State Sector is China’s Secret Sauce

Joe Zhang
South China Morning Post
The state sector has provided essential organization, capital and the ability to survive turbulence collectively. That’s the Chinese edge, like it or not.

China Tightens Security in Beijing

BBC
China has deployed armed police patrol vehicles in Beijing after three attacks at transport hubs around the country.

Mapping the Four C's of Chinese Wealth

Warner Brown
Live in a city near China's coast, and in a capital. (Coal doesn't hurt.)

Caixin Media

05.06.14

Growing Pains for a Megalopolis in Transition

Twenty years of on-and-off government discussions have yielded little progress toward the goal of coordinating urban and industrial development in a key Chinese megalopolis—the region encompassing the nation's capital Beijing, neighboring Hebei...

Infographics

05.02.14

The ‘Nongmin’ Breakdown

from Sohu
Who are China's rural migrant workers?A uniquely Chinese social identity, the category of “rural migrant worker” is a product of China’s urban/rural dichotomy. It refers to a class of citizens no longer employed in the agricultural sector who...

China’s Income Inequality Surpasses U.S., Posing Risk for President Xi Jinping,

Lorraine Woellert and Sharon Chen
Bloomberg
The income gap between the rich and poor in China has surpassed that of the U.S. and is among the widest in the world, a report showed, adding to the challenges for President Xi Jinping as growth slows.

Sinica Podcast

04.25.14

Trash Talk with Adam Minter

Jeremy Goldkorn & Adam Minter from Sinica Podcast
Anyone living in China doubtless has a sense of the unholy number of people who seem to be involved in the trash trade here, and who will ferret away everything from your cardboard boxes to plastic bottles faster than you can unpack them or consume...

China’s Losers: Disillusioned Office Workers

Gady Epstein
Economist
Amid spreading prosperity, a generation of self-styled also-rans emerges.

China’s Air Pollution Leading to More Erratic Climate for US, Say Scientists

Jonathan Kaiman
Guardian
Computer modelling shows intensification of U.S.-bound Pacific storms, driven by fine aerosols from coal power plants and traffic.

Massive China Shoe Factory Strike Rolls on as Offer Falls Flat

John Ruwitch and Danny Kwok
Reuters
Chinese shoe factory workers shrugged off an offer of improved benefits, prolonging one of the largest strikes in recent years amid signs of increased labor activism as the economy slows.

China Property Collapse Has Begun

Gordon G. Chang
Forbes
Walmart will be closing its Zhaohui store in Hangzhou on April 23 as a part of its overall plan to dump marginal locations—about nine percent of the total—in China.

Photo Gallery

04.09.14

Sunflower Protestors Open Up

Chien-min Chung
On March 18 some 200 Taiwanese, mostly college students, stormed the offices of Taiwan’s legislature, beginning a protest over a proposed trade agreement between the self-governed island and mainland China, which considers it a “renegade province.”...

Is the American Middle Class Losing Out to China and India?

Thomas B. Edsall
New York Times
CUNY professor Branko Milanovic says the middle class in China and India experienced 60 to 70 percent income growth from 1998 to 2008, while middle class growth stalled in the United States.

Reports

03.25.14

Urban China

World Bank
This report recommends that China curb rapid urban sprawl by reforming land requisition, give migrants urban residency and equal access to basic public services, and reform local finances by finding stable revenues and by allowing local governments...

Was Chinese Train Massacre ‘Terrorism’?

Nisid Hajari
Bloomberg
Chinese might want to think twice before they start adopting the U.S.’s politically charged, post-Sept. 11 enthusiasm for labeling terrorists and terror attacks.

Kunming Rail Station Attack: China Horrified as Mass Stabbings Leave Dozens Dead

Barry Neild
Guardian
State media blamed the killings at Kunming in Yunnan province, south-west China, on militants from Xinjiang in the country's restive north-west. 

At Least 28 Dead, 113 Injured in Kunming Railway Station Violence

Xinhua
The railway station attack in the southwest Chinese city of Kunming was an organized, premeditated violent terrorist attack, according to the authorities.

Dozens Dead in Knife Attack at China Train Station

Calum MacLeod
USA Today
China suffered one of its deadliest ever acts of terror when more than 10 knife-wielding men killed at least 29 people and injured over 130 in a brutal assault at a train station in southwest China's Kunming.

Happy and Unhappy in China

James Fallows
Atlantic
The new video “Happy in Beijing,” shot over the past few days of worse-than-ever airpocalypse in Beijing, is worth noticing for several reasons.

Chinese Man Sues Local Government Over Smog

Shannon Tiezzi
Diplomat
Li Guixin of Hebei province has become the first person to sue the government over air pollution. 

