Why Can’t China Make Its Food Safe?—Or Can It?
ALEX WANG, JOHN C. BALZANO, ISABEL HILTON (& authors)The month my wife and I moved to Beijing in 2004, I saw a bag of oatmeal at our local grocery store prominently labeled: “NOT POLLUTED!” How funny that this would be a selling point, we thought.But 7 years later as we prepared to return to the US, what was once a joke had...
China Air Daily
MICHAEL ZHAOBeijing’s air pollution regularly makes international headlines. But exactly how bad is the air in the Chinese capital, home to 20 million people? That’s the question China Air Daily strives to answer—in pictures we take every single day from the same spot.Air pollution...
Nuclear Fusion: An Answer to China’s Energy Problems?
CHINADIALOGUEThe global nuclear sector has been through something of an apocalyptic patch since the disaster at Fukushima—from power station shutdowns in Japan and Germany to waste-plan chaos in the U.K. to doubts about China’s ability to showcase new reactor designs.But not everything is...
Toxic Effects and Environmental Nondisclosure
CAIXINHigh-profile talk emphasizing environmental action at the Communist Party’s 18th national congress attracted a lot of attention. News from the November proceedings spurred industry demands for more information and pushed stock prices higher for companies that make environmental...
Chinese AIDS Activist Endures “Degradation” in New...
TEA LEAF NATIONChinese people translate “New Yorker” into “New York Ke” to designate people living in New York City, including Chinese immigrants. But in Chinese, “ke” means “visitor” or “guest.” It has been a sad word in Chinese literature and poems for thousands of years,...
Millions Await News of Test-tube Panda Taotao’s “...
CHINADIALOGUEOn October 11, at the age of two years and two months, giant panda Taotao went home.This was China’s second attempt to introduce a giant panda born through artificial insemination into the wild. Unlike last time, however, Taotao was born and raised in an environment designed to...
Thanks, But No Thanks
CAIXINOn the last day of Zhao Xiang’s short life, her request to donate every organ possible to save the lives of others was brushed off by the president of Shenzhen Liulian Hospital.Zhao, her parents, and transplant specialists from the Shenzhen branch of the Red Cross Society of...
Living on Dangerous Ground
CAIXINFractures had long plagued the rocky mountainside next to Huang Daihong’s home. When an earthquake jolted Luozehe County in Yunnan province, Huang watched a large black boulder release a shower of stones that instantly killed her neighbor.The September 7 quake that struck the...
We Make It Pour, Declare Cloud-Seeders
CAIXINWill it be clear or gray skies today? Increasingly, the answer in China may be decided by the government.The Chinese have been seeding clouds for decades. Airplanes equipped with rocket-launchers and chemicals for inducing rainfall are based in thousands of counties across the...
China’s Food Fright
CAIXINThere’s no denying that the gastronomic horizons of Chinese cuisines sometimes verge on the infinite. But on factors of food quality, there’s little subtlety or nuance for safety standards. In the past five years, the number of public food and drug safety scandals has hit...
Why Didn’t Science Rise in China?
JONATHAN D. SPENCEIn response to:The Passions of Joseph Needham from the August 14, 2008 issueTo the Editors:In his illuminating essay on Joseph Needham [ NYR, August 14], Jonathan Spence notes that early in his career Needham posed the question: “What were the inhibiting factors in their...
China’s Assault on the Environment
JONATHAN MIRSKYIn 1956 Chairman Mao wrote the poem “Swimming,” about a dam to be built across the Yangtze River. This is its second stanza:A magnificent project is formed. The Bridge, it flies! Spanning North and South, and a Natural Barrier becomes a thoroughfare. A rocky dam shall stand...