Teaching Uighur Children Mandarin will not Bring Stability to Xinjiang

Economist
More schools move to use Chinese only, except a few hours each week in Uighur literature. President Xi Jinping emphasizes this policy as a way to fight terrorism.

Outcry in Russia over China land lease

Kathrin Hille
Financial Times
Plans to hand a stretch of remote Siberian territory to Chinese investors triggers protests in Russia, underlining how the relationship between both countries is undermined by deep-rooted distrust.

Environment

06.24.15

High Off the Hog

Stefani Kim
Hongshaorou—“red braised” pork belly, a classic Chinese dish—is cooked with ginger, garlic, and soy sauce until the squares of fatty meat are so tender they dissolve in the mouth. Once a luxury, this succulent delicacy was known to be a favorite...

At Least 18 Dead in Ramadan Attack on Police Checkpoint in Xinjiang

Joshua Lipes, Mamatjan Juma
Radio Free Asia
18 dead after a knife and bomb attack by a group of Uyghurs on a checkpoint in Xinjiang amid harsh restrictions on observance of Ramadan.

Sinica Podcast

06.23.15

The Brother Orange Saga

Kaiser Kuo, Jeremy Goldkorn & more from Sinica Podcast
The story started when a Buzzfeed editor lost his iPhone in an East Village bar in February of last year and blossomed into the Sino-American romance of the century, and probably the most up-lifting and altogether unlikely China story that we can...

The Village and the Girl

Carrie Gracie
BBC
The destruction of rural China became for pig farmer Xiao Zhang a liberation and an opportunity.

Caixin Media

06.09.15

China’s Cabinet Unveils Plan to Improve Rural Schools

The State Council has released a plan for improving the quality of education in rural areas over the next five years—a move the cabinet says is aimed at improving the quality of teaching at primary and secondary schools in the country’s less-...

Divers Comb Capsized China Ship, Hopes Fade for Survivors

John Ruwitch, Engen Tham
Reuters
Rescuers have not slackened off, even though about 200 divers face difficulties such as cabin doors blocked by tables and beds.

Traces II

Ian Teh
Granta
Few rivers have captured the soul of a nation more deeply than the Yellow River. Historically a symbol of enduring glory, a force of nature both feared and revered, it has provided water for life downstream for thousands...

Dying to Breathe

Sim Chi Yin
National Geographic
This is the unseen cost of gold mining in China—the world’s top gold producer. In China, silicosis is considered a form of pneumoconiosis, which affects an estimated six million workers who toil in gold, coal, or silver mines or in stone-cutting...

Searching for Identity in China’s Outer Lands

Q. Sakamaki & Dave Gershgorn
New York Times
“ ‘China’s Outer Lands’ is about people instinctively looking for their own identity, between conformity or originality or autonomy or dependence,” Mr. Sakamaki said. “It’s natural, it’s happening in not only China, it’s everywhere.”

China, Russia Prepare $2 Billion Agricultural Investment Fund

Chuin-Wei Yap
Wall Street Journal
The fund will develop agricultural projects in the two countries and set up a free-trade zone between their key farming belts.

An American Hero in China

Ian Johnson from New York Review of Books
One night in September, three hundred people crowded into the basement auditorium of an office tower in Beijing to hear a discussion between two of China’s most popular writers. One was Liu Yu, a thirty-eight-year-old political scientist and blogger...

At Least 20 Killed, 58 Injured in Tibet Following Earthquake

Xinhua
Some 24,800 people in Xigaze City were relocated after 8.1 earthquake in neighboring Nepal.

Nepal Earthquake: India and China Send Rescue Teams to Himalayan Nation

Niharika Mandhana and Charles Hutzler
Wall Street Journal
China sent 62 rescue workers, six sniffer dogs, and was providing about $3.2 million in supplies.

Wild Pigeon

Photos by Carolyn Drake, words by...
Daylight
“The underlying theme I heard when talking to people was that how you interpret things is how they will be, so its best to look at the bright side of things. You don’t mention bad dreams, or you try to interpret them in a positive way. People told...

Sinica Podcast

03.23.15

In Manchuria: A Village Called Wasteland

Kaiser Kuo, David Moser & more from Sinica Podcast
Kaiser Kuo and David Moser are joined by Michael Meyer, the author of The Last Days of Old Beijing and now In Manchuria, a part literary travelogue and part journalistic account of three years spent living with family in rural Jilin.{...

Media

03.09.15

China’s Real Inconvenient Truth: Its Class Divide

Rachel Lu
China is talking about its pollution problem, but its equally serious class problem remains obscured behind the haze. Smog leapt to the forefront of Chinese national discourse after the February 28 release of "Under the Dome," a 103-minute...

The Cowboys (and Indians) of Sichuan: Photographers Search for China's Billy the Kid

Stephanie Borcard and Nicolas Metraux
South China Morning Post
The people of remote Tagong in the southwestern grasslands resemble the cowboys and Indians of North American history.

