Notes from ChinaFile
02.01.24![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/55166_sm.jpg?itok=n3Roswrj)
“It’s Too Convenient to Say That Xi Jinping Is a Second Mao”
The Chinese Communist Party, an organization of over ninety million members, remains opaque to many outsiders, even within China. Wall Street Journal reporter Chun Han Wong spent years in Beijing documenting social, political, and economic changes...
Viewpoint
12.07.23![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/55066_sm.jpg?itok=jkAWmdBM)
China’s Vision for World Order
In October, in front of leaders from Asia, Africa, Latin America, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East, Xi Jinping stood triumphant in a celebratory keynote address celebrating the tenth birthday of his Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The speech,...
The NYRB China Archive
12.07.23![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/sun_weishi_1940s.jpg?itok=AmbZ6oY7)
A Fallen Artist in Mao’s China
from New York Review of Books
This book will be denounced in Beijing. Ha Jin’s The Woman Back from Moscow is a novel based on the life of Sun Weishi, an adopted daughter of Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai, whose brilliant mind and intensive study in Moscow of the Stanislavski acting...
The NYRB China Archive
10.04.23![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/55246_sm.jpg?itok=6p_I4vwt)
China’s Foreclosed Possibilities
from New York Review of Books
Like other authors of recent Western histories of this period, Dikötter attributes most of the early initiative in the reestablishment of diplomatic ties between Washington and Beijing to the Chinese, not to Nixon. Beijing’s preoccupation with...
Viewpoint
01.31.23![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/podium_54531_sm.jpg?itok=7zHeQCqL)
Where Does Xi Jinping Go from Here?
Popular narratives about Chinese leader Xi Jinping are in flux. Just a few months ago, he was widely seen as an unassailable force. But unusually widespread protests in late November, followed by a complete reversal of his zero-COVID policy, have...
The NYRB China Archive
09.20.22![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/54366_sm.jpg?itok=4mWhP1lW)
China: Back to Authoritarianism
from New York Review of Books
Over the past decade, Xi has become a transformational figure on a par with the two other giants of Chinese Communist Party rule: Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping. Like them, he has reversed earlier policies, in Xi’s case the relative openness that his...
The NYRB China Archive
10.21.21![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/gettyimages-1233733856.jpeg?itok=xyR951LR)
The CCP’s Culture of Fear
from New York Review of Books
One way to measure China’s urge to transform itself is to note how often the word new has been used by Chinese leaders. In 1902, the concept of the “new citizen” took hold in Liang Qichao’s New Citizen Journal. 20 years later, the May Fourth...
Viewpoint
09.23.21![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/gettyimages-1232333749.jpeg?itok=GHiKuWuX)
‘China’s Search for a Modern Identity Has Entered a New and Perilous Phase’
In 1980, writing the last paragraph of the last chapter of Coming Alive: China After Mao, I declared that China was moving “from totalitarian tyranny to a system more humane, part of a struggle by this nation to free itself from a straitjacket woven...
Features
08.19.21![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/gettyimages-1228681686.jpeg?itok=wb43V9Kx)
Homage to Richard Nixon
This short story was written 20 years ago but never published. It is the first piece of original fiction to appear on ChinaFile since our launch in 2013. In a postscript, author Zha Jianying explains that when she unearthed the story earlier this...
Viewpoint
05.14.21![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/gettyimages-1208878826.jpeg?itok=jlEjYYMY)
Ahead of Its Centennial, the Chinese Communist Party Frets Over Unsanctioned Takes on Its History
On July 1, the Chinese Communist Party will commemorate its founding in Shanghai one hundred years ago. Unsurprisingly, Beijing is leaving no stone unturned to ensure that nothing untoward takes place in the run-up to the great day. On April 9, the...
The NYRB China Archive
03.26.20![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/gettyimages-2516661.jpg?itok=JtDp6KN-)
The Flowers Blooming in the Dark
from New York Review of Books
It’s possible to identify another period that might surpass the 1980s as China’s most open: a 10-year stretch beginning around the turn of this century, when a rich debate erupted over what lay ahead. As in the past, many of those speaking out were...
Viewpoint
02.26.20![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/xi-wave-sys.jpg?itok=kkHtq9Uq)
Dear Chairman Xi, It’s Time for You to Go
In this open letter, the author urges Xi Jinping to step down. Xu Zhiyong went into hiding in late 2019. The following open letter, which was released on 4 February 4, 2020, was written while he was on the run. On February 15, Xu was detained in the...
