Features
09.27.24
Is China’s Cultural Outreach to Muslims in Indonesia Working?
Indonesia is the world’s largest Muslim-majority country. So as Beijing ramps up its engagement with the Global South and with the Muslim world, it is unsurprising that it has been reaching out to various Muslim organizations and strengthening its...
Features
09.26.24
Can China’s Scholarships and Cultural Diplomacy Efforts Succeed in Pakistan?
In Washington, D.C., China has a bad reputation for the way it treats its Muslim minorities. But views differ greatly in many majority-Muslim countries in Asia. Educational programs and exchanges are a key part of this. Pakistan is an exemplar:...
Viewpoint
07.23.24
Sideline Sinology
In August, when I visited Wuhan, I met with a young building-company manager who had worked on the construction sites of various emergency clinics and quarantine facilities during the city’s outbreak. “The pandemic is like a mirror,” the manager...
Media
07.23.24
ChinaFile Presents: Peter Hessler’s ‘Other Rivers: A Chinese Education’
On July 17, ChinaFile hosted the launch of Peter Hessler’s Other Rivers: A Chinese Education, a memoir of his two years teaching at Sichuan University in Chengdu from 2019 to 2021. The book explores elementary and college education, China’s handling...
Notes from ChinaFile
04.29.24
Lessons from Tiananmen for Today’s University Presidents
Thirty-five years ago, in April 1989, Chinese students from Beijing’s elite universities began their occupation of Tiananmen Square. Their issues were different from those of American students today. Chinese demonstrators voiced concerns about...
Conversation
02.05.24
What Will Newly Increased Party Control Mean for China’s Universities?
In January, Radio Free Asia reported that the Chinese Communist Party is “taking a direct role in the running of universities across the country” by merging the presidents’ offices with their Party committees. Ideological controls on universities...
Viewpoint
02.02.24
New Security Measures Curtailing the Study of China Alarm Educators
Late last year, The New York Times reported on a new state-level bill in Florida that was creating unintended consequences for prospective Chinese graduate students. The bill restricts universities from accepting grants from or participating in...
Conversation
10.24.23
Are Staying in the U.S. or Returning to China Mutually Exclusive?
The past several years have seen declines in both the number of Chinese students studying in the U.S. and U.S. students studying China. We asked Chinese students studying, or who have recently completed their studies, in the U.S. why they chose to...
Conversation
10.24.23
What Is the Future for International Students in China?
In the last several years, an under-appreciated element of China’s retreat from the global stage has been diminished educational exchange, and particularly that exchange’s impact on students. During the height of the pandemic, tens of thousands of...
Notes from ChinaFile
10.10.23
The Global Times Translated My Op-Ed. Here’s What They Changed.
On May 25, 2023, The New York Times published my guest essay “Like It or Not, America Needs Chinese Scientists,” on American higher education’s engagement with China in the STEM fields. The article was subsequently translated by the Chinese State-...
Notes from ChinaFile
08.17.23
What’s Behind the Youth Unemployment Statistics Beijing Just Decided to Stop Publishing?
This week, China’s National Bureau of Statistics announced it would cease collecting data on youth unemployment. The news came after nearly a decade of poor job prospects for Chinese people ages 16-24, often reported on by international media as...
Notes from ChinaFile
03.13.23
‘It Is Especially Scary to See Students’
As in many other aspects of public life in China under Xi Jinping, the space for independent inquiry and discussion within the academy has shrunk significantly in recent years. The Xi administration has released a slew of guidelines and communiques...
Viewpoint
07.21.22
From My Anguished Heart—A Letter to My Daughter
In early July 2020, Xu Zhangrun was detained for supposedly having “solicited prostitutes” during a trip with friends to Sichuan in late 2019. He was being persecuted for his unsparing critiques of Xi Jinping, starting in July 2018. The following...
Conversation
06.16.22
China’s Record Urban Youth Unemployment
China has recorded its highest level of unemployment among urban youth since the country began tracking it in 2018. In March, 16 percent of Chinese city-dwellers aged 16 to 24 were unemployed, compared to 13.6 percent a year earlier. In May, that...
