Media
11.27.12
Spotted on Weibo: Chinese Leaders Share a Human Moment
An active Beijing-based micro-blogger named Dongdong Wang recently tweeted this image on Sina Weibo, China’s Twitter: {vertical_photo_right}At first glance, it doesn’t look like much: Outgoing Premier Wen Jiabao (left) and outgoing...
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11.27.12How Ordinary Chinese Are Talking And Fighting Back
NPR
Roughly 400 million Chinese use Weibo, China's Twitter, and often do so to expose corruption.
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11.27.12China's Passport Propaganda Baffles Experts
Christian Science Monitor
Vietnam and India are angry at new P.R.C. passports picturing disputed land and sea as China's.
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11.27.12People’s Daily Quotes the Onion: Kim Jong Eun ‘Sexiest Man Alive’
Wall Street Journal
Top Communist newspaper cited American satirical paper's slide show of North Korean leader.
Culture
11.27.12
Remember to Tell the Truth
The recording of memory brings history to life and creates a legacy of its own. In 2010, documentary filmmaker Wu Wenguang launched the Memory Project to try to shine a light on the long-shrouded memories of one of modern China’s most traumatic...
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11.26.12Ai's Song: Elton John Praises Artist in Beijing
Wall Street Journal
Elton John struck a note of support for dissident artist Ai Weiwei at his show in Beijing, but did he also strike a blow at China’s live music scene?
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11.26.12China's Ping An Eyes Legal Action after NYT Report on Leader's Family Wealth
Reuters
Chinese Insurance giant said recent media coverage contained "serious inaccuracies, facts being distorted and taken out of context."
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11.25.12China Crackdown Fuels Tibet Immolations Group
Agence France-Presse
A crackdown in China's Tibetan areas has fuelled dozens of self-immolations in protest at Beijijng rule, says the International Campaign for Tibet.
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11.25.12Will China's New Leaders Change Tibet policy?
BBC
Xi Zhongxun, father of China's new president, Xi Jinping, was a former leader known for a more conciliatory approach to Tibetans.
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11.25.12Lobbying, a Windfall and a Leader’s Family
New York Times
Wen Jiabao's relatives grew extraordinarily wealthy during his leadership, with most wealth coming from Ping An Insurance shares.
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11.24.12Pressure Mounts on Carr over China Rights Abuses
Sydney Morning Herald
Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr is faced with confronting Beijing with rights abuses after an Australian doctor was quietly jailed.
Caixin Media
11.23.12
Asset Transparency Urged to Fight Government Graft
Calls for government officials to disclose personal and family assets are growing louder in China, mainly in reaction to the rising number of corruption cases affecting officialdom.And some officials are listening. A local Communist Party official...
The NYRB China Archive
11.22.12
China: Worse Than You Ever Imagined
from New York Review of Books
Last summer I took a trip to Xinyang, a rural area of wheat fields and tea plantations in central China’s Henan province. I met a pastor, a former political prisoner, and together we made a day trip to Rooster Mountain, a onetime summer retreat for...
Media
11.21.12
Official Online Poll: Chinese Want Democracy
With China’s new leadership now set, Chinese Web users have turned their attention to answering the key question: “What’s next?” In concert with the 18th Party Congress, the website of Communist Party-sanctioned Peoples’s Daily hosted an...
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11.21.12China's Powerbrokers Block Reformers
Reuters
Retired leaders in China's Communist Party used a last-minute straw poll to block two pro-reform candidates from joining the policymaking standing committee, including one who had alienated party elders, sources with ties to the leadership said...
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11.21.12Women in China Leadership Fewer Than Under Mao
Bloomberg
The chart of the day shows the falling percentage of women in the ruling Communist Party’s Central Committee, a group of about 200 members that includes all seven men on the nation’s top decision-making body, the Politburo Standing...
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11.20.12Op-Ed: Japan-China Relations at a Crossroads
New York Times
Japan's foreign minister argues that there is no doubt that the Senkaku Islands, known as the Diaoyu in China, are a part of Japan.
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11.20.12Why Is China Censoring a Fake Photo of its Leaders Doing 'Gangnam Style'?
Washington Post
A doctored photo of China's top officials doing a popular South Korean dance went viral 'til Chinese censors pulled it down.
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11.20.12Corruption in China's Orphanages
Financial Times
One of my children is from an orphanage where the director, a government official, has created a nice little business in orphan homecomings, which include a lavish meal, hugs from the caregivers, and a shower of gifts for the returning child. The...