Media

03.04.15

The Other China

Michael Meyer & Ian Buruma
Writers Michael Meyer and Ian Buruma engage in a discussion co-sponsored by The New York Review of Books centered on Meyer’s new book, In Manchuria: A Village Called Wasteland and the Transformation of Rural China, which combines immersion...

Earthbound China

03.02.15

Village Acupuncture

Andrew Stokols
On a bamboo-covered mountaintop the mud-walled houses of Diaotan village are just barely visible through the thick fog that often shrouds this remote hamlet in China’s Zhejiang province. Worn but sturdy earthen walls still enclose the largest...

39 Hours Inside The Biggest Human Migration On Earth

Matthew Sheehan
Huffington Post
China's Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's rolled into one, the holiday unfolds on an entirely different scale. 

Traffic Peaks as Lunar New Year Holiday Ends

Meng Jie
Xinhua
The last day of the holiday saw about 9.7 million train trips, 1.4 million by plane, and 73.6 million by highway.

Culture

02.20.15

‘Still Not Married?’ A Graphic Guide to Surviving Chinese New Year

Roseann Lake
Maya Hong is a Beijing transplant from a small town outside of Harbin, the icy city not far from China’s border with Siberia. Though proud of her glacial origins and skilled at combating subzero temperatures, over the years Hong, 30, has had to add...

Culture

02.04.15

‘This is not that China Story’

James Carter & Michael Meyer
James Carter spent much of the 1990s researching the modern history of Harbin, China’s northernmost major city, in the region that is today known as dongbei, the northeast. That region is the subject of Michael Meyer’s forthcoming book, In Manchuria...

Excerpts

01.28.15

The View from Wasteland

Michael Meyer
In winter the land is frozen and still. A cloudless sky shines off snow-covered rice paddies, reflecting light so bright, you have to shield your eyes. I lean into a stinging wind and trudge north up Red Flag Road, to a village named Wasteland.The...

Xi’s Yunnan Visit Highlights Poverty Elimination, Ethnic Solidarity

Xinhua
Xinhua
President Xi Jinping seeks to rally support for a "tough battle" against poverty and to speed up growth in the country's relatively underdeveloped ethnic regions.

Vets Battle to save Stricken Panda in Shaanxi

Huang Zhiling
China Daily
Vets are racing to treat a 5-year-old panda diagnosed with canine distemper at the Shaanxi Rare Wildlife Rescue and Breeding Research Center.

American Film On A Tibetan Migrant Finds Unlikely Success In China

Frank Langfitt
NPR
Journalist Jocelyn Ford spent years documenting the life of Zanta, a Tibetan migrant who fled her poor, mountain village to build a life for herself and her son in Beijing.

In Remote Thai Villages, Legacy of China’s Lost Army Endures

Amy Qin
New York Times
At night, traditional Chinese red lanterns illuminate the hotels, shop fronts and Yunnanese-style restaurants lining the main road in this highland village of just over 1,000 people. On one recent evening, as the mist rose off a nearby reservoir,...

Good Times Are Over for Local Governments

Caixin
Two pieces of recent news have piqued the public's interest. First, local governments reported their latest debt figures to the Ministry of Finance. The numbers have not been made public, but sources say many officials reported large amounts in...

Myanmar-China Trafficking: Sold by Father for $1000

Jonah Fisher
BBC
Along the Chinese border, it is not just drugs being traded—Burmese women and children are being bought and sold.

China Might Be Killing Off a Pikachu-Like Animal For No Reason

Kayla Ruble
Vice News
The animated yellow rodent-like character, Pikachu, from the Pokémon video game and TV franchise, is not a total work of fiction. In fact, many believe the creature is based off of a small mousey animal found in China known as a pika.

Myanmar Returns to What Sells: Heroin

Thomas Fuller
New York Times
A decade ago, Myanmar seemed on course to wipe out the opium fields and heroin jungle labs along its eastern border, the notorious Golden Triangle.

Inside a Chinese Test-Prep Factory

Brook Larmer
New York Times
One minute later, at precisely 11:45, the stillness was shattered. Thousands of teenagers swarmed out of the towering front gate of Maotanchang High School. Many of them wore identical black-and-white Windbreakers emblazoned with the slogan, in...

Other

12.30.14

A Look Back at 2014

It’s hard to believe, but ChinaFile is almost two years old. It’s been an exciting year for us, and, as ever, an eventful year for China. It was a year of muscular leadership from Xi Jinping, who has now been in office just over two years and who...

China’s Mountain Hermits Seek a Highway to Heaven

Tom Hancock
Agence France-Presse
His unheated hut is half way up a mountain with no electricity, and his diet consists mostly of cabbage. But Master Hou says he has found a recipe for joy. "There is no happier way for a person to live on this earth," he declared,...

Video

12.15.14

Down to the Countryside

Sun Yunfan & Leah Thompson
The world has heard much of late about the scale and scope of China’s mass migration from the poor rural countryside to its booming cities. Some think the number of these migrant workers will soon reach some 400 million souls. They have created...

