Media
11.06.13
Sex Ed Videos Go Viral
A collection of sex education videos have just gone, ahem, viral on the Chinese Internet. On October 29, a three-person team calling itself the “Nutcracker Studio” released three one-minute clips addressing tough topics in childhood sex education,...
ChinaFile Recommends
11.06.13The Challenges of Conveying Absurd Reality: An Interview with Yu Hua
Los Angeles Review of Books
Thus, Los Angeles Review of Books Asia Co-editor Megan Shank and Yu exchanged Chinese-language e-mails about history’s most over- and underrated Chinese writers, the evolution of an ancient language and why Yu will never read&...
Sinica Podcast
11.05.13
Terrorism in Tiananmen, Politics at Peking University
from Sinica Podcast
This week on Sinica, we return to our China roots with a show covering recent developments in the news including the recent terrorist attack in Beijing and political hiring-and-firing at Peking University. Joining Kaiser and Jeremy to talk about...
Video
11.05.13
Small Part, Big Screen
Every morning outside the imposing gate of the Beijing Film Studio, a throng gathers to try to find a way inside. These aren’t fans, exactly. Look at their faces, the practiced way they crane their necks or square their shoulders when the man with...
Media
10.31.13
Tiananmen Attack Spotlights China’s Beleaguered Uighurs
On October 28, a jeep plowed into a group of pedestrians and burst into flames on the avenue next to Tiananmen Square, the massive public square in Beijing that is the symbolic heart of the Chinese capital. According to Chinese state media reports,...
Sinica Podcast
10.29.13
Chinese Literature in Translation
from Sinica Podcast
This week, Sinica is delighted to be joined by Linda Jaivin and Alice Liu for a discussion on Chinese literature in translation. As many listeners will know, Linda is a long-standing force in the Chinese literary community and the author of many...
Media
10.29.13
Why “2 Broke Girls” Is All the Rage in China
In China’s battle between cupcakes and Communists, the cupcakes appear to be winning. While Chinese President Xi Jinping promotes the “Chinese Dream” of national rejuvenation with mixed success, the U.S. sitcom 2 Broke Girls has drawn Chinese...
Excerpts
10.28.13Stark Choices for China’s Leaders
One Beijing morning in early November 2012, seven men in dark suits strode onto the stage of the Great Hall of the People. China’s newly elected Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Chairman Xi Jinping stood at the center of the ensemble, flanked on each...
ChinaFile Recommends
10.28.13Mixed Marriages in China a Labour of Love
BBC
In 1978, there was not a single inter-racial marriage registered in mainland China, according to government figures. But the numbers of Chinese marrying foreigners has gradually risen, with 53,000 such couples tying the knot in 2012.&...
ChinaFile Recommends
10.28.13In China, ‘Everyone is Guilty of Corruption’
CNN
Much as I appreciate our president’s determination in his fight against corruption, his battle feels like an attempt to “put out a big fire with a glass of water,” given how corruption has reached every corner of our society.
ChinaFile Recommends
10.25.13Newspaper Publishes Front-Page Call for Journalist’s Release
Global Voices
A Guangzhou-based newspaper, the New Express, published a front-page editorial statement urging the Security Bureau of Hunan Province to release their investigative reporter Chen Yongzhou who was arrested for criminal...
ChinaFile Recommends
10.25.13To Live and Die in Ordos
Film Business Asia
This film is a character study of a socially responsible cop in a get-rich-quick modern bordertown whose life conveniently sums up the social and ethical tensions through which the whole country has been going during the past decade or so.
The NYRB China Archive
10.25.13
Unhinged in China
from New York Review of Books
In one of the central scenes in Jia Zhangke’s new film, a young man working in the southern Chinese manufacturing city of Dongguan goes to an ATM and finds that he’s broke. He’s just spent the past month betraying his friends and hopping from job to...
Books
10.24.13
The Grass-Mud Horse Lexicon
Over the years, China Digital Times (CDT) has collected hundreds of words and turns of phrase invented by China’s citizens of the Internet, its “netizenry.” Playfully evading online censors, netizens have created a world of “grass-mud horses” and “river crabs,” forever locked in battle in the “Mahler Desert.” CDT’s Grass-Mud Horse Lexicon is a collection of politically-charged terms which represent netizen resistance discourse. This eBook includes a selection of “classic” terms which have endured beyond the events which generated them. They are arranged by category, and indices in alphabetical order by both English and pinyin are included. This is the netizen language you need to know to understand China’s Internet. —China Digital Times{chop}
The NYRB China Archive
10.24.13
China: “Capitulate or Things Will Get Worse”
from New York Review of Books
The massacre of protesters in Beijing on June 4, 1989, and the harsh repression during the months immediately following put China into a foul mood. Among ordinary Chinese, the prestige of the Communist Party, whose leaders had ordered the brutal...