Viewpoint
09.28.19![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/51331_sm.jpg?itok=YATQPbPH)
A Birthday Letter to the People’s Republic
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...
Books
08.01.19![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/books/system/fravel-sys.jpg?itok=ybYaE3vG)
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Active Defense
Princeton University Press: Since the 1949 Communist Revolution, China has devised nine different military strategies, which the People’s Liberation Army (P.L.A.) calls “strategic guidelines.” What accounts for these numerous changes? Active Defense offers the first systematic look at China’s military strategy from the mid-20th century to today. Exploring the range and intensity of threats that China has faced, M. Taylor Fravel illuminates the nation’s past and present military goals and how China sought to achieve them, and offers a rich set of cases for deepening the study of change in military organizations.Drawing from diverse Chinese-language sources, including memoirs of leading generals, military histories, and document collections that have become available only in the last two decades, Fravel shows why transformations in military strategy were pursued at certain times and not others. He focuses on the military strategies adopted in 1956, 1980, and 1993—when the P.L.A. was attempting to wage war in a new kind of way—to show that China has pursued major change in its strategic guidelines when there has been a significant shift in the conduct of warfare in the international system and when the Chinese Communist Party has been united.Delving into the security threats China has faced over the last seven decades, Active Defense offers a detailed investigation into how and why states alter their defense policies.{chop}
Books
05.22.19![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/books/system/jude-book-cover.jpg?itok=uuJHJ_7L)
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China’s New Red Guards
Oxford University Press: Ever since Deng Xiaoping effectively de-radicalized China in the 1980s, there have been many debates about which path China would follow. Would it democratize? Would it embrace capitalism? Would the Communist Party’s rule be able to withstand the adoption and spread of the Internet? One debate that did not occur in any serious way, however, was whether Mao Zedong would make a political comeback.As Jude Blanchette details in China’s New Red Guards, contemporary China is undergoing a revival of an unapologetic embrace of extreme authoritarianism that draws direct inspiration from the Mao era. Under current Chinese leader Xi Jinping, state control over the economy is increasing, civil society is under sustained attack, and the Chinese Communist Party is expanding its reach in unprecedented new ways. As Xi declared in late 2017, “Government, military, society, and schools, north, south, east and west—the Party is the leader of all.”But this trend is reinforced by a bottom-up revolt against Western ideas of modernity, including political pluralism, the rule of law, and the free market economy. Centered around a cast of nationalist intellectuals and activists who have helped unleash a wave of populist enthusiasm for the Great Helmsman’s policies, China’s New Red Guards not only will reshape our understanding of the political forces driving contemporary China, it will also demonstrate how ideologies can survive and prosper despite pervasive rumors of their demise.{chop}
Books
05.10.19![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/books/system/book-oriana.jpg?itok=Cv7CGpGe)
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The Costs of Conversation
Cornell University Press: After a war breaks out, what factors influence the warring parties’ decisions about whether to talk to their enemy, and when may their position on wartime diplomacy change? How do we get from only fighting to also talking?In The Costs of Conversation, Oriana Skylar Mastro argues that states are primarily concerned with the strategic costs of conversation, and these costs need to be low before combatants are willing to engage in direct talks with their enemy. Specifically, Mastro writes, leaders look to two factors when determining the probable strategic costs of demonstrating a willingness to talk: the likelihood the enemy will interpret openness to diplomacy as a sign of weakness, and how the enemy may change its strategy in response to such an interpretation. Only if a state thinks it has demonstrated adequate strength and resiliency to avoid the inference of weakness, and believes that its enemy has limited capacity to escalate or intensify the war, will it be open to talking with the enemy.Through four primary case studies—North Vietnamese diplomatic decisions during the Vietnam War, those of China in the Korean War and Sino-Indian War, and Indian diplomatic decision making in the latter conflict—The Costs of Conversation demonstrates that the costly conversations thesis best explains the timing and nature of countries’ approach to wartime talks, and therefore when peace talks begin. As a result, Mastro’s findings have significant theoretical and practical implications for war duration and termination, as well as for military strategy, diplomacy, and mediation.{chop}
Viewpoint
02.16.19![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/macfarquhar-pei_sm.jpg?itok=OP9_lySl)
Roderick MacFarquhar: A Remembrance
When Roderick MacFarquhar passed away on February 10, 2019, I was left with a deep regret: that our friendship had been too short.“He can be very intimidating. Don’t be put off by it; it’s just a mannerism,” Nancy Hearst, the librarian at Harvard’s...
