Traditional Chinese Medicine Struggling to Find Cure...
CAIXINIn November, the traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) Fuzheng Huayu Tablets passed the second phase of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) clinical testing.Before this, only one TCM drug had cleared the second of the three phases needed for a medicine to hit the U.S....
Junkyard Planet
ADAM MINTERWhen you drop your Diet Coke can or yesterday’s newspaper in the recycling bin, where does it go? Probably halfway around the world, to people and places that clean up what you don’t want and turn it into something you can’t wait to buy. In Junkyard Planet, Adam Minter—...
How an Expectant Mother Died in Qingdao
CAIXINOne of the fifty-five people to die in an explosion on November 22 at a pipeline owned by China Petroleum & Chemical Corp. (Sinopec) in the eastern city of Qingdao was a twenty-three-year-old pregnant woman named Chen Na.Her husband, who declined to give his full name, told...
What Will the Beginning of the End of the One-Child...
LETA HONG FINCHER, VINCENT NI, ISABEL HILTON (& authors)Leta Hong Fincher:The Communist Party’s announcement that it will loosen the one-child policy is, of course, welcome news. Married couples will be allowed to have two children if only one of the spouses is an only child, meaning that millions more couples will now be exempted...
In Line Behind a Billion People
DAMIEN MA, WILLIAM ADAMSNearly everything you know about China is wrong! Yes, within a decade, China will have the world’s largest economy. But that is the least important thing to know about China. In this enlightening book, two of the world’s leading China experts turn the conventional wisdom on...
Stark Choices for China’s Leaders
DAMIEN MA, WILLIAM ADAMSOne Beijing morning in early November 2012, seven men in dark suits strode onto the stage of the Great Hall of the People. China’s newly elected Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Chairman Xi Jinping stood at the center of the ensemble, flanked on each side by three members of the...
Sip of Death Plagues River Villages
CAIXINCancer is claiming fewer lives these days, and Dr. Wang Shiren says he’s been caring for a steadily declining number of patients suffering from gastrointestinal disorders.Yet a decades-long health calamity continues to grip Huangmengying, a Henan province community of about 2,...
Markups, Kickbacks, and Sellouts: What’s Wrong with...
SOHU BUSINESS, TEA LEAF NATIONAs the United States haltingly moves to implement the Affordable Care Act, China claims it has already achieved universal rural health care, with more than 800 million rural residents enrolled in a medical plan. Yet according to recent reports the system still suffers from...
Amid Scandals, Can China’s New Organ Transplant...
TEA LEAF NATIONThe now oft-derided Chinese Red Cross once again found itself in hot water in July, when it was reported that some branches have asked organ transplant hospitals to pay 100,000 RMB ($16,300) for each successful organ donation organized by them. In August, the People’s Daily...
Beijing’s Air in 2013 or Ground Zero’s After 9/11:...
EMILY BRILLWhen I moved to Beijing from New York in February to study Chinese, a question began to haunt me: Could Beijing’s air in 2013 be more dangerous than the toxic brew produced by the 9/11 attacks on New York City’s World Trade Center, which hung over Lower Manhattan for months,...
China’s Urban Sludge Dilemma: Sinking in Stink
CAIXINPromptly at noon on March 17, a heavy truck hauling a dark substance and on a dark mission pulled out of the Gaobeidian Wastewater Treatment Plant in eastern Beijing.A wastewater treatment engineer helped a Caixin reporter identify the unusual load, which jiggled in the truck’s...
China’s Abandoned Steel Mills Are a Threat to Public...
CHINADIALOGUEChina’s steel industry has been in trouble since 2011, with numerous bankruptcies nationwide. The city of Tangshan in Hebei province has been no exception. Though the city is Hebei’s biggest steel maker, with its 70 million tons of annual production accounting for almost half...