Luo Jiajun

on January 31, 2022

Luo Jiajun is the China Law Fellow at the Georgetown Center for Asian Law (GCAL). His work primarily centers on the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC’s) legal development in the broader context of comparative law and area studies. Using China as an example, Luo’s work explores new paradigms of legality and rationalization of statecraft in authoritarian regimes. His current project at GCAL focuses on “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” legal reform, and freedom of expression in the PRC. He also studies other contentious areas where Chinese law, politics, and society intersect.

Luo is also a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law. His Doctoral dissertation, “Unequal Justice Delivered by the Chinese Courts,” examines systemic differential treatment in the Chinese courtrooms in key areas of law, and explains the historical roots and institutional factors that account for that inequality. The thesis draws heavily on empirical data, including on-site observation and interviews with judges, government officials, and lawyers in China.

Luo was a visiting researcher at Cornell Law School in 2017, and he holds a research-intensive Master of Law degree from the University of British Columbia in Canada. He received his first Law degree, with distinction, from Shenzhen University.

A Vast Network of ‘New Era Civilization Practice Centers’ Is Beijing’s Latest Bid to Reclaim Hearts and Minds

By Jessica Batke on January 31, 2022

New Era Civilization Practice Centers are designed to deliver a mix of social services and political indoctrination, to draw China’s citizens ever nearer to the Party by giving them tangible reminders of the Party’s largesse and molding them into the type of citizens the Party would like them to be. Though these centers have received little attention outside of China, ChinaFile has traced their emergence as a new feature of the country’s political topography through Party directives, procurement notices, and state-affiliated media.

Implementation Plan for Constructing New Era Civilization Practice Volunteer Service Mechanisms

on January 31, 2022

The Chinese Communist Party Central Propaganda Department and the Central Guidance Commission on Building Spiritual Civilization jointly promulgated the following document, “Implementation Plan for Constructing New Era Civilization Practice Volunteer Service Mechanisms,” on October 26, 2019.

中共中央宣传部

中央文明办

文件

文明办 (2019) 17 号

中共中央宣传部 中央文明办 印发《关于新时代文明实践志愿服务机制建设的实施方案 》的通知

Implementation Plan to Deepen and Expand the Pilot Project of Constructing New Era Civilization Practice Centers

on January 31, 2022

The Central Guidance Commission on Building Spiritual Civilization promulgated the following document, “Implementation Plan to Deepen and Expand the Pilot Project of Constructing New Era Civilization Practice Centers,” on October 23, 2019. The original Chinese text follows ChinaFile’s English translation.

Document from the Central Guidance Commission on Building Spiritual Civilization

Civilization Commission [2019] Number 5

Guiding Opinion on the Work of Constructing New Era Civilization Practice Centers Pilot Project

on January 31, 2022

The Chinese Communist Party Central Committee General Office promulgated the following document, “Guiding Opinion on the Work of Constructing New Era Civilization Practice Centers Pilot Project,” on August 24, 2018. This is the directive that formally launched the New Era Civilization Practice Centers initiative.

中共中央办公厅

厅字 【2018】78号

中共中央办公厅印发《关于建设新时代文明实践中心试点工作的指导意见》的通知

各省、自治区、直榕市党委，中央各部委，国家机关各部委党组（党委），解放军各大单位、中央军委机关各部门党委，各人民团体党姐：

Gao Yunxiang

on January 31, 2022

Gao Yunxiang is a Professor of History at Ryerson University in Toronto. Her research focuses primarily on trans-Pacific cultural history in the 20th century through a multilingual approach. She has written two books. Arise, Africa! Roar, China!: Black and Chinese Citizens of the World in the Twentieth Century was published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2021. It unpacks the close relationships between a trio of the most famous 20th-century African Americans, W. E. B. Du Bois, Paul Robeson, and Langston Hughes, and their little-known Chinese allies, journalist, musician, and Christian activist Liu Liangmo and Sino-Caribbean dancer-choreographer Sylvia Si-lan Chen, during World War II and the Cold War. Sporting Gender: Women Athletes and Celebrity-Making during China’s National Crisis, 1931-1945, was published by the University of British Columbia Press in 2013. Gao has published articles in The Du Bois Review, Gender and History, The Journal of American East-Asian Relations, Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, Socialism and Democracy, and Sport in Society. Several of her articles have been translated into Chinese. Currently, she is finishing two biographies, modeling a trans-nationalized Asian and Asian American history. They are tentatively entitled “Soo Yong (ca.1903-1984): A Hollywood Actress and Cosmopolitan of the Asian Diasporas”; and “Wang Yung (ca.1913-1974): From Child Bride, Shanghai’s ‘Literary Star,’ to the Trans-Pacific ‘Drama Queen.’”

The Olympics Return to Beijing

A ChinaFile Conversation

By Sam Crane, Maya Wang & more on January 28, 2022

In February Beijing will host the Olympic Games again, this time amid a surging pandemic, a new wave of lockdowns, at least 10 diplomatic boycotts, and international alarm at the disappearance of one of the country’s top athletes. “Together for a Shared Future,” read the words beneath the interlocking rings this year. But what will be shared and how and with whom seems infinitely more vexed a question than at any time since the Olympic torch last blazed down the Avenue of Eternal Peace.

Susan Brownell

on January 27, 2022

Susan Brownell is a Professor of Anthropology at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. She is an internationally-recognized expert on Chinese sports and Olympic Games. She was a nationally-ranked track and field athlete (heptathlon) in the U.S. before she joined the track team at Peking University and was selected to represent Beijing in the 1986 Chinese National College Games, where she set a national record. Training the Body for China: Sports in the Moral Order of the People’s Republic (University of Chicago Press, 1995) is the first book on Chinese sports based on fieldwork in China by a Westerner. She spent one year in Beijing conducting research on China’s first Olympic Games in 2008, and also did research at the Olympics in Athens, Rio, and PyeongChang. She is the author of Beijing’s Games: What the Olympics Mean to China (Rowman & Littlefield, 2008), co-author of The Anthropology of Sport: Bodies, Borders, Biopolitics (University of California Press, 2018), and has published multiple other works and online commentaries about China and sports.