ChinaFile Recommends
06.08.15Obama Vows to Boost U.S. Cyber Defenses Amid Signs of China Hacking
Reuters
U.S. officials said the probe into a massive breach of federal government networks has yielded growing signs of a direct Chinese role.
Sinica Podcast
06.08.15Writers: Heroes in China?
from Sinica Podcast
If you happen to live in the anglophone world and aren’t closely tied to China by blood or professional ties, chances are that what you believe to be true about this country is heavily influenced by the opinions of perhaps one hundred other people,...
Conversation
06.06.15Should the U.S. Change its China Policy and How?
The past several months have seen a growing chorus of calls for the U.S. to take stock of its policy toward China. Some prominent voices have called for greater efforts by the U.S. and China to forge “a substantive sense of common purpose,” while...
ChinaFile Recommends
06.05.15ChinaFile Recommends
06.05.15Sale of High-Tech Battery Plants to China May Haunt Hillary Clinton
Detroit Free Press
@tsspangler http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2015/06/05/clinton-sale-michigan-china-gop/28525387/
Media
06.05.15Hong Kong’s Long-Standing Unity on Tiananmen Is Unraveling
June 4, a day that changed mainland China forever, has become a cross that the city of Hong Kong bears. Each year, thousands of the city’s residents gather on an often steamy night and share anxious memories of 1989, when tanks rolled by bloodied...
ChinaFile Recommends
06.05.15China in Focus as Cyber Attack Hits Millions of U.S. Federal Workers
Reuters
Hacks possibly compromised the personal data of 4 million current and former federal employees.
ChinaFile Recommends
06.05.15Survivor Accounts Raise Questions About Yangtze Ship’s Final Moments
New York Times
Four days after the ship, the Oriental Star, flipped over in a ferocious storm, leaving 442 dead or missing.
Caixin Media
06.04.15China Uses Drones to Monitor Pollution Problems from Above
China’s environmental regulators want to increase the use of drones watching pollution levels, supplementing the existing monitoring system.In the central city of Wuhan, drones were sent to urban areas to inspect emissions from chimneys that are...
ChinaFile Recommends
06.04.15China Is Exporting its Tiananmen Censorship, and We Are All Victims
Foreign Policy
Twenty six years after the killing of student protesters, the code of silence is spreading worldwide.
ChinaFile Recommends
06.04.15China Tries To Put A More Positive Spin On Cruise Ship Sinking
NPR
Dozens are confirmed dead and the number is expected to pass 400.
The NYRB China Archive
06.04.15In North Korea: Wonder & Terror
from New York Review of Books
The northeast of China used to be called Manchuria. Another name was “the cockpit of Asia.” Many wars were fought there. A French priest who traveled through the region in the 1920s wrote: “Although it is uncertain where God created paradise, we can...
ChinaFile Recommends
06.03.15Alibaba to Invest in China Business News
Wall Street Journal
E-commerce giant to pay about $200 million for a 30% stake.
Postcard
06.03.15Beijing Autumn
Then even August ended. China was disappearing from the news, as portentous events elsewhere thrust themselves to the forefront.South Africa had started to come out of the dark age of apartheid. Eastern Europe had begun the march to unshackle itself...
