Health
The People’s Republic of Chemicals
Maverick environmental writers William J. Kelly and Chip Jacobs follow up their acclaimed Smogtown with a provocative examination of China’s ecological calamity already imperiling a warming planet. Toxic smog most people figured was...
Why Chinese Promote Confining New Mothers for a Month
HONG KONG—Giving birth is never easy, but for new Chinese mothers the month following a baby’s arrival is particularly fraught. Immediately after I became pregnant for the first time, I started to hear about zuoyuezi, or “sitting the month...
Can the Potato Help Feed China, Cut Pollution, and Alleviate Drought?
The Ministry of Agriculture’s move to make potatoes an increasingly important staple in Chinese kitchens, including the propagation of recipes that rely on the humble tuber, at first glance might appear slightly odd and surprising.
Baby Hatch Programs Struggle to Cope With Number of Infants With Birth Defects
Giving birth to her first baby granted Zheng Yuling no happiness, but instead brought pain and sadness. The seriously ill girl died hours after birth, and Zheng’s husband, Chen Dafu, was arrested on suspicion he abandoned the newborn.
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...
Seeing China in 2014
In 2014, ChinaFile published great original work in photography. As always, we worked to look beyond stereotypical images of the country to find nuanced representations of the new and ChinaFile contributors’ commentary on it. Still, many...
The People’s Republic of Chemicals
The name of China is almost obscured by a grey smudge on the title page of The People’s Republic of Chemicals, and this image proves to be apt. This book examines the crisis caused by toxic smogs that periodically choke vast regions of...
“Having a Second Kid Isn’t as Simple as Adding Another Pair of Chopsticks”
When China loosened its family planning rules a year ago in November, allowing more couples to have a second child, it was big news. It marked the biggest reform of China’s strict family planning rules—which limited most urban couples to...
China Reforms National Parks to Improve Environmental Protection
China’s central government is reforming the way major tourist attractions are run. It plans to create a unified national parks management system in a bid to halt environmental damage within its protected areas. The new, unified system will...
Popular Mental Health Treatment Has No Benefits, Experts Say
A widely used and expensive mental illness treatment that many patients have turned to for help is in the spotlight due to suggestions it offers little help. A college student name Xiaolei and his father travelled more than 500 kilometers...
Ebola Crisis in West Africa: Fair to Compare U.S. and China Aid?
When the ebola crisis first struck West Africa, China was among the only major powers to not only keep its personnel in the affected countries but to also send tens of millions of dollars in badly needed aid. The U.S., by contrast, was...
Here’s How This Giant Chinese Forest Disappeared
In early August, Greenpeace China’s forest campaigner Wu Hao wrote a piece in the environmental section of the newspaper Southern Weekly about China’s astonishing rate of deforestation. He posted dramatic before and after satellite images...
More Exploitation, More Happiness
It was one of the deadliest industrial disasters in recent Chinese history. On August 2, a massive metal dust explosion killed 75 workers and injured another 186 at a factory in Kunshan, in Jiangsu province, that supplied wheels to General...
The Dark Side of the Boom
Just over a year ago, in July 2013, a report published in the U.S. journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, put the health impacts of air pollution in China into an unusually clear framework: residents of south China, the...
China Steps up in West Africa to Help Fight Ebola
China appears to be leveraging the Ebola crisis in West Africa to radically improve its controversial foreign aid record. In contrast to Western countries, many of whom have evacuated their medical personnel from the region, China has sent...
