On “Strange Stones,” a Discussion with Peter...
THE EDITORSOn May 21st at the Asia Society in New York City, Peter Hessler, author of the recently published Strange Stones: Dispatches from East and West, discussed his book and a decade of writing about China and elsewhere with author, Michael Meyer and Susan Jakes, Editor of ChinaFile....
U.S.-China Economic Relations—What Will the Next...
JONATHAN LANDRETH, ORVILLE SCHELL, PATRICK CHOVANECOn Monday, within hours of the announcement that Chinese President Xi Jinping will meet U.S. President Barack Obama on a visit to California on June 7-8, Tung Chee-hwa, the former Chief Executive and President of the Executive Council of Hong Kong, introduced former U.S....
Maoism: The Most Severe Threat to China
OUYANG BINMa Licheng (马立诚) is a former Senior Editorials Editor at People’s Daily, the Communist Party’s most important mouthpiece, and the author of eleven books. In 2003, when Japan’s then-Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s visits to the Yasukuni Shrine inflamed China’s...
What’s China’s Game in the Middle East?
RACHEL BEITARIE, MASSOUD HAYOUN, TAI MING CHEUNGRachel Beitarie:Xi Jinping’s four point proposal for a Palestinian-Israeli peace agreement is interesting not so much for its content, as for its source. While China has maintained the appearance of being involved in Middle East politics for years, its top leaders, so far,...
Lao She in London
ANNE WITCHARDLao She remains revered as one of China’s great modern writers. His life and work have been the subject of volumes of critique, analysis and study. However, the four years the young aspiring writer spent in London between 1924 and 1929 have largely been overlooked. Dr. Anne...
The ‘Breaking of an Honorable Career’
RODERICK MACFARQUHAR1.In the 1950s, the late John King Fairbank, the dean of modern China studies at Harvard, used to tell us graduate students a joke about the allegation that a group of red-leaning foreign service officers and academics—the four Johns—had “lost” China: John Paton Davies,...
Lin Shu, Inc.
MICHAEL GIBBS HILLHow could a writer who knew no foreign languages call himself a translator? How, too, did he become a major commercial success, churning out nearly 200 translations over twenty years? Lin Shu, Inc. crosses the fields of literary studies, intellectual history, and print culture,...
Moving House: Preserving Huizhou’s Vernacular...
LEAH THOMPSON, SUN YUNFANIn 1996, art historian Nancy Berliner, working with the Peabody Essex Museum, purchased a vacant Qing dynasty merchant’s house from the Huizhou region of China and, piece by piece, moved it to the United States to be meticulously reconstructed at the museum in Massachusetts....
There Goes the Neighborhood
SUN YUNFAN, LEAH THOMPSONWhen, in 1996, art historian Nancy Berliner purchased a late Qing dynasty merchants’ house from Huangcun, a village in Anhui province, it was just one ordinary house among thousands like it in the picturesque Huizhou region of China. It took Berliner seven years to oversee the...
‘Hi! I’m Fang!’ The Man Who Changed China
PERRY LINKIn China in the 1980s, the word renquan (“human rights”) was extremely “sensitive.” Few dared even to utter it in public, let alone to champion the concept. Now, nearly three decades later, a grassroots movement called weiquan (“supporting rights”) has spread widely,...
Will China’s Renminbi Replace the Dollar as the World...
PATRICK CHOVANEC, DAMIEN MA, DONALD CLARKE (& authors)Patrick Chovanec:This week’s news that Brazil and China have signed a $30 billion currency swap agreement gave a renewed boost to excited chatter over the rising influence of China’s currency, the renminbi (RMB). The belief, in many quarters, is that the renminbi is well on...
Who Killed Pamela in Peking?
JONATHAN D. SPENCEAn ordinary winter evening in the Legation Quarter of Peking, where foreign embassies and consulates were located, January 7, 1937. Cold. The heavy sound of Japanese armored cars, out on patrol down the busy shopping streets that flank the Forbidden City. (Japan would occupy the...