Notes from ChinaFile
02.01.24“It’s Too Convenient to Say That Xi Jinping Is a Second Mao”
The Chinese Communist Party, an organization of over ninety million members, remains opaque to many outsiders, even within China. Wall Street Journal reporter Chun Han Wong spent years in Beijing documenting social, political, and economic changes...
The NYRB China Archive
12.07.23A Fallen Artist in Mao’s China
from New York Review of Books
This book will be denounced in Beijing. Ha Jin’s The Woman Back from Moscow is a novel based on the life of Sun Weishi, an adopted daughter of Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai, whose brilliant mind and intensive study in Moscow of the Stanislavski acting...
Viewpoint
01.31.23Where Does Xi Jinping Go from Here?
Popular narratives about Chinese leader Xi Jinping are in flux. Just a few months ago, he was widely seen as an unassailable force. But unusually widespread protests in late November, followed by a complete reversal of his zero-COVID policy, have...
Conversation
12.02.22Jiang Zemin, 1926-2022
Former Chinese leader Jiang Zemin died on Wednesday at the age of 96, shortly after anger about the zero-COVID policy had boiled over into a wave of protest last weekend. Jiang took the country through the boom years of the 1990s, a time now...
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08.09.18Where China’s Top Leaders Go in Summer and in Secret: A Brief History of Beidaihe
South China Morning Post
When state radio reported on Wednesday that Premier Li Keqiang met United Nations General Assembly President Maria Fernanda Espinosa in Beidaihe, it was the clearest confirmation that the annual summer gathering of China’s most influential...
The NYRB China Archive
03.14.18Chairman Xi, Chinese Idol
from New York Review of Books
For nearly sixty years since it opened in 1959, the Great Hall of the People has been the public focus of Chinese politics, a monumental granite block that extends 1,200 feet along the west side of Tiananmen Square. It is where the country’s leaders...
Conversation
02.25.18Xi Won’t Go
In a surprise Sunday move, Beijing announced that the Communist Party leadership wants to abolish the two-term limit for China’s president and vice president, potentially paving the way for China’s 64-year-old President Xi Jinping to stay in power...
The NYRB China Archive
01.18.18The Red Emperor
from New York Review of Books
This fall, the Nineteenth Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (C.C.P.) gave proof that during his five years as general secretary Xi Jinping has become the most powerful leader of China since Mao Zedong died in 1976. Most observers, Chinese and...
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10.25.17Xi Jinping Unveils China’s New Leaders but No Clear Successor
New York Times
President Xi Jinping thrust China into a new era of strongman politics on Wednesday, unveiling a leadership team without a likely successor among the six officials who will help him rule for the next half decade.
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08.31.17CPC Expected to Convene 19th National Congress on Oct. 18
Xinhua
One of China's most important political events, the key five-yearly congress will decide the new leadership line-up.