Many in China Can Now Have a Second Child, but Say No

Dan Levin
New York Times
Many couples blamed the rising cost of living for their reluctance to have more than one child. Some cited a cultural norm that requires husbands to provide an apartment, car and other material riches to a bride, demands that can push families into...

China Must Reduce ‘Unbearable’ Smog, Government Adviser Says

Bloomberg
China's air pollution has reached intolerable levels and the country should aggressively cut its reliance on coal, according to the government’s climate-change adviser.

Chinese Sentiment

Rinse
Medium
Shen Wei is a fine art photographer currently based in New York City. Before going to the States, he’s never even held a camera. But once he did, he never stopped. He was inspired by the medium and began exploring the power of photography. As he...

Caixin Media

03.03.14

Kunming Attack Is ‘China’s 9/11,’ State Media Says

In the days after a major terror attack in Kunming, state media outlets are calling for a united front to combat terror and warning against excusing the attackers or criticizing the government’s policies on minorities.On the evening of March 1, a...

Sinica Podcast

03.01.14

In Line Behind a Billion People

Kaiser Kuo, Jeremy Goldkorn & more from Sinica Podcast
This week on Sinica, Kaiser and Jeremy are joined by Damien Ma, author of In Line Behind a Billion People, a new book for China-watchers looking at how China’s lack of affordable housing, its food and air pollution, and the country’s poor education...

Environment

02.28.14

Citizen Sues Local Government for Failing to Curb Air Pollution

from chinadialogue
Although residents in Northern China are no strangers to dirty air, a man from the smog-enshrouded Hebei province has decided to take the local environmental authority to court for failing to control air pollution.Li Guixin, a resident in Hebei’s...

Media

02.14.14

A Kapital Idea

Matthew Niederhauser & David M. Barreda
Matthew Neiderhauser is a photographer and artist whose work is influenced by his studies in anthropology. He lived in Beijing for six years and recently returned to the United States. His pictorial book Sound Kapital, published in 2009, documented...

China T.V. Expose on Sex Workers Sparks Angry Backlash

Julie Makinen
Los Angeles Times
A salacious investigative report on state-run C.C.T.V., detailing widespread prostitution in the southern city of Dongguan, boomeranged on the broadcaster as a vocal contingent of citizens rallied to the defense of the city’s sex workers. ...

In China, ‘Once the Villages Are Gone, the Culture Is Gone’

Ian Johnson
New York Times
Across China, cultural traditions like the Lei family’s music are under threat. Rapid urbanization means village life, the bedrock of Chinese culture, is rapidly disappearing, and with it, traditions and history.

Features

01.26.14

For Freedom, Justice, and Love

Xu Zhiyong from China Change
Following is legal activist Xu Zhiyong’s closing statement at the end of his trial in Beijing on January 22, 2014. According to his lawyer, Xu was only able to read “about ten minutes of it before the presiding judge stopped him, saying it was...

Beijing Population Tops 21 Million

Xinhua
This includes an estimated increase of 100,000 senior citizens every year until 2020. 

Back in China, Watching My Words

Helen Gao
New York Times
Back in China after many years in the U.S., Yuxin Gao feels alienated and silenced, and many ask why she returned. 

China Dwarfs U.S. in Monetary Stimulus

Keith Bradsher
New York Times
Can China slow credit growth and money supply without causing slumps in real-estate and business?

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...

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...

Why Eating Chinese Food on Christmas is a Sacred Tradition for American Jews

Marc Tracy
Tablet
The Hebrew year is 5774 and the Chinese year is 4710. That must mean, the joke goes, that against all odds the Jews went without Chinese food for 1,064 years. In fact, Jewish love for Chinese food is neither hallucinated nor arbitrary. It is very...

The End of China’s One-Child Policy? An Interview with Mei Fong

Jeffrey Wasserstrom
Dissent
What exactly did the recent Third Plenum reveal about China’s strategy for dealing with the “One-Child Policy?” Questions for Mei Fong, a Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter working on a book about the policy.

Excerpts

11.22.13

Shen Wei’s ‘Chinese Sentiment’

Peter Hessler
When Shen Wei was growing up in Shanghai during the nineteen-eighties and nineties, his mother worked as a fashion designer who specialized in calendars. If a company wanted to publish one, they hired Shen Wei’s mother, and she designed clothes for...

Environment

11.12.13

China’s Urban Dilemma

Isabel Hilton from chinadialogue
After nearly three decades of rapid urbanization, China’s official and unofficial city dwellers outnumber its farmers. More than 400 million people have already moved into cities in the past thirty years, and in 2011 China crossed the threshold of a...