Earthbound China

12.15.14

A Map of China’s Back-to-the-Land Efforts

Leah Thompson
In our short film “Down to the Countryside,” Sun Yunfan and I follow Ou Ning, an artist and curator who moved from Beijing to the village of Bishan in rural Anhui province in 2013, where he experiments with preserving and revitalizing local heritage...

China’s Water Diversion Project Starts to Flow to Beijing

Jonathan Kaiman
Guardian
The project has roots in an offhand comment by Mao Zedong who, on an inspection tour in the early 1950s, said: “The south has plenty of water, but the north is dry. If we could borrow some, that would be good.”

Infographics

11.20.14

Who Really Benefits from Poverty Alleviation in China?

from Sohu
A series of reports issued by China's National Audit Office highlights problems in 19 counties that have received funding from national poverty alleviation programs. News of "impoverished counties’" constructing luxurious new...

China Warns Tibet Party Members Not to Harbor Separatist “Fantasies” about Dalai Lama

Reuters
Reuters
"As for cadres who harbor fantasies about the 14th Dalai Group, follow the Dalai Group, participate in supporting separatist infiltration sabotage activities, (they will be) strictly and severely punished according to the law and party...

China Planning $16.3 Billion Fund for “New Silk Road”

Bloomberg
The fund, overseen by Chinese policy banks, will be used to build and expand railways, roads and pipelines in Chinese provinces that are part of the strategy to facilitate trade over land and shipping routes.

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.

India-China Border Standoff: High in the Mountains, Thousands of Troops Go Toe-to-Toe

Gordon Fairclough
Wall Street Journal
The mountain standoff lasted weeks and at times involved tense shoving-and-shouting matches, according to Indian border-patrol troopers who participated. Both armies called in helicopters. The scale and duration of the clash are signs of mounting...

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...

Unrest in China Leaves 22 Dead Following Xinjiang Attack

Lucy Hornby
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. 

China Launches Massive Rural ‘Surveillance’ Project to Watch Over Uighurs

Tom Phillips
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.

Environment

10.16.14

‘Paranoia’ and Public Opinion

Sam Geall from chinadialogue
When permits for Chinese researchers to grow genetically modified rice and corn expired this summer, there was concern. More so, given there was little indication that the Ministry of Agriculture would renew them.The certificates, issued in 2009,...

Once a Symbol of Power, Farming Now an Economic Drag in China

Ian Johnson
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.

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?”

Tibet in Sichuan

Miguel Cano
Diplomat
Traveling the Tibetan plateau in Sichuan Province with indepdendent journalist Miguel Cano.

Books

09.02.14

Cities and Stability

Jeremy L. Wallace
China's management of urbanization is an under-appreciated factor in the regime's longevity. The Chinese Communist Party fears "Latin Americanization"—the emergence of highly unequal megacities with their attendant slums and social unrest. Such cities threaten the survival of nondemocratic regimes. To combat the threat, many regimes, including China's, favor cities in policymaking. Cities and Stability shows this "urban bias" to be a Faustian Bargain: cities may be stabilized for a time, but the massive in-migration from the countryside that results can generate the conditions for political upheaval. Through its hukou system of internal migration restrictions, China has avoided this dilemma, simultaneously aiding urbanites and keeping farmers in the countryside. The system helped prevent social upheaval even during the Great Recession, when tens of millions of laid-off migrant workers dispersed from coastal cities. Jeremy Wallace's powerful account forces us to rethink the relationship between cities and political stability throughout the developing world. —Oxford University Press {chop}

Can China Save Africa's Elephants?

Adam Minter
Bloomberg
Poaching has not only reduced elephant populations, but it has also become unsustainable. The problem, beyond how many elephants are being killed, is the lack of surviving males in their prime years.

Caixin Media

08.19.14

A Chinese Town’s Imported Cambodian Brides

It is a hot and sticky midsummer day in a small village along the Chang River in the eastern province of Jiangxi. The most popular spot is in front of the local grocery where a few women are playing mahjong as children chase each other around...

China Tells Citizens to Walk, Bike, and Snitch in “United Struggle” to Breathe Easier

Lily Kuo
Quartz
The environmental ministry has published a set of guidelines for citizens, which encourage them not only to reduce their personal environmental imprint, but to also turn in polluting and wasteful neighbors. 

Video

08.12.14

Chinese Dreamers

Sharron Lovell & Tom Wang
A dream, in the truest sense, is a solo act. It can’t be created by committee or replicated en masse. Try as you might, you can’t compel your neighbor to conjure up the reverie that you envision. And therein lies the latent, uncertain energy in the...

Environment

07.17.14

The Legacy of Hunan’s Polluted Soils

from chinadialogue
This is the second of a special three-part series of investigations jointly run by chinadialogue and Yale Environment 360 with the support of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. You can also read parts one and three.Cao Fushe spent much of 2013...

Environment

06.12.14

The Dead Swans of Dongting Lake

from chinadialogue
I’ve lost track of how many nights I spent traveling to Dongting Lake, a large, shallow lake in Hunan province, central China, famed for being the origin of dragon-boat racing.In mid-January 2013 I met the Yueyang River Porpoise Conservation Society...