ChinaFile Recommends
09.04.12Doesn’t Matter If the Ferrari Is Black or Red
Economist
Salacious rumours had started swirling on the internet within hours of the spectacular crash in March: another Ferrari in Beijing, another Chinese leader’s son. But which leader? Months later the answer appears to be emerging into view,...
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09.04.12Online Criticism Leads to Suspension of Military Official over Flight Fight
WSJ: China Real Time Report
A Chinese military official accused last week of assaulting a flight attendant has been suspended following an explosion of outrage online fed in part by rare criticism from state-run media. Col. Fang Daguo, a political commissar for the...
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09.03.12Editor at Communist Party Mouthpiece Blasts Leaders
South China Morning Post
A senior editor of Study Times, a Communist Party mouthpiece, has launched a blistering broadside at the country's outgoing leaders, who are about to step down in a once-a-decade shake-up, accusing them of stalling long-overdue political reform...
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09.03.12China Faces New Scandal Over Crash of a Ferrari
New York Times
China’s carefully scripted leadership transition appears to have suffered another glitch: a fatal car crash involving a Ferrari, a privileged son and two women.
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09.01.12Chinese Activist Chen Guangcheng to Visit Taiwan
Reuters
Blind Chinese legal activist Chen Guangcheng, whose escape from house arrest sparked a diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Washington, accepted an invitation on Friday to visit Taiwan, underscoring his drive to ensure his influence as a human...
Media
08.31.12“Naked Official” Streaks to U.S.
On Monday, the People’s Daily confirmed rumors that Wang Guoqiang, a senior official of Fengcheng city, Liaoning province, fled China in April to the United States. Though Wang has been absent since April, his case was only uncovered last Sunday,...
Caixin Media
08.31.12In Guangdong, Tea Oil Greases Official Palms
In the financial documents for a Guangdong province grower and processor of tea seed oil is a list of key shareholders who also happen to be the relatives of local government officials.Off the record, Guangdong Xindadi Biotechnology Co. Ltd. and its...
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08.31.12China's Long History of Defying the Doomsayers
Atlantic
Thirty-six years after "Great Helmsman" Mao Zedong died of a heart attack, leaving his country briefly rudderless during a time of crisis and uncertainty, the Chinese ship of state is still sailing. But is it still seaworthy? Observers are...
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08.31.12China's Greatest Challenge: Not America, But Itself
Diplomat
As China’s international profile continues to rise in tandem with its economic and political significance, one might conclude that the Chinese public is likely to expect Xi Jinping to carry a higher profile on the international stage. As the leader...
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08.31.12Does China's Next Leader Have a Soft Spot for Tibet
Reuters
Few people know what Xi, whose ascent to the leadership is likely to be approved at a Communist Party congress later this year, thinks of Tibet or the Dalai Lama. But his late father, Xi Zhongxun, a liberal-minded former vice premier, had a...
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08.30.12Propaganda Bites Official
Economic Observer
Wuhan, the largest city in the central Chinese province of Hubei, has a reputation for being one of China's three "furnace" cities, but on this occasion the heat was on the government officials as they were about to appear on a...
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08.30.12A Diplomatic Incident in China
New Yorker
The Japanese ambassador to Beijing, Uichiro Niwa, and his wife were riding in their limo this week when an unknown Chinese man approached and tore the mini-flag off the hood. There is some debate about whether the limo was blocked...
Media
08.30.12
Chinese “Traitors” and the Foreign Press
{vertical_photo_right}On June 2nd, local family planning officials forced Feng Jianmei, a twenty-two-year-old Shaanxi woman pregnant with her second daughter, to undergo an abortion, as a consequence of China’s One Child...
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08.29.12Jasmine in Beijing: Belated Blossoms
Economist
In the words of a senior foreign policy adviser to the Chinese government, the official attitude towards the Arab Spring can be summed up very simply: “Ever since it started, all they want is to keep it as far away from China as possible.”
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08.29.12Victims’ Sons in Tough Fight for Redress After China Rail Crash
New York Times
The crash killed 40 passengers, injured 191 and shook the nation’s confidence in its ambitious high-speed rail system. Mr. Cao, 33, a Chinese-American importer from Colorado, barely survived; he lost a kidney and his spleen, and head injuries have...