Books
06.02.15China Under Mao
China’s Communist Party seized power in 1949 after a long period of guerrilla insurgency followed by full-scale war, but the Chinese revolution was just beginning. China Under Mao narrates the rise and fall of the Maoist revolutionary state from 1949 to 1976—an epoch of startling accomplishments and disastrous failures, steered by many forces but dominated above all by Mao Zedong.Mao’s China, Andrew Walder argues, was defined by two distinctive institutions established during the first decade of Communist Party rule: a Party apparatus that exercised firm (sometimes harsh) discipline over its members and cadres; and a socialist economy modeled after the Soviet Union. Although a large national bureaucracy had oversight of this authoritarian system, Mao intervened strongly at every turn. The doctrines and political organization that produced Mao’s greatest achievements―victory in the civil war, the creation of China’s first unified modern state, a historic transformation of urban and rural life—also generated his worst failures: the industrial depression and rural famine of the Great Leap Forward and the violent destruction and stagnation of the Cultural Revolution.Misdiagnosing China’s problems as capitalist restoration and prescribing continuing class struggle against imaginary enemies as the solution, Mao ruined much of what he had built and created no viable alternative. At the time of his death, he left China backward and deeply divided.—Harvard University Press{chop}{node, 16186, 4}
ChinaFile Recommends
06.02.15Chinese Democracy Isn’t Inevitable
Atlantic
Can a political system be democratically legitimate without being democratic?
Media
06.02.15Chinese Netizens to Fiorina: You’re Right, We Don’t Innovate
Carly Fiorina, the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard and a declared Republican candidate for U.S. president, evidently has strong opinions about the capacities of Chinese people. “Yeah, the Chinese can take a test,” Fiorina told an Iowa-based video blog...
ChinaFile Recommends
06.01.15Will China Close Its Doors?
New York Times
The draft “Foreign NGO Management Law” is part of a package of legislation that includes strict laws on national security and antiterrorism.
Culture
06.01.15Chinese Writers and Chinese Reality
My first encounter with Liu Zhenyun was in 2003. At the time, cell phones had just become available in China and they were complicating people’s relationships. I witnessed a couple break up because of the secrets stored on a phone. I watched people...
ChinaFile Recommends
06.01.15Q&A—Willy Wo-Lap Lam on ‘Chinese Politics in the Era of Xi Jinping’
New York Times
Xi’s reversal of guiding principles guiding Chinese politics post-Mao signals “the closing of the Chinese mind.”
Sinica Podcast
06.01.15Earthquake in Nepal!
from Sinica Podcast
[Note: This podcast was first recorded on May 13.—The Editors]On April 25, an 8.1 magnitude earthquake shook the Katmandu Valley in Nepal, causing over 8,600 deaths, countless more injuries, and triggering mountain avalanches which sent snow...
ChinaFile Recommends
06.01.15Chubby Blue Cat Hints at Thaw in Ties Between China and Japan
New York Times
In September, three Sichuan newspapers attacked the animated cat Doraemon as a tool of Japan’s “cultural invasion.”
ChinaFile Recommends
06.01.15China Voice: South China Sea Issue Should not Hinder China-U.S. Ties
Xinhua
A U.S. anti-submarine and maritime surveillance aircraft flew over waters off China's Nansha Islands last month.
ChinaFile Recommends
06.01.15The Ultimate Irony: Is China the ‘America’ of Asia?
National Interest
Beijing’s claims in Asia are as valid as those made by the U.S. States against Mexico and Great Britain in the mid-19th century.
ChinaFile Recommends
06.01.15Made in Chindia: Giants Take Different Manufacturing Paths
Bloomberg
Made in Chindia: Giants take different manufacturing paths http://www.livemint.com/Politics/5dpo7KGpdaYBigaTctF8BJ/Made-in-Chindia-Giants-take-different-manufacturing-paths.html
Reports
06.01.15Demand-Driven Data: How Partner Countries are Gathering Chinese Development Cooperation Information
United Nations
As China becomes one of the major development partners and South-South cooperation (SSC) providers globally, there is increasing demand from partner countries for more information on China’s financial flows. China has been taking initiatives to...
Reports
06.01.15Chinese FDI in Europe and Germany
Mercator Institute for China Studies
The authors have—on the basis of a unique transaction dataset—analyzed the newest trends of Chinese direct investment in Germany and the E.U. The study is able to clearly establish that the new wave of Chinese investment offers exceptional...
ChinaFile Recommends
05.30.15China Cares Little for Other Countries’ Territorial Claims
Guardian
Beijing’s actions in building man-made islands in the South China Sea are motivated by a desire to impose its sovereignty.
