ChinaFile Recommends
10.29.14Nine out of 10 Hong Kong Activists Say Will Fight on for a Year
Reuters
The most tenacious protests since the former British colony returned to Chinese rule in 1997 have already persisted beyond most expectations.
ChinaFile Recommends
10.29.14Ex-General in China Admits He Took Bribes, Report Says
New York Times
“Xu Caihou fully confessed to the facts of his bribetaking crimes,” said the brief Xinhua report. It did not give any details of who gave the bribes or how much Mr. Xu took.
ChinaFile Recommends
10.29.14Taking Back Hong Kong’s Future
New York Times
Since the return of Hong Kong to China in 1997, less than a year after I was born, the people of this city have muddled through with a political system that leaves power in the hands of the wealthy and the well-connected.
ChinaFile Recommends
10.29.14China Says It Will Be Good Host to Japan During APEC
Voice of America
A one-on-one meeting would be a symbolic breakthrough in ties between the world’s second- and third-biggest economies, which have turned frigid in the past two years over a territorial row.
Media
10.29.14
A Talking Heads Video: China Strikes Back
In the first episode of the new VICE News series Talking Heads, Orville Schell, the Arthur Ross Director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at Asia Society, and publisher of ChinaFile, discusses his New York Review of Books essay, “China...
Media
10.27.14
What China’s Reading: ‘Broken Dreams, USA’
Zhou Xiaoping, a 33-year-old selfie-snapping blogger, has quickly become the new face of Chinese patriotism—or, some would say, nationalism. On October 15, Chinese President Xi Jinping held a forum in Beijing in which the president called for art to...
ChinaFile Recommends
10.27.14Xinhua Insight: China’s Legal Renaissance Sounds Death Knell for Guanxi
Xinhua
As the curtain fell on a key meeting on rule of law on Thursday, Israeli Yuval Golan, 29, felt good about his business prospects in what should be a more transparent and predictable China.
ChinaFile Recommends
10.27.14Japan Builds Response to Chinese Area-Denial Strategy
Defense News
Japan’s response to Chinese anti-access/area-denial threats rest on three planks: increasingly large helicopter carriers, next-generation 3,300-ton Soryu-class submarines and new Aegis destroyers.
ChinaFile Recommends
10.27.14China’s Crackdown on Dissent Shows How Nervous Its Leaders Are
Washington Post
The legal assault on a critic of Mao gives a flavor of the current climate. Tie Liu is the pen name of Huang Zerong, 81, who has collected and published memoirs of people who were purged by Chinese dictator Mao Zedong in the 1950s and 1960s.
ChinaFile Recommends
10.27.14China’s Assault on Corruption Enters Executive Suite
Wall Street Journal
Communist Party leaders plan to slash the compensation of the top executives at China’s largest state-owned companies over the next few months to make sure only those truly committed to the party run them.
ChinaFile Recommends
10.27.14China Considers Abolishing Death Penalty for Nine Crimes
Reuters
China is considering trimming nine crimes from the list of offenses punishable by death, state media said, as the ruling Communist Party considers broader reforms to the country’s legal system.
ChinaFile Recommends
10.27.14The Secret History of Hong Kong’s Stillborn Democracy
Quartz
By September 29 peaceful protesters had been clogging Hong Kong’s downtown for less than a day, but to the Chinese Communist Party this already smacked of ingratitude.
ChinaFile Recommends
10.27.14China Began Push Against Hong Kong Elections in ’50s
New York Times
Beginning in the 1950s, the colonial governors who ran Hong Kong repeatedly sought to introduce popular elections but abandoned those efforts in the face of pressure by Communist Party leaders in Beijing.
ChinaFile Recommends
10.27.14China, Vietnam Say Want Lasting Solution to Sea Dispute
Reuters
The two countries have sought to patch up ties since their long-running row erupted in May, triggered by China’s deployment a drilling rig in waters claimed by the communist neighbors.
ChinaFile Recommends
10.27.14Pro-Democracy Movement’s Vote in Hong Kong Abruptly Called Off
New York Times
The referendum boiled down to two simple questions: Did voters endorse demanding that the Hong Kong government press Beijing to make democratic concessions on election rules, and did they agree that the changes should apply to city Legislative...
