Hong Kong Tycoons Descend on Beijing for Xi Meeting

Joyce Ng and Jeffie Lam
South China Morning Post
Tung Chee-hwa leads 70-strong delegation to Beijing; members come out strongly against Occupy Central, saying don’t harm Hong Kong

China’s Measured Embrace of India

Minghao Zhao
Project Syndicate
Chinese President Xi Jinping’s three-day visit to India, the main leg of a recent tour of Central and South Asia, sheds new light on China’s emerging approach to its neighbors, particularly Asia’s other giant.

‘They Don’t Want Moderate Uighurs’

Ian Johnson from New York Review of Books
In my series of interviews with Chinese intellectuals, there is an empty chair for Ilham Tohti, the economist and Uighur activist. It’s not that I hadn’t heard of him or hadn’t been in China long enough to have met him before he was arrested earlier...

Beijing’s Rising Smear Power

Murong Xuecun
New York Times
Chinese dissidents are constantly subject to all sorts of harassment, including a vicious online smear campaign.

Viewpoint

09.19.14

“Daddy’s ‘Friends’ Are Actually Plainclothes Cops”

Zeng Jinyan
[Updated March 18, 2015] The essay that follows was written by Zeng Jinyan, whose former partner, Hu Jia, has been prominently involved in activism around environmental issues, AIDS, and human rights in China over the past decade and a half and is a...

Conversation

09.19.14

China and Climate Change: What’s Next?

Angel Hsu & Barbara A. Finamore
Climate Week at the United Nations General Assembly is upon us and we asked a group of experts to bring us up-to-date about the areas where progress on climate change looks most possible for China, now the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse...

Dalai Lama: Chinese President Xi Jinping is ‘More Open Minded’

Vibhuti Agarwal
Wall Street Journal
India’s support of the Dalai Lama, who fled to India after a Chinese crackdown in the Himalayan region in 1959, has been a source of friction between the two countries.

Viewpoint

09.18.14

More Exploitation, More Happiness

Kevin Slaten
It was one of the deadliest industrial disasters in recent Chinese history. On August 2, a massive metal dust explosion killed 75 workers and injured another 186 at a factory in Kunshan, in Jiangsu province, that supplied wheels to General Motors...

Towards an Asian Century of Prosperity

Xi Jinping
Hindu
The combination of the world’s factory and the world’s back office will produce the most competitive production base, writes Xi Jinping , President of China

Uighur Scholar Ilham Tohti Goes on Trial in China on Separatist Charges

Edward Wong
New York Times
A conviction of Ilham Tohti for separatism could result in the death penalty, but in his case life imprisonment is likely to be the maximum punishment because of the specific charges.

Video

09.18.14

Collecting Insanity

Joshua Frank
Every country has a past it likes to celebrate and another it would rather forget. In China, where history still falls under the tight control of government-run museums and officially approved textbooks, the omissions appear especially stark. An...

Misunderstanding China

Michael Pillsbury
Wall Street Journal
How did Western policy makers and academics repeatedly get China so wrong?

With Much at Stake, Chinese Leader Visits India

Ellen Barry
New York Times
China has the ability to channel billions of dollars into Indian infrastructure and manufacturing projects, allowing Mr. Modi to pursue the jobs-creation agenda that was at the heart of his campaign.

Caixin Media

09.16.14

Grappling with Ammonia in China’s Haze

Chicken farmers and auto designers follow different career paths, but soon both may be changing how they do their jobs as part of a campaign to clean up China’s polluted air.Emissions from poultry waste and auto engines alike can contain...

China, the Climate and the Fate of the Planet

Jeff Goodell
Rolling Stone
If the world’s biggest polluter doesn’t radically reduce the amount of coal it burns, nothing anyone does to stabilize the climate will matter.

Q. and A.: Yong Zhao on Education and Authoritarianism in China

Didi Kirsten Tatlow
New York Times
Yong Zhao, a professor of education at the University of Oregon, is the author of “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Dragon: Why China Has the Best (and Worst) Education System in the World.”

China Detains Writer Tie Liu for ‘Provoking Trouble’

BBC
Chinese writer Huang Zerong, also known as Tie Liu, has been detained by police allegedly for writing articles critical of a senior official.

