What Could Happen in China in 2014?

Gordon Orr
McKinsey & Company
Gordon Orr predicts corporate focus on driving productivity, increased interest in CIOs, bankrupt shopping malls, and European investment in Chinese soccer clubs. 

Slowly, Asia’s Factories Begin to Turn Green

Mike Ives
New York Times
Despite a lack of legal restriction, foreign companies in Asia are beginning to set up environmentally sustainable factories to their financial benefit. 

Caixin Media

01.08.14

How Shanghai’s Free Trade Zone Works

At a conference table surrounded by bookshelves in his Shanghai office, the city’s party boss Han Zheng recently polished the image of a commercial crown jewel—the China (Shanghai) Pilot Free Trade Zone—during an exclusive interview with Caixin.Han...

Caixin Media

01.07.14

Chinese Firm Linked to CNPC Suspected of Fraud in Iraq

Just after the December 29 celebration of the Muslim holiday Ashura in southern Iraq, heads of the Iraqi subsidiary of China National Offshore Oil Corp. (CNOOC) received a letter titled “Suspending all activities of Hermic.”The sender of the letter...

China Approves Pilot Plan to Set Up 3-5 Private Banks

Nick Macfie
Reuters
In a step to boost financial support for cash-starved smaller firms, The China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC) has announced its plan to maintain “prudential regulatory standards” in approving private banks. 

Media

01.03.14

Coming to Chinese Headlines in 2014

Chinese people have spent another year breathing dirty air, fretting about food safety, poking fun at corrupt officials, and complaining about tightening censorship—but as a discerning consumer of international news, you probably knew that already...

Police Seize 3 Tons Meth in South China Village

Julie Makinen
Los Angeles Times
Call it “Breaking Bad: China Edition.” More than 3,000 police officers equipped with helicopters and motorboats and accompanied by dogs descended on a southern Chinese village notorious for making crystal meth, seizing 3 tons of the drug and 23 tons...

Wal-Mart Recalls Fake Donkey-Meat Snacks in China

Don Lee
Los Angeles Times
Some months ago, rat meat was passed off as strips of lamb in China. Now it's fox sold as donkey-meat snacks. And in the middle of the latest Chinese food scare: Wal-Mart. 

China May Raise Iran Oil Imports With New Contract: Sources

Chen Aizhu
Reuters
China may buy more Iranian oil this year as a state trader is negotiating a new light crude contract that could raise imports from Tehran to levels not seen since tough Western sanctions were imposed in 2012, running the risk of upsetting Washington.

China 2013 Box Office Surges 27 Percent to $3.6 Billion

Clifford Coonan
Hollywood Reporter
Chinese box office revenue rose $760 million to $3.57 billion, an increase of 27 percent over last year's $2.8 billion (17 billion yuan), data from China's biggest online film review site, Mtime, showed.

Caixin Media

12.30.13

The Rise and Fall of a Local Official Obsessed

A November 27 statement by the Communist Party’s anti-corruption watchdog confirmed that the Deputy Governor of Hubei Province, Guo Youming, was being investigated for graft.Three days later, Guo was removed from his post, becoming the thirteenth...

Other

12.26.13

2013 Year in Review

As the year draws to a close, we want to take a moment to look back at some of the stories ChinaFile published in 2013. We hope you’ll find something that interests you to read—or watch—over the holidays.It’s hard to remember a recent year that didn...

Other

12.23.13

[Transcript] One Year Later, China’s New Leaders

J. Stapleton Roy, Susan Shirk & more
Nearly a year to the day after seven new leaders ascended to their posts on the Standing Committee of China’s Politburo, the Asia Society held a public conversation with The New Yorker’s Evan Osnos; Dr. Susan Shirk of the University of California,...

How China Spends Christmas

BBC
As the western world eagerly anticipates the festive season, in China Christmas will be a relatively subdued affair.

Li Ruigang’s CMC Buys Stake in Caixin Media

Patrick Frater
Variety
China Media Capital, a $833 million venture capital fund with connections to Rupert Murdoch, Time Warner and Jeffrey Katzenberg, has bought a stake in Caixin Media, one of China’s leading independent news organizations.

Bitcoin in China

Suwatchai Songwanich
Nation (Thailand)
Bitcoin, a virtual stored-value system not regulated by any country or banking authority, has been a huge phenomenon this year and much of the action has been driven out of China.

Is Beijing About to Pull the Plug on Two Major American News Operations in China?

Mary Kay Magistad
Public Radio International
In an unprecedented move, the Chinese government has declined to process visa applications for the entire Beijing bureaus of The New York Times and Bloomberg News, in apparent retaliation for investigative reporting those two media organizations...