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11.19.12America and China in the Aftermath of Election and Succession: Paths and Pitfalls
Brookings Institution
Panel discussion with Li Cheng, Kenneth Lieberthal and Ambassador Stapleton Roy
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11.19.12The Key to Bringing Democracy to China
Foreign Policy
For many years, Western leaders have couched the argument for greater political openness and democratization in China in moral terms, citing the universality of both human rights and the aspirations for freedom and independence. In May, defending...
Media
11.19.12
A Conservative Commentator Calls Out Chinese Liberals, and Liberals Shout Back
Speech on the Chinese Internet, it seems, is beginning to thaw once more following the country’s leadership transition. After months of speculation, new Chinese leader Xi Jinping was announced on November 16 at the close of the 18th Party Congress,...
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11.19.12The Headache of Mo Yan, China’s Nobel Prize Winner in Literature
Washington Post
Mo Yan had a tuxedo made for the December 10 prize gala in Stockholm and is studying the waltz, in case he's invited to dance.
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11.19.12China: The Mao Dynasty Moves Toward Democracy And Human Rights
Forbes
China is visibly evolving toward liberal republican governance. Ten years, rather than life, tenure for its leaders is a major step.
Photo Gallery
11.19.12
China’s Footprint in Myanmar
President Barack Obama’s visit to Yangon (also known as Rangoon) today shines a spotlight on a story that has already captured the world’s attention: namely, the remarkable political transformation that has been underway over the past year in...
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11.19.12Getting Over Ai Weiwei
Randian
There are, though, significant dangers in the upholding of Ai as our sole representative/mediator of artistic resistance to authority within China. While Ai’s bluntly confrontational and often bombastic stance can be readily digested within Western...
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11.17.12The Saturday Profile: Peng Liyuan, First Lady of China
New York Times
The top pop-folk icon is beloved for a glass-cracking soprano and her range of roles, from Tibetan yak herder to stiff-lipped general.
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11.17.12China Says Does Not Want South China Sea Overshadowing Summit
Reuters
China's claim to a stretch of water off its south coast also claimed by neighbors makes it Asia's biggest potential military hot spot.
Caixin Media
11.17.12
Political Reform: The Way to Go
Sections of the 18th National Party Congress report that have justifiably generated the most attention are references to political reform.Anyone who did not harbor unrealistic hopes about the congress and its outcome can read the report and find...
Caixin Media
11.17.12
As 18th Congress Ends, a Peek into the Process
Over the past twenty years, economist Zhang Zhuoyuan has witnessed and actively participated in building the nation’s economic policy.He participated in the drafting of reports at each of the Communist Party’s three previous national congresses,...
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11.16.12China's Top Censor's New Leadership Role Raises Fears
Agence France-Presse
Chinese propaganda boss Liu Yunshan has risen to the country’s top leadership in what could be a perilous sign for online debate.
Sinica Podcast
11.16.12
The State of the Navy
from Sinica Podcast
After two weeks focusing on developments at the Eighteenth Party Congress, and with the next generation of China’s leadership now public news for the world to digest, this week on Sinica we take a break from China’s leadership transition and turn...
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11.15.12China’s New Chief
New Yorker
When it was all over this morning, and the seven men had returned once again to the secluded backstage of the Great Hall of the People, trailed by their security, and the stage where they had stood was suddenly empty. I walked up to the spot where...
Viewpoint
11.15.12
Age of China’s New Leaders May Have Been Key to Their Selection
Earlier this week, before the new Politburo Standing Committee (PBSC) and Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party were announced, I argued that the Party faces the difficult problem of how to allocate power in the absence of an open and legitimate...
Environment
11.15.12An Insight into the Green Vocabulary of the Chinese Communist Party
from chinadialogue
After years of neglect, the environment is gradually gaining more attention from China’s leaders. The most noticeable manifestation of this is in their vocabulary.Six months ago, Hu Jintao, speaking at the opening of a study session for provincial...
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11.15.12Habemus Papam! China Unveils its New Leaders
Economist
With its unique and mystifying blend of pageantry, ritual and secrecy, China’s ruling Communist Party has named its seven new leaders.
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11.15.12The New Member's of China's Ruling Body
New York Times
All of China’s new Politburo Standing Committee, the group of politicians who rule country, have close connections with former leaders.
Viewpoint
11.14.12
The Future of Legal Reform
Carl Minzner, Professor of Law at Fordham University, talks here about the ways China’s legal reforms have ebbed and flowed, speeding up in the early 2000s, but then slowing down again after legal activists began to take the government at its word,...
Viewpoint
11.14.12
Change in Historical Context
China’s Communist Party has only ruled the country since 1949. But China has a long history of contentious transfers of power among its ruler. In these videos, Yale historian, Peter C. Perdue, an expert on China's last dynasty, the Qing, puts...
