ChinaFile Recommends
10.06.15China’s Xi Jinping Changes the Odds in Macau
Wall Street Journal
If there’s one skill that the U.S. gambling moguls who staked their futures here have mastered it’s calculating the odds.
ChinaFile Recommends
10.06.15At U.N., China Uses Intimidation Tactics to Silence Its Critics
Reuters
“When I was hiding in the mountains, the Chinese government announced a cash reward of 200,000 yuan (about $31,000) for whoever finds me.”
ChinaFile Recommends
10.05.15Artist Ai Weiwei Discovers Hidden 'Listening Devices' in Beijing Studio
CNN
"When I found these bugs, I had a strange feeling," he said.
ChinaFile Recommends
10.02.15Troubles for the ‘China Model’
Wall Street Journal
Meritocracy has worked for Beijing, but to survive, the system needs more openness.
ChinaFile Recommends
10.01.15On China’s National Day, Hong Kong Protesters Say That They Are Not Part of China
Time
Small groups of protesters waved the blue colonial flag.
ChinaFile Recommends
10.01.15China’s Latest Ally in Its Crackdown on Religion: The Pope
Quartz
This week, Chinese president Xi Jinping and Pope Francis missed each other on their back-to-back visits to the United States.
ChinaFile Recommends
09.30.15China Says Arrests Two Japanese for Spying
Reuters
Japan's Asahi newspaper said one man was taken into custody in China's northeast province of Liaoning near the border with North Korea and the other in the eastern province of Zhejiang near a military facility.
ChinaFile Recommends
09.29.15Asia's Richest Man Li Voices Support For China's Leadership
Reuters
Li said he resolutely supported China's path to reform and opening up.
ChinaFile Recommends
09.25.15Top Hong Kong Judges Defend Rule of Law in Face of China Pressure
Reuters
Two top Hong Kong judges on Friday defended the rule of law in an apparent rebuke of China's top official.
ChinaFile Recommends
09.24.15Hybrid Warfare With Chinese Characteristics
Diplomat
From Sun Tzu to Xi Jinping: Russia isn’t the only one who knows hybrid warfare.
ChinaFile Recommends
09.24.15Two Very Different Men Visit D.C.: China’s Leader And His Teenage Nemesis
Washington Post
Xi Jinping will get a state dinner and a 21-gun salute while Joshua Wong is in town to talk about Hong Kong’s fight for self-determination.
ChinaFile Recommends
09.24.15China Dissident's Wife Rejects Invite to State Department
Associated Press
The United States has warned that the toughest crackdown in years on Chinese activists threatens to cloud the high-profile visit by Xi.
ChinaFile Recommends
09.23.15Why Tibet Could Be the Best Opportunity for Xi Jinping
Huffington Post
The state visit is a growing alarm about China's less than peaceful rise, and provides a rare opportunity for Obama to give an important message on Tibet.
ChinaFile Recommends
09.23.15China's Xi Tells Foreign NGOs to Obey the Law
Agence France-Presse
Foreign organisations in China should "obey Chinese law".
ChinaFile Recommends
09.22.15Working for A Chinese Boss Is Great, Ordinary Americans Explain in This Slick New Pro-China Video
Quartz
The video is called “When China met Carolina”.
ChinaFile Recommends
09.21.15China Seeks 'New Model' for Relations with U.S.
BBC
Despite the enormous range and complexity of the US-China relationship, it is becoming ever harder to manage.
ChinaFile Recommends
09.21.15This Explains Why China Is Taking So Long to Reform Its Economic System
Washington Post
The new leadership is turning back to old measures to stimulate growth.
ChinaFile Recommends
09.18.15China Hails U.S. Repatriation of Corruption Fugitive
Reuters
The repatriation of Yang Jinjun marked the first time that China has succeeded in getting a wanted corruption suspectback from the U.S.
ChinaFile Recommends
09.17.15The Chinese Government Is Censoring A Documentary About Mothers Who Love Their Gay Kids
Quartz
The upcoming court case of a filmmaker from Beijing, stands out.
ChinaFile Recommends
09.11.15Chinese Society 'Very Fragile,' Warns Dissident Artist Ai Weiwei
CNN
Suffocated by censorship, Chinese society is "very fragile," warned dissident artist Ai Weiwei on Thursday.
ChinaFile Recommends
09.11.15For the First Time Ever, China’s Communist Party Is Openly Questioning Its Legitimacy
Quartz
China’s Communist Party invited political figures and academics to attend a meeting in Beijing.
Caixin Media
09.08.15
Amnesty As a Stepping Stone to Rule of Law
A recent amnesty declaration affecting convicted criminals deemed no threat to society was a poignant reminder of China’s tradition of prudent punishment, support for human rights, and progress toward of rule of law.The recent decision by the...