Conversation
05.29.15Did the Game Just Change in the South China Sea? (And What Should the U.S. Do About It?)
As the 14th annual Asia Security Summit—or the Shangri-La Dialogue, as it has come to be known—gets underway in Singapore, we asked contributors to comment on what appears to be a recent escalation in tensions between the U.S. and China over the two...
Two Way Street
05.28.15What China’s Lack of Transparency Means for U.S. Policy
from Two Way Street
I am a political scientist and former diplomat who has studied China for more than forty years, and yet I still can’t answer some of my students’ most basic questions about China’s policy-making process. Where—in which institutional arena and at...
The China Africa Project
05.27.15Chinese Racist Views Towards Blacks and Africans
When riots broke out in the U.S. city of Baltimore in May 2015, the reaction across the Chinese social web was sadly predictable as Internet users posted countless anti-black racist comments. However, what was interesting about their posts is how...
ChinaFile Recommends
05.27.15Should Authors Shun or Cooperate With Chinese Censors?
New York Times
A PEN American Center report found some books were expurgated by Chinese censors without the authors knowledge.
The NYRB China Archive
05.27.15China’s Invisible History: An Interview with Filmmaker and Artist Hu Jie
from New York Review of Books
Though none of his works have been publicly shown in China, Hu Jie is one of his country’s most noteworthy filmmakers. He is best known for his trilogy of documentaries about Maoist China, which includes Searching for Lin Zhao’s Soul (2004), telling...
ChinaFile Recommends
05.26.15Corrupting the Chinese Language
New York Times
The author fears Orwell’s prediciton: “If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.”
Media
05.26.15Weighing Mao’s Legacy in China Today
At the May 21 Asia Society event ChinaFile Presents: Does Xi Jinping Represent a Return to the Politics of the Mao Era?, a discussion of author Andrew Walder’s new book, China Under Mao: A Revolution Derailed, sparked a lively debate about the...
Sinica Podcast
05.26.15Identity, Race, and Civilization
from Sinica Podcast
It doesn't take much exposure to China to realize the pervasiveness of identity politics here. Indeed, whether in the Chinese government’s occasionally hamfisted efforts to micromanage ethnic minority cultures or the Foreign Ministry’s soft-...
ChinaFile Recommends
05.26.15How America Should Respond to China’s Moves in the South China Sea
National Interest
U.S. military superiority is required to keep the Asia-Pacific region from getting out of hand.
Caixin Media
05.26.15Time for Reform Advocates to Step to the Fore
As the reform of China’s economy and society deepens, attention is turning to the people tasked with the job of spearheading and carrying out change. Thus, it was gratifying to hear the call by President Xi Jinping, made at the 12th meeting of the...
ChinaFile Recommends
05.25.15Paris Can’t Be Another Copenhagen
New York Times
The U.S. and China must rapidly increase collaboration on climate change both within and beyond the framework of the conference.
ChinaFile Recommends
05.25.15China Warned Over ‘Insane’ Plans for New Nuclear Power Plants
Guardian
He Zuoxiu, a leading scientist, says China is not investing enough in safety controls after the Fukushima disaster in Japan.
ChinaFile Recommends
05.25.15Taiwan’s Hou Hsiao-hsien Wins Cannes Best Director Award for 'The Assassin'
Agence France-Presse
The Guangdong-born director’s film is a study in contemplative art despite its action-packed premise.
ChinaFile Recommends
05.21.15This American VC Thinks He’s Getting Out of China Just in Time
Bloomberg
The 52-year-old began venture investing in China in 2009 and ended up putting money into 50 startups.
ChinaFile Recommends
05.21.15Why the U.S. Needs to Listen to China
Atlantic
And why China needs to listen to the U.S. The importance of the mutual economic criticisms between two major world powers.
