Viewpoint
02.22.19‘We’re Very Sexy People’: How the U.S. Miscalculated Its Allure to China
The Sino-Vietnamese War is rarely remembered or discussed today. But 40 years ago, the war appeared to herald a tectonic shift in regional and global politics and helped forge a close, more trusting relationship between the leader of the free world...
Conversation
12.11.18Is this the Beginning of a New Cold War?
Beyond complicating trade negotiations between the United States and China, the arrest of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou has renewed concerns that the two countries are embarking on a new Cold War, based on economic preeminence and technological innovation...
Features
11.28.18Beijing’s Long Struggle to Control Xinjiang’s Mineral Wealth
The Silk Road Economic Belt—the overland component of Xi Jinping’s signature Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)—promises to bind China to Central Asia and beyond through a new infrastructural network. Connecting through China’s far western Xinjiang...
The NYRB China Archive
02.05.18Who 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...
Viewpoint
10.20.17Mao 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...
Features
12.02.16How Do You Stand up to China? Ask Mongolia
The day before the Dalai Lama’s November 18 trip to Mongolia, Beijing issued a “strong demand” to its neighbor to cancel the visit of the “anti-Chinese separatist” or face (unstated) consequences. The Dalai Lama would be making his ninth visit to...
ChinaFile Recommends
08.21.13Where Is China’s Gorbachev?
Atlantic
Why China hasn't had—and isn't likely to have—a political reformer in the mold of the former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.
ChinaFile Recommends
02.15.13Vows of Change in China Belie Private Warning
New York Times
Xi Jinping told party insiders during a visit to Guangdong Province in December, China must still heed the “deeply profound” lessons of the former Soviet Union.
ChinaFile Recommends
01.28.13Xi Jinping’s Opposition to Political Reforms Laid out in Leaked Internal Speech
South China Morning Post
Beijing-based writer Gao Yu’s writing on a speech Xi Jinping made during his “southern tour” in December, suggests Xi, who blames those not “man enough” to do what had to be done to save the Soviet Communist Party from itself, has even...
ChinaFile Recommends
01.28.13Beijing Observation: Xi Jinping the Man
Seeing Red in China
Xi Jinping’s “new southern tour speech,” made in December, began circulating last week in the party. It reads like a confirmation of Harvard Professor Roderick MacFarquhar’s prediction that the likelihood of the Chinese Communist Party reforming...
The NYRB China Archive
10.25.12Who Was Mao Zedong?
from New York Review of Books
In Kashgar’s largest bazaar a few years ago, I spotted a pencil holder sporting an iconic Cultural Revolution image: Mao Zedong and Marshal Lin Biao smiling together. But Mao’s personally chosen heir apparent had been a nonperson since 1971, when he...
ChinaFile Recommends
10.11.12Mo Yan Mines a Deep Well
New York Times
Mo Yan's work recalls a Soviet dissident's quip that in his country “reality and satire are the same.”
ChinaFile Recommends
09.06.12Late Nights, Mysterious Women, and Communism
New Yorker
The men who run China today are avid readers of history, especially of the decline and fall of the Soviet Union. They can recite its causes, and they are explicitly dedicated to avoiding a repeat of the experience. So I have to wonder if anyone this...
Reports
04.30.07Dissident Dissonance
Sara Segal-Williams
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
The United States has applied a different standard on human rights and dissent to China than it did to the Soviet Union. Several things explain this. First, beginning in 1972, relations with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) were intended to...