The China Africa Project
09.04.15
South Africa’s Inexplicable Love Affair with China
While the recent economic turmoil in China is prompting a number of African countries to reconsider their growing economic dependence on the People’s Republic of China, not so in South Africa. Both the government and the ruling African National...
Media
09.03.15
Who Is Xi Jinping? Introducing the Asia Society Podcast
from Asia Blog
Three years after Xi Jinping took control of China’s Communist Party and assumed the country’s leadership, he has emerged as one of the world’s most powerful people. But his tenure has also raised uncomfortable questions. Is he a reformer bent on...
ChinaFile Recommends
08.29.15For China, a Plunge and a Reckoning
Wall Street Journal
Anyone trying to design an event to bring Xi Jinping’s China back to Earth couldn’t have engineered something much more elegant than the turmoil in China’s financial markets and the resulting global aftershocks. The upheaval is traumatic for China’s...
Reports
08.18.15
The Politburo’s Predicament
Freedom House
Drawing on an analysis of hundreds of official documents, censorship directives, and human rights reports, as well as some 30 expert interviews, the study finds that the overall degree of repression has increased under the new leadership. Of 17...
The NYRB China Archive
08.13.15
China: The Superpower of Mr. Xi
from New York Review of Books
In the almost one-hundred-year existence of the Chinese Communist Party (C.C.P.), its current general secretary, Xi Jinping, is only the second leader clearly chosen by his peers. The first was Mao Zedong. Both men beat out the competition, and thus...
ChinaFile Recommends
07.27.15China’s Un-separation of Powers
Foreign Affairs
U.S. industry has figured out how to pull the levers of power in China but also points to a substantial change in how China is governed. In the past, there was at least some separation between party and government roles, but it seems that the line...
ChinaFile Recommends
07.23.15Confucius Says, Xi Does
Economist
Since he came to power in 2012, Mr Xi has sought to elevate Confucius—whom Mao vilified—as the grand progenitor of Chinese culture.
ChinaFile Recommends
07.22.15China Probes Senior Xinjiang Security Official For Graft
Reuters
A deputy regional security chief and former head of the prison system, Xie Hui, in Xinjiang has been put under investigation for suspected corruption.
Conversation
07.21.15
Is China’s Reform Era Over and, If So, What’s Next?
Fordham Law School professor and regular ChinaFile contributor Carl Minzner says we've arrived at “China After the Reform Era,” a development that’s “not entirely bad” but also has a “dark side.” Minzner’s conclusions, excerpted below, come...
ChinaFile Recommends
07.21.15Understanding Xi Jinping’s ‘Key Minority’
Wall Street Journal
Xi’s renewed attention to the performance of county leaders shows that he is relying on local officials to play a pivotal role in implementing his program.
ChinaFile Recommends
07.20.15One-Time Aide to China’s Ex-President Accused of Corruption
CNN
Party investigators accuse Ling Jihua, 58, once aide to former President Hu Jintao, of accepting bribes and illegally obtaining party and state secrets.
Features
06.16.15
Does Xi Jinping Represent a Return to the Mao Era?
Following is an edited transcript of a live event hosted at Asia Society New York on May 21, 2015, “ChinaFile Presents: Does Xi Jinping Represent a Return to the Politics of the Mao Era?” The evening convened the scholars Roderick MacFarquhar and...
ChinaFile Recommends
06.10.15Caixin Media
05.05.15
A Byronic Hero for China’s Supremo
A little known vignette about Xi Jinping’s fondness for Song Jiang, a fictional hero in the 14th century classic novel The Water Margin, gives a peek into the private thoughts of China’s most powerful man. For someone born with a red spoon in his...
ChinaFile Recommends
05.01.15Q. and A.: Francis Fukuyama on China's Political Development
New York Times
Stanford historian argues an effective political system has to balance state capacity against rule of law and democracy.
ChinaFile Recommends
04.16.15Why Do the Chinese Hack? Fear
War on the Rocks
To ensure its survival, the Chinese Communist Party has decided that it must control the Internet.
Viewpoint
04.10.15
Bury Zhao Ziyang, and Praise Him
Zhao Ziyang, the premier and general secretary of the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in the 1980s, died on January 17, 2005. At a tightly controlled ceremony designed to avoid the kind of instability that the deaths of other controversial...
Books
04.09.15
Revolutionary Cycles in Chinese Cinema, 1951-1979
A comprehensive history of how the conflicts and balances of power in the Maoist revolutionary campaigns from 1951 to 1979 complicated and diversified the meanings of films, this book offers a discursive study of the development of early PRC cinema. Wang closely investigates how film artists, Communist Party authorities, cultural bureaucrats, critics, and audiences negotiated, competed, and struggled with each other for the power to decide how to use films and how their extensively different, agonistic, and antagonistic power strategies created an ever-changing discursive network of meaning in cinema. —Palgrave Macmillan{chop}
ChinaFile Recommends
04.06.15Born Red
New Yorker
How Xi Jinping, an unremarkable provincial administrator, became China’s most authoritarian leader since Mao.