U.S. Treasury Warns China Over Antimonopoly Efforts

Laurie Burkitt and Bob Davis
Wall Street Journal
U.S. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew Issues Antimonopoly Warning in Letter to Chinese Vice Premier Wang Yang

Conversation

09.12.14

Is a Trade War with China Looming?

Arthur R. Kroeber & Donald Clarke
As Alibaba gets ready to sell shares on Wall Street, U.S. investors will be focused on Chinese companies getting a fair shake here in America even as some big U.S. brand names (Microsoft, Chrysler, et al) are being shaken down by China’s newly...

Media

09.12.14

A New Definition of Chinese Patriotism

Rachel Lu
China’s ruling Communist Party has a message for Chinese citizens: You are for us, or you are against us.That’s the takeaway from a widely discussed September 10 opinion piece in pro-party tabloid Global Times, in which Chen Xiankui, a professor at...

Books

09.11.14

Powerful Patriots

Jessica Chen Weiss
Why has the Chinese government sometimes allowed and sometimes repressed nationalist, anti-foreign protests? What have been the international consequences of these choices? Anti-American demonstrations were permitted in 1999 but repressed in 2001 during two crises in U.S.-China relations. Anti-Japanese protests were tolerated in 1985, 2005, and 2012 but banned in 1990 and 1996. Protests over Taiwan, the issue of greatest concern to Chinese nationalists, have never been allowed. To explain this variation in China’s response to nationalist mobilization, Powerful Patriots argues that Chinese and other authoritarian leaders weigh both diplomatic and domestic incentives to allow and repress nationalist protests. Autocrats may not face electoral constraints, but anti-foreign protests provide an alternative mechanism by which authoritarian leaders can reveal their vulnerability to public pressure. Because nationalist protests are costly to repress and may turn against the government, allowing protests demonstrates resolve and increases the domestic cost of diplomatic concessions. Repressing protests, by contrast, sends a credible signal of reassurance, facilitating diplomatic flexibility and signaling a willingness to spend domestic political capital for the sake of international cooperation. To illustrate the logic, the book traces the effect of domestic and diplomatic factors in China’s management of nationalist protest in the post-Mao era (1978-2012) and the consequences for China’s foreign relations.—Oxford University Press {chop}

Majority in China Expect War with Japan

Demitri Sevastopulo
Financial Times
China and Japan are heading towards military conflict, according to a majority of Chinese surveyed on ties between the Asian powers in a Sino-Japanese poll.

Viewpoint

09.10.14

China’s Tough New Internet Rules Explained

Hu Yong
On August 7, the State Internet Information Office issued a new set of guidelines entitled “Provisional Regulations for the Development and Management of Instant Messaging Tools and Public Information Services.” These regulations require that...

South Africa to Dalai Lama: ‘You’re Not Welcome’ (Really)

Eric Olander & Cobus van Staden
For a third consecutive time, South Africa has made it clear to the Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama that he is not welcome to visit. Most recently, the Dalai Lama was informed he would not receive a visa, forcing the controversial religious...

China Asks U.S. to End Close-Up Military Surveillance

Jane Perlez
New York Times
The United States should halt its “close-in” aerial and naval surveillance of China, a senior Chinese military officer told Susan E. Rice, President Obama’s national security adviser.

Japanese People Hate China More Than Ever

Megumi Fujikawa
Wall Street Journal
More than half of Japanese respondents who had a negative impression of China thought the country’s actions were incompatible with international rules.

Xi Calls for More Strategic Trust Between China, U.S.

Xinhua
Xi said China stands ready to build a new model of major-country relations with the United States based on non-confrontation, non-conflict, mutual respect and win-win cooperation.

National Security Adviser Susan Rice in China at Fraught Point in Relationship

Associated Press
Rice said Obama still considered China to be a priority and that her primary reason for coming to Beijing was to hammer out the agenda for the November meeting between Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping.

From China to Jihad?

Richard Bernstein from New York Review of Books
It’s a very long way from China’s arid Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region in the country’s far northwest to its semi-tropical borders with Vietnam, Laos, and Burma in the south, and then it’s another precarious distance from there, down rivers and...