Apple Blocks Anti-Censorship ‘FreeWeibo’ App in China

Agence France-Presse
U.S. technology giant Apple has removed the FreeWeibo application intended to allow users to read sensitive postings on Sina Weibo, a Chinese equivalent of Twitter, from its Chinese app store on orders from Beijing. 

Environment

12.12.13

China’s Coal Industry at a Crossroads

from chinadialogue
Times are getting rough for Wang Guangchun, a ten-year veteran sales manager of a state-owned coal company.“During the golden era of the past, clients came to find me,” Wang said. “Starting last year, we had to go looking for them.”Wang is employed...

Journo for a Journo

Joshua Keating
Slate
If China kicks out U.S. journalists, should the U.S. do the same to Chinese journalists?

Is Beijing About to Boot The New York Times?

Isaac Stone Fish
Foreign Policy
The Chinese government’s crackdown on Bloomberg and “the paper of record” reaches a head.

Foreign Correspondents in China Do Not Censor Themselves to Get Visas

Hannah Beech
Time
Compared with five years ago, when the Chinese leadership promised to ease restrictions on foreign journalists as part of reforms unveiled during the Beijing Olympics charm campaign, the atmosphere has clearly chilled. 

IKEA Toy Wolf Becomes Unlikely Anti-Government Symbol In Hong Kong

Yuen Chan
Huffington Post
An IKEA toy wolf whose name in Cantonese, Lo Mo Sai, sounds like the offensive phrase "mom’s c***," was thrown at Hong Kong’s chief executive, Leung Chun-ying on Sunday. "Throw Lo Mo Sai" in Cantonese sounds like "f*** your...

Late to the Party? The U.S. Government’s Response to China’s Censorship

Elizabeth Lynch
China Law & Policy
When China denied veteran journalist Paul Mooney’s visa request in November, neither the State Department, Administration officials nor anyone on Capitol Hill said anything publicly about a U.S. citizen appearing to be punished for his speech.

China’s Government Is Scaring Foreign Journalists Into Censoring Themselves

Emily D. Parker
New Republic
The story of self-censorship in China is a quieter tale of unwritten articles, avoided topics and careful phrasing.

China’s Strong-Arm Tactics Toward U.S. Media Merit a Response

Washington Post
Chinese journalists get an open door to the United States. This reflects U.S. values and is fundamentally correct. If China continues to exclude and threaten American journalists, the U.S. should inject a little more symmetry into its visa policy.

Caixin Media

12.09.13

Traditional Chinese Medicine Struggling to Find Cure for Regulatory Woes in the U.S.

In November, the traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) Fuzheng Huayu Tablets passed the second phase of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) clinical testing.Before this, only one TCM drug had cleared the second of the three phases needed for...

Conversation

12.07.13

Will China Shut Out the Foreign Press?

Winston Lord, Paul Mooney & more
Some two dozen journalists employed by The New York Times and Bloomberg News have not yet received the visas they need to continue to report and live in China after the end of this year. Without them, they will effectively be expelled from the...

Books

12.03.13

Junkyard Planet

Adam Minter
When you drop your Diet Coke can or yesterday’s newspaper in the recycling bin, where does it go? Probably halfway around the world, to people and places that clean up what you don’t want and turn it into something you can’t wait to buy. In Junkyard Planet, Adam Minter—veteran journalist and son of an American junkyard owner—travels deeply into a vast, often hidden, multibillion-dollar industry that’s transforming our economy and environment. Minter takes us from back-alley Chinese computer recycling operations to high-tech facilities capable of processing a jumbo jet’s worth of recyclable trash every day. Along the way, we meet an unforgettable cast of characters who’ve figured out how to build fortunes from what we throw away: Leonard Fritz, a young boy “grubbing” in Detroit’s city dumps in the 1930s; Johnson Zeng, a former plastics engineer roaming America in search of scrap; and Homer Lai, an unassuming barber turned scrap titan in Qingyuan, China. Junkyard Planet reveals how “going green” usually means making money—and why that’s often the most sustainable choice, even when the recycling methods aren’t pretty. With unmatched access to and insight on the junk trade, and the explanatory gifts and an eye for detail worthy of a John McPhee or William Langewiesche, Minter traces the export of America’s recyclables and the massive profits that China and other rising nations earn from it. What emerges is an engaging, colorful, and sometimes troubling tale of consumption, innovation, and the ascent of a developing world that recognizes value where Americans don’t. Junkyard Planet reveals that we might need to learn a smarter way to take out the trash.—Bloomsbury Press{chop}

Conversation

12.03.13

What Posture Should Joe Biden Adopt Toward A Newly Muscular China?

Susan Shirk
Susan Shirk:United States Vice President Joseph Biden is the American political figure who has spent the most time with Xi Jinping and has the deepest understanding of Xi as an individual. Before Xi’s selection as P.R.C. president and C.C.P. general...

