Conversation

06.21.21

Will I Return to China?

Scott Kennedy, Tracy Wen Liu & more
ChinaFile sent a short questionnaire to several hundred ChinaFile contributors to get a sense of their feelings about traveling to China once COVID-19 restrictions begin to ease. Media reports at the time had suggested, anecdotally, that foreigners...

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...

Viewpoint

08.27.20

When China Reporters Can’t Report from China

Matt DeButts
Shortly after midnight on March 18, a phone call awoke Steven Lee Myers in his Beijing apartment. The call was followed by a flurry of messages: WhatsApp, text, email. Friends and colleagues were asking him questions: What is going on? What does...

Conversation

07.21.20

Is There a Future for Values-Based Engagement with China?

Neysun A. Mahboubi, Mary Gallagher & more
A key feature of current debates over U.S.-China relations is the proposition that “engagement failed,” in light of the Chinese government’s increasingly aggressive posture towards liberal values at home and on the world stage. Already on the...

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...

Conversation

11.27.18

How to Be a Chinese Scientist without Being China’s Scientist

Yangyang Cheng, Yu He & more
As trade tensions between the United States and China worsen, a new technological cold war looms, casting its shadow over American universities and research institutions. How should individual scientists of Chinese origin decide whether to accept a...

Conversation

10.12.18

Is America Overreacting to the Threat of Chinese Influence?

Isaac Stone Fish, Taisu Zhang & more
American civil and political discourse has seen a growing number of reports about worrying Chinese governmental influence in the United States. Most recently, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence decried the “malign influence” of China in the United...

Viewpoint

10.05.18

Banning Chinese Students is Not in the U.S. National Interest

Chang Chiu & Thomas Kellogg
President Donald Trump has made no secret of his desire to radically revamp America’s immigration policies. Indeed, his family separation policies, which sparked nationwide protests and public revulsion after they were rolled out in May 2018, were...

Video

05.07.18

Ou Chen’s Good Run

Guo Rongfei & Muyi Xiao from Arrow Factory Video
The number of Chinese racers has risen dramatically—a phenomenon that Chinese media call a “marathon fever.” Obed Tiony, a Kenyan studying at Shanghai University, works as an agent for some 300 runners from Kenya and its neighbor Ethiopia. Tiony’s...

Viewpoint

04.06.18

I Thought Studying Journalism outside of China Would Open Doors. Now I’m Not So Sure.

Shen Lu
Six years ago as I was about to begin my undergraduate career at The University of Iowa majoring in journalism, a fellow Chinese student who’d switched her major from communications studies to business ruthlessly doubted my choice. “How on earth...

‘America First’ Shouldn’t Stop the Us from Welcoming Chinese Students and Other Global Talent

Vasilis Trigkas
South China Morning Post
Almost half a century after the “Nixon shock”, when US President Nixon unilaterally declared that the United States would abandon the dollar’s convertibility to gold and impose a 10 per cent import surcharge, the world is now being shaken by the “...

China Unveils New Visa Program to Attract 'High-End' Foreigners

NPR
If you are a scientist, entrepreneur or a Nobel Prize laureate, you might have a future as an expatriate in China.

Kushner Company a No-Show at China Visa Event After Ethics Uproar

TRACY CONNOR
NBC News
Richard Painter, who was an ethics attorney for President George W. Bush, told NBC News last week that Saturday’s meeting in Shenzhen came “very, very close to solicitation of a bribe” and amounted to “corruption, pure and simple.”

Trump’s Pretty Good China Deal

Wall Street Journal
Wilbur Ross made some startling claims after Thursday’s announcement of a 10-point agreement with China on trade. The U.S. Commerce Secretary boasted that the “herculean accomplishment” was “more than has been done in the whole history of U.S.-China...

China Pitch by Kushner Sister Renews Controversy over Visa Program for Wealthy

Michael Kranish
Washington Post
A much-criticized visa program that allows foreigners to win fast-track immigration in return for investing $500,000 in U.S. properties was extended in a bill signed by President Trump just one day before a sister of senior White House adviser Jared...

Conversation

06.03.16

Should I Stay or Should I Go?

Yidi Wu, Ding Feng & more
It’s graduation time, and Chinese graduates from American colleges are now pondering what to do next: return to China or stay in the U.S. We reached out to recent graduates to ask about their decision-making process and how they view their prospects...

Visa Rejection Flap Shows China Wants Tighter Grip On Muslim Far West

Ralph Jennings
Forbes
Beijing has pressured India into canceling the visas for a pair of independence activists from Xinjiang.

