How Much Will New Stimulus Improve China’s Economic Outlook?

A ChinaFile Conversation

Arthur R. Kroeber, Michael Pettis & more via ChinaFile Conversation

After months of downbeat economic news and little action from the Chinese government, Beijing has announced a slew of stimulus measures. Are the stimulus measures enough to make a difference and are they going to work as long as secular trends like demographics and global uncertainty don’t change? What signal should we look for to understand if the stimulus measures will work? How will China’s economy perform in the next year? Read full story>>

China’s Iconoclast

Ian Johnson via New York Review of Books

I Have No Enemies: The Life and Legacy of Liu Xiaobo by Perry Link, the leading Western chronicler of dissent in China, and a Chinese colleague who writes anonymously as Wu Dazhi is the definitive biography of the most famous dissident in the nearly seventy-five-year history of the People’s Republic of China. The book, long and necessarily ambitious, is also a tour de force survey of Chinese political thought, activism, and dissent over the past half-century. Read full story>>

Where the Malan Blooms

60 Years After the First Chinese Nuclear Bomb

Yangyang Cheng

This October 16 marks the 60th anniversary of the testing of the first Chinese nuclear bomb. When my friends and I coiled up our jump ropes and returned to class, we learned inspirational tales about the earliest generation of Chinese nuclear scientists, who left the comfort of home for the northwestern frontier and toiled in anonymity to forge the country’s atomic shield. In the same classrooms and from the same textbooks, we also marveled at our motherland’s vastness and diversity: every inch... Read full story>>

Tick Tock for TikTok

A ChinaFile Conversation

Kevin Xu, Ivy Yang & more via ChinaFile Conversation

Will TikTok succeed in defending itself on First Amendment grounds, or will it be forced to shut down in the U.S.? Or will ByteDance find a creative way out of the problem? What will this case mean for Chinese business interests in the U.S. and the future of tech? And given that Donald Trump appears to have reversed his earlier position on banning TikTok while Joe Biden signed the ban, what effect might the TikTok ban have on the U.S. election? Read full story>>

Is China’s Cultural Outreach to Muslims in Indonesia Working?

Randy Mulyanto

Indonesia is the world’s largest Muslim-majority country. So as Beijing ramps up its engagement with the Global South and with the Muslim world, it is unsurprising that it has been reaching out to various Muslim organizations and strengthening its people-to-people exchanges with the Muslim community in Indonesia. Read full story>>

Can China’s Scholarships and Cultural Diplomacy Efforts Succeed in Pakistan?

Akbar Notezai

In Washington, D.C., China has a bad reputation for the way it treats its Muslim minorities. But views differ greatly in many majority-Muslim countries in Asia. Educational programs and exchanges are a key part of this. Pakistan is an exemplar: Estimates suggest that more than 28,000 students studied in China in 2019, making it the top destination for outward-bound students. Read full story>>