Alibaba Smashes Its Sales Record On China’s Singles’ Day Shopping Bonanza

Jon Russell
TechCrunch
In case you missed the media hype and have no idea why November 11 (11/11) is significant, it’s China biggest e-commerce sales day. Think of it as an amalgamation of all of North America’s biggest online retail days into one… on steroids.

‘A Map of Betrayal,’ by Ha Jin

Ben Macintyre
New York Times
Many years ago, the F.B.I. coined an acronym, MICE, to describe the motivations of the spy. This stands for Money, Ideology, Compromise and Ego. All spies, it is argued, are drawn into espionage by some combination of these factors.

Ten Fun and Fascinating Facts About Xi Jinping

Elizabeth Economy
Council on Foreign Relations
While I can’t do justice to all the material presented in Xi Jinping: The Goverance of China, here are some things I learned from reading through Xi’s musings and the musings of others about him.

Culture

11.07.14

‘The Training Wheels Are Coming Off,’ But That’s Not Necessarily A Good Thing

Jonathan Landreth
Making a movie is a wild ride no matter where you are in the world, a process fraught with ego and pride; wobblier, riskier, yet potentially more lucrative, the bigger and faster it gets.With U.S. gross sales of movie tickets basically flat, up just...

Features

11.06.14

No Women Need Apply

Lijia Zhang
“Applicants limited to male.” 23-year-old job-hunter Huang Rong (not her real name) noticed this line in a job announcement only after she had heard nothing from the recruiter and gone back to check the advertisement online. She had graduated from...

Myanmar's Aung San Suu Kyi Set to Visit China next Month, Her Party Says

Patrick Boehler
South China Morning Post
"We asked for some of her time … but she said she might be going to China and needed some free time in December," Han Thar Myint, of the National League for Democracy's Central Executive Committee, told the South China Morning Post.

Media

11.05.14

Tim Cook Coming Out Has Turned China Into a Nation of Fifth-Graders

Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian
"Let me be clear," wrote Apple CEO Tim Cook in a Bloomberg Businessweek article published on October 30. "I'm proud to be gay."Within an hour of the article's publication, Cook's first public announcement of his...

In Pictures: Designed in China

BBC
The Guo Shoujing Telescope, or Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope, is named after the 13th Century Chinese astronomer and is aimed at bringing Chinese astronomy into the 21st Century.

China Officials “Buy Corpses to Meet Cremation Quota”

BBC
BBC
Two officials in Guangdong province have been arrested after they allegedly bought corpses from grave robbers to have them cremated, Chinese media say.

Is China’s Grand Ethnic Experiment Working?

David McKenzie
BBC
In a gleaming classroom at Chong Hua High School in the northern Chinese city of Tianjin, students peer at onion slices under microscopes. Their biology teacher calls on Abdurrahman Mamat to explain what he sees."Plasmolysis," he replies...

Manual on How to Spot a Spy Circulates in an Increasingly Wary China

Didi Kirsten Tatlow
New York Times
“On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.” Or an American spy. Or a “hostile foreign force.” So says the “China Folk Counterespionage Manual,” a “how to spot a spy” guide circulating on the Internet.

Taiwan Leader Stresses Support for Hong Kong Protests

Keith Bradsher and Austin Ramzy
New York Times
“If mainland China can practice democracy in Hong Kong, or if mainland China itself can become more democratic, then we can shorten the psychological distance between people from the two sides of the Taiwan Strait,” President Ma Ying-jeou said.

Tigers and Flies

South China Morning Post
The South China Morning Post has collected the CCDI’s announcements of graft probes since the beginning of Xi’s reign two years ago, and visualised them on a map. Party probes have spread across China and dramatically intensified since early 2014.

Beijing Subway Bans Halloween Costumes

Lucy Hornby
Financial Times
The Chinese capital banned Halloween costumes from its subway system, warning they could cause “panic” and “stampedes.”

In Hong Kong Photographer, China Sees Image of Spy

Chris Buckley
New York Times
Dan Garrett, a gnarled, tattooed former Pentagon intelligence analyst, has attracted more stares than usual lately when he prowls the streets here with a camera fitted with a 300-millimeter lens, snapping images of pro-democracy demonstrations,...