Features
06.03.22
The Prize Student
This short story, written in 2000 by Zha Jianying, is ChinaFile’s second foray into original fiction.
Conversation
10.20.21
Tightening Up
In what many observers have termed a “regulatory crackdown,” a wave of new legal restrictions and bans on business, technology, and entertainment has broken across China over the past several months, with what appears to be escalating velocity and...
Viewpoint
09.09.21
A Farewell to My Students
Xu Zhangrun addresses this letter to the students and young scholars who participated in “The Three Talents Salon” which Xu founded in 2003, a biannual symposium devoted to fostering “three talents” or skills in the participants: in-depth reading,...
Viewpoint
04.27.21
The Right Way to Bring Chinese STEM Talent Back to the U.S.
The Trump administration deployed a raft of restrictions on international students and workers, many of which directly targeted or disproportionally impacted Chinese STEM talent. While some measures had a basis in legitimate concerns like illicit...
Conversation
08.27.20
The Future of China Studies in the U.S.
As an extraordinarily fraught school year begins, the study of China on U.S. campuses (or their new virtual equivalents), as well as China’s role in university life more broadly, has recently become a subject of scrutiny and debate. What is the...
Viewpoint
08.20.20
How To Teach China This Fall
The coming academic year presents unique challenges for university instructors teaching content related to China. The shift to online education, the souring of U.S.-China relations, and new national security legislation coming from Beijing have...
Photo Gallery
02.21.20
‘They Feel Like They Can’t Go Home’
In September 2014, while waiting for access to photograph Syrian refugee camps in Jordan, a Chinese photographer who calls himself “Ali” came upon a large group of students from his home country at a local restaurant. He knew that many young Chinese...
Features
02.04.20
Human Resources Both Drive and Limit China’s Push for Automation
from New America
For China’s government planners, one of the most important roles for artificial intelligence (AI) and automation is addressing looming challenges in the labor market. After nearly four decades of the one-child policy, China’s aging population is...
Conversation
11.04.19
How Should Universities Respond to China’s Growing Presence on Their Campuses?
How should universities encourage respectful dialogue on contentious issues involving China, while at the same time fostering an environment free of intimidation, harassment, and violence? And how should university administrators and governments...
Conversation
09.13.19
Why Is the FBI Investigating Americans Who Study in China?
Over the last two years, the FBI has questioned at least five U.S. citizens who have studied at Yenching Academy, a Master’s degree program hosted by Peking University. The purpose of the interviews, according to NPR, is to “ascertain whether they...
Viewpoint
08.08.19
The U.S. Recently Erected a New Hurdle to U.S.-China Academic Cooperation. Here’s What It Might Mean.
A recent move by the U.S. Department of Commerce reminds us that academic relationships are not immune from the effects of deteriorating U.S.-China relations. In April 2019, the Department included several Chinese universities on its Unverified List...
Conversation
08.01.19
How Should the U.S. Government Treat Chinese Students in America?
The State Department’s top education official Marie Royce gave a speech entitled “The United States Welcomes Chinese Students.” In it, she quoted recent remarks from Donald Trump, who said, “We want to have Chinese students come and use our great...
Excerpts
07.31.19
What Role Will Intellectuals Play in China’s Future?
As we commemorate the thirtieth anniversary of China’s 1989 democracy movement, it is hard to imagine students and intellectuals playing a similar role today. In China’s highly marketized and politically controlled society, the space for...
Viewpoint
06.04.19
Is Hong Kong Forgetting to Remember June Fourth?
In sharp contrast to anywhere else in China, Hong Kong has stood as a steadfast stronghold of remembrance of the massacre, protected by the territory’s political system that guarantees freedoms of assembly and expression. Every June 4, the...
The NYRB China Archive
05.14.19
‘One Seed Can Make an Impact’: An Interview with Chen Hongguo
from New York Review of Books
Chen Hongguo might be China’s most famous ex-professor. Five years ago, he quit his job at the Northwest University of Politics and Law in Xi’an, publishing his resignation letter online after administrators prohibited him from inviting free-...
The NYRB China Archive
05.09.19
China: A Small Bit of Shelter
from New York Review of Books
At night, a spotlight illuminates four huge characters on the front of the Great Temple of Promoting Goodness in Xi’an, the capital of Shaanxi province in northwestern China: mi zang zong feng, “The Esoteric Repository of the Faith’s Traditions.”...
