How China and America See Each Other

Minxin Pei
Foreign Affairs
China scholar Minxin Pei reviews the high-level exchanges published in Nina Hachigian's book “Debating China: The U.S.-China Relationship in Ten Conversations”.

China Set to Press North Korea Further on Nuclear Aims, Kerry Says

Michael R. Gordon
New York Times
Mr. Kerry urged President Xi Jinping and senior Chinese officials to “use every tool at their disposal” to persuade North Korea to rethink its decision to be a nuclear power. 

Local Government Threatens Severe Punishments for Families of Tibetan Self-Immolators

Patrick Boehler
South China Morning Post
A county in Sichuan province has issued guidelines aimed at punishing family members of Tibetans who have set themselves on fire to protest Chinese rule in their homeland.

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...

Media

02.19.14

Chinese Netizens (Still) Love ‘House of Cards’

“Everyone in China who works on this level pays who they need to pay.” Mild spoiler alert: These are the words of the fictitious Xander Feng, an influential Chinese billionaire on the Netflix series "House of Cards," a show that follows...

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...

Media

02.13.14

Did President Xi’s Dumpling Outing Create a Pilgrimage Site?

Isaac Stone Fish & Helen Gao
Beijing, China—It’s well after lunch and Liu Fengju still hasn’t gotten her food. The sixty-seven-year-old wife of a retired railway worker came to Beijing to spend Spring Festival, the annual seven-day Chinese New Year celebration, with her niece...

Conversation

02.13.14

Are Ethnic Tensions on the Rise in China?

Enze Han, James Palmer & more
On December 31, President Xi Jinping appeared on CCTV and extended his “New Year’s wishes to Chinese of all ethnic groups.” On January 15, Beijing officials detained Ilham Tohti, a leading Uighur economist and subsequently accused him of “separtist...

Two New Reports Slam Hong Kong Media Self-Censorship

Hong Wrong
Hong Kong fell to 61st in the Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Index, behind Burkina Faso, Moldova and Haiti.

Microsoft Denies Global Censorship of China-Related Searches

Paul Carsten
Reuters
Microsoft denied it was omitting websites from its Bing search engine results for users outside China after a Chinese rights group said the U.S. firm was censoring material the government deems politically sensitive.

This Woman is the Voice of Tibet for China and the World

Matthew Bell
Public Radio International
Tsering Woeser is a prolific blogger who writes in Chinese, the language she grew up with in school in Tibetan towns in southwestern Sichuan province. This makes Woeser's voice for the rights of Tibetans unique.

An Offer They Can’t Refuse

Isaac Stone Fish
Foreign Policy
Will China win its 65-year war with Taiwan—without firing a shot?

Russia, China Snub U.N. Talks on Syria Aid Access

Michelle Nichols And Louis Charbonneau
Reuters
Russia and China on rebuffed the United States, France and Britain by failing to attend negotiations on a draft UN Security Council resolution to boost aid access in Syria.

Caixin Media

02.11.14

Local Governments Aim for Lower GDP Growth This Year

Most of the local governments that have announced their GDP targets for this year aimed lower than they did in 2013, citing the need to rebalance the economy and improve the quality of growth. Many missed their growth targets last year.The...

Spanish Judge Orders Arrest of China's Former President Jiang Zemin

South China Morning Post
A Spanish judge seeks to arrest Jiang and four others for alleged genocide in Tibet under a ‘universal jurisdiction’ doctrine that can prosecute human rights cases which took place outside Spain.

China and Taiwan Hold First Official Talks Since Civil War

Austin Ramzy
New York Times
The discussions were not expected to produce major breakthroughs, but they had important symbolic significance.

How Does China Impact the Global Economy? (Video)

Bloomberg
Council on Foreign Relations Senior Fellow Elizabeth C. Economy discusses the Chinese economy, natural resources, the pollution problem, the fallacies of referring to the C.C.P. as a “totalitarian regime”, and more on Bloomberg Television’s “...

Chinese Dissident Lands at Cato Institute With a Caution to Colleauges

Tamar Lewin
New York Times
Xia Yeliang, dismissed from his job as an economics professor at Peking University after clashes with his government over liberalization, warned that American universities should be careful about partnerships with Chinese universities. “They use the...