Toronto School District Cancels Plans for Confucius Institute

Austin Ramzy
New York Times
Canada’s largest school district moved to terminate its agreement with the institute, which would have offered after-school Chinese language and culture classes, over concerns about China’s human rights record and restrictions on academic freedom.

AFP Follows Chinese Fugitive Money Trail

Samantha Hutchinson, Lisa Murray, Angus...
Agence France-Presse
The son of China’s most famous fugitive spent the five years before his father was placed under investigation for corruption setting up two Australian companies and buying a development site in Sydney’s Neutral Bay.

Media

10.29.14

Foot Spas, Steamed Buns, and Midday Drinking

It may not be Monty Python’s famous “Ministry of Silly Walks,” but it’s close.The Office of Forbidding Midday Alcohol Consumption, a local government initiative in China’s southern Henan province which seeks to reduce alcohol consumption at...

China Quietly Gives Global News Awards

David Bandurski
China Media Project
Although the WMS was, according to Chinese state media, “co-launched by Xinhua News Agency and other major media organizations around the world,” the event has always been solidly China’s prerogative.

It’s Time to Give China Some Time

William Pesek
Bloomberg
There’s also evidence the country may be approaching something of a Henry Ford moment, when a manufacturing-based economy matures to point where workers can afford to buy the products they're making.

China to Ban Extralegal Administration with Power List

Xinhua
Xinhua
The new policy hopes to curb problems in administration and law enforcement such as failure in strictly observing or enforcing the law, putting their power above law, bending law for personal gains and power-for-money trades, Xi Jinping said.

Ex-General in China Admits He Took Bribes, Report Says

Chris Buckley
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.

Taking Back Hong Kong’s Future

Joshua Wong Chi-Fung
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.

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...

Xinhua Insight: China's Legal Renaissance Sounds Death Knell for Guanxi

Xinhua
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.

China 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.

Media

10.24.14

Hong Kong Documentary Explores the Roots of Dissent

La Frances Hui
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...

China’s Alibaba Reportedly Eyeing 37 Percent Stake in Lionsgate

Etan Vessing
Hollywood Reporter
The New York Post reported on Friday that the chairman of Lionsgate is looking to unload his influential stake in the mini-studio, with Ma in line to possibly buy it.

Environment

10.23.14

Tibetan Plateau Faces Massive ‘Ecosystem Shift’

from chinadialogue
Large areas of grasslands, alpine meadows, wetlands, and permafrost will disappear on the Tibetan plateau by 2050, with serious implications for environmental security in China and South Asia, a research paper published by scientists at the Kunming...

Presumed Guilty in China’s War on Corruption, Targets Suffer Abuses

Andrew Jacobs and Chris Buckley
New York Times
One beating left Wang Guanglong, a midlevel official from China’s Fujian Province, partly deaf, according to his later testimony.

Thomas Sauvin’s Beijing Silvermine

Amy Connors
New Yorker
Thomas Sauvin estimates that he has sifted through more than half a million images, taken by ordinary citizens, between 1985 and the early aughts, that depict everyday life, leisure, and travel, both in China and abroad.

China, U.S. Working to Ensure Positive Results from Obama's Upcoming China Visit: Senior Chinese Official

Xinhua
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.

Viewpoint

10.21.14

‘We Can Only Trust Each Other and Keep the Road’

Ilaria Maria Sala
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...

Sinica Podcast

10.17.14

China Daddy Issues

Kaiser Kuo, Jeremy Goldkorn & more from Sinica Podcast
We’ve all heard about the difficulty of finding good schools in China, and know first hand about the food and air safety problems. But what about the terrors of pedestrian crossings, the dilemmas of how much trust you should inculcate in your kids,...

Books

10.15.14

China’s Super Consumers

Savio Chan and Michael Zakkour
China has transformed itself from a feudal economy in the 19th century, to Mao and Communism in the 20th century, to the largest consumer market in the world by the early 21st century. China's Super Consumers explores the extraordinary birth of consumerism in China and explains who these super consumers are. China's Super Consumers offers an in-depth explanation of what's inside the minds of Chinese consumers and explores what they buy, where they buy, how they buy, and most importantly why they buy.The book is filled with real-world stories of the foreign and domestic companies, leading brands, and top executives who have succeeded in selling to this burgeoning marketplace. This remarkable book also takes you inside the boardrooms of the people who understand Chinese consumers and have had success in the Chinese market.A hands-on resource for succeeding in the Chinese marketplaceFilled with real-world stories of companies who have made an impact in ChinaDiscover what the Chinese consumer wants and how to deliver the goodsThis book is an invaluable resource for anyone who wants a clear understanding of how China's Super Consumers are changing the world and how to sell to them. —Wiley {chop}

‘People’s Democratic Dictatorship’ Wrongly Targeted

Global Times
Global Times
A CPC-owned magazine published an article recently, saying it is wrong to negate or replace the people's democratic dictatorship with the rule of law.

