ChinaFile Recommends
11.05.14Britain Soft on China over Hong Kong Crisis, Says Chris Patten
Guardian
Patten, the last British governor of Hong Kong before the 1997 handover, said China’s actions were “spit in the face” of the 1984 Joint Declaration on the conditions under which Hong Kong would be handed over.
Books
11.05.14China 1945
A riveting account of the watershed moment in America’s dealings with China that forever altered the course of East-West relations.As 1945 opened, America was on surprisingly congenial terms with China’s Communist rebels—their soldiers treated their American counterparts as heroes, rescuing airmen shot down over enemy territory. Chinese leaders talked of a future in which American money and technology would help lift China out of poverty. Mao Zedong himself held friendly meetings with U.S. emissaries, vowing to them his intention of establishing an American-style democracy in China.By year’s end, however, cordiality had been replaced by chilly hostility and distrust. Chinese Communist soldiers were setting ambushes for American marines in north China; Communist newspapers were portraying the United States as an implacable imperialist enemy; civil war in China was erupting. The pattern was set for a quarter century of almost total Sino-American mistrust, with the devastating wars in Korea and Vietnam among the consequences.Richard Bernstein here tells the incredible story of that year’s sea change, brilliantly analyzing its many components, from ferocious infighting among U.S. diplomats, military leaders, and opinion makers to the complex relations between Mao and his patron, Stalin.On the American side, we meet experienced “China hands” John Paton Davies and John Stewart Service, whose efforts at negotiation made them prey to accusations of Communist sympathy; FDR’s special ambassador Patrick J. Hurley, a decorated general and self-proclaimed cowboy; and Time journalist, Henry Luce, whose editorials helped turn the tide of American public opinion. On the Chinese side, Bernstein reveals the ascendant Mao and his intractable counterpart, Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek; and the indispensable Zhou Enlai.A tour de force of narrative history, China 1945 examines the first episode in which American power and good intentions came face-to-face with a powerful Asian revolutionary movement, and challenges familiar assumptions about the origins of modern Sino-American relations. —Knopf {chop}
ChinaFile Recommends
11.04.14Why China Won Mexico’s High-Speed Rail Project
Diplomat
Underlying Mexico’s decision to choose China, and what may have made it the only country able to meet to proposal deadline, was its decision to finance 85 percent of the project through the Export-Import Bank of China.
ChinaFile Recommends
11.04.14Chinese Courts Are Selling Seized Assets on Alibaba’s Taobao
CNN
Ever wonder what it's like to live large like a corrupt Chinese businessman or official? This is your chance.
ChinaFile Recommends
11.04.14China Planning $16.3 Billion Fund for “New Silk Road”
Bloomberg
The fund, overseen by Chinese policy banks, will be used to build and expand railways, roads and pipelines in Chinese provinces that are part of the strategy to facilitate trade over land and shipping routes.
ChinaFile Recommends
11.03.14A Comb Worth Fighting For
Economist
By one estimate, the number of Chinese Christians could by 2030 have reached 250 million—the largest Christian population of any country in the world.
ChinaFile Recommends
11.03.14China Celebrates Successful Moon Probe
Telegraph
The mission to the Moon was “another step forward for China's ambition that could eventually land a Chinese citizen there,” Xinhua, China’s official news agency, said. It was “the world's first mission to the Moon and back for some 40...
ChinaFile Recommends
11.03.14China Rolls out the Red Carpet for APEC
Financial Times
The APEC summit of nations that collectively represent more than half the global economy is more about dialogue and non-binding commitments than implementing change.
ChinaFile Recommends
11.03.14Manual on How to Spot a Spy Circulates in an Increasingly Wary China
New York Times
“On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.” Or an American spy. Or a “hostile foreign force.” So says the “China Folk Counterespionage Manual,” a “how to spot a spy” guide circulating on the Internet.
ChinaFile Recommends
11.03.14Taiwan Leader Stresses Support for Hong Kong Protests
New York Times
“If mainland China can practice democracy in Hong Kong, or if mainland China itself can become more democratic, then we can shorten the psychological distance between people from the two sides of the Taiwan Strait,” President Ma Ying-jeou said.
ChinaFile Recommends
11.03.14Tigers and Flies
South China Morning Post
The South China Morning Post has collected the CCDI’s announcements of graft probes since the beginning of Xi’s reign two years ago, and visualised them on a map. Party probes have spread across China and dramatically intensified since early 2014.
ChinaFile Recommends
10.31.14Beijing Subway Bans Halloween Costumes
Financial Times
The Chinese capital banned Halloween costumes from its subway system, warning they could cause “panic” and “stampedes.”