Caixin Media

12.02.13

How an Expectant Mother Died in Qingdao

One of the fifty-five people to die in an explosion on November 22 at a pipeline owned by China Petroleum & Chemical Corp. (Sinopec) in the eastern city of Qingdao was a twenty-three-year-old pregnant woman named Chen Na.Her husband, who...

Caixin Media

11.25.13

Chinese State Oil Scandal Has Links to Iraq

A legal storm that started with China’s largest state-owned oil company has expanded to include Iraq and led to the detention of more people.Mi Xiaodong, a former mid-level official at China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) was detained by...

Bloomberg News Suspends Reporter Whose Article on China Was Not Published

Edward Wong and Christine Haughney
New York Times
Award-winning Hong Kong-based Bloomberg reporter Michael Forsythe met with supervisors and was placed on leave, said two Bloomberg employees with knowledge of the situation, which was supposed to be private.

Reporter on Unpublished Bloomberg Article Is Suspended

Edward Wong and Christine Haughney
New York Times
A reporter for Bloomberg News who worked on an unpublished article about China that employees for the company said had been killed for political reasons by top Bloomberg editors was suspended last week by managers.

China Unveils Boldest Reforms in Decades, Shows Xi in Command

Kevin Yao and Ben Blanchard
Reuters
China has relaxed its longstanding one-child policy and further freed up the markets in order to put the world's second-largest economy on a more stable footing.

Bloomberg Boots ‘China Leak’ Scribe

Michael Forsythe
New York Post
Bloomberg News has put reporter Michael Forsthye, suspected of leaking news about a controversial China story on unpaid leave, escorting him from Bloomberg’s Hong Kong office on Nov. 14, sources said.

Conversation

11.12.13

Spiked in China?

John Garnaut, Sidney Rittenberg & more
Last weekend, The New York Times and later, The Financial Times reported that, according to Bloomberg News employees, Bloomberg editor in chief Matthew Winkler informed reporters by telephone on October...

Caixin Media

11.11.13

How Ambition Buried an Official Known As ‘The Digger’

Cranes and bulldozers were quieter in the ancient city of Nanjing on October 16.News broke that day that the city’s fifty-seven-year-old mayor, Ji Jianye, was being investigated for “suspected serious discipline violations,” the Communist Party’s...

Imax, China’s T.C.L. Unveil Home Theater Joint Venture

Patrick Brzeski and Etan Vlessing
Hollywood Reporter
Imax C.E.O. Richard Gelfond told the New York Times that he chose to partner with the Shenzhen-based electronics giant because he expects China will be the largest market for the pricey home theater systems.&...

Caixin Media

11.04.13

China’s Chilling Effect for Investor Research

Shanghai investor Wang Weihua’s final microblog post October 12 was brief and ominous: “The police are coming.”Three days later, Wang’s family said he’d been taken into custody by police officers who traveled more than 3,600 kilometers to Wang’s...

Culture

11.01.13

The Sound of China’s Future

Jonathan Campbell
It’s high noon in March and the cluttered patio of Maria’s Taco Xpress, the Austin, Texas institution, is gloriously sunny. First time visitor Gan Baishui is moments away from his band’s American debut, but the composer and musician from a fourth-...

Conversation

10.30.13

Trial By TV: What Does a Reporter’s Arrest and Confession Tell Us About Chinese Media?

Wang Feng & Jeremy Goldkorn
The latest ChinaFile Conversation focuses on the case of Chen Yongzhou, the Guangzhou New Express journalist whose series of investigative reports exposed fraud at the Changsha, Hunan-based heavy machinery maker Zoomlion. Chen later was arrested and...

Books

10.28.13

In Line Behind a Billion People

Damien Ma, William Adams
Nearly everything you know about China is wrong! Yes, within a decade, China will have the world’s largest economy. But that is the least important thing to know about China. In this enlightening book, two of the world’s leading China experts turn the conventional wisdom on its head, showing why China’s economic growth will constrain rather than empower it. Pioneering political analyst Damien Ma and global economist Bill Adams reveal why, having thirty-five years of ferocious economic growth, China’s future will be shaped by the same fundamental reality that has shaped it for millennia: scarcity.{node, 4231}Ma and Adams drill deep into Chinese society, illuminating all the scarcities that will limit its power and progress. Beyond scarcities of natural resources and public goods, they illuminate China’s persistent poverties of individual freedoms, cultural appeal, and ideological legitimacy—and the corrosive loss of values and beliefs amongst a growing middle class shackled by a parochial and inflexible political system. Everyone knows “the 21st century is China’s to lose”—but, as with so many things that “everyone knows,” that’s just wrong. Ma and Adams get beyond cheerleading and fearmongering to tell the complex truth about China today. This is a truth you need to hear—whether you’re an investor, business decision-maker, policymaker, or citizen. —Pearson{chop}

Excerpts

10.28.13

Stark Choices for China’s Leaders

Damien Ma & William Adams
One Beijing morning in early November 2012, seven men in dark suits strode onto the stage of the Great Hall of the People. China’s newly elected Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Chairman Xi Jinping stood at the center of the ensemble, flanked on each...

