U.S. Eyes Pushback On China Hacking

Siobhan Gorman
Wall Street Journal
Current and former officials said the offensive shift turned on two developments: new intelligence showing the Chinese military directing cyberspying campaigns, and a sudden change in U.S. companies’ willingness to acknowledge Chinese...

China Expands Crackdown On Anticorruption Activists

Andrew Jacobs
New York Times
The arrests of four activists have both infuriated and disappointed reformers and human rights advocates, who say the crackdown bodes ill for Mr. Xi’s widely trumpeted war on graft. 

Viewpoint

04.26.13

Sino-American Relations: Amour or Les Miserables?

Winston Lord
Winston Lord, former United States Ambassador to China, tells us he recently hacked into the temples of government, pecking at his first-generation iPad with just one finger—a clear sign that...

Conversation

04.25.13

Hollywood in China—What’s the Price of Admission?

Jonathan Landreth, Ying Zhu & more
Last week, DreamWorks Animation (DWA), the Hollywood studio behind the worldwide blockbuster Kung Fu Panda films, announced that it will cooperate with the China Film Group (CFG) on an animated feature called Tibet Code, an adventure story based on...

‘Unmade In China’ - When China Tries Calling A Filmmaker’s Shots

Ian Buckwalter
NPR
Unmade in China is nominally about filmmaking, but what Kofman and Barklow do well is to use their unusual position within the Chinese state machine - sponsored and controlled by the government - to make a thinly veiled movie about politics...

China To Send North Korea Envoy To Washington

Reuters
China will send its special envoy on North Korea to the United States next week for talks on maintaining peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula, the foreign ministry said on Friday.   

Will The State Department Sanction China And Russia For Human Trafficking

Josh Rogin
Foreign Policy
This year the State Department must either promote Russia and China to Tier 2 status or demote those countries to Tier 3, the lowest classification, which opens those countries to sanctions from the U.S. government. 

Bo’s Campaign ‘Worse Than Cultural Revolution’

Radio Free Asia
Chongqing, the largest Chinese municipality, was the epicenter of a Maoist revival campaign under Bo, who spearheaded an effort to crack down on gangs and corruption and promoted the public singing of nostalgic revolutionary songs reflecting the...

China Responds To Gun-Control Failure

Evan Osnos
New Yorker
To the Chinese who awoke to the news Thursday, it was a confusing object lesson in what they are so often told is a model political system. 

Tale Of China’s Leader In A Taxicab Is Retracted

Chris Buckley
New York Times
The state-run news media, which had initially given credence to the story, abruptly reversed course, and the tale was in shreds. What does it mean when feel-good propaganda cannot be trusted even on its own fanciful terms? 

The ‘Breaking of an Honorable Career’

Roderick MacFarquhar from New York Review of Books
1.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’s Sufis: The Shrines Behind the Dunes

Ian Johnson from New York Review of Books
Lisa Ross’s luminous photographs are not our usual images of Xinjiang. One of China’s most turbulent areas, the huge autonomous region in the country’s northwest was brought under permanent Chinese control only in the mid-twentieth century...

China Gives Breakdown Of Its Military, Criticizes U.S.

Scott Neuman
NPR
For the first time ever Beijing outlined in broad strokes its People’s Liberation Army, which includes ground, air and naval forces. The defense white paper also took the U.S. to task for its shift to Asia, as well as the ongoing conflict in the...

Conversation

04.23.13

How Would You Spend (the Next) $300 Million on U.S.-China Relations?

Orville Schell & Michael Kulma
Orville Schell:When Stephen A. Schwarzman announced his new $300 million program aimed at sending foreign scholars to Tsinghua University in Beijing the way Rhodes Scholarship, set up by the businessman and statesman Cecil Rhodes in 1902 began...

Challenges Mount For China’s President

Bill Bishop
Deal Book
Whatever honeymoon President Xi Jinping of China may have been having appears to be over. Now the president must grapple with the H7N9 virus, tensions over North Korea, an economic slowdown, corruption, and a host of other issues. 

Kerry: China Must Do More To Resolve N. Korean Missile Crisis

Andrea Mitchell and Ian Johnson
NBC News
Kerry believes that the instability created by Pyongyang’s belligerence is enough to push China to intervene more thoroughly; if China does not, Kerry says the U.S. will open direct talks with North Korea.

Stuck In The Middle: Korea In Chinese History

J.J.
Economist
For more than two thousand years, successive Chinese dynasties have seen Korea as a tributary to be protected, a prize to be coveted, or as a dangerous land bridge which might convey “outer barbarians” into China. China unsurprisingly has a long...