ChinaFile Recommends
10.31.14In Hong Kong Photographer, China Sees Image of Spy
New York Times
Dan Garrett, a gnarled, tattooed former Pentagon intelligence analyst, has attracted more stares than usual lately when he prowls the streets here with a camera fitted with a 300-millimeter lens, snapping images of pro-democracy demonstrations,...
ChinaFile Recommends
10.31.14Taiwan Puts Curbs on Study in China, WeChat for Top Officials
Wall Street Journal
Taiwan and China have fostered closer commercial ties recent years, and since 2008 have signed some 21 trade agreements. But both sides remain at loggerheads over Taiwan’s political status. Beijing regards Taiwan as a renegade province that must be...
ChinaFile Recommends
10.31.14Toronto School District Cancels Plans for Confucius Institute
New York Times
Canada’s largest school district moved to terminate its agreement with the institute, which would have offered after-school Chinese language and culture classes, over concerns about China’s human rights record and restrictions on academic freedom.
ChinaFile Recommends
10.31.14Plenum Didn’t Decide on Zhou Graft Case ‘As He Is No Longer State Leader’
South China Morning Post
The Party's anti-graft watchdog announced three months ago that it was investigating Zhou—making him the first serving or former member of the elite Politburo Standing Committee to be probed—but there has been no word since on progress in the...
ChinaFile Recommends
10.31.14Key Points in China’s Flood of Legal Reform Rhetoric
Wall Street Journal
One core focus of the plenum documents is extra-judicial interference in the work of the courts, which is a source of intense public dissatisfaction with China’s legal system. Notably, they call for the establishment of “circuit courts” operating...
ChinaFile Recommends
10.31.14AFP Follows Chinese Fugitive Money Trail
Agence France-Presse
The son of China’s most famous fugitive spent the five years before his father was placed under investigation for corruption setting up two Australian companies and buying a development site in Sydney’s Neutral Bay.
ChinaFile Recommends
10.31.14India-China Border Standoff: High in the Mountains, Thousands of Troops Go Toe-to-Toe
Wall Street Journal
The mountain standoff lasted weeks and at times involved tense shoving-and-shouting matches, according to Indian border-patrol troopers who participated. Both armies called in helicopters. The scale and duration of the clash are signs of mounting...
ChinaFile Recommends
10.31.14China: Facebook Not Banned, but Must Follow the Rules
PC World
“Foreign Internet companies entering China must at the base level accord to Chinese laws and regulations,” Lu Wei, the director of China’s State Internet Information Office, said. “First, you can’t damage the national interests of the country...
ChinaFile Recommends
10.31.14In War on Smog, Struggling China Steel Mills Adapt to Survive
Reuters
Dozens of steel mills in industrial areas straddling the capital are set to shut from November 1 to cut smog before leaders, including U.S. President Barack Obama, attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting. China had imposed...
ChinaFile Recommends
10.31.14Hong Kong Politician Likens Protesters to African-American Slaves
New York Times
“American slaves were liberated in 1861, but did not get voting rights until 107 years later,” she was reported as saying by The Standard, an English-language Hong Kong newspaper. “So why can’t Hong Kong wait for a while?”
Conversation
10.31.14What Should Obama and Xi Say to Each Other at APEC?
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...
Media
10.29.14Foot Spas, Steamed Buns, and Midday Drinking
It may not be Monty Python’s famous “Ministry of Silly Walks,” but it’s close.The Office of Forbidding Midday Alcohol Consumption, a local government initiative in China’s southern Henan province which seeks to reduce alcohol consumption at...
ChinaFile Recommends
10.29.14Nine out of 10 Hong Kong Activists Say Will Fight on for a Year
Reuters
The most tenacious protests since the former British colony returned to Chinese rule in 1997 have already persisted beyond most expectations.
ChinaFile Recommends
10.29.14Ex-General in China Admits He Took Bribes, Report Says
New York Times
“Xu Caihou fully confessed to the facts of his bribetaking crimes,” said the brief Xinhua report. It did not give any details of who gave the bribes or how much Mr. Xu took.
ChinaFile Recommends
10.29.14Taking Back Hong Kong’s Future
New York Times
Since the return of Hong Kong to China in 1997, less than a year after I was born, the people of this city have muddled through with a political system that leaves power in the hands of the wealthy and the well-connected.
ChinaFile Recommends
10.29.14China Says It Will Be Good Host to Japan During APEC
Voice of America
A one-on-one meeting would be a symbolic breakthrough in ties between the world's second- and third-biggest economies, which have turned frigid in the past two years over a territorial row.
Media
10.29.14A Talking Heads Video: China Strikes Back
In the first episode of the new VICE News series Talking Heads, Orville Schell, the Arthur Ross Director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at Asia Society, and publisher of ChinaFile, discusses his New York Review of Books essay, "China...
