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12.30.14A Look Back at 2014
It’s hard to believe, but ChinaFile is almost two years old. It’s been an exciting year for us, and, as ever, an eventful year for China. It was a year of muscular leadership from Xi Jinping, who has now been in office just over two years and who...
Sinica Podcast
12.26.14Regulating the Fourth Estate in China
from Sinica Podcast
The explosion of the commercial media sphere in China over the last decade hasn't been particularly subtle, especially if you're anything like us and walk past multiple Chinese newsstands in the morning. But let's look beyond the way...
Books
12.23.14Top Five China Books of 2014
As the editor of ChinaFile’s Books section, I have the privilege of meeting and interviewing some amazing writers covering China today—academics, journalists, scholars, activists. Based on these conversations, we create short videos of the...
Reporting & Opinion
12.23.14China in 2014 Through the Eyes of a Human Rights Advocate
from China Change
This time last year, volunteers and I were busy writing and translating articles to prepare for the New Citizens Movement trials. Many Chinese voices were speaking out forcefully against these trials: law professors, rights lawyers, liberal...
ChinaFile Recommends
12.22.14China Offers Russia Ruble Help
Wall Street Journal
China says it is willing to provide assistance to Russia following recent sharp drops in the value of its currency, said a senior official, as President Vladimir Putin’s regime faces continuing strains with the U.S. and Europe.
Conversation
12.19.14Just How Successful Is Xi Jinping?
Last week, Arthur Kroeber, Editor of the China Economic Quarterly opined that “…the Chinese state is not fragile. The regime is strong, increasingly self-confident, and without organized opposition.” His essay, which drew strong, if divided,...
ChinaFile Recommends
12.19.14As Obama Opens to Cuba, China Experts Remember Benefits from U.S. Engagement
Washington Post
As Washington moves to restore diplomatic ties with Cuba after decades of trying to isolate and overthrow the Castro regime, Chinese people and China experts in the United States have been reminded of a much more momentous opening 36 years ago that...
ChinaFile Recommends
12.19.14In China, Expectant Dads Line Up to Experience Labor Pains
Wall Street Journal
He described the treatment as creating a three-part sensation: hot steel balls dropping on his stomach and then a hook being gouged into him, followed by the ripping of his innards. “I treated her to a French dinner after,” says Mr. Li.
Culture
12.19.14‘One Day the People Will Speak Out for Me’
The ongoing exhibition “@Large: Ai Weiwei at Alcatraz” is both revelatory and heart-wrenching, a stunning and sobering work by an artist who understands firsthand the fragility and pricelessness of freedom.Detained without warning or charge for 81...
Media
12.18.14Hong Kong, the Resilient City
The tents have folded. After 75 days of camping on the street, braving police crackdowns, occasional civilian attacks, and the city’s (admittedly mild) winter chill, Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protesters have cleared out. As promised, police moved in...
The China Africa Project
12.18.14Who Are the Chinese in Africa?
Some say the number of Chinese in Africa now exceeds one million people; some even go as high as two million. Although no one has a precise accounting of just how many Chinese migrants now live on the continent, there is no doubt their numbers are...
ChinaFile Recommends
12.17.14Dalai Lama Concedes He May Be the Last
BBC
Exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama has said he realizes that he may be the last to hold the title. But he told the BBC it would be better that the centuries-old tradition ceased "at the time of a popular Dalai Lama".
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12.17.14China’s Mountain Hermits Seek a Highway to Heaven
Agence France-Presse
His unheated hut is half way up a mountain with no electricity, and his diet consists mostly of cabbage. But Master Hou says he has found a recipe for joy. "There is no happier way for a person to live on this earth," he declared,...
Video
12.15.14Down to the Countryside
The world has heard much of late about the scale and scope of China’s mass migration from the poor rural countryside to its booming cities. Some think the number of these migrant workers will soon reach some 400 million souls. They have created...
ChinaFile Recommends
12.15.14China’s Lost Generation Finds Itself in Ukraine
Bloomberg
A working class high-school graduate who scored abysmally on China's college entrance exam, Mei now owns his own business, claims title to three-quarters of an acre of land, lives in a split-level house, and is married to an eighteen-year-old...
