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.
Researchers at Symantec Corp have discovered a group of highly sophisticated hackers operating for hire out of China, a U.S. computer security company said, and it linked them to some of the best-known espionage attacks in recent years.
The US may have Save the Earth campaigns to thank for the embrace of recycling. But more likely, it was made possibly by China’s emergence as a manufacturing powerhouse. The more China made, the more it needed used plastics.
Tencent is spending $448 million to buy a 36.5 percent stake in Sogou, a local search engine owned by Chinese company Sohu.com. As part of the deal, Tencent’s own search engine, Soso, will merge with Sogou, the companies said.
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.
Chinese authorities have increasingly been broadcasting interviews after big-name arrests, forcing suspects to confess publicly to alleged crimes prior to trial or conviction.
In the bike-loving Netherlands, electric bicycles now account for one-third of bicycle spending. The e-bike is encroaching on the Vespa in Rome, and multiplying on the steep roads of Lausanne.
Most coverage of Xinjiang focuses on the tensions between Han and Uighur in the region, especially since the 2009 Urumqi riots. The Silk Road of Pop, a new documentary about Uighur music directed by Sameer Farooq, is a timely portrait of the rich contemporary culture of China’s westernmost reaches, and the need to look beyond the commonly presented view of Xinjiang as a “troubled” or “restive” area.
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 impact on mainstream culture through cuisine. I have always favored their ubiquitous restaurants when traveling.
For decades, a major piece of World War II history has gone virtually unwritten. The war began in China, two years before Hitler invaded Poland, and China eventually became the fourth great ally, partner to the United States, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain. Yet its drama of invasion, resistance, slaughter, and political intrigue remains little known in the West.
Rana Mitter focuses his gripping narrative on three towering leaders: Chiang Kai-shek, the politically gifted but tragically flawed head of China’s Nationalist government; Mao Zedong, the Communists’ fiery ideological stalwart, seen here at the beginning of his epochal career; and the lesser-known Wang Jingwei, who collaborated with the Japanese to form a puppet state in occupied China. Drawing on Chinese archives that have only been unsealed in the past ten years, he brings to vivid new life such characters as Chiang’s American chief of staff, the unforgettable “Vinegar Joe” Stilwell, and such horrific events as the Rape of Nanking and the bombing of China’s wartime capital, Chongqing. Throughout, Forgotten Ally shows how the Chinese people played an essential role in the wider war effort, at great political and personal sacrifice.
Forgotten Ally rewrites the entire history of World War II. Yet it also offers surprising insights into contemporary China. No twentieth-century event was as crucial in shaping China’s worldview, and no one can understand China, and its relationship with America today, without this definitive work.—Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Gordon G. Chang, The New York Times (September 6, 2013)
Simon Kuper, Financial Times (June 21, 2013)
The Economist (June 22, 2013)
Richard Overy, Guardian (June 6, 2013)
Isabel Hilton, Prospect Magazine (June 19, 2013)
Chris Riback (September 12, 2013)
