Sino-American Relations: Amour or Les Miserables?
WINSTON LORDWinston Lord, former United States Ambassador to China, tells us he recently hacked into the temples of government, pecking at his first-generation iPad with just one finger—a clear sign that both Beijing and Washington need to beef...
China Concerto
JONATHAN LANDRETHBefore February 2012, when his name exploded onto the front pages of newspapers around the globe, most people outside of China had never heard of Bo Xilai, the now-fallen Communist Party Secretary of the megacity of Chongqing. But in the years leading up to the murder trial that...
Achieving Real Progress in How Government Functions
CAIXINAfter months of speculation, the reorganization of the State Council has finally been approved by the National People’s Congress.Under the shake-up, China’s rail business will no longer be managed by the regulator. Three national agencies will be formed or beefed up—on...
Chavez and Bo Xilai Gone: Death of a Political Model?
TEA LEAF NATIONVenezuelan president Hugo Chavez’s death on March 5, 2013 came in the same week as the “Two Sessions” began in China, when China’s national legislature meets in Beijing. It was also almost exactly a year since the spectacular political demise of Bo Xilai, the former party...
Classical Music with Chinese Characteristics
SHEILA MELVINOn a frigid Friday morning at the end of 2012, a stream of expectant concertgoers poured through the cavernous lobby of the China National Center for the Performing Arts. They had come to the stunning, egg-shaped arts complex at this unusually early hour holding invitations to...
Xi Jinping Should Expand Deng Xiaoping’s Reforms
ZHOU RUIJINA month after the conclusion of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) 18th National Congress, the new Secretary General of the CCP and Central Military Commission, comrade Xi Jinping, left Beijing to visit Shenzhen, the first foothold of China’s economic reforms. He placed a...
Media Censorship and Its Future
OUYANG BINThe year 2013 has gotten off to an inauspicious start for China’s press, especially for its most outspoken members. At the end of last year, when many of the country’s media were heralding newly installed Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s visit to Guangdong province as a modern...
Is Xi Jinping a Reformer? It’s Much Too Early to Tell
RACHEL BEITARIE, JEFFREY WASSERSTROMLast weekend, Nicholas Kristof wrote in the pages of The New York Times that he feels moderately confident China will experience resurgent economic reform and probably political reform as well under the leadership of recently installed Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping...
The Old Fears of China’s New Leaders
JONATHAN MIRSKYI felt a shudder of déjà vu watching the mounting protests inside China this week of the Communist Party for censoring an editorial in Southern Weekend, a well-known liberal newspaper in the southern city of Guangzhou. It is all too similar to the disciplining in April 1989 of...
The Rise and Fall of the House of Bo
JOHN GARNAUTWhen news of the murder trial of prominent Communist Party leader Bo Xilai’s wife reached public attention, it was apparent that, as with many events in the secretive upper echelons of Chinese politics, there was more to the story. Now, during the biggest leadership transition...
Beijing’s Doomsday Problem
IAN JOHNSONOver the past ten days, China has been riveted by accounts of what authorities say are its very own doomsday cult: the church of Almighty God, which has prophesized that the world will end today. Authorities have said the group staged illegal protests and basically spun out of...
The New Chinese Gang of Seven
IAN JOHNSONIn traditional Chinese religion, a fashi, or ritual master, will recite a set of phrases to turn an ordinary space into a sacred area where the gods can descend to receive prayers and rejuvenate the community. The ceremony can last days, with breaks and feasts, until the rites...