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12.15.1479 Days That Shook Hong Kong
Time
Photo Essay: Hong Kong's street occupations have ended, but many demonstrators say this is only the beginning of their fight for free elections.
Infographics
12.15.14Is Studying Abroad Worth the Cost?
from Sohu
The number of Chinese students who choose to study abroad has increased by more than 1,000% since 2000. Yet education costs abroad also continue to rise. This infographic looks at reasons why Chinese students are choosing an education overseas.
ChinaFile Recommends
12.12.14Fidel Castro Wins China’s Alternative Peace Prize
Guardian
In line with past recipients, the ailing Castro did not come to Beijing to pick up his award and it was unclear whether he was aware of the honour. The prize, in the form of a gold statuette and certificate, was instead handed to a Cuban foreign...
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12.12.14Young, Idealistic, and Caught Up in a Wave of Detentions
New York Times
Well educated and deeply committed to helping their fellow Chinese, Liu Jianshu and Zhao Sile are the kind of idealistic young people who pepper the story of China’s transformation over the past century as it searches for a modern identity.
ChinaFile Recommends
12.09.14Xi Jinping: The Growing Cult of China’s ‘Big Daddy Xi’
Telegraph
The construction of a cult of personality around president Xi represents a dramatic direction change for a country that sought to rule collectively after the devastation wrought during Chairman Mao's three-decade monopoly on power.
ChinaFile Recommends
12.09.14Hong Kong Democracy Protesters Brace for Final Camp Shutdown
Washington Post
The operation reflects the waning support for demonstrators after more than two months of civil disobedience and clashes that began over Beijing’s role in directing elections in the former British colony.
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12.05.14China Mulls Giving Migrant Population More Equal Rights
Xinhua
China's migrant population may get equal access to more public services formerly restricted to the locals, according to a draft document of the government.
ChinaFile Recommends
12.05.14Thousands of Local Internet Propaganda Emails Leaked
China Digital Times
The archive includes correspondence, photos, directories of “Internet commentators” (网评员), summaries of commentary work, and records of the online activities of specific individuals, among other documents. Over 2,700 emails are included in the...
ChinaFile Recommends
12.05.14China Watchdog Says TV Censorship Rules Should Apply Online Too
Hollywood Reporter
A more censorious environment coincides with a boom in tie-ups between China and Hollywood. HBO and Tencent have agreed to make HBO content available on a broad basis in China, including shows like The Newsroom, Boardwalk Empire, Rome and Band of...
Media
12.05.14Repeat After Me: Taiwan’s Recent Elections Had Nothing to Do With Hong Kong
If China was in fact the invisible candidate in Taiwan’s local elections, it just lost in a landslide. On November 28, voters on the self-governing island, which mainland China considers a renegade province, selected candidates for over 11,000...
Sinica Podcast
12.05.14Domestic Abuse in China
from Sinica Podcast
It doesn’t take a lot of time in China to see household violence play out in supermarkets, in schools, or even in the streets. But exactly how common is domestic violence in China? In the face of recent evidence from Peking University that more than...
Conversation
12.03.14Can China Conquer the Internet?
Lu Wei, China’s new Internet Czar, recently tried to get the world to agree to a model of information control designed by the Chinese Communist Party. Regular contributors comment below and we encourage readers to share their views on our Facebook...
ChinaFile Recommends
12.02.14Hong Kong Protests Have Produced No Real Winners
Guardian
There appear to be no real winners from Hong Kong’s umbrella movement: not the demonstrators—who have failed to win the concessions for which they have fought so persistently—nor the authorities, who have veered between aggressive intervention and...
ChinaFile Recommends
12.01.14Leader Asserts China’s Growing Importance on Global Stage
New York Times
Sounding confident after a burst of high-profile diplomacy, President Xi Jinping told Communist Party officials in a major address here over the weekend that China would be nice to its neighbors in Asia but that he would run an active foreign policy...