Media
10.27.14What China’s Reading: ‘Broken Dreams, USA’
Zhou Xiaoping, a 33-year-old selfie-snapping blogger, has quickly become the new face of Chinese patriotism—or, some would say, nationalism. On October 15, Chinese President Xi Jinping held a forum in Beijing in which the president called for art to...
ChinaFile Recommends
10.27.14Xinhua Insight: China's Legal Renaissance Sounds Death Knell for Guanxi
Xinhua
As the curtain fell on a key meeting on rule of law on Thursday, Israeli Yuval Golan, 29, felt good about his business prospects in what should be a more transparent and predictable China.
ChinaFile Recommends
10.27.14Japan Builds Response to Chinese Area-Denial Strategy
Defense News
Japan’s response to Chinese anti-access/area-denial threats rest on three planks: increasingly large helicopter carriers, next-generation 3,300-ton Soryu-class submarines and new Aegis destroyers.
ChinaFile Recommends
10.27.14China’s Crackdown on Dissent Shows How Nervous Its Leaders Are
Washington Post
The legal assault on a critic of Mao gives a flavor of the current climate. Tie Liu is the pen name of Huang Zerong, 81, who has collected and published memoirs of people who were purged by Chinese dictator Mao Zedong in the 1950s and 1960s.
ChinaFile Recommends
10.27.14China’s Assault on Corruption Enters Executive Suite
Wall Street Journal
Communist Party leaders plan to slash the compensation of the top executives at China's largest state-owned companies over the next few months to make sure only those truly committed to the party run them.
ChinaFile Recommends
10.27.14China Considers Abolishing Death Penalty for Nine Crimes
Reuters
China is considering trimming nine crimes from the list of offenses punishable by death, state media said, as the ruling Communist Party considers broader reforms to the country's legal system.
ChinaFile Recommends
10.27.14The Secret History of Hong Kong’s Stillborn Democracy
Quartz
By September 29 peaceful protesters had been clogging Hong Kong’s downtown for less than a day, but to the Chinese Communist Party this already smacked of ingratitude.
ChinaFile Recommends
10.27.14China Began Push Against Hong Kong Elections in ’50s
New York Times
Beginning in the 1950s, the colonial governors who ran Hong Kong repeatedly sought to introduce popular elections but abandoned those efforts in the face of pressure by Communist Party leaders in Beijing.
ChinaFile Recommends
10.27.14China, Vietnam Say Want Lasting Solution to Sea Dispute
Reuters
The two countries have sought to patch up ties since their long-running row erupted in May, triggered by China's deployment a drilling rig in waters claimed by the communist neighbors.
ChinaFile Recommends
10.27.14Pro-Democracy Movement’s Vote in Hong Kong Abruptly Called Off
New York Times
The referendum boiled down to two simple questions: Did voters endorse demanding that the Hong Kong government press Beijing to make democratic concessions on election rules, and did they agree that the changes should apply to city Legislative...
Caixin Media
10.27.14Rise and Fall of a Coal Boomtown
Some 187 kilometers west of Taiyuan, capital of the northern province of Shanxi, the city of Luliang is located on the dry and gullied Loess Plateau in the upper and middle reaches of the Yellow River.The city, which covers 21,143 square kilometers...
ChinaFile Recommends
10.27.14Using Cash and Pressure, China Builds Its Chip Industry
New York Times
Beijing is starting programs to increase investment by the state and to gain expertise from foreign chip companies. Experts say the chip industry is one focus of Chinese espionage efforts.
ChinaFile Recommends
10.27.14Why China Chose a French-Directed Film as Its Oscar Submission
Wall Street Journal
“It’s a mild, breezy, accessible, feel-good drama which really pictures China as a harmonious, wonderful place where conflicts of various stripes—across age, class or geographical divides—could easily be reconciled,” said Clarence Tsui, a film...
ChinaFile Recommends
10.27.14Dispatches From Xinjiang: The Uyghur Blockbuster “Money On The Road”
Beijing Cream
The comedy Money on the Road (Money Found on the Way in Chinese) features an ensemble of stars, including a cameo by the famous singer Abdulla. It follows the misadventures of three Uyghur farmers who come to the city as migrant workers to...
Media
10.24.14Hong Kong Documentary Explores the Roots of Dissent
To many observers, Hong Kong’s “Umbrella Movement”—thousands of students and other citizens in the streets demanding to choose their own political leaders—seemed to unfurl, fully formed, out of nowhere. Residents of the former colony were supposed...
ChinaFile Recommends
10.24.14Zhou Xiaoping, Director of History
China Digital Times
Since nationalistic blogger Zhou Xiaoping’s “positive energy” won accolades from Xi Jinping at the Beijing Forum on Literature in Art last week, he has been the subject of much netizen scrutiny, and some have taken him to task for his blatant...