Maid in Hong Kong Fights for Justice Against Abuser

Deb Price, Chester Yung and Sara...
Wall Street Journal
Maids from Indonesia and the Philippines are an indispensable part of the Hong Kong’s vibrant economy and society. But incidents of abuse often stay hidden from public view.

Cultural Reflection Can Improve Modern Governance

Xinhua
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.

Caixin Media

10.14.14

Sounds of Distinction

Sheila Melvin
The Peking Opera star Mei Lanfang (1894-1961) is generally acknowledged to have been the greatest performer of female dan roles in the history of his art. He was also a renowned theatrical innovator whose performance style is carried on as the...

Chinese Media Accuse Japanese Manga Star Doraemon of Subverting Youth

Justin McCurry
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.

Sinica Podcast

10.10.14

The Sounds of Old Beijing

Kaiser Kuo & Jeremy Goldkorn from Sinica Podcast
This week on Sinica, Kaiser and Jeremy are joined by Colin Chinnery from the Beijing Sound History Project, a recording project that aims to preserve the distinctive clangs, songs, and shouts of traditional Beijing life. In addition to sampling some...

Viewpoint

10.08.14

‘We Do Not Want to Be Persuaded’

Ilaria Maria Sala
Over the past week, it has been hard to make sense of the threats and ultimatums the Hong Kong protesters have faced. On Sunday, the South China Morning Post splashed on its front page that Hong Kong had “hours to avoid tragedy.” University deans...

China Detains Poet Wang Zang and 7 Others Ahead of Hong Kong Event

Jack Chang and Isolda Morillo
Huffington Post
On Sept. 30, Wang Zang had posted on Twitter a picture of himself raising his middle finger and holding an umbrella, a symbol of solidarity adopted by the protesters demanding open nominations for Hong Kong's chief executive.

China’s Soft-Power Fail

Adam Minter
Bloomberg
This was not the reception that the Chinese government had in mind in 2004 when it inaugurated the Confucius Institute program as a means of improving its image abroad and projecting “soft power.”

The Kitchen Network

Lauren Hilgers
New Yorker
“Customers are here already!” the restaurant’s owner, a wiry Chinese man in his fifties, barked. He dropped a heavy container onto the metal counter with a crash. “How can you possibly be moving this slowly?”

Read the Anti-Hong Kong Rant That’s Going Viral in China

Anonymous
Foreign Policy
Hong Kong's real problem is that most people have no awareness of changing patterns of development, and thus are not psychologically prepared for economic restructuring.

China Removes 160,000 ‘Phantom Staff’ from Government Payroll

Katie Hunt
CNN
Hebei province in central China was the worst offender, with 55,793 officials found to be getting paid even though they never worked, followed by Sichuan and Henan.

Penn State Latest School to Drop China’s Confucius Institute

Douglas Belkin
Wall Street Journal
The action signals increasing discontent on university campuses over the institutes' hiring practices and refusal to acknowledge unflattering chapters of Chinese history.

Waldorf Astoria NY hotel sold to China’s Anbang for $1.95bn

Anna Nicolaou
Financial Times
The sale allows the companies to “finally maximise the full value of this iconic asset on a full city block in midtown Manhattan,” said Christopher Nassetta, chief executive of Hilton Worldwide.

Great Job on the Railroad. Now Go Back to China.

Edward Rothstein
New York Times
The narrative at the New-York Historical Society’s vigorous and imaginative new exhibition is not just of China’s impact on United States history or of the experiences and suffering of Chinese immigrants. It is how Chinese-American identity came to...

Sinica Podcast

10.03.14

Chinese Martial Arts

Jeremy Goldkorn, David Moser & more from Sinica Podcast
This week on Sinica, Jeremy Goldkorn and David Moser are pleased to be joined by Sascha Matuszak, a Chengdu-based expert on Chinese martial arts and the producer of a new documentary on Chinese MMA (mixed martial arts), a competitive tournament...

