Asia Blog

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Asia Blog features the best of Asia Society's global programming and expertise from our 12 worldwide locations, as well as news and views from across the continent. Showcasing exclusive contributions from our network of Fellows and Associate Fellows, Asia Blog is your daily source of insight and analysis on Asian arts, culture, politics, and business.

Bolder Protests Against Pollution Win Project’s Defeat in China

China has long been known as a place where the world’s dirtiest mines and factories can operate with impunity. Those days may not be over, but a growing environmental movement is beginning to make the most polluting projects much harder to build and operate.

Powerless Media=Powerless Citizens, Says China Youth Daily Editorial

Tapping into widespread public frustration with corruption among government officials, advocates of press freedom in China seem to have found an effective tool with which to ally citizens to the journalistic cause. In a July 3 editorial published in the China Youth Daily, the official newspaper of the Communist Youth League, columnist Cao Lin makes an impassioned case for protecting journalists from intimidation or harassment.

U.S. Files Trade Complaint Against China on Cars

The United States filed a trade complaint against China on Thursday for new duties it imposed on American-made cars and trucks. The move came as President Obama kicked off a campaign bus tour through the manufacturing heartland of Pennsylvania and Ohio. The Ohio-built Jeep Wrangler is among the cars affected.

Watching How China Censors

China's government employs software and an army of thousands to police the Internet, but it leaves much of the censoring to social-media sites like Sina Corp. SINA +2.30% to take down posts that violate local and national rules issued each week. While it is generally known that certain words or phrases, such as the Tiananmen Square massacre, will trip the censors, the scope isn't fully understood.

China-Japan Diaoyu Dispute, Now an iPad Game

Forget about Angry Birds. One new videogame for China’s iPad users is all about the angry words flung back and forth between China and Japan over a series of small islands in the East China Sea. The new game, called Defend the Diaoyu Islands, challenges players to defend Chinese military positions on the disputed islands–which are also claimed by the Japanese, who call them the Senkaku–with a variety of weapons and obstacles.

China Needs To Ease One-Child Policy, State Researchers Say

Chinese government researchers called on the nation to ease its one-child policy as soon as possible to cope with an aging population and labor shortage. One option is allowing all people to have a second child, three researchers including Yu Dong from the State Council’s Development Research Center wrote in an article in yesterday’s China Economic Times, a newspaper affiliated with the center. “The longer time we take to adjust the policy, the more vulnerable we become,” the piece said.

Dirty Truth about China’s Incinerators

Xie Yong could be called a pioneer. He is one of very few to date to sue a Chinese government agency over its unlawful refusal of requested data. His crusade for change has little to do with civic altruism, however. Xie’s struggle is personal in nature, his actions forced by desperation. He has been battling his son’s paralysis-causing epileptic seizures and mounting health care costs since 2010. His son’s condition, Xie believes, is the result of toxic emissions from an incineration plant near his home.