Photo Gallery
04.26.19
Chiang Mai’s Chinese Transfer Students
On a chilly winter Friday in early 2013, seven-year-old Zou Yanhu came home from school, looking dejected. Yanhu was a first-grader attending a public primary school in Chengdu, Sichuan’s sprawling capital city. His weekend homework was to write...
Conversation
04.04.19
Are Confucius Institutes Good for American Universities?
Confucius Institutes continue to incite controversy in America. Since 2006, China’s government has given more than $158 million to dozens of U.S. universities to host the institutes, which offer Chinese language classes and hold events. To critics,...
Depth of Field
02.25.19
Living by the Rivers
from Yuanjin Photo
If the stories in this edition of Depth of Field share a common thread—apart from their distinguished photographic storytelling—it’s their interest in the flux and churn of life in China in 2019, where nothing seems fixed and pressure of constant...
Viewpoint
12.28.18
‘Now We Don’t Talk Anymore’
In an old Silk Road oasis town on China’s western border, these days a thirsty traveller can knock back a cold beer in a local mosque. The former place of worship is now a bar for tourists. And it is with the customers’ views in mind—and, perhaps,...
Photo Gallery
12.27.18
Cut Chives
2018 gave us many opportunities to look back at China’s past—the tenth anniversary of Sichuan earthquake and of the Beijing Olympics, the 40th year since the country began its policy of Reform and Opening. This year also brought changes that thrust...
Conversation
11.09.18
Forty Years on, Is China Still Reforming?
In late October, to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the “Reform and Opening Up” policy, China’s Chairman Xi Jinping visited the southern metropolis of Shenzhen, the first major laboratory for the Party’s post-Mao economic reforms. Like his...
Viewpoint
10.05.18
Banning Chinese Students is Not in the U.S. National Interest
President Donald Trump has made no secret of his desire to radically revamp America’s immigration policies. Indeed, his family separation policies, which sparked nationwide protests and public revulsion after they were rolled out in May 2018, were...
Infographics
08.15.18
Visualizing China’s Anti-Corruption Campaign
“Catching Tigers and Flies” is ChinaFile’s interactive tool for tracking and, we hope, better understanding the massive campaign against corruption that Xi Jinping launched shortly after he came to power in late 2012. It is designed to give users a sense of the scope and character of the anti-corruption campaign by graphically rendering information about more than 2,000 of its targets whose cases have been publicly announced in official Chinese sources.
ChinaFile Recommends
08.08.18China Tightens Grip on Foreign University Ventures
Financial Times
The directive, which took effect last year but whose existence is being revealed for the first time by the Financial Times, mandates foreign education institutions to include a clause that supports the establishment of a party organisation in any...
ChinaFile Recommends
07.12.18Chinese Professor Accused of Sexual Harassment Is Barred From Teaching
A major university in southern China has barred a professor from teaching after female students went public with sexual harassment allegations against him, unhappy that the university had not taken swifter, firmer action.
Depth of Field
06.28.18
Staying on Point in Rural China
from Yuanjin Photo
In this edition of Depth of Field: aspiring ballerinas, what’s beneath the gilt in a rich Zhejiang town, worn out doctors, disappearing schools, melting snow, data farms, and the powerful appeal of dancing outdoors.
ChinaFile Recommends
06.13.18For Survivors of a 9-Hour Chinese Exam, a Door Opens to America
New York Times
Every June, millions of high school seniors in China sit down for a grueling university entrance exam, knowing they may not get into a top school or any school at all. If their results are disappointing, finding another route to university can take...
ChinaFile Recommends
05.15.18China Gave Trump a List of Crazy Demands, and He Caved to One of Them
Washington Post
China’s list of economic and trade demands that suggest its negotiating position.
ChinaFile Recommends
05.14.18Why Is China Suddenly Seeking Filipino English Teachers?
South China Morning Post
Beijing shifts its attitude towards workers from the Philippines.
ChinaFile Recommends
05.09.18How China Managed to Play Censor at a Conference on U.S. Soil
Foreign Policy
The Beijing-backed Confucius Institute offers much-needed money to American universities — but with strings attached.