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08.28.12To Know What’s Wrong With China, Look At Her Construction
Every time I walk down the street and see a new project about to break ground, I know that several billionaires are about to be made. Every time I see a project has been completed, I know that a few unknown “temporary workers” are about to become...
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08.28.12Assigning Blame for a Hard Landing
Sinostand
Over the next few months we should start to see an answer to the “hard vs. soft landing” question. Since talk of a possible hard landing began, I’ve often wondered how China’s propaganda apparatus would respond if and when China’s economy takes a...
Reports
08.27.12
The China Toll
Economic Policy Institute
Since China entered the World Trade Organization in 2001, the extraordinary growth of trade between China and the United States has had a dramatic effect on U.S. workers and the domestic economy, though in neither case has this effect been...
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08.27.12China Seeks to Increase Mutual Investments with India
Hindu
China has called for a move to boost mutual investments with India as a measure to strengthen trade ties and reshape what officials have acknowledged is an increasingly unbalanced and strained business relationship, as trade talks between both...
Caixin Media
08.25.12
Gu Kailai: Getting Away with Murder?
Closer Look: Nearly Getting Away with MurderBy Zhang JianjingShortly after Bogu Kailai received a death sentence with a two-year reprieve, four former high-ranking Chongqing police officers were sentenced to jail terms ranging from five to eleven...
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08.24.12Collapse of New Bridge Underscores China’s Infrastructure Concerns
New York Times
One of the longest bridges in northern China collapsed on Friday just nine months after it opened, triggering a storm of criticism from Chinese Internet users and underscoring questions about the quality of construction during China’s rapid...
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08.23.12Diaoyu in Our Heart: The Revealing Contradictions of Chinese Nationalism
Atlantic
There was another side to the anti-Japanese demonstrations that rocked Chinese cities this weekend, reacting to Japanese activists who had landed on a disputed island chain in the East China Sea. As Chinese protesters asserted their national...
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08.22.12Security Suggests Party Congress Is Nearing
Hindu
Even as Chinese officials have maintained a steady silence on when the Party Congress — the most important meeting in a decade — will be convened, the government has put in place security measures and issued corruption warnings — the first...
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08.22.12Thucydides’s Trap Has Been Sprung in the Pacific
Financial Times
China’s increasingly aggressive posture towards the South China Sea and the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea is less important in itself than as a sign of things to come. For six decades after the second world war, an American “Pax Pacifica”...
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08.21.12Simmering Chinese Anger at Japan Is Now on the Boil
New York Times
In angry mass protests and subdued smaller gatherings, Chinese citizens have taken to the streets to protest the landing by Japanese activists on some barren islands that are claimed by both countries. Protesters in about a dozen cities on...
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08.20.12China’s Show Trial of the Century
Project Syndicate
The trial, conviction, and suspended death sentence of Gu Kailai, the wife of purged Chinese leader Bo Xilai, has called into question not only China’s legal system, but the very unity of the Communist Party leadership.
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08.20.12Winning? China Internet Users React to Gu Murder Verdict
WSJ: China Real Time Report
Gu Kailai has scored another courtroom victory. Such was the takeaway for many of China’s Internet users after it was revealed Monday that the wife of fallen Communist Party heavyweight Bo Xilai had been given a suspended death sentence after being...
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08.20.12China Conflicted Over Anti-Japan Protests
WSJ: China Real Time Report
Popular Chinese websites on Monday ran photos from anti-Japan protests across the nation, showing images of flipped-over and smashed Japanese-model cars in apparent reaction to a China-Japan dispute over a clutch of rocky islands.But in a country...
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08.20.12Anti-Japan Protests Erupt in China Over Disputed Island
New York Times
Anti-Japanese protests spread across China over the weekend, and the landing of Japanese activists on a disputed island on Sunday sharply intensified tensions between the two countries.
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08.19.12Sheng Shuren: A Journalist in Mao’s New China
Seeing Red in China
I came upon the name Sheng Shuren (盛树人) recently when I was reading one of the documents left behind by Uncle Liu Erning. From the reference I learned Sheng Shuren was a man arrested along with Uncle Erning in Xushui, Hebei Province, in the summer...