Conversation
05.21.15Censorship and Publishing in China
This week, a new PEN American Center report “Censorship and Conscience: Foreign Authors and the Challenge of Chinese Censorship,” by Alexa Olesen, draws fresh attention to a perennial problem for researchers, scholars, and creative writers trying to...
ChinaFile Recommends
05.20.15Liu Xiaobo Locked Up in China, Locked Out of Translation of Paul Auster Novel
New York Times
Liu Xiaobo’s arrest was cut from the Chinese translation of Auster's novel without his knowledge.
Media
05.20.15China Liked TPP—Until U.S. Officials Opened Their Mouths
After a brief but frightening setback for proponents, U.S. congressional leaders looked set on May 13 to pass legislation for an eventual up-or-down (“fast-track”) vote on what would be one of the world’s largest trade accords, the U.S.-led Trans-...
Reports
05.20.15Censorship and Conscience
Alexa Olesen
PEN International
In this report, PEN American Center (PEN) examines how foreign authors in particular are navigating the heavily censored Chinese book industry. China is one of the largest book publishing markets in the world, with total revenue projected to exceed...
Caixin Media
05.19.15Why Xinjiang’s Economy Is Sputtering
It has been almost one year since a terrorist bombing in Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang region, shocked the nation and brought economic woes and social conflicts in the largely Uighur-populated area into the spotlight again.I arrived by train...
ChinaFile Recommends
05.19.15‘Crotch Bomb’ in Anti-Japan War Drama Blasted by Chinese Netizens as 'Lewd, Bizarre'
South China Morning Post
When a prisoner pulls his hand from underneath the heroine's dress, he is holding a bomb, which he then detonates.
Viewpoint
05.19.15Hong Kong’s Not That Special, And Beijing Should Stop Saying It Is
As political wrangling in Hong Kong continues over changes to how the city’s chief executive will be selected in 2017, Beijing marks the 25th anniversary of the promulgation of the Hong Kong Basic Law—the Special Administrative Region’s...
ChinaFile Recommends
05.19.15Chinese Professors Among 6 Charged with Economic Espionage
USA Today
U.S. federal prosecutors allege Beijing sponsored economic espionage in the alleged theft of sensitive American made radio frequency filters.
ChinaFile Recommends
05.19.15China Issues Plan for Gleaming High-tech Future
Reuters
China’s plan to promote advanced industry is supposed to aid its economy’s move away from low-value manufacturing.
ChinaFile Recommends
05.19.15Why Hong Kong is Clamping Down on Creative Writing
Guardian
The decision to close City University’s MFA program is plainly intended to limit free expression.
Environment
05.19.15Dredging For Disaster
from Foreign Policy
Tensions are rising in the South China Sea. On May 16, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry arrives in Beijing for talks which will likely focus on the territorial disputes. But China’s controversial effort to assert its sovereignty in the South China...
ChinaFile Recommends
05.18.15The Worrying Rise of Anti-China Discourse in the US
Diplomat
Forget U.S. patrols in the South China Sea. This is the real threat to U.S.-China relations.
ChinaFile Recommends
05.18.15INFOGRAPHIC: China's Wanted 100
South China Morning Post
Beijing's anti-graft watchdog released on April 22 a detailed list of 100 fugitives it wants to extradite back to China as part of its "Sky Net" anti-graft operation.
ChinaFile Recommends
05.18.15Duck-Rice, Honey Bees and Mandarins
China Policy Institute Blog
There has to be a financial model which allows the farmers to see the impact of restoration on their business.
ChinaFile Recommends
05.18.15Despite Tension, Xi says U.S.-China Relations are Stable
Reuters
John Kerry's trip has been dominated by security concerns about Beijing’s maritime ambitions in the So China Sea.
ChinaFile Recommends
05.18.15ChinaFile Recommends
05.15.15Indians From All Over China Are Flocking to Shanghai to Hear Their Prime Minister Speak
Time
More than 5,000 Indian expats are expected to attend an event on Saturday.