Can Market Mechanisms Clear China’s Air?

Publishing Environmental Records of Companies Seen As New Way to Fight Pollution

on March 3, 2015

The Chinese government recently responded to rising public discontent over environmental degradation by introducing tougher rules for industrial emissions.

Meanwhile, a non-governmental organization and a state-run newspaper are coordinating a parallel fight against industrial pollution based on market mechanisms.

The Word That Broke the Chinese Internet

Duang

By Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian on March 3, 2015

It might be gibberish, but it’s also a sign of the times. The word duang, pronounced “dwong,” is spreading like wildfire throughout China’s active Internet—even though 1.3 billion Chinese people still haven’t figured out what it means. In fact, its particular combination of sounds can’t even be represented with China’s existing writing system.

Migrant Hair

By Stéphanie Borcard & Nicolas Métraux on March 3, 2015

This photo series of Chinese hairdressers was made in the spring of 2012, in the city center of Chengdu in Sichuan province. There, some 16 percent of the city’s nearly 12 million residents are recent immigrants, like the individuals photographed in this project.

Luigi Tomba

on March 2, 2015

Luigi Tomba is a political scientist with a particular interest in China’s political and social change. He is a Senior Fellow in the Australian Centre on China in the World (CIW) at Australian National University (ANU). Born and educated in Italy, Tomba first visited China in 1988. He joined ANU in 2001 after spending several years in Beijing, where he worked for the Italian diplomatic mission. His early research focused on the ideological debates and policy implications of China’s labor reform between 1975 and 1995. Tomba’s best-known work is on urbanization, the social engineering of a Chinese urban middle class, housing, and land reform. His current research interests are informed by China’ urban question—the ideological implications of China’s project to urbanize the country and its social, political, and territorial consequences. His latest book, The Government Next Door: Neighborhood Politics in Urban China, is a study of China’s urban grassroots governing practices and their implication for regime legitimacy (Cornell University Press, 2014). Since 2005, he has been the Co-Editor of The China Journal, an English-language journal on Chinese affairs. In the Australian Centre on China in the World, Tomba is responsible, with Carolyn Cartier, for the China Urban stream of research. He convenes the Ph.D. program and CIW post-graduate education programs.

Village Acupuncture

Can Architects Restore Vitality to China’s Countryside?

By Andrew Stokols on March 2, 2015

On a bamboo-covered mountaintop the mud-walled houses of Diaotan village are just barely visible through the thick fog that often shrouds this remote hamlet in China’s Zhejiang province. Worn but sturdy earthen walls still enclose the largest structure of Diaotan, the ancestral hall, or citang. Inside, a few lanterns and red couplets hang above a stone courtyard covered with moss and weeds.