ChinaFile Recommends
04.01.15Xi Jinping Forever
Foreign Policy
Is China’s increasingly powerful president angling to break tradition and extend his rule indefinitely?
Viewpoint
04.01.15
China’s Government Is Serious About Fundamentally Reshaping Itself
Respected China scholar David Shambaugh recently set off a firestorm among other China specialists when he predicted the collapse of China’s ruling Communist Party in an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal. Beneath many of the arguments in his defense...
ChinaFile Recommends
03.26.15ChinaFile Recommends
03.15.15Q. and A.: David Shambaugh on the Risks to Chinese Communist Rule
New York Times
Shambaugh’s recent essay argued that the “endgame of Chinese communist rule has now begun.”
ChinaFile Recommends
03.13.15Shambaugh China Essay in Shambles
China Daily
Shambaugh's deep flaw is that he looked at China with a bias, completely ignoring the positive aspects.
ChinaFile Recommends
03.13.15Chinese Debate Potential Collapse of Communist Party
Deutsche Presse-Agentur
Debate sparked by an essay by David Shambaugh, professor of international affairs at George Washington University.
Conversation
03.11.15
Is China Really Cracking Up?
On March 7, The Wall Street Journal published an opinion piece by David Shambaugh arguing that “the endgame of Chinese communist rule has now begun...and it has progressed further than many think.” Shambaugh laid out a variety of signs he believes...
Conversation
02.12.15
Is Mao Still Dead?
It has long been standard operating procedure for China’s leaders to pay tribute to Mao. Even as the People’s Republic he wrought has embraced capitalist behavior with ever more heated ardor, the party he founded has remained firmly in power and his...
Features
01.28.15
‘I Don’t Know Where Some Cadres Get Their Magical Powers’
Earlier this month, at the close of the Chinese Communist Party’s 5th Plenum, the official People’s Daily noted on its website that as this important agenda-setting meeting came to a close it was worth paying attention to the recent publication of a...
The China Africa Project
01.23.15
South Africa: China’s BFF in Africa
South Africa is emerging as one of China’s most important international partners as the relationship deepens across all levels. Economically, South Africa is the source of more Chinese investment than any other country on the continent. However,...
Reports
01.01.15
The Politburo’s Predicament
Freedom House
Drawing on an analysis of hundreds of official documents, censorship directives, and human rights reports, as well as some 30 expert interviews, the study finds that the overall degree of repression has increased under the new leadership. Of 17...
Viewpoint
12.16.14
Why Marx Still Matters: The Ideological Drivers of Chinese Politics
In days of greater political brouhaha, “to go and see Marx” used to be a slang expression among Chinese Communists, to refer to death. More recently, a considerable number of commentators have pronounced the expiry of Marxism itself. China’s reform...
Viewpoint
12.11.14
Here Is Xi’s China: Get Used To It
from China Economic Quarterly
The prevailing mood among China-watchers in 2014 was one of anxiety and skepticism. The year began in the shadow of Chinese assertiveness in the East and South China Seas. Economic concerns quickly took over: by February the property market seemed...
Media
12.08.14
Happy Friday, Zhou Yongkang
Eight minutes after midnight on Friday, the axe fell on Zhou Yongkang: a terse news release from state-run Xinhua news agency said that China’s former security czar Zhou had been expelled from the Chinese Communist Party, his case handed over to...
Infographics
12.05.14
China’s Fallen Mighty [Graphic]
Over the past thirty-eight years, twelve of China’s top leaders have been purged. This infographic and the bios of these leaders explain how and why these mighty men fell. Download the high-resolution graphic.
Features
12.05.14
China’s Fallen Mighty [Updated]
Political infighting and purges have been hallmarks of the Chinese Communist Party since its earliest days but came to a peak during Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution, damaging the country and paralyzing the Party itself. When Mao died in 1976, it...
The NYRB China Archive
11.20.14‘China Strikes Back’: An Exchange
from New York Review of Books
Letters in response to: “China Strikes Back!” from the October 23, 2014 issue of The New York Review of Books.To the Editors:In “China Strikes Back” [NYR, October 23], Orville Schell sounds a much-needed wake-up call about China’s recent attitude...
ChinaFile Recommends
11.07.14Ten Fun and Fascinating Facts About Xi Jinping
Council on Foreign Relations
While I can’t do justice to all the material presented in Xi Jinping: The Goverance of China, here are some things I learned from reading through Xi’s musings and the musings of others about him.