Books

02.23.16

The Diplomacy of Migration

Meredith Oyen
During the Cold War, both Chinese and American officials employed a wide range of migration policies and practices to pursue legitimacy, security, and prestige. They focused on allowing or restricting immigration, assigning refugee status, facilitating student exchanges, and enforcing deportations. The Diplomacy of Migration focuses on the role these practices played in the relationship between the United States and the Republic of China both before and after the move to Taiwan. Meredith Oyen identifies three patterns of migration diplomacy: migration legislation as a tool to achieve foreign policy goals, migrants as subjects of diplomacy and propaganda, and migration controls that shaped the Chinese American community.Using sources from diplomatic and governmental archives in the United States, the Republic of China on Taiwan, the People’s Republic of China, and the United Kingdom, Oyen applies a truly transnational perspective. The Diplomacy of Migration combines important innovations in the field of diplomatic history with new international trends in migration history to show that even though migration issues were often considered “low stakes” or “low risk” by foreign policy professionals concerned with Cold War politics and the nuclear age, they were neither “no risk” nor unimportant to larger goals. Instead, migration diplomacy became a means of facilitating other foreign policy priorities, even when doing so came at great cost for migrants themselves. —Cornell University Press{chop}Correction: Meredith Oyen’s employer was misidentified in an earlier version of this video. She is an Assistant Professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

Large Companies Game H-1B Visa Program, Costing the U.S. Jobs

JULIA PRESTON
New York Times
“I had this great American dream that got broken.”

South Africa Tourism in Crisis as Chinese Reject New Visa Regulations

Eric Olander, Cobus van Staden & more
South Africa’s tourism sector is in crisis as a series of new visa regulations have prompted dramatic falls in arrivals, particularly from the world’s largest source of tourists: China. The number of Chinese visitors to South Africa has plunged a...

Conversation

05.21.15

Censorship and Publishing in China

Andrew J. Nathan, Zha Jianying & more
This week, a new PEN American Center report “Censorship and Conscience: Foreign Authors and the Challenge of Chinese Censorship,” by Alexa Olesen, draws fresh attention to a perennial problem for researchers, scholars, and creative writers trying to...

How China Uses J-Visas to Punish International Media for Critical Coverage

Bob Dietz
Committee to Protect Journalists
A new report finds Chinese authorities are "treating journalistic accreditation as a privilege rather than a professional right."

Infographics

02.03.15

Wealthy Chinese Are Fleeing the Country Like Mad

from Sohu
Last year, Chinese millionaires maxed out the quota for EB-5 visas under the U.S.’s Immigrant Investor Program, and recently it was reported that 90% of Australia’s Significant Investor visas were given to Chinese nationals. All over the world,...

South Africa to Dalai Lama: ‘You’re Not Welcome’ (Really)

Eric Olander & Cobus van Staden
For a third consecutive time, South Africa has made it clear to the Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama that he is not welcome to visit. Most recently, the Dalai Lama was informed he would not receive a visa, forcing the controversial religious...

Sinica Podcast

07.05.14

Sin and Vice

Jeremy Goldkorn & David Moser from Sinica Podcast
This week on Sinica, Jeremy Goldkorn and David Moser turn their attention to vice, in conversation with Robert Foyle Hunwick, a media consultant and editor for Beijing Cream. We talk about everything naughty that happens here, with special attention...

Conversation

02.05.14

What Should the U.S. Do about China’s Barring Foreign Reporters?

Nicholas Lemann, Michel Hockx & more
Last week, the White House said it was “very disappointed” in China for denying a visa to another journalist working for The New York Times in Beijing, forcing him to leave the country after eight years. What else should the U.S. government...

White House ‘Very Disappointed’ NYT Reporter was Forced to Leave China

Andrew Beaujon
Weekly Standard
The statement also raised concerns about the treatment of foreign journalists in China. 

China Forces New York Times Reporter to Leave Country

William Wan
Washington Post
Ramzy’s forced departure will result in the first full-time Times correspondent stationed in Taiwan. 

China Appears Set to Force Times Reporter to Leave

Andrew Jacobs
New York Times
Austin Ramzy is the most recent of such journalists since a critical article about Wen Jiabao and his family was written in 2013.

Why China Needs to Rethink the Way It Treats the Foreign Press

Evan Osnos
New Yorker
A new report on elite wealth by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists suggests Beijing may need to change its whack-a-mole strategy of removing offending reporters one by one.

Paying a Price to Cross China’s Border

Perry Link
Washington Post
For Chinese critics of the government, the border long ago acquired a political toll booth: Whichever way you cross, you pay a price.

Journo for a Journo

Joshua Keating
Slate
If China kicks out U.S. journalists, should the U.S. do the same to Chinese journalists?

Late to the Party? The U.S. Government’s Response to China’s Censorship

Elizabeth Lynch
China Law & Policy
When China denied veteran journalist Paul Mooney’s visa request in November, neither the State Department, Administration officials nor anyone on Capitol Hill said anything publicly about a U.S. citizen appearing to be punished for his speech.

Communist Party Members May Be Ineligible for U.S. Green Card

U.S. and China Visa Law Blog
The U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act still makes ineligible for permanent residence any person who “is or has been a member of or affiliated with” the Chinese Communist Party (C.C.P.). There are certain exceptions and waivers, however...

China’s New Visa Laws Target Expats

Craig Hill
China Daily Mail
On July 1st 2013, China introduced new visa laws for foreigners, supposedly targeting illegal workers, but in reality targeting all expats in China. Mostly it seems about being able to control...

International Schools in China Point Students to the West

Lucy Hornby
Reuters
Some Chinese pay as much as 260,000 renminbi, or about $42,000, a year for a Western-style education and a possible ticket to a college overseas for their children.

China Insists Reporter Was Not Forced to Leave

VOA
Voice of America
China is still considering the visa application of a New York Times journalist who the paper says was forced to leave.