ChinaFile Recommends
09.26.13Slowly, Americans Moving to China
Forbes
All told, 1,202 foreigners received the equivalent of a Chinese “green card” — making them legal, permanent residents of the world’s No. 2 economy. The numbers, minuscule compared to U.S. immigration figures, are clearly on the rise. &...
ChinaFile Recommends
09.26.13China Broadcasts COnfession of Chinese-American Blogger
Washington Post
Chinese authorities have increasingly been broadcasting interviews after big-name arrests, forcing suspects to confess publicly to alleged crimes prior to trial or conviction.
Postcard
09.25.13The Strangers
In the winter of 2009, I was spending my weekends in the northeast Chinese city of Tangshan, and eating most of my food from the far-western province of Xinjiang. Like many minorities, the Uighur, the native people of Xinjiang, have made their chief...
ChinaFile Recommends
09.24.13Filmmaker Giving Voice to Acts of Rage in Today’s China
New York Times
When Sina Weibo made filmmaker Jia Zhangke aware of just how many ordinary Chinese were being provoked by power-abusing members of society to commit acts of bloodshed, he decided to adapt his martial arts film to reflect the issues of the...
ChinaFile Recommends
09.24.13Ex-Champion Takes Solid Lead in Fight for Chess Title
New York Times
China’s Hou Yifan, age 19, is currently playing against Ukraine’s Anna Ushenina, 28, for the title of world female chess champion. Each player earns one point for a victory and a half-point for a draw, and, after four games, Ms. Hou leads 3...
ChinaFile Recommends
09.24.13Some of China’s Prominent Internet Voices
New York Times
A run-down of some of Sina Weibo’s most followed figures, complete with background information, a sampling of posts, and the type of content you ought to expect from them, from irreverant property developers to optimistic high-tech investors.
ChinaFile Recommends
09.24.13Is China Outgrowing Hollywood Film, TV Industry?
Variety
While Western media loves to trumpet its successes in China, with the strong showing of Hollywood blockbusters, it’s clear that China audiences aren’t just sitting and waiting for the next Hollywood blockbuster.
ChinaFile Recommends
09.19.13Cheap iPhone Not Cheap Enough in China
Wall Street Journal
Apple stands to gain sales in China more than any other market from the cheaper offering thanks to the country’s huge number of low- and middle-income smartphone users. But in China the new iPhone quite frankly won’t be all that cheap.
ChinaFile Recommends
09.19.13Crackdown on Bloggers Is Mounted by China
New York Times
Worried about its hold on public opinion, the Chinese government has pursued a propaganda and police offensive against what it calls malicious rumor-mongering online.
Infographics
09.19.13The Mooncake Economy
from Sohu
Across the country, Chinese are observing the annual harvest festival by giving and receiving mooncakes, pastries whose round shape is meant to evoke the full moon of the autumnal equinox. In recent years, bemoaning the debasement of this tradition...
Media
09.13.13Chinese Professor Mocked for Suggesting Elderly Sacrifice Even More
China’s age of retirement has long been a subject of controversy, as the country’s aging population and slowing economic growth have made caring for the elderly an increasingly daunting task. Recently, Yang Yansui, a professor at China’s prestigious...