No, China Did Not Win the Global Battle for Supremacy

Daniel Rosen
Foreign Policy
Eric X. Li enumerates the defects of a U.S.-centric international system that he perceives to be crumbling, praises the deftness and strength he sees in China's statecraft, and predicts a coming period of international volatility as...

China’s Television War on Japan

Murong Xuecun
New York Times
The state prohibits content that “incites ethnic hatred,” yet according to Southern Weekly more than 70 anti-Japanese TV series were screened in China in 2012. The result of this stream of rancor is just what you’d expect. &...

Culture

02.10.14

Will Xi Jinping Stop the Music?

Sheila Melvin
In late November of 2013, I sat chatting in a California concert hall with one of the PRC’s most famous first-generation pianists. Normally at this time of year, the pianist told me, he would be heading off to China to perform multiple New Year’s...

Tangling with China

Editorial Board
New York Times
The international community should insist China abide the rule of law and heed the United Nations arbitration ruling where tensions around China’s claims in the South and East China Seas are concerned.

The State of Journalism in China

Paul Mooney, Evan Osnos, David Barboza...
Nieman Journalism Lab
How reporters are trying to work around China’s resurgent censorship, 25 years after Tiananmen.

Media

02.06.14

Beijing’s State Secrets Law—Still Broad, Still Opaque

Beijing may be whittling back its widely reviled state secrets laws—but given their opacity, it’s hard to say for sure. Chinese Premier Li Keqiang signed a regulation, announced February 2, that would prohibit Chinese government organs from “using...

The Original Manchurian Candidate

G.E.
Economist
In 1868 Anson Burlingame became not only America’s first minister to China to reside in Beijing, but also China’s first ambassador to the world.

China, the Death Star of Emerging Markets

William Pesek
Bloomberg
On any list of banking accidents waiting to happen, China is assured a place at the very top. But could a crash there take the entire global economy down with it?

Growing Concern With China's Behavior at Sea: Senior U.S. Diplomat

Lesley Wroughton
Reuters
The United States has growing concerns that China's maritime claims in the disputed South China Sea are an effort to control oceans in the Asia-Pacific region, a senior U.S. official said on Wednesday.

Commentary: Philippine Leader's Senseless Attack Against China Smells of Amateurish Politician

Ming Jinwei
Xinhua
A Xinhua writer fiercely responds to Philippine President Benigno S. Aquino III’s comparison of China to Nazy Germany.

The Censorship Pendulum

Yu Hua
New York Times
People like to hear voices critical of the government, so social media companies can’t silence them entirely.

China Ends One Notorious Form Of Detention, But Keeps Others

Frank Langfitt
NPR
Despite the closure of labor camps across China, groups targeted as political threats are still subject to incarceration in mental institutions and secret jails. 

Philippine Leader Sounds Alarm on China

Keith Bradsher
New York Times
President Benigno S. Aquino III called for nations around the world to support the Philippines in resisting China’s claims to the seas near his country, drawing a comparison to the West’s failure to support Czechoslovakia against Hitler’s demands...

Xi Jinping’s Inner Circle: The Shaanxi Gang

Cheng Li
Brookings Institution
This analysis is an excerpt of a paper examining the members of Xi Jinping's inner circle. It specifically looks at the “Shaanxi Gang,” national leaders tied to Shaanxi province whose ascent to leadership paralleled Xi’s own.

Conversation

02.05.14

What Should the U.S. Do about China’s Barring Foreign Reporters?

Nicholas Lemann, Michel Hockx & more
Last week, the White House said it was “very disappointed” in China for denying a visa to another journalist working for The New York Times in Beijing, forcing him to leave the country after eight years. What else should the U.S. government...

Books

02.05.14

By All Means Necessary

Elizabeth C. Economy and Michael Levi
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}

China to Ramp Up Military Spending

Michael Forsythe
New York Times
China will spend $148 billion on its military this year, up from $139.2 billion in 2013, according to IHS Jane’s, a defense industry consulting and analysis company.

Taiwan: The Winner in the China-Japan Row?

Jens Kastner
Al Jazeera
Dispute between two powers results in unexpected benefits for tiny Taiwan's fishing industry.

In China’s War On Bad Air, Government Decision to Release Data Gives Hope

Simon Denyer
Washington Post
China’s Communist state is hardly known for its transparency. So when environmental groups appealed for official air pollution data, they were not expecting much.