ChinaFile Recommends
10.23.13How to Say ‘Truthiness’ in Chinese
Foreign Policy
In the face of recent policies assaulting their right to speak out on the internet, grassroots Chinese are trying to turn the mirror back on officialdom by calling out instances where officials or state-owned media made statements that turned out to...
ChinaFile Recommends
10.23.13China’s Silly War on Starbucks Lattes
A C.C.T.V. investigation into Starbucks’ jacked-up prices in Mainland China has backfired, prompting many netizens to ask why the television station doesn’t cover more widespread and egregious injustices.
ChinaFile Recommends
10.23.13Chinese Regulators Restrict Imports of T.V. Formats
Hollywood Reporter
The new order is aimed at pushing domestically produced and “morality-building programs,” in line with the recent campaign to decrease vulgarity on Chinese T.V. The vacated slots will have to be filled with news, education programs and...
ChinaFile Recommends
10.23.13Robbed in China? Remain Calm and Call a Foreigner
Foreign Policy
Photos circulating on Chinese social media have bolstered the perception among Chinese citizens that victims of crime who hold foreign passports are granted special treatment and more attention by the police.
ChinaFile Recommends
10.23.13Top Chinese University Expels Outspoken Economist
Associated Press
Peking School of Economics’ Xia Yeliang was expelled for his political views and activism, including his vocal support of democracy, his involvement in the drafting of Charter 08, and his refusal to comply with government directives to de-politicize...
ChinaFile Recommends
10.23.13The Labor Shortage That Could End China’s Economic Boom
Foreign Affairs
Based on its track record, the purely economic dimensions of an economic transition don’t seem more daunting than the other feats the C.C.P. has pulled off. Instead, it’s the social and political dimensions of the demographic hangover that seem most...
Media
10.22.13
China’s Silly War on Starbucks Lattes
There are worse things in the world than an overpriced latte. That’s the message that thousands of Chinese web users are sending China Central Television (CCTV), a state-owned media behemoth that ran an October 20 segment accusing the Seattle-based...
ChinaFile Recommends
10.21.13China Holds Two Bloggers As It Expands Crackdown on Rumors
Reuters
Police in China have arrested an influential blogger and are holding a cartoonist in a widening crackdown on online “rumor-mongering”, friends and a lawyer for one of them said on Thursday October 17.
ChinaFile Recommends
10.21.13What China Thinks of the Shutdown
Diplomat
The notion of a government shutdown is strange for the average Chinese person because its consequences in the People’s Republic would go far beyond closed federal agencies and parks, but it has also helped the Chinese better understand the U.S...
Media
10.18.13
Cross-Culture Fail Watch: “Blacklist” Bungles One-Child Policy
Chinese Internet users have a message for the screenwriters of The Blacklist: You’ve got a lot to learn about our country.The third episode of The Blacklist, a new NBC television drama in which the FBI and a former fugitive team up to fight...
Viewpoint
10.15.13
Trust Issues: Hong Kong Resists Beijing’s Advances
When Hong Kong reverted to Chinese sovereignty in 1997, expectations were high—in Beijing and among the pro-mainland forces in Hong Kong—that identification with the Chinese nation would slowly but surely strengthen among the local population,...
ChinaFile Recommends
10.15.13Former Google China Chief Faces Online Attacks
WSJ: China Real Time Report
Major Chinese Internet portals have republished an essay from an official media website that implies that Kai-fu Lee lied about being diagnosed with cancer, in what some of his supporters are calling a coordinated ad hominem effort...
ChinaFile Recommends
10.15.135 Things About China’s New Aged-Care Law
Associated Press
The changes in the law in China reflect an increasingly urgent dilemma across the world: As populations age faster than ever before, families and governments are struggling to decide who will protect and provide for the old. Too often, the answer is...
ChinaFile Recommends
10.15.13‘Where Are the Riots?’: China Watches the Shutdown
New Yorker
In China’s social media - what amounts to China’s largest and most liberal classroom - microbloggers are taking the opportunity to teach one another the difference between federal and local authority in America and the protections, and perils, of...
ChinaFile Recommends
10.15.13The World’s Most Active Twitter Country?
Forbes
In terms of active Twitter users (defined as those “who used or contributed to the platform at least once a month”), the country with the most users was China, with 35.5 million, even though Chinese netizens are restricted from using Twitter.&...