Kerry In China To Seek Help In Korea Crisis

Michael R. Gordon
New York Times
Mr. Kerry suggested that the United States could remove some newly enhanced missile defenses in the region, though he did not specify which ones. Any eventual cutback would address Chinese concerns about the buildup of American weapons systems in...

North Korean Leader Strains Ties With Chinese

Jane Perlez
New York Times
How far the alliance between the powerhouse China and the impoverished North Korea has soured is now debated openly in the Chinese news media. Few call it a serious rift, though a spirited debate is under way within the Chinese government over how...

What Kerry Should Tell China

Shen Dingli
Foreign Policy
On April 13, 2013, when John Kerry pays his first visit to China as the U.S. secretary of state, North Korea will be at the top of his agenda, with Iran’s nuclear program and cyberattacks also extremely important. 

Conversation

04.18.13

How Fast Is China’s Slowdown Coming, and What Should Beijing Do About It?

Patrick Chovanec, Barry Naughton & more
Slower Chinese GDP growth is not a bad thing if it’s happening for the right reasons. But it’s not happening for the right reasons.Instead of reining in credit to try to curb over-investment, Chinese authorities have allowed a renewed explosion in...

Books

04.17.13

A Death in the Lucky Holiday Hotel

Pin Ho, Wenguang Huang
The downfall of Bo Xilai in China was more than a darkly thrilling mystery. It revealed a cataclysmic internal power struggle between Communist Party factions, one that reached all the way to China’s new president Xi Jinping.The scandalous story of the corruption of the Bo Xilai family—the murder of British businessman Neil Heywood; Bo’s secret lovers; the secret maneuverings of Bo’s supporters; the hasty trial and sentencing of Gu Kailai, Bo’s wife—was just the first rumble of a seismic power struggle that continues to rock the very foundation of China’s all-powerful Communist Party. By the time it is over, the machinations in Beijing and throughout the country that began with Bo’s fall could affect China’s economic development and disrupt the world’s political and economic order.—PublicAffairs

The Dangerous World Of Independent Film In China

Isabelle Regnier
Le Monde
An interview with Zhang Xianmin, founder of one of the many independent cultural events that were banned last year by the Chinese government. 

‘Daily Show’ Clip Mocking Kim Jong-un Gets 2.8 million Chinese Views

Max Fisher
Washington Post
The voraciousness with which Chinese viewers are watching the segment suggests that their appetite for such coverage, for publicly criticizing an ally that has become something of an embarrassment, far exceeds what they’re getting from state media...

Wikileaks Dumps Over 200,000 Documents Related to Kissinger

Wikileaks
A new, full-searchable document dump containing over 206,000 documents related to Henry Kissinger from between 1973 and 1976. 

China’s Xi Signals Limited Shift Away From North Korea

Peter Ford
Christian Science Monitor
The current situation, in which North Korea has threatened the US and its ally South Korea with nuclear strikes, is “a golden opportunity for the US and China to work together and build mutual trust.”  

Conversation

04.16.13

Why is China Still Messing with the Foreign Press?

Andrew J. Nathan, Isabel Hilton & more
To those raised in the Marxist tradition, nothing in the media happens by accident.  In China, the flagship newspapers are still the “throat and tongue” of the ruling party, and their work is directed by the Party’s Propaganda Department...

Korea Crisis: How Much Influence Does China Have?

Martin Patience
BBC
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has appealed to North Korea to change course, saying it has "gone too far." In this video, Martin Patience reports China’s options as Pyongyang’s rhetoric gets more volatile. 

China ‘Shifts Position’ On North Korea

Malcolm Moore
Telegraph
Beijing appears to prefer the devil it knows, in the shape of the unpredictable Kim family regime, to the uncertainties, and perhaps American influence, that a reunification on the Korean peninsula could bring, but that seems to be changing.&...

In China, Party Trumps A Strongman

Didi Kristen Tatlow
New York Times
Mainland China now, like Taiwan in 1987, is riddled with issues where many people want to see change, from education to pollution to corruption. May we see a similar transition occur in China, initiated by a strong individual politician? 

Can N. Korea Learn From Coca Cola? (China Did)

Evan Osnos
New Yorker
“The military-first regime derives support from the public perception that it is feared and respected around the world. So international ridicule may well put the regime under more pressure to carry through on at least some of its rhetoric.”&...

China’s First Lady: A Perfectly Scripted Life

Malcolm Moore
Telegraph
The Communist party firmly believes that the less the public knows about its leaders, the better, and has spent years carefully deleting information about Mrs Peng and crafting a narrative so exemplary it is, at times, hard to believe. 

Yongbyon Restart: North Korea Ramps Up Nuclear Tension

Mark Fitzpatrick
BBC
 Until now, Pyongyang had clung to the transparent fiction that it only had a peaceful rationale.The new element in the announcement is North Korea's acknowledgement that the uranium enrichment is for weapons use. 