‘Capture’ of Chinese national fighting with ISIS gives China jitters

Jaime FlorCruz
CNN
It’s not clear how many Chinese nationals may be fighting with the ISIS. Wu Sike, until recently China’s special envoy to the Middle East, earlier stated that there could be about 100 of them.

Sinica Podcast

09.05.14

ISIS and China

Kaiser Kuo, Jeremy Goldkorn & more from Sinica Podcast
With the recent capture of a Chinese ISIS soldier triggering speculation about the involvement of Chinese citizens in the Iraqi civil war, Kaiser Kuo and Jeremy Goldkorn are joined in our studio by Edward Wong from The New York Times and Prashant...

The Struggle for Hong Kong

Economist
The territory’s citizens must not give up demanding full democracy—for their sake and for China’s.

Culture

09.04.14

‘Transformers 4’ May Pander to China, But America Still Wins

Ying Zhu
Hollywood made news this summer with the China triumph of Transformers: Age of Extinction, which broke all previous Chinese box office records. The Chinese box office even outsold the North American box office. But jubilation over the film’s...

Iraqis Identify Prisoner as Chinese Islamist Fighter

Edward Wong
New York Times
Chinese officials have in the past expressed concerns about citizens’ venturing abroad to join ISIS or other jihadist groups in the Middle East, or of their being influenced by such groups to carry out attacks within China.

China to Limit Foreign TV Shows on Video-Streaming Sites

Lillian Lin
Wall Street Journal
Regulators expected to cap amount of imported television content at 30 percent.

China Website Editors ‘Held for Extortion’

Damian Grammaticus
BBC
Eight people from the 21st Century financial news website and public relations firms were being investigated, Xinhua news agency said.

Caixin Media

09.03.14

Beijing Must Address Claims of Anti-Foreign Bias

Once mocked as a “toothless tiger,” China’s anti-monopoly law is finally demonstrating some bite, six years after it took effect.The three agencies responsible for enforcing it—the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the Ministry of...

Viewpoint

09.02.14

The Danger of China’s ‘Chosen Trauma’

Harry W.S. Lee
When we see young Chinese people at a state event collectively chant, “Do not forget national humiliation and realize the Chinese dream!” we may be tempted to dismiss it as yet another piece of CCP propaganda. But we may also find ourselves...

Media

09.02.14

Anti-Vice Click-Bait Spawns Popular Govt. Social Media Feed

Alexa Olesen
The Chinese government institution with the biggest social media following goes to...the nationwide anti-vice campaign called “Strike the four blacks, Eliminate the four harms.” Da Sihei, Chu Sihai in Mandarin, the four blacks and four...

Conversation

09.02.14

Hong Kong—Now What?

David Schlesinger, Mei Fong & more
David Schlesinger:Hong Kong’s tragedy is that its political consciousness began to awaken precisely at the time when its leverage with China was at its lowest ebb.Where once China needed Hong Kong as an entrepôt, legal center, financial center,...

Books

09.02.14

Cities and Stability

Jeremy L. Wallace
China’s management of urbanization is an under-appreciated factor in the regime’s longevity. The Chinese Communist Party fears “Latin Americanization”—the emergence of highly unequal megacities with their attendant slums and social unrest. Such cities threaten the survival of nondemocratic regimes. To combat the threat, many regimes, including China’s, favor cities in policymaking. Cities and Stability shows this “urban bias” to be a Faustian Bargain: cities may be stabilized for a time, but the massive in-migration from the countryside that results can generate the conditions for political upheaval. Through its hukou system of internal migration restrictions, China has avoided this dilemma, simultaneously aiding urbanites and keeping farmers in the countryside. The system helped prevent social upheaval even during the Great Recession, when tens of millions of laid-off migrant workers dispersed from coastal cities. Jeremy Wallace’s powerful account forces us to rethink the relationship between cities and political stability throughout the developing world. —Oxford University Press {chop}

Hong Kong’s Democracy Dilemma

Margaret Ng
New York Times
In a huge rally on Sunday in Hong Kong, democratic groups already were declaring a new era of civil disobedience.