ChinaFile Recommends
10.15.13Parents Bribe to Get Students into Top Schools, Despite Campaign Against Corruption
Washington Post
Almost everything, from admission to grades to teacher recommendations, is negotiable in Chinese schools if you know the right person or have enough cash, a fact that's worsening rather than mending the vast gap...
ChinaFile Recommends
10.15.13Li Tianyi Sentencing Is Small Step for Chinese Women
New York Times
In the trial of Li Tianyi, the 17-year-old son of prominent entertainers in the military on trial for gang rape, an important detail in the court’s recent ruling may improve thewelfare of the women who work in China’s illegal but widespread...
The NYRB China Archive
10.15.13
Old Dreams for a New China
from New York Review of Books
Ever since China’s new leader, Xi Jinping, first uttered the phrase “China Dream” last year, people in China and abroad have been scrambling to decipher its meaning. Many nations have “dreams”; in Canada, the country’s most prominent popular...
Media
10.11.13
How Social Media Complicates the Role of China’s Rights Lawyers
Xia Junfeng was once unknown, but his 2009 arrest for the murder of security officers—who, he alleged, had savagely beaten him—made him a symbolic figure in a national debate about human rights and reform in China. Yet many wonder whether this...
Reports
10.10.13
Congressional-Executive Commission on China: 2013 Annual Report
United States Congress
The Commission notes China’s lack of progress in guaranteeing Chinese citizens’ freedom of expression, assembly, and religion; restraining the power of the Chinese Communist Party; and establishing the rule of law under the new leadership of...
ChinaFile Recommends
10.08.13Chinese Police Shoot Dead Seven Uighurs in Kashgar
Radio Free Asia
Four died after police in Yarkand county, which is administered by the Silk Road city of Kashgar, opened fire on a group of Uighurs in a private residence on October 3 after suspecting them of “illegal assembly,” the Munich-based World Uyghur...
ChinaFile Recommends
10.08.13Uighurs in China Say Bias Is Growing
New York Times
Discrimination in employment, common across western Xinjian, is one of the many indignities China’s 10 million Uighurs face in a society that increasingly casts them as untrustworthy and prone to religious extremism.
ChinaFile Recommends
10.07.13Beijing's 20 Most Interesting People
Beijinger
Even if nothing interesting could be written about 99 percent of Beijing's approximately 20 million people, there would still be 200,000 great stories remaining.
ChinaFile Recommends
10.04.13Sina C.E.O. Charles Chao on How Weibo Is Changing China
All Things Digital
“Before, if anything happened, any accident or disaster, the information can be withheld or contaminated by government media control; but now it’s impossible, almost, to withhold information,” Chao said at the Stanford University China 2.0...
ChinaFile Recommends
10.04.13‘A Touch of Sin,’ Four Tales from China by Jia Zhangke
New York Times
A blistering fictionalized tale straight out of China, “A Touch of Sin” is at once monumental and human scale. A story of lives rocked by violence, it has the urgency of a screaming headline but one inscribed with emotional weight...
ChinaFile Recommends
10.04.13Xi Jinping Hopes Traditional Faiths Can Fill Moral Void in China
Reuters
President Xi Jinping believes China is losing its moral compass and he wants the ruling Communist Party to be more tolerant of traditional faiths in the hope these will help fill a vacuum created by the country’s breakneck growth...
ChinaFile Recommends
10.04.13Mao’s Little Red Book to Get Revamp
Guardian
The re-emergence of Quotations from Chairman Mao comes amid an official revival of the era’s rhetoric. Xi Jinping has embraced Maoist terminology and concepts, launching a “mass line rectification campaign” and even presiding over...
ChinaFile Recommends
10.04.13Her Husband’s Execution, Then a Bag of Ashes
New York Times
In the four years since her husband was arrested, Ms. Zhang, 39, has been transformed from a shy, self-described politically naïve peasant into an eloquent voice for the downtrodden.
ChinaFile Recommends
10.04.13Bringing Home the Bacon: Chinese Savor Smithfield Deal
USA Today
China's swallowing up of Smithfield, a well-known U.S. povider of processed meats, illustrates two things about the country: its swelling economic power and growing hunger for meat-based diets. And the deal may foretell of many...
ChinaFile Recommends
10.04.13Puffer-fish Statue Reignites Row Over State Decadence in China
Guardian
A city in eastern China has spent 70m yuan (£7.1m) on building a giant bronze statue of a puffer fish, drawing accusations of graft and profligate state spending.