Excerpts
09.30.18![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/police-kid-sys.jpg?itok=Lfml5ecl)
For Generations of P.R.C. Leaders, a World ‘Alive with Danger’
There can be few jobs more difficult than that of paramount leader of China: the surrounding world invariably alive with danger, the extent of the state, its integrity and stability forever uncertain. For an outsider, it is easy to observe that the...
Books
09.30.18![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/books/system/haunted-by-chaos-sys.jpg?itok=4ehJHvFD)
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Haunted by Chaos
Harvard University Press: Before the Chinese Communist Party came to power, China lay broken and fragmented. Today, it is a force on the global stage, and yet its leaders have continued to be haunted by the past. Drawing on an array of sources, Sulmaan Wasif Khan chronicles the grand strategies that have sought not only to protect China from aggression but also to ensure it would never again experience the powerlessness of the late Qing and Republican eras.{node, 49171}The dramatic variations in China’s modern history have obscured the commonality of purpose that binds the country’s leaders. Analyzing the calculus behind their decision making, Khan explores how they wove diplomatic, military, and economic power together to keep a fragile country safe in a world they saw as hostile. Dangerous and shrewd, Mao Zedong made China whole and succeeded in keeping it so, while the caustic, impatient Deng Xiaoping dragged China into the modern world. Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao served as cautious custodians of the Deng legacy, but the powerful and deeply insecure Xi Jinping has shown an assertiveness that has raised both fear and hope across the globe.For all their considerable costs, China’s grand strategies have been largely successful. But the country faces great challenges today. Its population is aging, its government is undermined by corruption, its neighbors are arming out of concern over its growing power, and environmental degradation threatens catastrophe. A question Haunted by Chaos raises is whether China’s time-tested approach can respond to the looming threats of the 21st century.{chop}
The NYRB China Archive
09.27.18![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/general-marshall-sys.jpg?itok=GF4xif5j)
Mission Impossible
The name of George C. Marshall, one of only six U.S. Generals of the Army in modern times, is indelibly linked with the Marshall Plan that was critical to the rebuilding of Western Europe after the devastation of World War II. When he spoke at...
Viewpoint
09.04.18![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/49081_sm.jpg?itok=wVjdnS3D)
Peak Xi Jinping?
The adulation of Xi Jinping, China’s State President, Party General Secretary, and Chairman of the Central Military Commission, has yet to reach similar lofty heights as that of Mao Zedong. However, on September 3, the official Beijing media took a...
ChinaFile Recommends
08.09.18Where China’s Top Leaders Go in Summer and in Secret: A Brief History of Beidaihe
South China Morning Post
When state radio reported on Wednesday that Premier Li Keqiang met United Nations General Assembly President Maria Fernanda Espinosa in Beidaihe, it was the clearest confirmation that the annual summer gathering of China’s most influential...
Conversation
08.07.18![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/48756_sm.jpg?itok=X1kIyaUx)
We’re a Long Way from 2008
On August 8, 2008, China’s then Chairman Hu Jintao told a group of world leaders visiting Beijing to attend the Olympics that “the historic moment we have long awaited is arriving.” Indeed, awarding the Games to China in 2001 sparked a fierce debate...
Books
04.27.18![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/books/system/daniel-sys_0.jpg?itok=cOw5x8v8)
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The China Mission
W. W. Norton & Company: As World War II came to an end, General George Marshall was renowned as the architect of Allied victory. Set to retire, he instead accepted what he thought was a final mission―this time not to win a war, but to stop one. Across the Pacific, conflict between Chinese Nationalists and Communists threatened to suck in the United States and escalate into revolution. His assignment was to broker a peace, build a Chinese democracy, and prevent a Communist takeover, all while staving off World War III.{node, 46371}In his 13 months in China, Marshall journeyed across battle-scarred landscapes, grappled with Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai, and plotted and argued with Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and his brilliant wife, often over card games or cocktails. The results at first seemed miraculous. But as they started to come apart, Marshall was faced with a wrenching choice. Its consequences would define the rest of his career, as the secretary of state who launched the Marshall Plan and set the standard for American leadership, and the shape of the Cold War and the U.S.-China relationship for decades to come. It would also help spark one of the darkest turns in American civic life, as Marshall and the mission became a first prominent target of McCarthyism, and the question of “who lost China” roiled American politics.The China Mission traces this neglected turning point and forgotten interlude in a heroic career―a story of not just diplomatic wrangling and guerrilla warfare, but also intricate spycraft and charismatic personalities. Drawing on eyewitness accounts both personal and official, it offers a richly detailed, gripping, close-up, and often surprising view of the central figures of the time―from Marshall, Mao, and Chiang to Eisenhower, Truman, and MacArthur―as they stood face-to-face and struggled to make history, with consequences and lessons that echo today.{chop}
Viewpoint
03.31.18![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/kim-xi-real-sys.jpg?itok=EHD96p77)
Nixon in China, Trump in Pyongyang
On March 25, the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un arrived in Beijing in an armored train for talks with Chinese Communist Party Secretary Xi Jinping, the first known time he traveled outside his country since his father and predecessor died in...
