the sage has also been highly controversial. For the past 100 years, East Asians have questioned if the region can become truly modern while Confucius remains so entrenched in society. He has been criticized for causing the inequality of women, promoting authoritarian regimes, and suppressing human rights.Despite these debates, East Asians today are turning to Confucius to help them solve the ills of modern life more than they have in a century. As a wealthy and increasingly powerful Asia rises on the world stage, Confucius, too, will command a more prominent place in global culture.Touching on philosophy, history, and current affairs, Confucius tells the vivid, dramatic story of the enigmatic philosopher whose ideas remain at the heart of East Asian civilization.  —Basic Books {chop}