China in the World Podcast
11.08.23
10 Years of U.S.-China Trade Relations
from Carnegie China
Trade ties between the U.S. and China have undergone significant changes since the launch of the China in the World podcast 10 years ago. This episode helps shed light on the evolution of U.S.-China trade relations over that time.
Viewpoint
07.24.23
Xi Jinping’s Three Balancing Acts
from Foreign Policy
Xi Jinping has ruled China for over a decade, but the way he rules it is changing. Xi faces domestic and international environments that are markedly worse than when he took office in 2012. The economy is struggling, confidence is faltering, debt is...
Conversation
06.16.23
The Stakes of Antony Blinken’s Visit to Beijing
United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken will travel to China on June 18, after repeated delays of high-level meetings and amid ongoing tensions between the two countries. In November, U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping...
Conversation
04.05.23
As Macron Arrives in Beijing, What’s Next for Europe and China?
One year after the EU-China Summit of April 2022—famously described as a “dialogue of the deaf” by EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell—relations between Europe and China remain tense and further complicated by China’s ongoing stance towards Russia...
Conversation
03.22.23
Xi Jinping Goes to Moscow
On Wednesday, Xi Jinping returned to Beijing from Moscow following a three-day state visit at the invitation of Russian President Vladimir Putin. While the pair have met dozens of times in the past decade, this week’s talks have drawn unprecedented...
Notes from ChinaFile
03.10.23
The Future of China’s Climate Policy
With China accounting for more than a quarter of annual global greenhouse gas emissions, the future pathway of China’s emissions will play a central role in determining the extent to which the world can meet the Paris Agreement’s climate change...
Conversation
03.03.23
Xi Jinping Says He Wants to Spread China’s Wealth More Equitably. How Likely Is That to Actually Happen?
On the eve of the “Two Sessions,” Xi Jinping’s leadership position is now secure as he embarks on a third term. But China faces severe headwinds in reviving the economy, boosting employment, and managing local government debt. In past crises, China’...
Conversation
03.03.23
As China’s Leaders Gather in Beijing, Here’s What to Watch
As delegates gather in Beijing for the National People’s Congress and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, the annual meetings known as the “Two Sessions” that set the tone and direction of China’s governance and policy, we asked...
China in the World Podcast
02.14.23
10 Years of U.S.-China Diplomacy
from Carnegie China
To commemorate the 10th anniversary of the China in the World podcast, in this podcast episode Carnegie China is looking back on 10 years of U.S.-China diplomacy following the postponement of U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s planned visit to...
Viewpoint
01.31.23
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...
China in the World Podcast
01.19.23
Xi Jinping’s Charm Offensive in Southeast Asia
from Carnegie China
Following the 20th Party Congress, China’s paramount leader Xi Jinping engaged in a flurry of high-level diplomatic meetings with heads of state from dozens of countries in East and Southeast Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. In this episode of the...
Viewpoint
12.12.22
In China’s Diaspora, Visions of a Different Homeland
At the beginning, there were songs. It’s the Monday after Thanksgiving. In the storied New England town, over a hundred of us had gathered for the candlelight vigil. After a fire claimed at least ten lives in a locked-down building in Urumchi, and...
Conversation
12.02.22
Jiang Zemin, 1926-2022
Former Chinese leader Jiang Zemin died on Wednesday at the age of 96, shortly after anger about the zero-COVID policy had boiled over into a wave of protest last weekend. Jiang took the country through the boom years of the 1990s, a time now...
Conversation
11.29.22
China in Protest
Over the weekend, large demonstrations broke out in cities across China. The protests followed news, spread rapidly across Chinese and international social media, that a fire in an apartment building in Xinjiang’s capital of Urumchi on Friday had...
Conversation
11.11.22
The Beginning of the End for Zero-COVID?
At the end of October, videos began circulating on social media of workers at an iPhone plant in the city of Zhengzhou fleeing factory grounds to escape a quarantine lockdown of some 200,000 employees. Whether the workers wanted to escape the...
The NYRB China Archive
09.20.22
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...
Features
05.24.22
Public Security Minister’s Speech Describes Xi Jinping’s Direction of Mass Detentions in Xinjiang
An internal Chinese government document provides new support for the extraordinary scale of internment during what was likely its peak in 2018 and 2019. The document, a transcript of an internal June 15, 2018 speech by Minister of Public Security...
Conversation
03.02.22
China’s Calculus on the Invasion of Ukraine
Since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, the response from much of the international community has been swift and coordinated, with sanctions, shipments of armaments, and loud condemnation. China, however, has stayed markedly apart. What does...
Features
01.31.22
A Vast Network of ‘New Era Civilization Practice Centers’ Is Beijing’s Latest Bid to Reclaim Hearts and Minds
New Era Civilization Practice Centers are designed to deliver a mix of social services and political indoctrination, to draw China’s citizens ever nearer to the Party by giving them tangible reminders of the Party’s largesse and molding them into...