Caixin Media
10.27.14
Rise and Fall of a Coal Boomtown
Some 187 kilometers west of Taiyuan, capital of the northern province of Shanxi, the city of Luliang is located on the dry and gullied Loess Plateau in the upper and middle reaches of the Yellow River.The city, which covers 21,143 square kilometers...
ChinaFile Recommends
10.27.14Using Cash and Pressure, China Builds Its Chip Industry
New York Times
Beijing is starting programs to increase investment by the state and to gain expertise from foreign chip companies. Experts say the chip industry is one focus of Chinese espionage efforts.
ChinaFile Recommends
10.27.14Why China Chose a French-Directed Film as Its Oscar Submission
Wall Street Journal
“It’s a mild, breezy, accessible, feel-good drama which really pictures China as a harmonious, wonderful place where conflicts of various stripes—across age, class or geographical divides—could easily be reconciled,” said Clarence Tsui, a film...
ChinaFile Recommends
10.27.14Dispatches From Xinjiang: The Uyghur Blockbuster “Money On The Road”
Beijing Cream
The comedy Money on the Road (Money Found on the Way in Chinese) features an ensemble of stars, including a cameo by the famous singer Abdulla. It follows the misadventures of three Uyghur farmers who come to the city as migrant workers to...
Media
10.24.14
Hong Kong Documentary Explores the Roots of Dissent
To many observers, Hong Kong’s “Umbrella Movement”—thousands of students and other citizens in the streets demanding to choose their own political leaders—seemed to unfurl, fully formed, out of nowhere. Residents of the former colony were supposed...
ChinaFile Recommends
10.24.14Zhou Xiaoping, Director of History
China Digital Times
Since nationalistic blogger Zhou Xiaoping’s “positive energy” won accolades from Xi Jinping at the Beijing Forum on Literature in Art last week, he has been the subject of much netizen scrutiny, and some have taken him to task for his blatant...
ChinaFile Recommends
10.24.14China Vows Better Rule of Law, But No Word of Disgraced Security Chief
Reuters
The moves, made at a closed-door meeting of the ruling party’s elite, are pivotal to the workings of China’s market economy.
ChinaFile Recommends
10.24.14China’s Coal Use Actually Falling Now (For the First Time this Century)
Greenpeace
The data suggests the world’s largest economy is finally starting to radically slow down its emission growth, and it comes ahead of key talks next year on a new global climate and energy deal.
ChinaFile Recommends
10.24.14Net Closes on Ling Jihua, One-Time Top Aide to Ex-President Hu Jintao
South China Morning Post
Hu has been conspicuously silent over the investigation.
ChinaFile Recommends
10.24.14A Chance to Introduce Social and Environmental Protections
New York Times
Instead of opposing its creation, the U.S. should consider joining the bank as a means of guaranteeing that it matches world-class financing strength with world-class environmental practices.
Conversation
10.23.14
Are China’s Economic Reforms Coming Fast Enough?
Economic data show a slowdown in China. At least two opposing views of what’s next for the world’s largest economy have just been published: one skeptical, from David Hoffman at The Conference Board, and one cautiously optimistic, from Dan Rosen and...
Media
10.21.14
Chinese Doubt Their Own Soft Power Venture
On September 27, Chinese Vice Premier Liu Yandong read aloud a letter written by President Xi Jinping at a ceremony in Beijing celebrating the tenth anniversary of the Confucius Institute (CI) program, an international chain of academic centers...
Books
10.21.14
Hou Hsiao-hsien
For younger critics and audiences, Taiwanese cinema enjoys a special status, comparable with that of Italian Neorealism and the French New Wave for earlier generations, a cinema that was and is in the midst of introducing an innovative sensibility and a fresh perspective. Hou Hsiao-hsien is the most important Taiwanese filmmaker working today, and his sensuous, richly nuanced films reflect everything that is vigorous and genuine in contemporary film culture. By combining multiple forms of tradition with a uniquely cinematic approach to space and time, Hou has created a body of work that, through its stylistic originality and historical gravity, opens up new possibilities for the medium. This new volume includes contributions by Olivier Assayas, Peggy Chiao, Chung Mong-hong, Jean-Michel Frodon, Hasumi Shigehiko, Ichiyama Shōzō, Jia Zhang-ke, Kent Jones, Koreeda Hirokazu, Jean Ma, Ni Zhen, Abé Mark Nornes, James Quandt, Richard I. Suchenski, James Udden, and Wen Tien-hsiang, as well as conversations with Hou Hsiao-hsien and some of his most important collaborators over the decades. —Columbia University Press {chop}
ChinaFile Recommends
10.21.14Hong Kong’s High Court Orders Protesters Off Roads in Mong Kok and Admiralty
South China Morning Post
In an interview with The New York Times, Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying hinted at possible intervention by the central government if the situation remained unresolved.
