Sara Segal-Williams is ChinaFile’s Senior Editor for Copy. She holds a B.A. from Bard College, where she concentrated in Chinese History, and an M.A. in International Relations from Central European University. She has studied Mandarin Chinese at Qingdao University and Yunnan University.
Last Updated: February 6, 2023
Conversation
06.24.16
Is Europe Prepared to Deal with the China Challenge?
Chinese President Xi Jinping is on a grand tour of the western end of the “New Silk Road,” in visits to Serbia and Poland this week before he returns to Beijing via Uzbekistan, a more eastern outpost on China’s expanding 21st Century trade route. Xi...
Media
06.08.12
Students Tear Up Books Before Big Exam
The gaokao, China’s annual National Higher Education Entrance Examination, is known for being extremely difficult and a stressful rite of passage for Chinese students. Due to the society’s traditional emphasis on education, many Chinese people still...
Reports
03.31.11
Jasmine in the Middle Kingdom: Autopsy of China’s (Failed) Revolution
Sara Segal-Williams
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
China’s version of the Arab world's “Jasmine Revolution” was a complete failure. Online calls for protests against Communist Party rule have elicited little response from would-be protesters. Yet Beijing’s reaction was swift and overwhelming—...
Reports
01.01.11
Equity and Public Governance in Health System Reform: Challenges and Opportunities for China
Sara Segal-Williams
World Bank
Achieving the objective of China's current health system reform, namely equitable improvements in health outcomes, will be difficult not least because of the continuously growing income disparities in the country. The analysis in this paper...
Reports
01.01.11
Promises Unfulfilled: An Assessment of China’s National Human Rights Action Plan
Sara Segal-Williams
Human Rights Watch
In 2009, the Chinese government unveiled the National Human Rights Action Plan (NHRAP), the first of its kind in China. However, two years on, deficiencies in the action plan and government failures to adequately implement some of its key...
Reports
12.01.10
Transforming China: Insights from the Japanese Experience of the 1980s
Sara Segal-Williams
International Monetary Fund (IMF)
China is poised on the brink of a transition to a service-based economy. The Japanese experience of the 1980s provides several insights about the way to manage such a transition and the downsides to avoid. In particular Japan offers useful insights...
Reports
08.01.10
Chess on the High Seas: Dangerous Times for U.S.-China Relations
Sara Segal-Williams
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
The Obama administration’s hopes that its warmer approach to Beijing would yield a more fruitful Sino-American relationship have been disappointed. Rather than adopting a more cooperative bearing, Beijing has become increasingly assertive over the...
Reports
07.01.10
“I Saw It With My Own Eyes”
Sara Segal-Williams
Human Rights Watch
More than two years after protests—the largest and most sustained in decades—erupted across the Tibetan plateau in March 2008, the Chinese government has yet to explain the circumstances that led to dozens of clashes between protesters and police...
Reports
05.05.10
Restructuring Paper on a Proposed Project Restructuring of Jiangxi Integrated Agricultural Modernization Project
Sara Segal-Williams
World Bank
The development objective of the Jiangxi Integrated Agricultural Modernization Project (JIAMP) for China is to improve the livelihood of the farmers in the project areas through establishment of integrated, sustainable, and market-driven...
Reports
05.01.10
Seeding Positive Impacts: How Business and Civil Society Can Contribute to the Sustainability of Chinese Agriculture
Sara Segal-Williams
BSR
From farm-level impacts related to pesticide and fertilizer use, to the processing and packaging of the final product, processes along the agricultural supply chain in China have an adverse environmental health impact. Companies and civil society...
Reports
01.01.10
“Where Darkness Knows No Limits”: Incarceration, Ill-Treatment, and Forced Labor as Drug Rehabilitation in China
Sara Segal-Williams
Human Rights Watch
Based on research in Yunnan and Guangxi provinces, this report documents how China's June 2008 Anti-Drug Law compounds the health risks of suspected illicit drug users by allowing government officials and security forces to incarcerate them for...
Reports
10.01.09
Identifying Near-Term Opportunities for Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS) in China
Sara Segal-Williams
Natural Resources Defense Council
To avoid the worst consequences of global warming, the world must limit average temperature increases by significantly reducing carbon emissions by 2050. Achieving the urgently needed emission reductions will require efforts beyond first-resort...