Conversation
11.08.21
When Will China Get off Coal?
As China looks to meet its energy demands, there has been a rush for coal, with prices hitting record highs in October. Despite pledges by Beijing to pull back from fossil fuels, the power crisis has exposed shortfalls in the country’s ability to...
The NYRB China Archive
10.21.21
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...
Conversation
10.20.21
Tightening Up
In what many observers have termed a “regulatory crackdown,” a wave of new legal restrictions and bans on business, technology, and entertainment has broken across China over the past several months, with what appears to be escalating velocity and...
Excerpts
10.06.21
The Man Behind Xi Jinping’s Foreign Policy
The daunting task of keeping up with Xi Jinping’s foreign policy ambitions fell to Wang Yi. Born in Beijing in 1953, the same year as Xi, Wang also spent a good chunk of his adolescence as a “sent down” youth during the Cultural Revolution, when he...
Viewpoint
09.23.21
‘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...
The NYRB China Archive
08.09.21
Xi’s China, the Handiwork of an Autocratic Roué
from New York Review of Books
At this crucial juncture, China’s political, business, and academic elites revealed a core of craven self-interest and vacuous hypocrisy. The display was even further evidence of the degraded state of our nation’s public life, one that has long been...
Conversation
07.30.21
Will Beijing Invade Taiwan?
What, precisely, are Beijing’s plans for Taiwan? In recent years, there has been no small amount of saber rattling, with aggressive naval drills, aerial incursions, and warnings that force would be used for reunification if necessary. But given the...
Viewpoint
05.14.21
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...
Conversation
09.17.20
Europe and China’s ‘Virtual Summit’
Meeting via video conference on Monday, China’s leader, Xi Jinping, held a summit with European Council President Charles Michel, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Slimmed down in format thanks to the...
Viewpoint
09.10.20
In Defense of Diplomacy with China
Critics of the last four decades of China policy have incorrectly and simplistically labeled diplomacy a failure because the People’s Republic did not become a liberal democracy. That was never the goal or an achievable objective of U.S. policy. The...
Conversation
08.05.20
What Now?
The past several months have been a particularly volatile period in U.S.-China relations. After last month’s closures of the Chinese consulate in Houston and the American consulate in Chengdu, we asked contributions to give us their assessments of...
Viewpoint
08.04.20
Reciprocity in U.S. Relations with China Should Be a Tool, Not the Whole Strategy
Since the outset of the U.S.-China trade war, critics have castigated the Trump administration for its capricious approach to relations with Beijing. They have found fault in particular with Donald Trump’s flip-flopping on sanctioning ZTE, banning U...
China in the World Podcast
05.27.20
Coronavirus and the Korean Peninsula
from Carnegie China
As nations confront the pandemic, rumors of Kim Jong-un’s death and a flurry of North Korean missile tests injected even more uncertainty in the international landscape. How do views in Washington, Seoul, and Beijing differ or align on North Korea?...
Viewpoint
05.21.20
How Will Historians Look Back at the Coronavirus Outbreak?
Imagine that a historian decides to reflect on the pandemic, asking quite simply, “How did it come to this?” There would be many ways of telling that story. But one way would be to chart a series of off-ramps on the road to disaster. Some of these...
Conversation
03.28.20
Is U.S.-China Cooperation on COVID-19 Still Possible?
Over the past two weeks, as the outbreak of the virus known has COVID-19 has accelerated its deadly spread around the world, an already collapsing U.S.-China relationship appears to be entering a period of free fall. This is happening at a moment...
The NYRB China Archive
03.26.20
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
03.20.20
Xi Jinping May Welcome Trump’s Racism
The coronavirus pandemic has ushered in a new low-point for the already strained relationship between the U.S. and China—and it could get worse in the months ahead as the toll rises and there is more urgency to assign blame. At the White House press...
Viewpoint
02.26.20
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
02.10.20
Viral Alarm: When Fury Overcomes Fear
Overnight, the country found itself in the grip of a devastating crisis; fear was stalking the land. The authorities proved themselves to be at a loss and the cost of their behavior was soon visited upon the common people. Before long, the...
Conversation
02.09.20
Public Anger Over Coronavirus Is Mounting. Will It Matter?
The coronavirus outbreak that exploded three weeks ago in the central Chinese city of Wuhan has prompted the most severe government actions in three decades. Cities are closed down, transport links broken, and tens of millions of people effectively...
Viewpoint
01.29.20
How Much Could a New Virus Damage Beijing’s Legitimacy?
A month into the coronavirus epidemic that has swept across China, the details of the Chinese government’s political and administrative response remain highly ambiguous. What has been unmistakable, however, is the volume and intensity of social...
Conversation
01.08.20
China: The Year Ahead
As 2019 drew to a close, ChinaFile asked contributors to write about their expectations for China in 2020.
