Viewpoint

03.05.24

Studying in China May Have Gotten Harder for Americans, But We Shouldn’t Stop Trying

Amy E. Gadsden
The U.S.-China relationship is the most important bilateral relationship in the world, but it is at its worst point since President Richard Nixon visited in 1972—more than 50 years ago. Getting the relationship right is not easy, but getting it...

Conversation

02.05.24

What Will Newly Increased Party Control Mean for China’s Universities?

Sun Peidong, Daniel A. Bell & more
In January, Radio Free Asia reported that the Chinese Communist Party is “taking a direct role in the running of universities across the country” by merging the presidents’ offices with their Party committees. Ideological controls on universities...

Viewpoint

02.02.24

New Security Measures Curtailing the Study of China Alarm Educators

Jordyn Haime
Late last year, The New York Times reported on a new state-level bill in Florida that was creating unintended consequences for prospective Chinese graduate students. The bill restricts universities from accepting grants from or participating in...

Conversation

10.24.23

Are Staying in the U.S. or Returning to China Mutually Exclusive?

Wendy Zhou, Zizhu Zhang & more
The past several years have seen declines in both the number of Chinese students studying in the U.S. and U.S. students studying China. We asked Chinese students studying, or who have recently completed their studies, in the U.S. why they chose to...

Conversation

10.24.23

What Is the Future for International Students in China?

Jack Allen, Matthew Barocas & more
In the last several years, an under-appreciated element of China’s retreat from the global stage has been diminished educational exchange, and particularly that exchange’s impact on students. During the height of the pandemic, tens of thousands of...

‘It Is Especially Scary to See Students’

Jue Jiang
As in many other aspects of public life in China under Xi Jinping, the space for independent inquiry and discussion within the academy has shrunk significantly in recent years. The Xi administration has released a slew of guidelines and communiques...

The Class of ’77

Susan Jakes
In August 1971, Jaime FlorCruz arrived in Beijing for a short trip to learn about Maoist China. Just days later, the Filipino college student learned he had been put on a blacklist by then President Ferdinand Marcos. Facing certain arrest and likely...

How to Become a Better Firefighter in Gansu? Read ‘1984,’ ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People,’ and ‘The Complete Book of Jewish Wisdom’

Jeffrey Sequeira
On April 23, 2022, the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) marked World Book Day with a meeting in Beijing to “study and implement the important instructions of Party General Secretary Xi Jinping and...

Viewpoint

09.09.21

A Farewell to My Students

Xu Zhangrun & Geremie R. Barmé
Xu Zhangrun addresses this letter to the students and young scholars who participated in “The Three Talents Salon” which Xu founded in 2003, a biannual symposium devoted to fostering “three talents” or skills in the participants: in-depth reading,...

Viewpoint

05.18.21

A Letter to My Editors and to China’s Censors

Xu Zhangrun & Geremie R. Barmé
Xu Zhangrun, perhaps China’s most famous dissident legal scholar, released a letter addressed not only to China’s censors but also to the editors and publishers with whom he had worked for decades. That essay, translated below, is Letter Eight in...

Conversation

05.06.21

What Should China Do about Its Aging Population?

Wang Feng, Karen Thornber & more
Though it has yet to be released, China’s latest ten-year census is certain to confirm what demographers have warned of for years: A labor crisis looms as the fertility rate remains low and the country ages at a dangerous speed. Five years after the...

Viewpoint

04.27.21

The Right Way to Bring Chinese STEM Talent Back to the U.S.

Evan Burke
The Trump administration deployed a raft of restrictions on international students and workers, many of which directly targeted or disproportionally impacted Chinese STEM talent. While some measures had a basis in legitimate concerns like illicit...

Conversation

08.27.20

The Future of China Studies in the U.S.

Sheena Greitens, Rebecca E. Karl & more
As an extraordinarily fraught school year begins, the study of China on U.S. campuses (or their new virtual equivalents), as well as China’s role in university life more broadly, has recently become a subject of scrutiny and debate. What is the...

Viewpoint

08.20.20

How To Teach China This Fall

Dimitar D. Gueorguiev, Xiaobo Lü & more
The coming academic year presents unique challenges for university instructors teaching content related to China. The shift to online education, the souring of U.S.-China relations, and new national security legislation coming from Beijing have...