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08.18.12China Accused of Crackdown on Family and Friends of Dead Activist
Guardian
Human rights groups have warned of a crackdown on relatives and friends of a veteran Chinese activists who questioned his strange death, after one was arrested for inciting subversion of state power. They believe Zhu Chengzhi is being punished for...
Sinica Podcast
08.17.12
The Fourth Estate
from Sinica Podcast
Following the Chinese media’s intense coverage of the blitzkrieg trial of Gu Kailai, those of us at Sinica want to take this opportunity to look back at the most riveting China story of the year. And while we’ve covered developments week-by-week and...
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08.16.12Chinese Media Praises Landing of Activists on Diaoyu Islands
Ministry of Tofu
Wednesday afternoon, 14 activists from Hong Kong successfully landed on one of a set of disputed islands, over which Japan, China and Taiwan all claim sovereignty, and planted Chinese flags on the island as a gesture of declaring ownership. Chinese...
Media
08.16.12
The People’s Daily Said What?
In the course of its dramatic growth, China often churns out unprecedented numbers. But few of them have been more controversial than the recently released National Revival Index, a formula devised to measure China’s economic and social development...
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08.16.12The Bogu Kailai Case: Underwritten by Privilege
A review of Xinhua News Agency's account of the Bogu Kailai and Zhang Xiaojun murder trial released last Friday revealed a trove of fresh information. The details included the criminal charges, the type of evidence brought forward, expert...
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08.16.12Black Box by the Sea
Economist
This week China’s Communist Party announced the election of the 2,270 delegates who will gather later this year in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People for the 18th National Party Congress. They will be tasked with determining a new roster of top...
The NYRB China Archive
08.16.12
News from the Dalai Lama
from New York Review of Books
“I told President Obama the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party are missing a part of the brain, the part that contains common sense,” the Dalai Lama said to me during our conversation in London in mid-June.But it can be put back in. I am hopeful...
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08.16.12This Is Awkward: The Politics of a Chinese Orgy
New Yorker
Orgies are back in the news in Beijing, but this time it’s the Communist Party that has found itself in an uncomfortable position, and it is now praising the virtues of privacy. A leaked batch of photos swept across the Chinese internet this month,...
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08.15.12“Twitter Is My City”: An Interview with Ai Weiwei
Foreign Policy
Ai, who lived in New York for much of the 1980s, has become a patron of China's disaffected urbanites, and here, in his tranquil garden, he holds court, offering advice to the thousands of fans, bloggers, activists, and petitioners who visit...
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08.14.12Random Thoughts on the Gu Kailai Trial
Chinese Law Prof Blog
Did she indeed confess to everything? All the reports state in various ways that Gu confessed. The Zhao Report says, “She fully admitted her acts in the case without reservation; she offered no objections.” The Xinhua Report says that she “confessed...
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08.14.12Bo’s Brand of Justice Leaves Timebomb for China
Reuters
China's fallen politician Bo Xilai left a timebomb as a parting gift for the Communist Party leadership that threw him out—the smoldering demands for redress from the many targets of his harsh version of justice in the city he ruled.
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08.14.122011 Foreign Policy Speech by Paul Ryan
Weekly Standard
Ryan also called for China to liberalize and become “integrated into the global order.” But, he said, Chinese leaders should not count on the decline of the United States as a great power. “We must demonstrate that planning for the post-American era...
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08.14.12Portrait of a Gadfly—On New Documentary “Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry”
One artist, 90 minutes, 5196 children, 9000 backpacks, 81 days in prison and 40 cats, one of them can open the door. “Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry” is a short documentary, but it covers many different aspects of the famous Chinese artist-and-dissident’s...
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08.14.12How Dangerous Liaisons Led to Massive Corruption
A graft investigation into former railways minister Liu Zhijun that started in February 2011 has concluded with the ministry issuing a document on August 3 that lists six disciplinary violations Liu committed. The internal ministry notice sheds...
ChinaFile Recommends
08.14.12Scrutiny for Casino Mogul’s Frontman in China
New York Times
When Sheldon Adelson, the casino magnate, needed something done in China, he often turned to his company’s “chief Beijing representative,” a mysterious businessman named Yang Saixin. Mr. Yang arranged meetings for Mr. Adelson with senior Chinese...