Beijing Opposes U.S. Rule On Technology Imports

Reuters
The new provision following recent cyberattacks requires NASA, as well as the U.S. Justice and Commerce Departments, to seek approval from national law enforcement officials before buying information technology systems from China. 

China’s Goodfellas

Howard W. French
Wall Street Journal
“A Death in the Lucky Holiday Hotel” is the most revealing work on the Bo Xilai episode to date. What emerges is an immensely complicated tale of behind-the-scenes power struggles as full of scandal, ambition and betrayal as anything that ancient...

Conversation

04.11.13

Why Is Chinese Soft Power Such a Hard Sell?

Jeremy Goldkorn, Donald Clarke & more
Jeremy Goldkorn:Chairman Mao Zedong said that power comes out of the barrel of a gun, and he knew a thing or two about power, both hard and soft. If you have enough guns, you have respect. Money is the same: if you have enough cash, you can buy guns...

Changing China Through Mandarin

Teng Biao
Seeing Red in China
Mandarin under totalitarianism is brimming with tautologies, self-aggrandizement and gangster logic, it has no use, no mercy, no reason, no fun, and no taste; it is reduced to a language game that has no connection with reality.  

Infographics

04.09.13

China, North Korea, and Nuclear Arms

Ouyang Bin, David M. Barreda & more
As tensions again escalate on the Korean Peninsula, ChinaFile examines more than a decade of developments in North Korea’s nuclear armaments program. We begin our timeline in late 2002, when China first joined diplomatic discussions, paving the...

Conversation

04.09.13

Is China Doing All It Can to Rein in Kim Jong-un?

Winston Lord, Susan Shirk & more
Winston Lord:No. 

Tibet: The CIA’s Cancelled War

Jonathan Mirsky from New York Review of Books
For much of the past century, U.S. relations with Tibet have been characterized by kowtowing to the Chinese and hollow good wishes for the Dalai Lama. As early as 1908, William Rockhill, a U.S. diplomat, advised the Thirteenth Dalai Lama that “close...

Caixin Media

04.08.13

A Day in the Life of a Beijing “Black Guard”

After receiving his delayed wages, thirty-year-old Wang Jie decided to change professions.On March 7, he pressed a fingerprint onto a receipt that read: “Today I have received settlement of the 12,000 yuan in wages owed to me by Mr. Shao.”“Actually...

Reports

04.08.13

Dangerous Waters: China-Japan Relations on the Rocks

International Crisis Group
The world’s second and third largest economies are engaged in a standoff over the sovereignty of five islets and three rocks in the East China Sea, known as the Diaoyu in Chinese and the Senkaku in Japanese. Tensions erupted in September 2012 when...

Video

04.05.13

Censored: A Chinese Journalist’s Inside View

Jonah Kessel from Committee to Protect Journalists
Journalist Liu Jianfeng worked at the China Economic Times newspaper in Beijing for fifteen years. Eventually, frustration with the nation’s state-controlled media system and pressure from his colleagues prompted him to quit. He then did brief...

Viewpoint

04.05.13

Christopher Hill on North Korea’s Provocations

Ouyang Bin
The first months of 2013 have seen a rapid intensification of combative rhetoric and action from North Korea. In the sixteen months since Kim Jong-un assumed leadership of the country, North Korea has run through the whole litany of provocations his...

Sinica Podcast

04.05.13

The Transgressions of Apple Computer

Kaiser Kuo, Jeremy Goldkorn & more from Sinica Podcast
While foreign media coverage these last two weeks has focused on environmental disasters, over-fishing, and emerging forms of the avian flu, the Chinese state media has turned its gaze towards the transgressions of Apple Computer, which found itself...

Viewpoint

04.04.13

‘Hi! I’m Fang!’ The Man Who Changed China

Perry Link
In 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”)...

Elite In China Face Austerity Under Xi’s Rule

Andrew Jacobs
New York Times
Warning that graft and gluttony threaten to bring down the ruling Communists, Mr. Xi has ordered an end to boozy, taxpayer-financed banquets and the bribery that often takes the form of Louis Vuitton bags. 

BRICS Offers New Model For Cooperation

Global Times
Ideally, Beijing would like to maintain a low profile while showing respect to other countries. China has no ambition to dominate BRICS, and will not purposely seek to raise its role in this mechanism.   

As China’s Xi Jinping Visits, Africa Asks: What Are We Getting Out Of This?

Peter Ford
Christian Science Monitor
Chinese trade with African countries was nearly $200 billion in 2012. But after years of embracing China, some Africans say that China is taking more than it gives back and replicating colonial patterns. 

Can China Deliver The Chinese Dream(s)?