Excerpts
03.31.18![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/chang-chichun-sys.jpg?itok=16WFsY9a)
The U.S.-Made Chinese Future That Wasn’t
Soon, such a scene would become unthinkable. It was a cold morning in early March 1946, a rocky airstrip laid along a broad, barren valley in China’s northwest, lined by mountains of tawny dust blown from the Gobi Desert. Six months earlier, one war...
Books
03.23.18![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/books/system/revolution-sys.jpg?itok=ig2sM5Y9)
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Curating Revolution
Cambridge University Press: How did China’s Communist revolution transform the nation’s political culture? In this rich and vivid history of the Mao period (1949-1976), Denise Y. Ho examines the relationship between its exhibitions and its political movements. Case studies from Shanghai show how revolution was curated: museum workers collected cultural and revolutionary relics; neighborhoods, schools, and work units mounted and narrated local displays; and exhibits provided ritual space for ideological lessons and political campaigns. Using archival sources, ephemera, interviews, and other materials, Ho traces the process by which exhibitions were developed, presented, and received. Examples under analysis range from the First Party Congress Site and the Shanghai Museum to the “class education” and Red Guard exhibits that accompanied the Socialist Education Movement and the Cultural Revolution. Operating in two modes—that of a state in power and that of a state in revolution—Mao era exhibitionary culture remains part of China’s revolutionary legacy.{chop}Related Reading:“The Double Helix of Chinese History and Its Powerful Leader,” Denise Y. Ho, The Japan Times, March 20, 2018“Fifty Years Later, How Is the Cultural Revolution Still Present in Life in China?,” ChinaFile Conversation, ChinaFile, April 19, 2016“The Cultural Revolution at 50 — A Q&A with Four Specialists (Part Two),” Alexander C. Cook, Los Angeles Review of Books, March 2, 2016“The Cultural Revolution at 50: A Q&A with Four Specialists (Part One),” Alexander C. Cook, Los Angeles Review of Books, February 24, 2016“Chairman Mao’s Everyman Makeover,” Denise Y. Ho and Christopher Young, The Atlantic, December 19, 2013Author’s Recommendations:The Gender of Memory, Gail Hershatter (University of California, 2014)Anyuan: Mining China’s Revolutionary Tradition, Elizabeth Perry (University of California, 2012)The Temple of Memories, Jun Jing (Cambridge University, 1996)
Books
03.09.18![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/books/system/carl_book_video.jpg?itok=VmXOCD16)
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End of an Era
Oxford University Press: Since the 1990s, Beijing’s leaders have firmly rejected any fundamental reform of their authoritarian one-party political system, even as a decades-long boom has reshaped China’s economy and society. On the surface, their efforts have been a success. Political turmoil has toppled former communist Eastern Bloc regimes, internal unrest overtaken Middle East nations, and populist movements risen to challenge established Western democracies. China, in contrast, has appeared a relative haven of stability and growth.But as Carl Minzner shows, a closer look at China’s reform era reveals a different truth. Over the past three decades, a frozen political system has fueled both the rise of entrenched interests within the Communist Party itself and the systematic underdevelopment of institutions of governance among state and society at large. Economic cleavages have widened. Social unrest has worsened. Ideological polarization has deepened.{node, 45901}Now, to address these looming problems, China’s leaders are progressively cannibalizing institutional norms and practices that have formed the bedrock of the regime’s stability in the reform era. Technocratic rule is giving way to black-box purges; collective governance sliding back towards single-man rule. The post-1978 era of “reform and opening up” is ending. China is closing down. Uncertainty hangs in the air as a new future slouches towards Beijing to be born. End of an Era explains how China arrived at this dangerous turning point, and outlines the potential outcomes that could result. {chop}
ChinaFile Recommends
03.07.18Francis Fukuyama: China’s ‘Bad Emperor’ Returns
Washington Post
Since 1978, China’s authoritarian political system has been different from virtually all other dictatorships in part because the ruling Communist Party has been subject to rules regarding succession.