Books
09.12.13Blocked on Weibo
Though often described with foreboding buzzwords such as “The Great Firewall” and the “censorship regime,” Internet regulation in China is rarely either obvious or straightforward. This was the inspiration for China specialist Jason Q. Ng to write an innovative computer script that would make it possible to deduce just which terms are suppressed on China’s most important social media site, Sina Weibo. The remarkable and groundbreaking result is Blocked on Weibo, which began as a highly praised blog and has been expanded here to list over 150 forbidden keywords, as well as offer possible explanations why the Chinese government would find these terms sensitive.As Ng explains, Weibo (roughly the equivalent of Twitter), with over 500 million registered accounts, censors hundreds of words and phrases, ranging from fairly obvious terms, including “tank” (a reference to the “Tank Man” who stared down the Chinese army in Tiananmen Square) and the names of top government officials (if they can’t be found online, they can’t be criticized), to deeply obscure references, including “hairy bacon” (a coded insult referring to Mao’s embalmed body).With dozens of phrases that could get a Chinese Internet user invited to the local police station “for a cup of tea” (a euphemism for being detained by the authorities), Blocked on Weibo offers an invaluable guide to sensitive topics in modern-day China as well as a fascinating tour of recent Chinese history. —The New Press{chop}
ChinaFile Recommends
09.12.13It’s O.K. to Protest in China, Just Don’t March
NPR
King has just completed two studies that peer into the Chinese censorship machine — including a field experiment within China that was conducted with extraordinary secrecy. The studies refute popular intuitions about what Chinese censors are after...
ChinaFile Recommends
09.12.13Tweeting Rumors in China Can Now Land You 3 Years in Jail
Tech in Asia
The latest barrage from the government in China’s ongoing war on rumors is a Supreme Court document that announces any post “clicked and viewed more than 5000 times, or reposted more than 500 times” will be considered...
ChinaFile Recommends
09.12.13China Past Due: Facing the Consequences of Control
Public Radio International
In the midst of it all, the Chinese people increasingly expect a different kind of relationship with their government – one of citizens and not subjects. They want their rights respected and their preferences heard.
ChinaFile Recommends
09.12.13As Chinese Farmers Fight for Homes, Suicide Is Ultimate Protest
New York Times
Farmers are increasingly thrown off their land by officials eager to find new sources of economic growth. The tensions are especially acute on the edge of big Chinese cities, and more and more people are resorting to suicide to protest the...
ChinaFile Recommends
09.12.13400 Million Cannot Speak Mandarin
Reuters
China’s governing Communist Party has promoted Mandarin for decades to unite a nation with thousands of dialects and numerous minority languages, but that campaign has been hampered by resistance, the country’s size and lack of investment in...
Media
09.11.13Amid Scandals, Can China’s New Organ Transplant System Work?
The now oft-derided Chinese Red Cross once again found itself in hot water in July, when it was reported that some branches have asked organ transplant hospitals to pay 100,000 RMB ($16,300) for each successful organ donation organized by them. In...
Viewpoint
09.11.13Beijing’s Air in 2013 or Ground Zero’s After 9/11: Which Was Worse?
When I moved to Beijing from New York in February to study Chinese, a question began to haunt me: Could Beijing’s air in 2013 be more dangerous than the toxic brew produced by the 9/11 attacks on New York City’s World Trade Center, which hung over...
ChinaFile Recommends
09.11.13Many Ladies Challenge China’s Traditional Female Image
Offbeat China
In contrary to the traditional Chinese female image of a cute, submissive and clinging lady, nü han zi is tough enough to take care of herself without a man.
ChinaFile Recommends
09.11.13The Puzzle of Identifying as Chinese
New York Times
In the U.S.A., there’s a tension between the self that is invented and the self that is inherited,” Chinese-American writer Gish Jen said. “But in China, it’s 20 percent of one and 80 percent of another,” whereas in America, “it’s the...
ChinaFile Recommends
09.11.13Letter from Beijing
Prospect Magazine
For recent college graduates strugglgin to find a job, positions inside the government, the state enterprises and state banks, which offer steady incomes and generous benefits, have increased dramatically in their appeal.
ChinaFile Recommends
09.11.13Chinese Teacher Suspended for Teaching Constitution
Global Voices
Professor Zhang Xuezhong of East China University of Politics and Law in Shanghai published an article entitled “The Origin and Perils of the Anti-constitutionalism Campaign in 2013″. On August 17, Zhang was notified that his teaching status had...
Infographics
09.09.13Where Humiliation is Normal
from Aibai
Tolerance of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals appears to be rising in Mainland China, at least among the digital generations. A February 2013 poll of users on Sina Weibo, one of China’s leading social networking sites,...