Viewpoint

09.28.19

A Birthday Letter to the People’s Republic

Yangyang Cheng
Dear People’s Republic, Or should I call you, China? I am writing to you on the eve of your 70th birthday. 70, what an age. “For a man to live to 70 has been rare since ancient times,” the poet Du Fu wrote in the eighth century. You have outlived...

Conversation

09.13.19

Why Is the FBI Investigating Americans Who Study in China?

Rosie Levine, Johanna M. Costigan & more
Over the last two years, the FBI has questioned at least five U.S. citizens who have studied at Yenching Academy, a Master’s degree program hosted by Peking University. The purpose of the interviews, according to NPR, is to “ascertain whether they...

Viewpoint

08.08.19

The U.S. Recently Erected a New Hurdle to U.S.-China Academic Cooperation. Here’s What It Might Mean.

Julian G. Ku
A recent move by the U.S. Department of Commerce reminds us that academic relationships are not immune from the effects of deteriorating U.S.-China relations. In April 2019, the Department included several Chinese universities on its Unverified List...

Conversation

08.01.19

How Should the U.S. Government Treat Chinese Students in America?

Siqi Tu, Mary Gallagher & more
The State Department’s top education official Marie Royce gave a speech entitled “The United States Welcomes Chinese Students.” In it, she quoted recent remarks from Donald Trump, who said, “We want to have Chinese students come and use our great...

Postcard

05.30.19

Four Is Forbidden

Yangyang Cheng
Liusi. Six-four. The two-syllable word, spoken nonchalantly by our teacher, was a stone cast into the tranquil pond of a classroom. From each ripple rose a gasp, a murmur, or a perplexed face, with only one or two enunciating the question on many of...

‘One Seed Can Make an Impact’: An Interview with Chen Hongguo

Ian Johnson from New York Review of Books
Chen Hongguo might be China’s most famous ex-professor. Five years ago, he quit his job at the Northwest University of Politics and Law in Xi’an, publishing his resignation letter online after administrators prohibited him from inviting free-...

Conversation

04.04.19

Are Confucius Institutes Good for American Universities?

Kenneth Hammond, Lawrence C. Reardon & more
Confucius Institutes continue to incite controversy in America. Since 2006, China’s government has given more than $158 million to dozens of U.S. universities to host the institutes, which offer Chinese language classes and hold events. To critics,...

Viewpoint

11.30.18

Cut out of the Operating Room

Christopher Magoon
In June 2015, doctors told 69-year-old Shuai Shuiqing she had stomach cancer and would need surgery. She left her home in the city of Chongzhou in Sichuan province and traveled 20 miles to visit Chengdu’s Huaxi Hospital, which is ranked second best...
11.15.18

German NGO Registers Third Office in China Despite Student’s Expulsion from the Country

The German Academic Exchange Service (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst, DAAD) registered its third office in China on November 9, according to Ministry of Public Security information, even though Chinese authorities forced a student studying...

China-Based Online Education Companies Just Launched an Aggressive Hiring Spree in Search of U.S. Teachers

Connie Loizos
TechCrunch
Teachers have long supplemented their incomes by tutoring. And there’s perhaps never been a better, or easier, time to do it than right now. The reason: China-based online education companies are in an apparent race with each other to hire U.S...

China’s Children Are Its Secret Weapon in the Global AI Arms Race

Alex Beard
Wired
China wants to be the world leader in artificial intelligence by 2030. To get there, it’s reinventing the way children are taught.

Hong Kong’s Ethnic Minorities Are Struggling with a Chinese Education Gap, but Can the Government See It?

Phyllis Cheung
South China Morning Post
The government has announced that the Chinese-language proficiency requirements will be lowered for 22 civil service grades, bringing the total thus adjusted since the year 2010 to 53.

Depth of Field

02.20.18

When You Give a Kid a Camera

Ye Ming, Yan Cong & more from Yuanjin Photo
This dispatch of photojournalism from China cuts across a broad spectrum of society, from film screenings in Beijing for the visually impaired to an acrobatics school 200 miles south, in Puyang, Henan province, and from children in rural Sichuan to...

Alibaba’s Jack Ma Thinks He Knows How to Save China's ‘Left-Behind Children’ — He’s Asking Other Entrepreneurs to Buy In

Karen Gilchrist
CNBC
The founder and executive chairman of e-commerce behemoth Alibaba said that investing in rural boarding schools could provide a solution for China’s “left-behind children” and ensure a more prosperous future for the next generation.

China’s Propagandists Wanted a Hero. ‘Frost Boy’ Fit the Bill.