ChinaFile Recommends
11.26.14Despite Persecution, Guardian of Lake Tai Spotlights China’s Polluters
New York Times
ZHOUTIE, China — By autumn, the stench of Lake Tai and the freakish green glow of its waters usually fade with the ebbing of the summer heat, but this year is different. Standing on a concrete embankment overlooking a fetid, floating array of...
ChinaFile Recommends
11.26.14As Chinese Duo Perform at American Music Awards, Those at Home Are Skeptical
Wall Street Journal
In an indication of how fragile domestic confidence is in the country’s cultural exports, many Chinese commentators were immediately skeptical of the award’s authenticity. By the next morning on Weibo, the phrase “Chopstick Brothers bought an award...
Viewpoint
11.26.14Three Views of Local Consciousness in Hong Kong
Hong Kong has been in turmoil. The 2003 demonstration in which more than half a million demonstrators successfully forestalled the Article 23 anti-subversion legislation, as well as the 2012 rally of 130,000 and the threat of general student strikes...
Sinica Podcast
11.25.14Internet Wrangling in Wuzhen
from Sinica Podcast
Kaiser Kuo hosts alone this week as we turn our attention to the World Internet Conference (English site) last week, when a last minute attempt by Chinese organizers to foist the so-called Wuzhen Declaration on participants provoked an international...
ChinaFile Recommends
11.24.14Xi and Peng Now Have a Song of Their Own
South China Morning Post
After a series of high-profile events highlighting their marriage bonds, China’s president, Xi Jinping, and his wife, Peng Liyuan, now have a song praising their relationship.
ChinaFile Recommends
11.24.14China’s Rich Want to Send Children Abroad for Education
China Daily
The report said that some 80 percent of the country's rich people have plans to send children abroad, the highest ratio in the world. By contrast, Japan has less than 1 percent and Germany has less than 10 percent of its rich people having such...
Sinica Podcast
11.22.14Banned but Booming: Golf in China
from Sinica Podcast
Despite China's legal moratorium on the development of the golf industry, a policy driven by concerns over illegal farmland seizures and the potential misallocation of agricultural land and water resources, the golf industry has experienced an...
ChinaFile Recommends
11.21.14Political Surgery
Economist
This year is unlikely to be remembered fondly by Taiwan’s president, Ma Ying-jeou. He entered it with opinion polls at record lows. Spring saw students occupying the legislature for more than three weeks in protest against his efforts to forge...
ChinaFile Recommends
11.21.14Writers Phil Klay and Evan Osnos win top National Book Awards
Reuters
Klay was awarded the fiction prize for "Redeployment," his book of stories about the wars in Afghanistan. Osnos earned his award for "Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China" in the non-fiction...
ChinaFile Recommends
11.21.14“Hunger Games” China Release Date canceled, Likely Due to “Revolutionary” Political Content
That’s
The film's sudden withdrawal may be due to the film's apparently incendiary content, depicting a fictitious revolution aimed at toppling a dystopian future government. It's feared that movie-goers might draw parallels to Taiwan's...
Infographics
11.20.14Who Really Benefits from Poverty Alleviation in China?
from Sohu
A series of reports issued by China's National Audit Office highlights problems in 19 counties that have received funding from national poverty alleviation programs. News of "impoverished counties’" constructing luxurious new...
ChinaFile Recommends
11.17.14China's ‘Fox Hunt’ Grabs 288 Suspects in Worldwide Anti-Graft Net
Reuters
China has conducted activities in 56 countries, including the United States, Canada, Spain, South Korea, and South Africa, it said, citing Vice Minister of Public Security Liu Jinguo.
ChinaFile Recommends
11.14.14As Chinese Adoptees Return Home, a New Genre Tells Their Tales
Wall Street Journal
"Ricki’s Promise” a documentary about a Seattle teen’s summer spent with her birth family in China, began showing on the U.S. film festival circuit this month. Next month, the U.S. cable network SundanceTV will premiere “One Child,” a fictional...