Media
09.06.13Follow the Money: Who Benefits from China’s One-Child Policy?
When debating China’s one-child policy, China’s domestic media and observers overseas mostly focus on its impact on the population structure or incidences of inhumanity involved in the implementation of the policy (such as forced abortion). Almost...
Sinica Podcast
09.06.13A Goodbye to the Magistad
from Sinica Podcast
Can it have been merely a few weeks ago that we sequestered Evan “The Turncoat” Osnos in our studio and grilled the celebrated writer on his decision to leave China for what must have myopically seemed like greener pastures? At the time, we intended...
ChinaFile Recommends
09.05.13Activist’s List of Chinese Political Arrests
South China Morning Post
Wen Yunchao, who has been monitoring arrests and convictions in this year in China from New York City, insists his records show a growing trend of repression under Xi Jinping.
ChinaFile Recommends
09.05.13The Beijing Independent Film Festival Survives
dGenerate Films
Although the cancellation of the opening screening on day one resulted in a weak turnout over the remaining days of the festival, it definitely relieved the tension from the authorities, which helped all the screenings, discussions and forums run...
ChinaFile Recommends
09.05.1390% of China’s New H.I.V. Infections Through Sex
Xinhua
With an estimated 48,000 to 50,000 new H.I.V./A.I.D.S. infections every year, Wu said the government aims to reduce new infections by 25 percent and H.I.V./A.I.D.S. mortality by 30 percent by the end of 2015.
ChinaFile Recommends
09.05.13China Bans Professor From Teaching Over His Advocacy of Constitution
Chronicle of Higher Education
The crackdown on Zhang Xuezhong is part of a broader stiffening of ideological control in the country’s universities as faculty and students grow skeptical of required courses in Communist ideology.
ChinaFile Recommends
09.05.13The Death of Independent Cinema in China
Caijing
After wrangling with the authorities all day August 25, on what was supposed to be the opening of the festival on the rural outskirts of Beijing, this year’s Beijing Independent Film Festival has been cancelled.
ChinaFile Recommends
09.05.13Look Who’s Afraid of Democracy
New York Times
For all of China’s vaunted influence in the world, many of its top leaders are deeply fearful of losing control of their own country. That fear is reflected in the Bo Xilai trial and the recently revealed “Document No. 9” warning of subversive...
Conversation
09.05.13To Reform or Not Reform?—Echoes of the Late Qing Dynasty
Orville Schell:It is true that China is no longer beset by threats of foreign incursion nor is it a laggard in the world of economic development and trade. But being there and being steeped in an atmosphere of seemingly endless political and...
ChinaFile Recommends
09.05.13Rape Trial Casts Spotlight on Offspring of China’s Elite
New York Times
Like the recent trial of Bo Xilai, the fallen former politician, the case has become an intensely watched and debated parable about the privileges and limited accountability of the Communist Party’s highborn.
ChinaFile Recommends
09.05.13China Seeks Western-Style Care Amid Explosion of Elderly
Bloomberg
In Confucian tradition, children and grandchildren have cared for the elderly, but with almost 200 million over-60 year olds, and a projection that sees that figure more than doubling in the next 40 years, China faces a deluge of infirm elderly who...
ChinaFile Recommends
09.05.13China‘s Communist Party Urges Popular Sina Weibo Users to Think of ’National Interests‘
Wall Street Journal
The recent uptick in government pressure on popular online pundits was evident as the Communist Party’s mouthpiece People’s Daily weighed in with a sharply worded commentary demanding users with huge followings act in the “national interest.”&...
Viewpoint
09.04.13The Confessions of a Reactionary
This article first appeared in Life and Death in China (a multi-volume anthology of fifty-plus witness accounts of Chinese government persecution and thirty-plus essays by experts in human rights in China). When I wrote it [on the evening of June 3...
Media
09.04.13China’s Crackdown on Social Media: Who Is in Danger?