The NYRB China Archive
02.05.18![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/mao-beichuan_45651_sm.jpg?itok=7bY9dgga)
Who Killed More: Hitler, Stalin, or Mao?
from New York Review of Books
In these pages nearly seven years ago, Timothy Snyder asked the provocative question: Who killed more, Hitler or Stalin? As useful as that exercise in moral rigor was, some think the question itself might have been slightly off. Instead, it should...
Media
12.07.17![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/trumansoong.jpg?itok=Y2JkVe0Y)
Could Truman Have Worked With Mao?
In the early months of 1949, it became increasingly clear that Mao Zedong’s Communists would win the Chinese civil war. This presented U.S. President Harry S. Truman with an unappetizing set of choices. He could either acknowledge the Communist...
Excerpts
11.16.17![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/mao-truman_sm.png?itok=ywAPq7U6)
Mementos of 1949
Bodies jostled, elbow to elbow, angling all morning for a spot in the square. Soldiers clomped in the cold—tanned, singing as they marched, steel helmets and bayonets under the October sun. Tanks moved in columns two by two; then howitzers, teams of...
Conversation
10.27.17![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/xi_congress-sm.jpg?itok=H00uMZwX)
What’s the Takeaway from the 19th Party Congress?
The day after the Party Congress ended on October 24, Xi Jinping strode across the stage of the massive Great Hall of the People with the six newly announced members of the 19th Politburo Standing Committee, the body that rules China. What might...
Viewpoint
10.20.17![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/mao_kruschiev_42186.jpg?itok=Kaqkndgt)
Mao Wished He Could Upend the World Order. Does Xi?
In his October 18 speech opening the 19th Party Congress, Chinese Communist Party Secretary Xi Jinping cautiously embraced the future. Eyeing thousands of Party delegates, Xi spoke for three-and-a-half hours about turning China into a “great modern...
Viewpoint
08.22.17![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/hk_book_store-sm.jpg?itok=PHlIgPKX)
Burn the Books, Bury the Scholars!
Chinese censorship has come a long way. During his rule in the second century B.C.E., the First Emperor of a unified China, Ying Zheng, famously quashed the intellectual diversity of his day by ‘burning the books and burying the scholars’. He not...
Books
08.01.17![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/books/system/guoguang_wu_hirez.jpg?itok=mR2GMTfM)
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Globalization against Democracy
Globalization has reconfigured both the external institutional framework and the intrinsic operating mechanisms of capitalism. The global triumph of capitalism implies the embracing of the market by the state in all its variants, and that global capitalism is not confined to the shell of nation-state democracy. Guoguang Wu provides a theoretical framework of global capitalism for specialists in political economy, political science, economics, and international relations, for graduate and undergraduate courses on globalization, capitalism, development, and democracy, as well as for the public who are interested in globalization. Wu examines the new institutional features of global capitalism and how they re-frame movements of capital, labor, and consumption. He explores how globalization has created a chain of connection in which capital depends on effective authoritarianism, while democracy depends on capital. Ultimately, he argues that the emerging state-market nexus has fundamentally shaken the existing institutional systems, harming democracy in the process. —Cambridge University Press{chop}
ChinaFile Recommends
07.13.17China’s Quest to End Its Century of Shame
New York Times
At an ocean research center on Hainan Island off China’s southern coast, officials routinely usher visitors into a darkened screening room to watch a lavishly produced People’s Liberation Army video about China’s ambitions to reassert itself as a...
Viewpoint
07.09.17![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/chinese_troops_leaving_korea-1.jpg?itok=djtqv86Y)
Why Won’t China Help With North Korea? Remember 1956
President Donald J. Trump’s short-lived honeymoon with Chinese Communist Party Secretary Xi Jinping is over. On June 29, the U.S. imposed sanctions on a Chinese bank, a Chinese shipping company, and two Chinese nationals, all accused of helping...
ChinaFile Recommends
05.24.17Xi Jinping Is ‘Putting the House in Order.’ or Is China Facing Destabilizing Changes?