Rosneft Proposes Chinese Company Take Stake in Russian Oilfield

Jack Farchy and Lucy Hornby
Financial Times
Rosneft is proposing that China take a stake in one of its largest oilfields—a deal that would deepen energy ties between Moscow and Beijing at a time when the future of western companies in Russia is uncertain.

China Opposes Proposed EU Sanctions Against Russia

Sui-Lee Wee
Reuters
EU proposed sanctions against Russia over accusations Moscow was sending troops into Ukrainian territory, saying the European Union’s push to draw up more measures would only complicate the crisis.

China Accuses MPs of Hong Kong ‘Interference’

Laura Kuenssberg
BBC
The Chinese authorities have accused British MPs of interfering in Hong Kong’s affairs.

China Targeting Foreign Companies, American Chamber Says

Scott Lanman
Bloomberg
China is targeting foreign companies with opaque laws and rules, according to a group representing U.S. businesses there, contributing to a deteriorating environment for investment in the nation.

China’s Hong Kong Mistake

Evan Osnos
New Yorker
The Beijing government has rejected demands for free, open elections for Hong Kong’s next chief executive, in 2017, enraging protesters who had called for broad rights to nominate candidates.

Will China Vet Hong Kong Election?

Robert Marquand
Christian Science Monitor
The occupation of Hong Kong’s central financial district could start early next week, after Beijing releases its guidelines Sunday on how the city’s next leader will be elected.

Viewpoint

08.28.14

China’s Nicaraguan Canal

Carlos F. Chamorro
While Nicaragua was once a central concern—indeed, almost an obsession—of Washington, as Sandinistas and Contras seemed to be battling for the soul of the Western Hemisphere, in more recent times our small and quite impoverished country has slipped...

Media

08.27.14

A ‘School Bus and a Ferrari’

Communication between China and the United States can often resemble ships passing in the night—or planes passing through international airspace. But when it comes to this particularly fraught bilateral relationship, perhaps metaphors are best...

China Considering $16 Billion for Electric-Vehicle Chargers

Bloomberg
Increased state funding would be a tailwind for carmakers coping with consumer concerns over the price, reliability and convenience of electric vehicles. 

Xi Eyes Mended China-Vietnam Ties

Xinhua
China and Vietnam will earnestly implement a basic guideline for the resolution of China-Vietnam maritime issues signed in October 2011.

Sport in China: What’s Wrong with Winning?

Kristy Lu Stout
CNN
China has a fixation on training elite champions in select sports and an education system that considers sports a luxury and not a priority.

Culture

08.27.14

Standing Up for Indie Film in China

Jonathan Landreth
In July, Transformers: Age of Extinction, the fourth in the action-packed series of Hollywood films about trucks turning into giant robots to save the world, became the first film to sell more than $300 million in tickets at China’s box office...

Culture

08.26.14

Healthy Words

Alec Ash
In 1902, Lu Xun translated Jules Verne’s From the Earth to the Moon into Chinese from the Japanese edition. Science fiction, he wrote in the preface, was “as rare as unicorn horns, which shows in a way the intellectual poverty of our time.” Not any...

New Political News Website Scolded by Party Propaganda Officials for ‘Incorrect Practices’

Chris Luo
South China Morning Post
Thepaper.cn given a ‘stern warning’ after it likely irked propaganda officials.

Fabled Uighur Princess Coming to Chinese Television as a Cartoon

Edward Wong
New York Times
Animators in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen are creating a 104-episode cartoon series loosely based on a historical Qing Dynasty imperial consort, a Uighur woman who is shrouded in myth.

China Says 8 Executed in Western Region; Charges Stem From Separatist Attacks

Chris Buckley`
New York Times
The executions were the latest in a succession of displays of might and resolve by the Chinese government, which is trying to extinguish increasingly violent discontent among Uighurs in Xinjiang.

Caixin Media

08.25.14

His Start in Oil Fuelled Zhou’s Rise to Top Cop

Zhou Yongkang, a former member of the Politburo Standing Committee, the Communist Party’s supreme decision-making body, has been the highest ranking Party cadre to be a target of a corruption investigation.The Party’s graft fighters...