Javier C. HernáNdez
New York Times
His frazzled face, rosy cheeks and icy hair lit up the internet. Now Wang Fuman, the 8-year-old Chinese student known as Frost Boy, is taking on a new role: propaganda star.

China Closes School ‘Teaching Women to Be Obedient’

BBC
Chinese authorities have shut down an institute that was teaching women to be obedient and subordinate to men.

China Child Abuse Claims: Kindergarten Company Reveals More Complaints

Guardian
The major company whose kindergarten in Beijing is under investigation over child abuse allegations, has said it is aware of more complaints by parents at some of its schools elsewhere in China.

China Child Abuse Scandal: Police Accuse Parents of Making Claims Up

Steven Jiang
CNN
A child abuse scandal that has rocked China took a shocking turn Tuesday, as police accused two parents for fabricating tales of their children being drugged and molested at a Beijing kindergarten.

Three Things to Know About China's Kindergarten Abuse Scandal

Casey Quackenbush
Time
A public firestorm has erupted in China over allegations of teachers abusing children at a kindergarten in Beijing. At the kindergarten in Xintiandi run by RYB Education, a New York-listed education chain that is well known in China, children were...

Depth of Field

11.20.17

Fake Girlfriends, Chengdu Rappers, and a Chow Chow Making Bank

Ye Ming, Yan Cong & more from Yuanjin Photo
Lonely dog owners in Beijing and a rented girlfriend in Fujian; the last Oroqen hunters in Heilongjiang and homegrown hip hop in Chengdu; young Chinese in an Indian tech hub and Hong Kong apartments only slightly larger than coffins—these are some...

Diplomat's China Speech Renews Australia University Debate

BBC
BBC
Australia's education minister has urged universities to maintain academic integrity after a diplomat renewed a discussion about possible Chinese influence on campuses.

In China, Scholars Are Being Punished amid Growing Squeeze on Public Expression

Anthony Kuhn
NPR
In late July, Beijing Normal University authorities fired Shi Jiepeng, an assistant professor, citing a number of offenses, including "expressing views outside the mainstream of society."

Books

10.06.17

Little Soldiers

Lenora Chu
In the spirit of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, Bringing up Bébé, and The Smartest Kids in the World, Little Soldiers is a hard-hitting exploration of China’s widely acclaimed yet insular education system—held up as a model of academic and behavioral excellence—that raises important questions for the future of American parenting and education.When students in Shanghai rose to the top of international rankings in 2009, Americans feared that they were being “out-educated” by the rising superpower. An American journalist of Chinese descent raising a young family in Shanghai, Lenora Chu noticed how well-behaved Chinese children were compared to her boisterous toddler. How did the Chinese create their academic super-achievers? Would their little boy benefit from Chinese school?Chu and her husband decided to enroll three-year-old Rainer in China’s state-run public school system. The results were positive—her son quickly settled down, became fluent in Mandarin, and enjoyed his friends—but she also began to notice troubling new behaviors. Wondering what was happening behind closed classroom doors, she embarked on an exploratory journey, interviewing Chinese parents, teachers, and education professors, and following students at all stages of their education.What she discovered is a military-like education system driven by high-stakes testing, with teachers posting rankings in public, using bribes to reward students who comply, and shaming to isolate those who do not. At the same time, she uncovered a years-long desire by government to alleviate its students’ crushing academic burden and make education friendlier for all. The more she learns, the more she wonders: Are Chinese children—and her son—paying too high a price for their obedience and the promise of future academic prowess? Is there a way to appropriate the excellence of the system but dispense with the bad? What, if anything, could Westerners learn from China’s education journey?Chu’s eye-opening investigation challenges our assumptions and asks us to consider the true value and purpose of education. —Stanford University Press{chop}

Sinica Podcast

08.01.17

Joan Kaufman on Foreign Nonprofits and Academia in China

Kaiser Kuo, Jeremy Goldkorn & more from Sinica Podcast
Joan Kaufman is a fascinating figure: Her long and storied career in China started in the early 1980s, when she was what she calls a “cappuccino-and-croissant socialist from Berkeley.” Today, she is the director for academics at the Schwarzman...

Google Is Already Late to China’s AI Revolution

Wired
“Some of the major Chinese companies are some of the most sophisticated deep learning and data companies in the world.”

Should the Chinese Government Be in American Classrooms?