Justice in China: A Conversation with Yiyun Li

Emily D. Parker
Guernica
Emily Parker talks with Yiyun Li about self-censorship in China, the line between fact and fiction, and whether it’s possible to create good art under a repressive regime.

In China, ‘Once the Villages Are Gone, the Culture Is Gone’

Ian Johnson
New York Times
Across China, cultural traditions like the Lei family’s music are under threat. Rapid urbanization means village life, the bedrock of Chinese culture, is rapidly disappearing, and with it, traditions and history.

Reports

02.01.14

The State of Journalism in China

Paul Mooney, Anne Henochowicz, Yu Gao, Qian Gang, Luo Changping, Hu Yong, David Barboza, Hu Shuli, Yang Xiao, Evan Osnos,
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...

Propaganda Photographer Wang Shilong

Shanghaiist
Wang Shilong 王世龙 (born in 1930 in Henan province) served in the Propaganda Department of the People’s Liberation Army as photographer and oil painter between the years 1948 and 1950. He then became a photojournalist for local newspapers and...

Media

01.31.14

Closing Time? China’s Social Media Crackdown Has Hit Weibo Hard

Findings by East China Normal University (ECNU), a research university in Shanghai, commissioned by respected U.K. outlet The Telegraph and released January 30, lodges concrete data behind what frequent users and analysts of Chinese social media...

China is Playing Chicken with the U.S. Military in the South China Sea

Benjamin Carlson
Global Post
Vessels from the U.S. military and other countries increasingly find themselves in high-stakes confrontations in the region.

White House ‘Very Disappointed’ NYT Reporter was Forced to Leave China

Andrew Beaujon
Weekly Standard
The statement also raised concerns about the treatment of foreign journalists in China. 

United Against China?

The Editorial Board
New York Times
Japan invests in India, and the two countries prepare for potential hostility from China. 

China Forces New York Times Reporter to Leave Country

William Wan
Washington Post
Ramzy’s forced departure will result in the first full-time Times correspondent stationed in Taiwan. 

China Challenging U.S. Military Technological Edge: Pentagon Official

David Alexander
Reuters
Chinese and Russian military developments are threatening to the U.S.’ technological edge. 

Class Consciousness

Ian Johnson
New Yorker
China’s new bourgeoisie discovers alternative education

China’s Global Popstars

Rebecca Kanthor
BBC
The ‘Earth Music Project’ will train Ruhan Jia who is one of the first popstars to be actively promoted by the government.

Beijing Forces U.S. Reporter to Leave China

Calum MacLeod
USA Today
“The government is punishing the Times for the content of its coverage...it seems as simple as that.”

Baucus Pledges to Press China on Security Issues, Trade in Hearing on Ambassador Post

Anne Gearan
Washington Post
Baucus says he will hold firm on human rights, intellectual property, free trade, and marine navigation. 

Virgin Galactic Bans Chinese Tourists from Space Flights Fearing Espionage

Asian News International
Tycoons willing to pay 250,000 dollars for the tickets have been advised to get another nationality's passport to board the flights. 

Why is the Chinese Communist Party so Afraid of Legal Activist Xu Zhiyong?

Yiyi Lu
Foreign Policy
Some fear that Xu and his fellow activists in the New Citizens Movement had formed an “anti-CCP clique”. 

Publisher of Book Critical of China’s Leader Is Arrested

Chris Buckley
New York Times
Yiu Mantin, a retired engineer from Hong Kong, had plans to distribute a withering denunciation of Xi Jinping. 

China's New Foreign Policy: Not Conflict But Convergence Of Interests

Yan Xuetong
Guancha.cn
China will begin to underwrite domestic benefits in exchange for political support in Central and Southeast Asia.  

Who is Xu Zhiyong?

Malcolm Moore
Telegraph
Four people whose lives were change by Xu Zhiyong describe how he helped them. 

Anxiety Rising Over Relations Between Japan and China

Andrew Ross Sorkin
New York Times
A "stealth war" between the second and third largest economies sparks fear amongst international businesses and leaders.

Jailed Dissident’s Wife: ‘I Don’t Want You to Give Up’

Wall Street Journal
A public letter from the wife of Xu Zhiyong shows the emotional burden imposed on the family members of jailed dissidents.

China Appears Set to Force Times Reporter to Leave

Andrew Jacobs
New York Times
Austin Ramzy is the most recent of such journalists since a critical article about Wen Jiabao and his family was written in 2013.