Evan Osnos
New Yorker
In dedicating his people to pursue something more abstract and individualized, Xi has succeeded in capturing their attention. Now he faces the challenge of meeting their expectations.  

The Dragon Eating The Eagle’s Lunch in Africa?

Alemayehu G Mariam
Ethiomedia
For the past decade, the U.S. has been nonchalant and complacent about China’s “invasion” and lightning-fast penetration of Africa, but the U.S. is finally reading the memo. 

Will the Chinese Be Supreme?

Ian Johnson from New York Review of Books
During the turbulent Maoist era from the 1950s to 1970s, China clashed militarily with some of its most important neighbors—India, Vietnam, the Soviet Union—and embarked on disastrous interventions in Indonesia and Africa. But by the 1980s, Deng...

Conversation

04.03.13

Bird Flu Fears: Should We Trust Beijing This Time?

David Wertime, Yanzhong Huang & more
David Wertime:A new strain of avian flu called H7N9 has infected at least seven humans and killed three in provinces near the Chinese metropolis of Shanghai, with the first death occurring on March 4. Meanwhile, in the last month, about 16,000 pigs...

Books

04.03.13

From the Dragon’s Mouth

Ana Fuentes
From The Dragon’s Mouth: Ten True Stories that Unveil the Real China is an exquisitely intimate look into the China of the twenty-first century as seen through the eyes of its people. This is one of the rare times a book combines the voices of everyday Chinese people from so many different layers of society: a dissident tortured by the police; a young millionaire devoted to nationalism; a peasant-turned-prostitute to pay for the best education for her son; a woman who married her gay friend to escape from social pressure, just like an estimated 16 million other women; a venerated kung fu master unable to train outdoors because of the hazardous pollution; the daughter of two Communist Party officials getting rich coaching Chinese entrepreneurs the ways of Capitalism; among others.   —Penguin{chop}{node, 3048, 4}

Media

04.02.13

China Concerto

Jonathan Landreth
Before February 2012, when his name exploded onto the front pages of newspapers around the globe, most people outside of China had never heard of Bo Xilai, the now-fallen Communist Party Secretary of the megacity of Chongqing. But in the years...

Media

04.02.13

Singing a Note of Caution About New First Lady Peng Liyuan

Xi Jinping, the newly appointed Chinese President, unfolded his presidency with a grand foreign tour to Russia, Tanzania, South Africa, and the Republic of the Congo. While this series of state visits unequivocally underscored China’s diplomatic...

Caixin Media

04.01.13

New Hands Take the Financial Regulation Wheel

Who’s steering China’s carefully managed financial system? Speculators were busy name-guessing before and for several months after the Communist Party’s 18th National Congress in November.Finally, the dust started to settle with formal appointments...

Sinica Podcast

03.29.13

Xi Jinping Goes to Russia

Kaiser Kuo & Jeremy Goldkorn from Sinica Podcast
Xi Jinping’s trip to Moscow earlier this week, his first journey abroad as China’s new Head of State, has raised interesting questions about China’s ambitions in Asia, and coupled with Washington’s “pivot to Asia” is resurrecting the specter of a...

Books

03.28.13

China Goes Global

David Shambaugh
Most global citizens are well aware of the explosive growth of the Chinese economy. Indeed, China has famously become the “workshop of the world.” Yet, while China watchers have shed much light on the country’s internal dynamics—China’s politics, its vast social changes, and its economic development—few have focused on how this increasingly powerful nation has become more active and assertive throughout the world.In China Goes Global, eminent China scholar David Shambaugh delivers the book that many have been waiting for—a sweeping account of China’s growing prominence on the international stage. Thirty years ago, China’s role in global affairs beyond its immediate East Asian periphery was decidedly minor and it had little geostrategic power. As Shambaugh charts, though, China’s expanding economic power has allowed it to extend its reach virtually everywhere—from mineral mines in Africa, to currency markets in the West, to oil fields in the Middle East, to agribusiness in Latin America, to the factories of East Asia. Shambaugh offers an enlightening look into the manifestations of China’s global presence: its extensive commercial footprint, its growing military power, its increasing cultural influence or “soft power,” its diplomatic activity, and its new prominence in global governance institutions.But Shambaugh is no alarmist. In this balanced and well-researched volume, he argues that China’s global presence is more broad than deep and that China still lacks the influence befitting a major world power—what he terms a “partial power.” He draws on his decades of China-watching and his deep knowledge of the subject, and exploits a wide variety of previously untapped sources, to shed valuable light on China’s current and future roles in world affairs.  —Oxford University Press

‘Oh Boy! So Many Questions!’ About China in Africa

Didi Kristen Tatlow
International Herald Tribune
Although not universal, there is some concern among Africans that China may be a “new colonial power,” extracting resources and selling manufactured goods.