Richard Bernstein from New York Review of Books
Since their beginning in 2005, Confucius Institutes (CIs) have been set up to teach Chinese language classes in more than 100 American colleges and universities, including large and substantial institutions like Rutgers University, the State...

Depth of Field

02.16.17

Riding into the New Year

Yan Cong, Ye Ming & more from Yuanjin Photo
As preparations for the Chinese New Year got underway, Liang Yingfei set up a roadside studio and asked migrants traveling home by motorbike to stop for a quick photograph. While in Cambodia for the Angkor Photo Festival & Workshops, Jia...

Zhou Youguang, Architect of a Bridge between Languages, Dies At 111

Colin Dwyer
NPR
Zhou Youguang, the inventor of a system to convert Chinese characters into words with the Roman alphabet, died Saturday at the age of 111.

More Chinese Are Sending Younger Children to Schools in U.S.

Miriam Jordan
Wall Street Journal
When Ken Yan’s parents were contemplating his future, they decided the best option for the 11-year-old was to send him 7,000 miles away from his home in China to Southern California. Ken didn’t speak English, and he would need to live with a host...

Migrant-School Students Face Difficulty Getting Into College, Study Finds

Chen Shaoyuan and Li Rongde
Less than 6% of students in Beijing schools for migrant children entered college. In local public schools, 60% did

Chinese Prosecutors Charge Thousands of School Bullies

Mimi Lau
South China Morning Post
Nationwide crackdown includes three-year jail sentence for 15-year-old who robbed his classmates

Students in China Were Made to Take Exams Outdoors in Toxic Smog

Kevin Lui
Time
Widely circulated photos of the students, sitting at desks while blanketed in choking pollution, starkly dramatize the Chinese "airpocalypse"

Are China’s Schools Failing?

Adam Minter
Bloomberg
China's much-lauded education system remains riven by inequality, with far-reaching consequences for schools, students and, ultimately, the economy

Facing a Transition of Power, China’s Xi is More Desperate Than Ever to Control Young Minds

Echo Huang
Quartz
With 2017 nearing, it’s likely China will expand its campaign to further instill the ideologies of the party in young minds

Lost Lives: The Battle of China’s Invisible Children to Recover Missed Years

Coco Liu and Shanshan Chen
Reuters
With the end of the One-Child Policy, unregistered younger siblings are trying to make up for lost time

In China, Eugenics Determines Who Plays in School Bands

Didi Kirsten Tatlow
New York Times
“We’ve chosen your children according to their physical attributes,” the leader told a group of parents at a Beijing public elementary school.

Features

11.15.16

For Chinese Orphan with a Disability, Life in the U.S. Brought the Strength to Help a Friend Left Behind

Ming Canaday
According to my caretakers at the orphanage, Chunchun arrived a few years before I did, when she was a baby. They estimate that I was around three or four years old at the time of my arrival, howling and screaming at the top of my lungs. I had been...

China’s Dream of Smart Economy Must "Get Past Talent Gap”

Wendy Wu
South China Morning Post
A new study shows that 70 per cent of Chinese employers say the education offered by universities “has little value”

A New Generation Of Chinese Social Entrepreneurs Is Emerging In Africa

Eric Olander, Cobus van Staden & more
The dearth of Chinese NGOs in Africa should not come as a surprise given that the emergence of the non-profit sector in China is a relatively new phenomenon. Today, there are an estimated 500,000 registered NGOs in the P.R.C., most of which focus on...

Shanghai Seeks to Enforce Ban on Overseas Curricula at International Schools

Li Rongde
Move comes as officials voice fears over erosion of values that result from imported syllabuses

Born in the U.S., Raised in China: ’Satellite Babies’ Have a Hard Time Coming Home

Hansi Lo Wang
NPR
Studies show the arrangement can take a great emotional toll on both parents and children

Is China's Gaokao The World's Toughest School Exam?

Alec Ash
Guardian
Chinese children must endure years of stress and impossible expectations preparing for their final school exam

The ‘Patriotic Education’ of Chinese Students at Australian Universities

Alexander Joske and Philip Wen
Sydney Morning Herald
As larger numbers of Chinese students study abroad, greater efforts are being made to ensure they do not return with new-found opposition to the Communist Party

Recognizing Boarding Schools’ Psychic Toll in China

Didi Kirsten Tatlow
New York Times
The most deeply affected may be those born in the early decades after 1949, as the boarding system spread — those in their 50s and 60s who run the country today.