ChinaFile Recommends
10.04.13Population Control Is Called Big Revenue Source in China
New York Times
Nineteen province-level governments in China collected a total of $2.7 billion in fines last year from parents who had violated family planning laws, which usually limit couples to one child, a lawyer who had requested the data said.
ChinaFile Recommends
10.04.13China Activist Cao Shunli ‘Disappears’, Says Rights Group
BBC
Cao Shunli has not been seen since September 14, when she was barred from boarding a flight to Switzerland, Human Rights Watch says. Ms, Cao has advocated for the right of petitioners to contribute to China’s human rights reports.
ChinaFile Recommends
10.04.13No, Facebook Can’t Conquer China With Free Trade
Wired
Mark Zuckerberg’s social network has now been legalized inside a forthcoming free-trade zone within Shanghai, but the beachhead will likely remain just that, as it’s unlikely Facebook will be able to penetrate other regions or...
ChinaFile Recommends
10.04.13Street Vendor’s Execution Stokes Anger in China
New York Times
In a country whose citizens widely support capital punishment, street vendor Xia Junfeng’s execution has stoked a firestorm of public anger, much of it expressed through social media and directed at the double standards applied to ordinary citizens...
ChinaFile Recommends
10.04.13Jittery Nation: Link, Maden, and Pickowicz’s “Restless China”
Los Angeles Review of Books
Thirteen knowledgeable academics trained in diverse disciplines and based around the world explore disquietude surrounding Chinese values and civic life in clusters of essays on “Legacies,” “A New Electronic Community,” “Values,” and “Global...
Media
10.02.13
ChinaFile Presents: Jia Zhangke on “A Touch of Sin”
On September 30 at Asia Society in New York City, film director and screenwriter Jia Zhangke and his wife, muse, and frequent leading lady on screen, actress Zhao Tao, joined Asia Society’s Film Curator La Frances Hui and journalist Emily Parker to...
ChinaFile Recommends
10.01.13Uighurs at Xinjiang Mosque Have to Face China Flag When Praying
Al Jazeera
Prominent Uighur rights advocate Ilham Tohti called the local government’s move an effort to “dilute the religious environment” in the area, where minority Uighurs often complain of ethnic and religious repression.
ChinaFile Recommends
10.01.13China to Crack Down on Family Planning Fines After Abuses Found
Reuters
The National Audit Office’s investigation of 45 counties in nine provinces and municipalities from 2009-12 found 1.6 billion yuan ($260 million) in fines had been given out in contravention of the rules, Chinese newspapers said...
ChinaFile Recommends
09.27.13For China, a New Kind of Feminism
New York Times
Sheryl Sandberg’s brand of self-strengthening feminism has made its way to China, receiving mixed, but generally positive, reactions among various audiences.
Conversation
09.27.13
Can China’s Leading Indie Film Director Cross Over in America?
Jonathan Landreth:Chinese writer and director Jia Zhangke’s A Touch of Sin won the prize for the best screenplay at the Cannes Film Festival in May. Though the dialogue and its fine translation and English subtitles by Tony Rayns are exemplary, I...
ChinaFile Recommends
09.27.13Up to 12 Uyghurs Shot Dead in Raid on Xinjiang ‘Munitions Center’
Radio Free Asia
Authorities in China’s restive northwestern region of Xinjiang have shot dead up to a dozen Uyghurs and wounded 20 others in a raid on what they said was a “terrorist” facility, according to local officials and residents.
ChinaFile Recommends
09.26.13Chinese Immigration to U.S. Still Rising
China Daily
The number of foreign-born Chinese Americans in the US doubled between 2000 and 2010, according to a UN report, and experts attribute the increase in large part to China’s growing middle class.
Media
09.26.13
Execution or Murder? Chinese Look for Justice in Street Vendor’s Death
This morning, a Chinese street vendor named Xia Junfeng was executed. Xia had been found guilty of murdering two urban enforcers, known colloquially as chengguan, in 2009. Xia’s lawyers argued he acted in self-defense, presenting six eyewitness...
ChinaFile Recommends
09.26.13A Chill, Ill Wind Blows Across China
Council on Foreign Relations
Beijing’s anti-corruption campaign against public intellectuals and corrupt officials—while widely heralded by the official Chinese media—seems like one destined for short-term gain but long-term pain.
ChinaFile Recommends
09.26.13Wooing, And Also Resenting, Chinese Tourists
New York Times
They gawk, they shove, they eschew local cuisine, and last year, 83 million mainland Chinese spent $102 billion abroad making them the world’s biggest tourism spenders, according to the United Nations World Tourism Organization.