ChinaFile Recommends
10.24.14China Vows Better Rule of Law, But No Word of Disgraced Security Chief
Reuters
The moves, made at a closed-door meeting of the ruling party's elite, are pivotal to the workings of China's market economy.
ChinaFile Recommends
10.24.14China’s Coal Use Actually Falling Now (For the First Time this Century)
Greenpeace
The data suggests the world's largest economy is finally starting to radically slow down its emission growth, and it comes ahead of key talks next year on a new global climate and energy deal.
ChinaFile Recommends
10.24.14Net Closes on Ling Jihua, One-Time Top Aide to Ex-President Hu Jintao
South China Morning Post
Hu has been conspicuously silent over the investigation.
ChinaFile Recommends
10.24.14A Chance to Introduce Social and Environmental Protections
New York Times
Instead of opposing its creation, the U.S. should consider joining the bank as a means of guaranteeing that it matches world-class financing strength with world-class environmental practices.
Conversation
10.23.14Are China’s Economic Reforms Coming Fast Enough?
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...
Media
10.21.14Chinese Doubt Their Own Soft Power Venture
On September 27, Chinese Vice Premier Liu Yandong read aloud a letter written by President Xi Jinping at a ceremony in Beijing celebrating the tenth anniversary of the Confucius Institute (CI) program, an international chain of academic centers...
Books
10.21.14Hou Hsiao-hsien
For younger critics and audiences, Taiwanese cinema enjoys a special status, comparable with that of Italian Neorealism and the French New Wave for earlier generations, a cinema that was and is in the midst of introducing an innovative sensibility and a fresh perspective. Hou Hsiao-hsien is the most important Taiwanese filmmaker working today, and his sensuous, richly nuanced films reflect everything that is vigorous and genuine in contemporary film culture. By combining multiple forms of tradition with a uniquely cinematic approach to space and time, Hou has created a body of work that, through its stylistic originality and historical gravity, opens up new possibilities for the medium. This new volume includes contributions by Olivier Assayas, Peggy Chiao, Chung Mong-hong, Jean-Michel Frodon, Hasumi Shigehiko, Ichiyama Shōzō, Jia Zhang-ke, Kent Jones, Koreeda Hirokazu, Jean Ma, Ni Zhen, Abé Mark Nornes, James Quandt, Richard I. Suchenski, James Udden, and Wen Tien-hsiang, as well as conversations with Hou Hsiao-hsien and some of his most important collaborators over the decades. —Columbia University Press {chop}
ChinaFile Recommends
10.21.14Hong Kong’s High Court Orders Protesters Off Roads in Mong Kok and Admiralty
South China Morning Post
In an interview with The New York Times, Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying hinted at possible intervention by the central government if the situation remained unresolved.
ChinaFile Recommends
10.21.14Presumed Guilty in China’s War on Corruption, Targets Suffer Abuses
New York Times
One beating left Wang Guanglong, a midlevel official from China’s Fujian Province, partly deaf, according to his later testimony.
ChinaFile Recommends
10.21.14China, U.S. Working to Ensure Positive Results from Obama's Upcoming China Visit: Senior Chinese Official
Xinhua
Chinese State Councillor Yang Jiechi saluted "new and positive progress" that has been made in various aspects of the China-U.S. ties since last year's summit held by Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping in California.
ChinaFile Recommends
10.21.14China’s Aircraft Carrier Trouble—Spewing Steam and Losing Power
Medium
There’s no more of a conspicuous and potent symbol of China’s growing naval power than the aircraft carrier Liaoning.
Viewpoint
10.21.14‘We Can Only Trust Each Other and Keep the Road’
Snip. Snip. Snip. The officer’s face shows concentration as he cuts one yellow ribbon after another along a metal fence on Queensway in the Central district of Hong Kong. Next to him, other policemen have just finished dismantling the barricades...
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10.21.14China Focus: By Rule of Law, China On the Way to Improving Governance
Xinhua
At 7:00 a.m., Shanghai-based lawyer Zhang Jie opened his computer at home, logged onto the Judicial Opinions of China website, and read a court ruling on a case he had offered legal aid to. The whole process took no more than one minute.
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10.21.14Hong Kong’s Leader Blames Foreigners for Fanning Protests
Bloomberg
“There is obviously participation by people, organizations from outside of Hong Kong,” Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying said in an interview on Asia Television Ltd.
ChinaFile Recommends
10.21.14Unrest in China Leaves 22 Dead Following Xinjiang Attack
Financial Times
A new ethnic clash in the restive region of Xinjiang, on China’s central Asian frontier, saw 22 people killed after Uighur assailants attacked Han Chinese merchants at a wholesale food market near the border with Kyrgyzstan.