Washington Post
Instead of political instability, recent political science research suggests that Xi’s reforms are on track to repair an undisciplined CCP and strengthen China’s fragmented government.
Books
05.08.17![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/books/system/ian_johnson_hirez.jpg?itok=Lrvk3HBb)
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The Souls of China
From journalist Ian Johnson, a revelatory portrait of religion in China today—its history, the spiritual traditions of its Eastern and Western faiths, and the ways in which it is influencing China’s future.The Souls of China tells the story of one of the world’s great spiritual revivals. Following a century of violent anti-religious campaigns, China is now filled with new temples, churches, and mosques—as well as cults, sects, and politicians trying to harness religion for their own ends. Driving this explosion of faith is uncertainty over what it means to be Chinese and how to live an ethical life in a country that discarded traditional morality a century ago and is searching for new guideposts.Johnson first visited China in 1984. In the 1990s, he helped run a charity to rebuild Daoist temples, and in 2001 he won a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the suppression of the Falun Gong spiritual movement. While researching this book, he lived for extended periods with underground church members, rural Daoists, and Buddhist pilgrims. Along the way, he learned esoteric meditation techniques, visited a nonagenarian Confucian sage, and befriended government propagandists as they fashioned a remarkable embrace of traditional values. He has distilled these experiences into a cycle of festivals, births, deaths, detentions, and struggle—a great awakening of faith that is shaping the soul of the world’s newest superpower. —Pantheon{chop}
ChinaFile Recommends
04.24.17Why Xi Jinping Is Planning a Historic Move to Rename China’s Army Corps
South China Morning Post
Army corps in China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) are likely to have their unit numbers changed for the first time in their history as part of President Xi Jinping’s efforts to reshape the world’s biggest army, military sources said.
ChinaFile Recommends
04.06.17All Mapped Out: How China’s Charting Its Course as a Superpower
Daily Beast
In February, the French daily Le Monde published a map reportedly circulated by the Chinese military. It showed the People’s Republic in the center of the globe with all else shrinking away toward the edges: “The world turned upside down for anyone...
Viewpoint
02.07.17![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/33891_sm.jpg?itok=g_u7DRKW)
Can the New U.S. Ambassador to China See Xi Jinping for Who He Really Is?
When the Senate Foreign Relations Committee holds confirmation hearings on Terry Branstad’s nomination to be Ambassador to China, the Iowa Governor is sure to be asked about the positions of the president who nominated him. I hope, though, that...
Books
02.01.17![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/books/system/julian-gewirtz-unlikely-partners.jpg?itok=UXdCc3I7)
![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/assets/images/books/covers/unlikely_partners_cover.jpg)
Unlikely Partners
Unlikely Partners recounts the story of how Chinese politicians and intellectuals looked beyond their country’s borders for economic guidance at a key crossroads in the nation’s tumultuous 20th century. Julian Gewirtz offers a dramatic tale of competition for influence between reformers and hardline conservatives during the Deng Xiaoping era, bringing to light China’s productive exchanges with the West.When Mao Zedong died in 1976, his successors seized the opportunity to reassess the wisdom of China’s rigid commitment to Marxist doctrine. With Deng Xiaoping’s blessing, China’s economic gurus scoured the globe for fresh ideas that would put China on the path to domestic prosperity and ultimately global economic power. Leading foreign economists accepted invitations to visit China to share their expertise, while Chinese delegations traveled to the United States, Hungary, Great Britain, West Germany, Brazil, and other countries to examine new ideas. Chinese economists partnered with an array of brilliant thinkers, including Nobel Prize winners, World Bank officials, battle-scarred veterans of Eastern Europe’s economic struggles, and blunt-speaking free-market fundamentalists.Nevertheless, the push from China’s senior leadership to implement economic reforms did not go unchallenged, nor has the Chinese government been eager to publicize its engagement with Western-style innovations. Even today, Chinese Communists decry dangerous Western influences and officially maintain that China’s economic reinvention was the Chinese Communist Party’s achievement alone. Unlikely Partners sets forth the truer story, which has continuing relevance for China’s complex and far-reaching relationship with the West. —Harvard University Press{chop}
Viewpoint
01.23.17![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/trumpmao.jpg?itok=amrVrMn6)
The Chairmen, Trump and Mao
The January 13, 1967 issue of TIME magazine featured Mao Zedong on its cover with the headline “China in Chaos.” Fifty years later, TIME made U.S. President-elect Donald Trump its Man of The Year. With a groundswell of mass support, both men...