China Story Yearbook 2013: Civilising China

China Story
“China Story Yearbook 2013” contains a rich range of translated material from Chinese sources related to politics, social change, urban transformation, law and order, international relations, the economy, the Internet, major news...

Reports

11.11.13

Reimagining China’s Cities

Isabel Hilton, et. al.
Isabel Hilton
chinadialogue
After nearly three decades of rapid urbanisation, China’s official and unofficial city dwellers outnumber its farmers. China’s urbanisation counts as the biggest and fastest social movement in human history, a movement that has turned Chinese...

In China There’s Not One City Without Stretches of Empty Houses

Anne Stevenson-Yang
Forbes
It is impossible to know with certainty when the property bubble will burst, but burst it will, and anyone visiting China five years from now will be lucky to find prices at 60% of the current values.  

Video

11.05.13

Small Part, Big Screen

Gilles Sabrié
Every morning outside the imposing gate of the Beijing Film Studio, a throng gathers to try to find a way inside. These aren’t fans, exactly. Look at their faces, the practiced way they crane their necks or square their shoulders when the man with...

Infographics

10.23.13

To Save or Not to Save

from Sohu
China is known for saving money, and as the country has become wealthier, the household saving rate has increased. China’s personal saving rate has risen steadily since the mid-90s and now exceeds 50%, much higher than Germany’s 10%—considered high...

China: A Place to Call Home

Simon Rabinovitch
Financial Times
Property prices have almost quintupled in leading Chinese cities over the past decade and they are perhaps the biggest single threat to the country’s economic and social stability.  

It’s the Law: Chengguan in Guangzhou Now Have to be Nice

Barry van Wyk
Danwei
The new regulations state clearly that chengguan may not use profane or threatening language while enforcing their duties, may not damage private property, and may not use any form of violence or intimidation. 

Parents Bribe to Get Students into Top Schools, Despite Campaign Against Corruption

William Wan
Washington Post
Almost everything, from admission to grades to teacher recommendations, is negotiable in Chinese schools if you know the right person or have enough cash, a fact that's worsening rather than mending the vast gap...

Beijing's 20 Most Interesting People

The Beijinger
Beijinger
Even if nothing interesting could be written about 99 percent of Beijing's approximately 20 million people, there would still be 200,000 great stories remaining.

For China, a New Kind of Feminism

Didi Kristen Tatlow
New York Times
Sheryl Sandberg’s brand of self-strengthening feminism has made its way to China, receiving mixed, but generally positive, reactions among various audiences.

How China Lost Its Mojo: One Town’s Story

Wall Street Journal
Low wages and easy access to overseas markets helped transform Yantian in the 90s from a sleepy agricultural hamlet to a manufacturing hub. Now, the number of foreign firms in town has dropped, due to rising labor costs, land shortages and fading...

China’s Plan to Curb Air Pollution Sets Limits on Coal Use and Vehicles

Edward Wong
New York Times
This plan represents the most concrete response yet by the Communist Party and the government to growing criticism over allowing the country’s air, soil and water to degrade to abysmal levels because of corruption and unchecked economic growth.&...

Caixin Media

09.16.13

Chongqing Officials Mired in Web of Sex, Lies and Video

When a sex video involving a Chongqing official went viral on the Internet on November 2012, like millions of others, Tan Linling clicked out of curiosity.To her surprise, Tan recognized the woman in the video as a former colleague and friend named...

Across China, Skyscrapers Brush the Heavens

Keith Bradsher
New York Times
China is home to 60 of the world’s 100 tallest buildings now under construction. But the skyward aspirations of Changsha, the capital of Hunan province, have inspired incredulity tinged with hostility. 

China’s Millionaire Population Grows Less Quickly

Laurie Burkitt
Wall Street Journal
With the world’s second-largest economy in the midst of an extended slowdown, growth in the population of Chinese millionaires has fallen to its slowest pace in five years.

China ‘Dog-lion’: Henan Zoo Mastiff Poses as Africa Cat

Michael Bristow
BBC
An animal described as an African lion at a Chinese zoo was exposed as a fraud—when the creature started barking in front of visitors. 

Caixin Media

08.19.13

Infrequent Flying Snarls Civil Aviation Sector

Getting away for a little surf and sand ought to be easy for Beijingers like Mr. Wang, who recently boarded one of the daily, four-hour flights that link the capital and sub-tropical Hainan Island in China’s far south.But airport delays seriously...

Conversation

08.15.13

What Should China Do to Reverse its Tourism Deficit?

Leah Thompson, Damien Ma & more
Recent news stories and industry studies show that fewer international visitors are choosing China as their destination. January-June arrivals in Beijing are down 15% from the same period in 2012 and more Chinese than ever before are spending their...