Sinica Podcast

09.27.14

In Conversation with Mara Hvistendahl

Kaiser Kuo & Jeremy Goldkorn from Sinica Podcast
Kaiser and Jeremy are joined this week by Mara Hvistendahl, Pulitzer Prize-nominated author and long-standing resident of Shanghai, to discuss her two main works. Along with discussing the twists and turns of her murder novel, And the City Swallowed...

Media

09.25.14

An Internet Where Nobody Says Anything

David Wertime
Here is what a court in Urumqi, the capital of China’s western Xinjiang region, concludes Ilham Tohti, a balding, thick-set, 44-year-old professor, did: “Using ‘Uighur Online’ as a platform, and taking advantage of his role as a university professor...

Viewpoint

09.25.14

How Bad Does the Air Pollution Have to Be Before You’d Wear a Face Mask?

Stephanie Ho
“Mommy, why don’t I wear a face mask?” asked my nine-year-old daughter Maggie nearly every day during the first few weeks of school. Two of her expat classmates had been in Beijing less than a year, but it seemed as if they wore theirs all the time...

Books

09.24.14

A Chinaman’s Chance

Eric Liu
From Tony Hsieh to Amy Chua to Jeremy Lin, Chinese Americans are now arriving at the highest levels of American business, civic life, and culture. But what makes this story of immigrant ascent unique is that Chinese Americans are emerging at just the same moment when China has emerged—and indeed may displace America—at the center of the global scene. What does it mean to be Chinese American in this moment? And how does exploring that question alter our notions of just what an American is and will be? In many ways, Chinese Americans today are exemplars of the American Dream: during a crowded century and a half, this community has gone from indentured servitude, second-class status and outright exclusion to economic and social integration and achievement. But this narrative obscures too much: the Chinese Americans still left behind, the erosion of the American Dream in general, the emergence—perhaps—of a Chinese Dream, and how other Americans will look at their countrymen of Chinese descent if China and America ever become adversaries. As Chinese Americans reconcile competing beliefs about what constitutes success, virtue, power, and purpose, they hold a mirror up to their country in a time of deep flux. In searching, often personal essays that range from the meaning of Confucius to the role of Chinese Americans in shaping how we read the Constitution to why he hates the hyphen in "Chinese-American," Eric Liu pieces together a sense of the Chinese American identity in these auspicious years for both countries. He considers his own public career in American media and government; his daughter's efforts to hold and release aspects of her Chinese inheritance; and the still-recent history that made anyone Chinese in America seem foreign and disloyal until proven otherwise. Provocative, often playful but always thoughtful, Liu breaks down his vast subject into bite-sized chunks, along the way providing insights into universal matters: identity, nationalism, family, and more. —PublicAffairs {chop}

Alibaba Founder Jack Ma Tops China Rich List

BBC
E-commerce mogul Jack Ma has become China's richest person following Alibaba's record share listing, according to a wealth survey by the Hurun Report. Ma tops its annual rich list with a fortune of $25 billion. 

China Increasingly Producing ‘Tools of Torture’ for Export: Amnesty

Megha Rajagopalan
Reuters
The Chinese equipment, such as spiked batons, fuels human rights abuses by law enforcement authorities in African and Southeast Asian nations, the international human rights group said in a report.

‘They Don’t Want Moderate Uighurs’

Ian Johnson from New York Review of Books
In my series of interviews with Chinese intellectuals, there is an empty chair for Ilham Tohti, the economist and Uighur activist. It’s not that I hadn’t heard of him or hadn’t been in China long enough to have met him before he was arrested earlier...

Sinica Podcast

09.19.14

LGBT China

Jeremy Goldkorn & David Moser from Sinica Podcast
This week on Sinica, Jeremy Goldkorn and David Moser are joined by Fan Popo for a discussion of the way life works for the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transsexual (LGBT) community in China. For those who have not heard of him, Fan is an accomplished...

Sex in China: An Interview with Li Yinhe

Ian Johnson from New York Review of Books
Li Yinhe is one of China’s best-known experts on sex and the family. A member of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, she has published widely on sexual mores, women, and family issues. Li also runs a popular blog, where she has advocated for...