ChinaFile Recommends
01.20.17Can Donald Trump Break Beijing’s ‘One China’ Obsession?
South China Morning Post
Through force and diplomacy, many renowned figures have tried to divide the country, and all have failed. Still, the new U.S. president seems to want the issue back on the table and, if so, he has a steep, historic hill to climb
Depth of Field
11.08.16![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/straphangers.jpg?itok=YudUa7zr)
Dongbei’s Last Match Factory, Capital Straphangers, Retracing the Long March...
from Yuanjin Photo
In October, several publications marked the 80th Anniversary of the Chinese Communists’ Long March. We have chosen two stories that revisited this event and that were standouts, visually. Elsewhere, photographers followed stories both large and...
Viewpoint
10.14.16![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/gettyimages-166485220_master.jpg?itok=KNZ8jAJ_)
Let One Hundred Panthers Bloom
“Chairman Mao says that death comes to all of us, but it varies in its significance: to die for the reactionary is lighter than a feather; to die for the revolution is heavier than Mount Tai.” So wrote Huey P. Newton, founder of the Black Panther...
Viewpoint
09.08.16![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/gettyimages-163399711.jpg?itok=N_hYTlFe)
Mao the Man, Mao the God
Mao Zedong was dying a slow, agonizing death. Diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) in July 1974, he gradually lost control of his motor functions. His gait was unsure. He slurred his speech and panted heavily. The decline was...
Media
05.18.16![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/26436_sm.jpg?itok=xysXdaVH)
My Uncle Was a Red Guard in the Cultural Revolution—He Isn’t Sorry
Lishui is the nickname for my uncle, a farmer who has lived all his life in the suburbs of Tianjin, a big city in northeastern China. Whenever people talk about Lishui, my mother’s older brother, they always say: “Lishui is a nice guy, honest,...
ChinaFile Recommends
05.16.16China's Cultural Revolution: 50th Anniversary Unmarked by State Media
BBC
How to handle the era's contentious legacy has remained a challenge to China's Communist rulers to this day.
ChinaFile Recommends
05.13.16How the Cultural Revolution Changed China Forever
CNN
Frank Dikotter, author of The Cultural Revolution: A People's History, discusses the turning point in modern Chinese history.
The NYRB China Archive
05.12.16![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/gettyimages-498389568.jpg?itok=K8QoZlHI)
Who Is Xi?
from New York Review of Books
More than halfway through his five-year term as president of China and general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party—expected to be the first of at least two—Xi Jinping’s widening crackdown on civil society and promotion of a cult of personality...
Sinica Podcast
05.09.16![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/26046.jpg?itok=eSQbvUjP)
The Cultural Revolution at Fifty
from Sinica Podcast
Fifty years ago, Mao Zedong launched the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, inaugurating a decade of political turmoil with his calls for young people to “bombard the headquarters.” In this special live edition of our podcast recorded at The...
The NYRB China Archive
04.07.16![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/pp2-4.jpg?itok=LEfNGsIu)
If Mao Had Been a Hermit
from New York Review of Books
At the annual meeting of BookExpo America that was held in New York last May, to which most leading U.S. publishers sent representatives, state-sponsored Chinese publishers were named “guests of honor.” Commercially speaking, this made sense. China’...
Conversation
03.04.16![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/xipeng.jpg?itok=eUVDANcq)
Xi Jinping: A Cult of Personality?
By some accounts, Chinese Presdient Xi Jinping is the most powerful leader the country has had since Mao Zedong. One arrow in his quiver that echoes Mao’s armory is Xi’s embrace of popular song, listened to these days not on the radio or...
The NYRB China Archive
01.26.16![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/54191_sm.jpg?itok=O5BdBgJ0)
China: Surviving the Camps
from New York Review of Books
By now, it has been nearly forty years since the Cultural Revolution officially ended, yet in China, considering the magnitude and significance of the event, it has remained a poorly examined, under-documented subject. Official archives are off-...
Caixin Media
12.02.15![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/gittings-zhang-zhixin.jpg?itok=07eyuiFr)
Zhang Zhixin: The Woman who Took on the ‘Gang of Four’
Next year marks the 50th anniversary of the start of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). The desire not to dwell on that tumultuous decade, after half a century has passed, is understandable, but the failure to reflect on its impact, offer a full...