Books
11.12.14The Sacred Routes of Uyghur History
For 250 years, the Turkic Muslims of Altishahr—the vast desert region to the northwest of Tibet—have led an uneasy existence under Chinese rule. Today they call themselves Uyghurs, and they have cultivated a sense of history and identity that challenges Beijing’s official national narrative. Rian Thum argues that the roots of this history run deeper than recent conflicts, to a time when manuscripts and pilgrimage dominated understandings of the past. Beyond broadening our knowledge of tensions between the Uyghurs and the Chinese government, this meditation on the very concept of history probes the limits of human interaction with the past.Uyghur historical practice emerged from the circulation of books and people during the Qing Dynasty, when crowds of pilgrims listened to history readings at the tombs of Islamic saints. Over time, amid long journeys and moving rituals, at oasis markets and desert shrines, ordinary readers adapted community-authored manuscripts to their own needs. In the process they created a window into a forgotten Islam, shaped by the veneration of local saints.Partly insulated from the rest of the Islamic world, the Uyghurs constructed a local history that is at once unique and assimilates elements of Semitic, Iranic, Turkic, and Indic traditions—the cultural imports of Silk Road travelers. Through both ethnographic and historical analysis, The Sacred Routes of Uyghur History offers a new understanding of Uyghur historical practices, detailing the remarkable means by which this people reckons with its past and confronts its nationalist aspirations in the present day. —Harvard University Press {chop}
ChinaFile Recommends
11.11.14Alibaba Smashes Its Sales Record On China’s Singles’ Day Shopping Bonanza
TechCrunch
In case you missed the media hype and have no idea why November 11 (11/11) is significant, it’s China biggest e-commerce sales day. Think of it as an amalgamation of all of North America’s biggest online retail days into one… on steroids.
ChinaFile Recommends
11.10.14‘A Map of Betrayal,’ by Ha Jin
New York Times
Many years ago, the F.B.I. coined an acronym, MICE, to describe the motivations of the spy. This stands for Money, Ideology, Compromise and Ego. All spies, it is argued, are drawn into espionage by some combination of these factors.
ChinaFile Recommends
11.07.14Ten Fun and Fascinating Facts About Xi Jinping
Council on Foreign Relations
While I can’t do justice to all the material presented in Xi Jinping: The Goverance of China, here are some things I learned from reading through Xi’s musings and the musings of others about him.
Culture
11.07.14‘The Training Wheels Are Coming Off,’ But That’s Not Necessarily A Good Thing
Making a movie is a wild ride no matter where you are in the world, a process fraught with ego and pride; wobblier, riskier, yet potentially more lucrative, the bigger and faster it gets.With U.S. gross sales of movie tickets basically flat, up just...
Features
11.06.14No Women Need Apply
“Applicants limited to male.” 23-year-old job-hunter Huang Rong (not her real name) noticed this line in a job announcement only after she had heard nothing from the recruiter and gone back to check the advertisement online. She had graduated from...
ChinaFile Recommends
11.05.14Myanmar's Aung San Suu Kyi Set to Visit China next Month, Her Party Says
South China Morning Post
"We asked for some of her time … but she said she might be going to China and needed some free time in December," Han Thar Myint, of the National League for Democracy's Central Executive Committee, told the South China Morning Post.
Media
11.05.14Tim Cook Coming Out Has Turned China Into a Nation of Fifth-Graders
"Let me be clear," wrote Apple CEO Tim Cook in a Bloomberg Businessweek article published on October 30. "I'm proud to be gay."Within an hour of the article's publication, Cook's first public announcement of his...
ChinaFile Recommends
11.04.14In Pictures: Designed in China
BBC
The Guo Shoujing Telescope, or Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope, is named after the 13th Century Chinese astronomer and is aimed at bringing Chinese astronomy into the 21st Century.
ChinaFile Recommends
11.03.14China Officials “Buy Corpses to Meet Cremation Quota”
BBC
Two officials in Guangdong province have been arrested after they allegedly bought corpses from grave robbers to have them cremated, Chinese media say.
ChinaFile Recommends
11.03.14Is China’s Grand Ethnic Experiment Working?
BBC
In a gleaming classroom at Chong Hua High School in the northern Chinese city of Tianjin, students peer at onion slices under microscopes. Their biology teacher calls on Abdurrahman Mamat to explain what he sees."Plasmolysis," he replies...
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
10.31.14Toronto 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.