Hollywood Must Think Bigger About China

China Daily
In the period from January to June, domestic films in China outperformed imported ones by 65 percent. That was a major reversal from the same period last year, when proceeds from imported films almost doubled those of domestic productions. 

Conversation

10.25.13

Can State-Run Capitalism Absorb the Shocks of ‘Creative Destruction’?

Barry Naughton, Shai Oster & more
Following are ChinaFile Conversation participants’ reactions to “China: Superpower or Superbust?” in the November-December issue of The National Interest in which author Ian Bremmer says that China’s state-capitalism is ill-equipped to absorb the...

Sinica Podcast

10.24.13

Innovation in China

Kaiser Kuo & Jeremy Goldkorn from Sinica Podcast
In China, innovation has become one of those political buzzwords which—like harmony—seems to mean anything and everything to the Central Propaganda Department. So much so that we find it difficult to walk down the streets in Beijing now without...

China Hints at Effort to Export Cars to West

Keith Bradsher
New York Times
Requests for auto parts companies to supply parts that meet Western regulatory standards are the clearest sign yet that after more than a decade of preparation, Chinese manufacturers are feeling the confidence to begin...

China Box Office Worth $5 Billion to Film Studios by 2017

Jessica Reif Cohen
Variety
BofA Merrill Lynch Global Research estimates the Chinese box office could yield $5 billion in value potential for Hollywood studios by 2017 including imported and local productions (with this figure potentially doubling under further relaxed...

Media

10.22.13

China’s Silly War on Starbucks Lattes

There are worse things in the world than an overpriced latte. That’s the message that thousands of Chinese web users are sending China Central Television (CCTV), a state-owned media behemoth that ran an October 20 segment accusing the Seattle-based...

China’s Poly Culture Plans Hong Kong I.P.O.

Patrick Frater
Variety
State-owned enterprise Poly Culture, one of China’s leading auction, cultural and film investors, previously planned to list its shares on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, but dropped them earlier this year due to regulatory uncertainty.&...

China Companies Rank Lowest in Survey of Transparency Reporting

Bloomberg
The report draws attention to a Chinese business environment corrupt due to minimal public-reporting requirements. Party leaders have warned that corruption threatens their grip on power and have announced anti-graft investigations of a number of...

Conversation

10.16.13

Uncomfortable Bedfellows: How Much Does China Need America Now?

Bill Bishop, David Schlesinger & more
Bill Bishop:The D.C. dysfunction puts China in a difficult place. Any financial markets turmoil that occurs because of a failure of Congress to do its job could harm China’s economy, and especially its exports. The accumulation of massive foreign-...

Viewpoint

10.16.13

Innovation in Britain and What it Means for China

Vincent Ni
On the occasion of a high-level British delegation’s visit to Beiing this week, Vincent Ni, the long-time New York-based U.S. correspondent for the independent Caixin Media group, shared his views about China’s ability to innovate relative to what...

Caixin Media

10.08.13

Shandong Shipyard’s Lesson: Don’t Rock the Bank

What was initially billed as a lucrative order from a European customer has pushed a Shandong Province shipbuilding company to the brink of bankruptcy and ruined its relationship with one of China’s biggest banks.Rushan City Shipbuilding Co. is...

Xi Jinping Gets Mocked Going After New Zealand on Food Safety

Josh Chin
WSJ: China Real Time Report
While China’s new leader has won praise at home for his aggressiveness in pushing China’s interests abroad, this is one situation in which his boldness was bound to backfire. As bad as the Fonterra scandal appeared, China’s own dairy companies have...

Obama’s Absence Leaves China as Dominant Force at Asia-Pacific Meeting

Jane Perlez and Joe Cochrane
New York Times
Secretary of State John Kerry replaced President Obama at the opening of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, leaving China’s president, Xi Jinping, as the dominant leader at a economic gathering.

In China, Lessons of a 'Hackerspace'

Emily D. Parker
Wall Street Journal
Do-it-yourself hubs are giving a boost to tinkerers and inventors.

China Employs Two Million Microblog Monitors State Media Say

BBC
 The Beijing News says the monitors, described as Internet opinion analysts, are on state and commercial payrolls. 

Environment

10.07.13

The Battle Over Ecuador’s Oil Takes New Twist

from chinadialogue
The announcement by Ecuador’s president, Rafael Correa, that he has abandoned a ground-breaking scheme stopping oil operations in the Amazon has led to a wave of protests across the country and speculation about why it failed.The stated aim of the...