Viewpoint
10.01.19
We Need to Pull U.S.-China Relations Back from the Brink. Here’s How.
Like it or not, the U.S. and China are in the process of “decoupling.” The two countries find themselves drifting dangerously back into a state of growing distrust, and even antagonism. Both sides have their narratives and grievances that prevent...
Culture
09.30.19
The Same Old ‘China Story’ Keeps Chinese Sci-Fi Earthbound
In the run-up to the 70th anniversary of the People’s Republic on October 1, China’s television regulator has mandated that all television channels only air patriotic shows. The ban might be short-lived, but it has kept the news in the headlines and...
Conversation
05.31.19
What Exactly Is the Story with China’s Rare Earths?
from ChinaFile
Deng Xiaoping reportedly said that while the Middle East has oil, China has rare earths. On May 29, Communist Party newspaper the People’s Daily warned of the United States’ “uncomfortable” dependence on Chinese rare earths: “Will rare earths become...
Viewpoint
05.28.19
Why We Remember June Fourth
Some people recently asked, “Why must you remember June Fourth? Thirty years have gone by. It is history. Get over it. Move on.” A simple question, but there are many answers. No single answer is adequate, and all of the answers together still leave...
The China Africa Project
05.16.19
Confused About China’s Belt and Road Agenda? You’re Not Alone.
Thirty-seven foreign heads of state came to Beijing this week to take part in the second Belt and Road summit hosted by Chinese President Xi Jinping. Some leaders, like Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta, came with expectations to sign huge...
Viewpoint
04.30.19
Trade: Parade of Broken Promises
from Democracy: A Journal of Ideas
The trade war between the United States and China has not given either side much to cheer about. As of January, Washington has levied 10 percent tariffs on U.S.$250 billion in Chinese goods, and China has reciprocated with similar tariffs on U.S.$...
Conversation
04.30.19
If the U.S. and China Make a Trade Deal, Then What?
The U.S.-China trade war has always been about more than just trade. Among other issues, it represents a move towards the decoupling of the two economies. Sometime within the next few weeks, Washington and Beijing may call a truce on the trade war...
Conversation
04.24.19
Is This the End of Belt and Road, or Just the Beginning?
On April 25-27, China’s government will host the leaders of dozens of countries to celebrate the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the signature foreign policy program of Xi Jinping. Since its founding in October 2013, the BRI now covers more than 150...
China in the World Podcast
04.18.19
In Reassessing China, Europe Sharpens Its Approach
from Carnegie China
In recent weeks, Beijing has both won victories and suffered defeats during important summits and dialogues with France and Italy, as well as the European Union. French President Emmanuel Macron invited German Chancellor Angela Merkel and European...
Conversation
02.08.19
Where Is China’s Foreign Policy Headed?
In testimony last week before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats asserted that “China’s actions reflect a long-term strategy to achieve global superiority.” With China’s global influence and...
Conversation
01.24.19
What Does Xi Want from Taiwan? (And What Can Taiwan Do About It?)
In a major speech in early January, China’s leader Xi Jinping called unification across the Taiwan Strait “the great trend of history,” and warned that attempts to facilitate Taiwan’s independence would be met by force. Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-...
China in the World Podcast
01.15.19
China’s Shift to a More Assertive Foreign Policy
from Carnegie China
Shi points to two important turning points in China’s shift to a more assertive foreign policy: the 2008 global financial crisis, which made it clear that China’s economic development was an important engine for global growth; and Xi Jinping’s rise...
Viewpoint
01.09.19
Normalization of Sino-American Relations: 40 Years Later
The spirited 2019 New Year’s speeches of Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen and China’s President Xi Jinping have just reminded the world that, 40 years after the normalization of relations between the United States and China, the potentially explosive...
Viewpoint
12.21.18
A Look Back at China in 2018
In 2018, the outlook for China regarding its politics, economy, and relationship with the United States darkened considerably. The removal of presidential term limits and Xi Jinping’s interactions with the Trump administration prompted rare...
China in the World Podcast
10.18.18
How Will China Respond to Global Concerns about its Trade and Economic Policies?
from Carnegie China
Official Chinese narratives about the U.S.-China trade war have not included Chinese reflection or discussion of what role China’s own policies have played in creating trade tensions. Many of the concerns on structural issues, such as market access...
Environment
10.03.18
The Anti-Corruption Campaign Takes on the War on Pollution
At last year’s 19th Party Congress, Xi Jinping vowed to confront the “principal contradiction” facing Chinese society: “the contradiction between unbalanced and inadequate development and the people’s ever-growing needs for a better life.” While the...
Excerpts
09.30.18
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

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}
China in the World Podcast
09.20.18
North Korea Diplomacy and U.S.-China Relations
from Carnegie China
Paul Haenle joined Kaiser Kuo to discuss next steps for DPRK diplomacy and tensions between the United States and China over trade, Taiwan, and the Belt and Road Initiative. Haenle shared his experience working as White House representative to the...