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08.10.12Unofficial Account of Gu Kailai Trial (Translation)
Chinese Law Prof Blog
An unofficial report of proceedings in the Gu Kailai trial has surfaced. I can't vouch for its authenticity, but have done a quick and dirty, and not entirely literal, translation anyway. Comments, corrections, and suggestions welcome.
Sinica Podcast
08.10.12
The Chairman
from Sinica Podcast
Ten years after his elevation to General Secretary of the Communist Party of China, Hu Jintao remains almost as much of an enigma now as he was on first taking power. What do we know about the man beyond his reputation as a somewhat robotic...
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08.09.12Court Observer: Gu Kailai's Trial
Washington Post
China’s most widely anticipated trial in a generation ended Thursday less than eight hours after it began, with Gu Kailai — a daughter of the Communist Party’s “red aristocracy” and the wife of deposed charismatic leader...
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08.09.12Murder Trial of Chinese Official’s Wife Begins and Concludes
New York Times
The murder trial of Gu Kailai, the wife of the deposed political leader Bo Xilai, began here on Thursday morning and came to an end seven hours later, with officials saying that the defendant and an accomplice had all but confessed to...
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08.09.12China Leadership Monitor--Issue 38
Hoover Institution
Includes articles on Bo Xilai and the PLA, the Pacific PIvot, Economic Uncertaintly Its Effect on Politics, and China's Top Future Leaders to watch.
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08.08.12Heavy Burden on Athletes Takes Joy Away From China’s Olympic Success
New York Times
When Liu Xiang, China’s track and field superstar, crashed to the ground at the London Olympic Games on Tuesday after stumbling over the first hurdle in his 110-meter men’s hurdles heat, an announcer on the state broadcaster openly wept and subway...
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08.07.12Party Bristles at Military’s Push for More Sway in China
New York Times
With China’s once-a-decade leadership transition only months away, the party is pushing back with a highly visible campaign against disloyalty and corruption, even requiring all officers to report financial assets.
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08.07.12The New Great Game in Central Asia
Foreign Affairs
In the last decade, the world has started taking more notice of Central Asia. For the United States and its allies, the region is a valuable supply hub for the Afghanistan war effort. For Russia, it is an arena in which to exert political influence...
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08.07.12Chinese Criminal Procedure at its Worst
WSJ: China Real Time Report
On July 23rd in Guizhou province, lawyers obtained a partial victory for some of the defendants accused of involvement in organized crime. Not all the accused were as fortunate, and the limited results came with...
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08.07.12The Non-Trial of the Century
New Yorker
When China’s fallen political grand dame, Gu Kailai, steps into a courtroom this week to face a murder charge, one of the few things we can expect with any certainty is the verdict: guilty. Barring a political tornado between now and the scheduled...
Caixin Media
08.07.12Shenyang Businesses Closed By Inspection Panic
Most shop owners in a city of roughly 8 million people have pulled down their shutters to avoid what they fear will be stringent enforcement of a city ordinance tied to the hosting of the 2013 National Games.Small business owners in Shenyang,...
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08.06.12Advising Chinese Leaders: Futile Efforts?
WSJ: China Real Time Report
At a recent conference of Chinese political scientists and international relations scholars in Beijing, a western academic remarked that he was struck by how Chinese scholars often seemed keen to use their research to come up with advice for the...
Reports
08.06.12
Chinese Leadership and Elite Responses to the U.S. Pacific Pivot
He Jianan
China Leadership Monitor
Over the past several years, the most significant overall U.S. foreign policy action of relevance to China has been the announcement and initial follow-through of the so-called Pacific pivot or “Rebalancing” of U.S. attention and resources to the...
Reports
08.06.12
Shaping the Future—Part I: Domestic Developments in Taiwan
He Jianan
China Leadership Monitor
Three main themes emerged in Taiwan politics in the wake of President Ma Ying-jeou’s convincing reelection victory in January. First, in a highly contentious election that portended continuing intra-party strife, the DPP chose its new chairman,...
Reports
08.06.12
Economic Uncertainty Fuels Political Misgivings
He Jianan
China Leadership Monitor
Political uncertainty is inevitable as China prepares for this fall’s leadership transition. This year economic conditions are also unusually unpredictable. In particular, while China is undergoing an inevitable economic slowdown, few have a clear...