There is a Chinese proverb that says one must kill a chicken to scare the monkeys, which means to punish someone in order to make an example out of them. That is what many believe happened last Sunday when outspoken investor and Internet celebrity...
ChinaFile Recommends
09.03.13China’s Rule-of-Law Trial
Council on Foreign Relations
The just-concluded trial of former Communist Party boss Bo Xilai was unprecedented in opening up a high-profile legal proceeding to public scrutiny, says legal scholar Jerome A. Cohen.
ChinaFile Recommends
09.03.13China’s Press Corps Ordered to Study Marxism
China Digital Times
The nation’s 307,000 reporters, producers and editors will soon have to sit through at least two days of Marxism classes, the Communist Party’s Propaganda Department has announced along with the press association...
ChinaFile Recommends
09.03.13Ai Weiwei on China’s Trial of the Century
Bloomberg
Ai Weiwei’s commentary on the twisted courtroom drama provided by the trial of Bo Xilai and what implications it holds for the future of “rule of law” in China, both for citizens and officials of all ranks.
ChinaFile Recommends
09.03.1330-Year Throwback: What Fodor’s Was Saying About China Three Decades Ago
Asia Blog
When asked to give examples of China's transformation over the last three decades, you may first be tempted to cite year-to-year G.D.P. growth figures. Yet in 2013, we may also find some of these answers tucked inside a Fodor's...
ChinaFile Recommends
09.03.13Censorship, Sex, and the Bo Xilai Trial
New Yorker
By allowing the ousted politician to have a say at all, and by releasing portions of the daily transcript the Party has highlighted its progressiveness and successfully deflected attention from the theatrical nature of a masterfully choreographed...
ChinaFile Recommends
09.03.13China’s “Seven Base Lines” for a Clean Internet
China Media Project
Run down the list of the “Seven Base Lines” and it is painfully obvious that this is part of a new government initiative to assert stronger control over online speech. This is yet another internet tightening in China ostensibly...
ChinaFile Recommends
09.03.13Today’s Alarming Japan-China Charts
Atlantic
Due to a variety of factors, the amount of Japanese people who dislike China and the amount of Chinese people who dislike Japan are on the rise, while those with positive feelings about the other country descends, according to recent polls.
ChinaFile Recommends
09.03.13Police Break Up Beijing Independent Film Festival
China Digital Times
Directors, jury and invited guests who had come from as far as Sweden were told the 10th Beijing Independent Film Festival were threatened with power cuts and the arrest of Wang Hongwei if they persisted in holding the festival.
Books
09.03.13China Across the Divide
Understanding China’s world role has become one of the crucial intellectual challenges of the 21st century. This book explores this topic through the adoption of three conceptual approaches that help to uncover some of the key complex and simultaneous interactions between the global and domestic forces that determine China’s external behavior. A central assumption of this study is that it is unhelpful to treat the global and domestic levels as separate categories of analysis and that the study of China can be enriched by a recognition of the interpenetrated nature of the domestic and international spheres.The first section of the book concentrates on the role of ideas. It examines Chinese conceptions, at both the elite and mass levels, of the country’s status and role in global politics, and how these conceptions can influence and frame policies. The second section provides evidence of Chinese societal involvement in transnational processes that are simultaneously transforming China as well as other parts of the world, often in unintended ways. The third section assesses the impact of globalization on China in issue areas that are central to global order, and outlines the domestic responses—from resistance to embrace—that it generates. This study adopts a multidisciplinary approach involving scholars in international relations, history, social anthropology, and area studies. It offers a sophisticated understanding of Chinese thought and behavior and illustrates the impact that China’s re-emergence is having on 21st century global order. —Oxford University Press {chop}
ChinaFile Recommends
09.03.13Citizens Movement Leader Xu Zhiyong Arrested
Associated Press
Xu is one of the founders of a loose network of campaigners known as the New Citizens Movement, who, among other things, have called for people to get together on the last Saturday of each month for dinner to discuss China’s constitution and other...
