Now that much of Europe has announced its intentions to join the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), was Washington’s initial opposition a mistake? Assuming the AIIB does get off the ground, what might it mean for future competition...
Published March 24, 2015
Updated: March 30, 2015
Published February 27, 2015
Updated: March 26, 2015
With evidence of ties strengthening between Beijing and Moscow—over energy contracts, the handling of the Ukraine, and their diplomats' stance toward outside interference in internal affairs, especially if it's perceived as coming from...
Published March 18, 2015
Updated: March 23, 2015
With China’s recent criminal detention of five feminist activists, gender inequality in China is back in the spotlight. What does a crackdown on Chinese women fighting for equal representation say about the current state of the nation’s political...
Published March 11, 2015
Updated: March 13, 2015
On March 7, The Wall Street Journal published an opinion piece by David Shambaugh arguing that “the endgame of Chinese communist rule has now begun...and it has progressed further than many think.” Shambaugh laid out a variety of signs he believes...
Published March 3, 2015
Updated: March 6, 2015
[Updated: March 6, 2015] Our friends at Foreign Policy hit the nail on the head by headlining writer Yiqin Fu's Monday story "China's National Conversation about Pollution Has Finally Begun." What happened? Well, in the last...
Published February 12, 2015
Updated: February 17, 2015
It has long been standard operating procedure for China’s leaders to pay tribute to Mao. Even as the People’s Republic he wrought has embraced capitalist behavior with ever more heated ardor, the party he founded has remained firmly in power and his...
Published February 5, 2015
Updated: February 10, 2015
On Thursday in Washington, the Dalai Lama attended the annual National Prayer Breakfast hosted by President Barack Obama, angering China's leaders in Beijing who have long called the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader a "splittist" and...
Published January 29, 2015
Updated: January 31, 2015
With Astrill and several other free and paid-subscription virtual private networks (VPNs) that make leaping China’s Great Firewall possible now harder to use themselves after government interference "gummed" them up, the world wide web just...
Published January 26, 2015
Updated: January 25, 2015
Last week, President Obama’s State of the Union Address touted a U.S. economic recovery. Meanwhile, China’s economic growth is slowing and Ma Jiantang, head of the National Bureau of Statistics, has said that China’s economy, contrary to overseas media...
Published January 16, 2015
Updated: January 16, 2015
In the days since the attacks that killed 12 people at the offices of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo in Paris, Chinese netizens have watched the outpouring of solidarity. As our colleagues at Foreign Policy reported earlier this week, the Chinese...
Published January 8, 2015
Updated: January 13, 2015
This week, we saw the release of the official government “Report on the Recent Community and Political Situation in Hong Kong.” It concluded: "It is the common aspiration of the Central Authorities [in Beijing], the [Hong Kong Special Administrative...
Published December 19, 2014
Updated: December 19, 2014
Last week, Arthur Kroeber, Editor of the China Economic Quarterly opined that “…the Chinese state is not fragile. The regime is strong, increasingly self-confident, and without organized opposition.” His essay, which drew strong, if divided, attention,...
Published December 16, 2014
Updated: December 16, 2014
Last week, Akio Takahara, a professor at the University of Tokyo currently visiting Peking University, wrote a New York Times Op-Ed praising recent diplomatic efforts by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan and Chinese President Xi Jinping to deflect power...
Published December 3, 2014
Updated: December 5, 2014
Lu Wei, China’s new Internet Czar, recently tried to get the world to agree to a model of information control designed by the Chinese Communist Party. Regular contributors comment below and we encourage readers to share their views on our Facebook page...
Published November 19, 2014
Updated: November 20, 2014
Last week, Ann Carlson and Alex Wang, environmental experts at UCLA Law School, called the November 12 U.S.-China Joint Announcement on Climate Change "monumental." "No two countries are more important to tackling the problem than the...
Published November 12, 2014
Updated: November 13, 2014
Given China’s tightening restrictions on film, TV, art, writing, and journalism, and the reverberations from President Xi Jinping’s recent speech on culture, we asked contributors why they think Beijing has decided to ramp up its involvement in the...
Published October 31, 2014
Updated: November 5, 2014
Next week's Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Beijing (November 5-11) between Presidents Xi Jinping, Barack Obama, and other leaders from around the world, is billed as the Chinese capital's highest-profile international event since...
Published October 1, 2014
Updated: October 27, 2014
Over the past week, tens of thousands of Hong Kong people have occupied the streets of their semi-autonomous city to advocate for the democratic elections slated to launch in 2017. The pro-democracy protestors have blocked major roads in the downtown...
Published October 23, 2014
Updated: October 24, 2014
Economic data show a slowdown in China. At least two opposing views of what’s next for the world’s largest economy have just been published: one skeptical, from David Hoffman at The Conference Board, and one cautiously optimistic, from Dan Rosen and the...
Published October 14, 2014
Updated: October 22, 2014
Last week The New York Times reported U.S. opposition to China's plans to launch a regional development bank to rival the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank. If, as some say, the the launch is a fait accompli, should Washington focus instead...