ChinaFile Recommends
05.01.18White House Considers Restricting Chinese Researchers over Espionage Fears
New York Times
U.S. may bar Chinese from sensitive research at universities and research institutes.
ChinaFile Recommends
04.26.18China-Based Online Education Companies Just Launched an Aggressive Hiring Spree in Search of U.S. Teachers
TechCrunch
Teachers have long supplemented their incomes by tutoring. And there’s perhaps never been a better, or easier, time to do it than right now. The reason: China-based online education companies are in an apparent race with each other to hire U.S...
ChinaFile Recommends
04.19.18The Chinese Communist Party Is Setting Up Cells at Universities Across America
Foreign Policy
It’s a strategy to tighten ideological control. And it’s happening around the world.
ChinaFile Recommends
04.19.18China’s Children Are Its Secret Weapon in the Global AI Arms Race
Wired
China wants to be the world leader in artificial intelligence by 2030. To get there, it’s reinventing the way children are taught.
Conversation
04.18.18
A Ban on Gay Content, Stopped in Its Tracks
On April 13, China’s major microblogging platform Sina Weibo announced that, in order to create “a sunny and harmonious” environment, it would remove videos and comics “with pornographic implications, promoting bloody violence, or related to...
Photo Gallery
04.11.18
23 Days, 1,300 Miles, and Some Very High Expectations
“We were at an altitude of 15,000 feet on Mount Haizi. It started to hail. The temperature dropped to 40 degrees. We were only wearing t-shirts. They didn’t stop biking.” It was photographer Wang He’s second time on the Tibetan Plateau. The first...
Viewpoint
04.06.18
I Thought Studying Journalism outside of China Would Open Doors. Now I’m Not So Sure.
Six years ago as I was about to begin my undergraduate career at The University of Iowa majoring in journalism, a fellow Chinese student who’d switched her major from communications studies to business ruthlessly doubted my choice. “How on earth...
ChinaFile Recommends
04.05.18Ex-Google Executive Opens a School for AI, with China's Help
Wired
Onetime head of Google's operations in China launches a new project to train Chinese AI talents.
ChinaFile Recommends
04.02.18What’s Made Indonesian Students Forget the China Taboo?
South China Morning Post
Not that long ago, having a Chinese book was strictly prohibited in Indonesia. But now the country’s young people are attending Chinese universities by the thousands.
ChinaFile Recommends
03.28.18‘America First’ Shouldn’t Stop the Us from Welcoming Chinese Students and Other Global Talent
South China Morning Post
Almost half a century after the “Nixon shock”, when US President Nixon unilaterally declared that the United States would abandon the dollar’s convertibility to gold and impose a 10 per cent import surcharge, the world is now being shaken by the “...
ChinaFile Recommends
03.26.18Hong Kong’s Ethnic Minorities Are Struggling with a Chinese Education Gap, but Can the Government See It?
South China Morning Post
The government has announced that the Chinese-language proficiency requirements will be lowered for 22 civil service grades, bringing the total thus adjusted since the year 2010 to 53.
Culture
03.23.18
What Chinese High School Students Learn in America
In 2011, when a rural prep school in Maine invited New York-based director Miao Wang to screen her first film, Beijing Taxi, she was surprised to find so many Chinese students enrolled at the archetypal New England establishment. Not Chinese-...
ChinaFile Recommends
03.09.18Chinese Students in America Say ‘Not My President’
Foreign Policy
The first posters appeared on a bulletin board at University of California, San Diego on March 1.
Depth of Field
02.20.18
When You Give a Kid a Camera
from Yuanjin Photo
This dispatch of photojournalism from China cuts across a broad spectrum of society, from film screenings in Beijing for the visually impaired to an acrobatics school 200 miles south, in Puyang, Henan province, and from children in rural Sichuan to...
Media
02.02.18
Chinese Civil Society in 2018: What’s Ahead?
The impetus for this event is it’s about a year since the new Foreign NGO Law was implemented in China. There was also another law implemented in 2016, the Charity Law, that governs how domestic NGOs function in China. But there’s a lot more going...