ChinaFile Recommends
10.21.14Presumed Guilty in China’s War on Corruption, Targets Suffer Abuses
New York Times
One beating left Wang Guanglong, a midlevel official from China’s Fujian Province, partly deaf, according to his later testimony.
ChinaFile Recommends
10.21.14China, U.S. Working to Ensure Positive Results from Obama’s Upcoming China Visit: Senior Chinese Official
Xinhua
Chinese State Councillor Yang Jiechi saluted “new and positive progress” that has been made in various aspects of the China-U.S. ties since last year’s summit held by Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping in California.
ChinaFile Recommends
10.21.14China’s Aircraft Carrier Trouble—Spewing Steam and Losing Power
Medium
There’s no more of a conspicuous and potent symbol of China’s growing naval power than the aircraft carrier Liaoning.
Viewpoint
10.21.14
‘We Can Only Trust Each Other and Keep the Road’
Snip. Snip. Snip. The officer’s face shows concentration as he cuts one yellow ribbon after another along a metal fence on Queensway in the Central district of Hong Kong. Next to him, other policemen have just finished dismantling the barricades...
ChinaFile Recommends
10.21.14China Focus: By Rule of Law, China On the Way to Improving Governance
Xinhua
At 7:00 a.m., Shanghai-based lawyer Zhang Jie opened his computer at home, logged onto the Judicial Opinions of China website, and read a court ruling on a case he had offered legal aid to. The whole process took no more than one minute.
ChinaFile Recommends
10.21.14Hong Kong’s Leader Blames Foreigners for Fanning Protests
Bloomberg
“There is obviously participation by people, organizations from outside of Hong Kong,” Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying said in an interview on Asia Television Ltd.
ChinaFile Recommends
10.21.14Unrest in China Leaves 22 Dead Following Xinjiang Attack
Financial Times
A new ethnic clash in the restive region of Xinjiang, on China’s central Asian frontier, saw 22 people killed after Uighur assailants attacked Han Chinese merchants at a wholesale food market near the border with Kyrgyzstan.
ChinaFile Recommends
10.21.14China Launches Massive Rural ‘Surveillance’ Project to Watch Over Uighurs
Telegraph
They arrived at the fringes of China’s modern day empire in early March, setting up base in a family planning center with riot shields, helmets and two sharp 6-foot spears propped up inside the front door.
Caixin Media
10.21.14Revision of Securities Law Is Chance to Liberalize Market
China’s securities law is to undergo a comprehensive revision almost a decade after the last major overhaul. Public consultation is due to start in the first half of next year, following recent comments from officials, scholars, and market...
Viewpoint
10.20.14‘A Power Capable of Making Us Weep’
This September, the editors of the online edition of the 21st Century Business Herald—a leading Chinese business newspaper based in Guangzhou and owned by Southern Media Group (Nanfang Baoye Jituan)—came under investigation on charges of extortion...
ChinaFile Recommends
10.20.14The Hong Kong Protesters Who Won’t Negotiate
Atlantic
Pro-democracy protests took a violent turn in Hong Kong, as police officers clashed with demonstrators in the territory’s Mong Kok neighborhood.
ChinaFile Recommends
10.20.14What China Means by ‘Rule of Law’
New York Times
There’s plenty of evidence that China sees the rule of law in nuanced and complex ways.
ChinaFile Recommends
10.20.14The U.S. Is No Role Model in Hong Kong’s Democracy Fight
Quartz
C.Y. Leung explains the protests that continue to paralyze parts of Hong Kong, after thwarting a police crackdown over the weekend: they are being supported by “external forces.”
The NYRB China Archive
10.19.14
China’s Unstoppable Lawyers: An Interview with Teng Biao
from New York Review of Books
Teng Biao is one of China’s best-known civil-rights lawyers, and a prominent member of the weiquan, or “rights defenders,” movement, a loosely knit coalition of Chinese lawyers and activists who tackle cases related to the environment, religious...
Conversation
10.17.14
Rule of Law—Why Now?