ChinaFile Recommends
09.03.13The Chinese Migrants Who Shocked Singapore
Wall Street Journal
The 2012 strike by Chinese bus drivers in Singapore offers a close-up look at a major issue facing the Southeast Asian city-state today: The growing number of migrant workers who underpin Singapore’s economy and the social tensions that their...
ChinaFile Recommends
08.29.13The East is Still Red
Foreign Policy
China’s Left believes that only a stronger Communist Party could solve the country’s problems of corruption, inequality, and moral torpor. Those on the Right believe unbridled state power is actually the problem, as China learned during the Mao...
ChinaFile Recommends
08.29.13A Path to the World for Chinese Directors
New York Times
CNEX, a nonprofit, has unique connections in the Chinese Communist Party which help insulate budding documentarians from undue interference so they can film and release films on a broader array of issues.
ChinaFile Recommends
08.29.13‘Trouble in the Middle’: How Foreign Companies SHould Confront Corruption in China
WSJ: China Real Time Report
Navigating the significant and sometimes dangerous differences between Western and Chinese business culture is the focus of “Trouble in the Middle,” the very well-timed new book by Steven Feldman, professor of business ethics at Case Western Reserve...
ChinaFile Recommends
08.29.13Li Na, China’s Tennis Rebel
New York Times
Li Na might prefer that we forget about China and judge her by her character and accomplishments alone. Hers, after all, is the tale of a conflicted working-class girl who rose to become one of the finest, richest and most...
ChinaFile Recommends
08.29.13Why China’s Farms Are Failing
Atlantic
In the process of emerging as the globe’s manufacturing center, China has severely damaged its land and water resources, compromising its ability to increase food production for a wealthier population that’s demanding ever-more meat.
ChinaFile Recommends
08.29.13Bo Xilai Supporters Demonstrate in Shandong on Eve of Trial
Reuters
About 10 people held up signs outside the courthouse in the eastern city of Jinan in Shandong province, where Bo is set to appear in public on Thursday for the first time in 17 months to face charges of bribery, corruption and abuse of power.&...
ChinaFile Recommends
08.29.13At Bo Xilai Trial, a Goal to Blast Acts, Not Ideas
New York Times
In a delicate balancing act, China’s leaders aim to simultaneously parade Mr. Bo as a criminal and silence his most vocal supporters while avoiding tarring the leftist policies he championed or alienating important revolutionary families.
ChinaFile Recommends
08.29.13Can China’s Show Trial Show the Way to Reform
Bloomberg
The Communist Party and its mouthpieces will celebrate the decisiveness of the Bo Xilai verdict as proof that the party - and the courts it controls - won’t tolerate corruption in its ranks. But who will believe this?
Books
08.27.13Ancestral Intelligence
In Ancestral Intelligence, Vera Schwarcz has added a forceful and fascinating work to her ever-growing list of publications depicting the cultural landscape of contemporary China. Here, she has created stunning “renditions” of poems by a mid-20th century dissident poet, Chen Yinke, and has added a group of her own poems in harmony with Chen Yinke’s. Like his, her poems show a degradation of culture and humanity, in this case through comparison of classic and modern Chinese logographs. —Antrim House {chop}
Media
08.27.13The Surprise Loser of China’s Trial of the Century: Its Corruption Watchdog
It seems like everybody has something to gain from Show Trial 2.0, a.k.a. the semi-live tweeting of fallen politician Bo Xilai’s day in court.Bo Xilai the showman takes a bow with a flourish; Gu Kailai, the scorned wife, exacts sweet revenge;...
ChinaFile Recommends
08.27.13How to Get Hired in China: The J.P. Morgan Case
New Yorker
The credibility of the Chinese political and economic system has always rested partly on its assertion that it is a well-functioning meritocracy. With the investigation of nepotism between JPMorgan and China’s Railway Ministry,...