Viewpoint
11.14.12
Are You Happier Than You Were Ten Years Ago?
“Many Chinese feel that they have not participated in the economic benefits of an economy that has been growing very rapidly,” says Michael Evans, a vice chairman of the Goldman Sachs Group and head of growth markets for the Wall Street...
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11.14.12Chinese Authorities Putting Pressure on Businesses to Help Censor the Web
New York Times
Web police units directed companies, including U.S. joint ventures, to buy and install hardware to log traffic, block select sites, and connect with police servers.
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11.14.12Opinion: Don't Expect Radical Reforms in China
Financial Times
If Li Keqiang walks on stage second it will suggest the premier post has been upgraded to a position of greater political clout.
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11.14.12Zhou Seen Exiting PBOC as China Installs New Economic Leadership
Bloomberg
Top finance official Vice Premier Wang Qishan will move to a new role and Commerce Minister Chen Deming is also likely to exit.
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11.13.12The Real China Model
New York Times
As a historian, however, I cannot let pass unchallenged the characterization of premodern Chinese political culture as “meritocratic.” Over the last 20 years, research has shown that the keju was far from the “ladder of...
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11.13.12China’s Great Political Leap Backward
Wall Street Journal
After years of parsing China's political jargon, I wasn't expecting anything dramatic from the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, which opened in Beijing last week. It was foolish, I knew, to look for bold statements...
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11.13.12At Mao-style Conclave, China Embraces Twitter Age
Associated Press
Dozens of the more than 2,000 party delegates, among them Chairman Mao's grandson, are using social media to wax rhapsodic about China's rise and Party General Secretary Hu Jintao's live 90-minute reading of highlights from this year...
Viewpoint
11.13.12
China’s Next Leaders: A Guide to What’s at Stake
Just a little more than a week after the American presidential election, China will choose its own leaders in its own highly secretive way entirely inside the Communist Party. What’s at stake for China—and for the rest of the world—is not just who...
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11.13.12The U.S.-China Reset
New York Times
The leaders of the U.S. and China may not want to say it out loud, but they would privately admit that U.S.-China relations are in trouble.
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11.12.12China Dodges Politcally Sensitive Questions at Key Congress
Reuters
In pre-Olypmics 2007, officials took solo interviews and overseas reporters were encouraged to ask questions. Not so this time.
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11.12.12China Mandates 'Social Risk' Reviews for Big Projects
New York Times
The move is aimed at curtailing the large and increasingly violent environmental protests of the last year.
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11.12.12Xinhua Insight: China Will Never Copy Western Political System
Xinhua
Xinhua says Hu Jintao wants China to support state power and at the same time improve the system of community-level democracy.
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11.11.12Recording the Untold Stories of China’s Great Famine
NPR
A young man trudges doggedly around his village, notebook in hand, fringe flopping over his glasses. He goes from door to door, calling on the elderly.The young man has one main question: Who died in our village during the Great Famine?This is the...
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11.11.12Exclusive: Hu Jintao Set to Step Down as Military Chief
South China Morning Post
Outgoing President Hu Jintao will formally relinquish his position as military chief at the end of the 18th party congress this week, according to sources.His decision to opt for complete retirement surprised many analysts, who had expected him to...
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11.11.12China Film Regulator: Don't Blame us for Hollywood Hiccups
Wall Street Journal
Beijing says it was the market that decided to bar imported films from domestic cinemas this summer, not film regulators.
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11.11.12Building China's Enlightenment
Sydney Morning Herald
China's most ambutious, radical and consequential think tank behind the scenes at the 18th Party Congress.
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11.11.12China, at Party Congress, Touts its Cultural Advances
New York Times
Party guidance is the "soul” of China's moves to privitize and promote industries that can spread soft power abroad.
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11.10.12China Turns Corner on Economy as Party Chooses New Leaders
Reuters
The world's No2 economy has stopped slowing, the economic planning agency said, forecasting 2012 GDP growth of 7.5 percent or more.
Sinica Podcast
11.10.12
Eighteenth Party Roundup
from Sinica Podcast
This week on Sinica, our hosts Kaiser Kuo and Jeremy Goldkorn are joined by Gady Epstein from the Economist and we turn our attention to the Eighteenth Party Congress, which officially started in Beijing earlier this week. As China’s capital...
Postcard
11.09.12
Where to, China?
The windows of buses and taxis going by Tiananmen Square have been taped shut. The paramilitary police stand at attention at all major traffic intersections—even near the old alleyway where I live some five kilometers away. Those are sure signs that...
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11.09.12Opinion: Meritocracy Versus Democracy
New York Times
Without much fanfare, Beijing has introduced significant reforms and established an elaborate system of what can be called “selection plus election.”