In a recent essay, “How China’s Leaders Will Rule on the Law,” Carl Minzner looks at the question of why China’s leaders have announced they will emphasize rule of law at the upcoming Chinese Communist Party plenum slated to take place in Beijing...
The China Africa Project
10.16.14
The Dalai Lama Forces China to Overplay its Hand in South Africa
Pretoria’s apparent refusal to grant Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama a visa to attend a summit of Nobel peace laureates has sparked outrage in South Africa. Critics allege the government is bowing to China, undermining South African...
Media
10.15.14
Jiang Zemin Unplugged
Given the leadership styles of Hu Jintao and Xi Jinping, who have been China’s supreme leaders over the past twelve years, it is an almost shocking experience to look back at these two videos (the first of which circulated last week on social media...
Viewpoint
10.15.14
How China’s Leaders Will Rule on the Law
Last week, as the world watched the student demonstrations in Hong Kong, China’s Politburo announced the dates for the Communist Party’s annual plenary session would be from October 20-23. As in previous years, top leaders will gather in Beijing to...
ChinaFile Recommends
10.14.14When Hong Kong Protests Are Over, Where Will the Art Go?
Wall Street Journal
As Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protests wane, what will become of the iconic artwork Umbrella Man, the Lennon Wall of sticky notes and all the banners?
ChinaFile Recommends
10.14.14LIVE: Police With Shields and Batons Push Back Protesters On Lung Wo Road
South China Morning Post
Hundreds of police with power tools tore down protesters’ barricades on Queensway in Admiralty, following a swiftly executed dawn operation to remove a number of blockades in Causeway Bay.
ChinaFile Recommends
10.14.14Cultural Reflection Can Improve Modern Governance
Xinhua
During the latest in a series of collective studies among the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, Xi said the CPC should follow successful examples in Chinese history to learn from their merits and avoid shortcomings.
Viewpoint
10.14.14
On Dealing with Chinese Censors
It was a hot afternoon in June in the East China city of Jinan. I was returning to my hotel after an afternoon coffee, thinking of the conference I had come to attend and trying to escape the heat on the shady side of the street. My cell phone rang...
Conversation
10.14.14
Will Asia Bank on China?
Last week The New York Times reported U.S. opposition to China’s plans to launch a regional development bank to rival the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank. If, as some say, the the launch is a fait accompli, should Washington focus...
ChinaFile Recommends
10.13.14China Approves $3.25 Billion Universal Theme Park in Beijing
Hollywood Reporter
The facility will cover a 300-acre site in the suburbs of China’s capital.
ChinaFile Recommends
10.13.14China Detains Scholar, Bans Books in Crackdown on Moderate Voices
Reuters
China has detained prominent scholar Guo Yushan, who helped blind dissident Chen Guangcheng flee to the United States two years ago and has banned books by eight writers in a crackdown on dissent.
ChinaFile Recommends
10.13.14Hong Kong Heats Up Again
Economist
Masked men attacked pro-democracy protesters for the second time in as many weeks on the morning of October 13th near Hong Kong’s Admiralty business district.
ChinaFile Recommends
10.12.14Once a Symbol of Power, Farming Now an Economic Drag in China
New York Times
Frustrated by how little they earn, the ablest farmers have migrated to cities, hollowing out this rural district in the Chinese heartland.
ChinaFile Recommends
10.12.14All Eyes Will Be On China This Week
Reuters
China’s economy, the second largest in the world, gets a spot check this week with a barrage of data due that should indicate how successful Beijing has been in supporting growth.
ChinaFile Recommends
10.10.14Chinese Media Accuse Japanese Manga Star Doraemon of Subverting Youth
Guardian
“Doraemon is a part of Japan’s efforts of exporting its national values and achieving its cultural strategy; this is an undisputed fact,” the local communist party newspaper Chengdu Daily said in an editorial.
ChinaFile Recommends
10.10.14China ‘Strongly Displeased’ by U.S. Rights Report
ABC
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said at a news briefing that the independent U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China “twisted facts and attacked China on purpose” in its report.
ChinaFile Recommends
10.10.14Taiwan Leader: China Should Try Democracy—Starting with Hong Kong
Los Angeles Times
Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou’s comments reflect popular local support for the tens of thousands of Hong Kong residents who launched democracy protests on Sept. 27 in the semi-autonomous Chinese territory.