Environment
07.21.16Chengdu’s Pollution Is Complicated by Taxi Apps
from chinadialogue
Research carried out by Peking University’s Statistical Science Centre and Guanghua School of Management found that Chengdu suffers from air pollution 88 percent of the time—even worse than Beijing at 76 percent.
Caixin Media
07.19.16Killer Knotweed Exposes Dangers of Traditional Chinese Medicine
Amid rising public concerns about side-effects of traditional Chinese medicines, or TCM, following the death of a young woman who died of liver failure last year, a government-backed medical association has started compiling a database of substances...
Environment
07.19.16Schoolkids Suffer Toxic Air at Recycled Rubber Athletic Tracks
Chinese are known for recycling, and recycling everything. The industry is even responsible for making billionaires, like China’s “wastepaper queen” Zhang Yin.Yet when factories recycle irresponsibly, the consequences can be dire. Reports...
Caixin Media
07.14.16Business Strategies for China’s Brewing Crisis
Not a single, modern-day entrepreneur or investor in China has had to experience a substantial and painful economic slowdown, let alone a recession. The reason is simple: Since the nation’s reform and opening campaign began in 1978, China has never...
Environment
07.14.16South China Faces Worst Floods in Decades
from chinadialogue
It’s like someone poked a hole in the sky, the rain just keeps pouring down, you can’t breathe,” said Mrs Wu from Donghu, a district in Wuhan a city in central China with over 10 million residents. Mrs Wu lives in Chunshuli, an affluent neighborhood...
Viewpoint
07.14.16China’s Failure in the South China Sea
By reiterating its policy of “no acceptance, no participation, no recognition, and no implementation,” China has painted itself into a difficult corner and diminished the chances of resolving the myriad maritime disputes—involving Vietnam, Brunei,...
Features
07.12.16You Ask How Deeply I Love You
“Back when I was a soldier on Kinmen, around 1975, the water demons still sometimes killed people,” Xu Shifu (Master Xu) said. The laugh-lines at the corners of his eyes were not visible now, even in the white fluorescent light shining down from the...
Viewpoint
07.07.16The South China Sea Needs ASEAN More Than Ever
A ruling from The Hague next week on maritime disputes in the South China Sea is likely to exacerbate frictions between China and the U.S. Both would be better off respecting the central role of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)...
Environment
07.06.16China-Backed Hydropower Project Could Disturb a Sensitive Siberian Ecosystem
from Rivers without Boundaries
Lake Baikal contains 20 percent of the world’s freshwater resources and affects the regional climate of North Asia and the Arctic Basin. The lake is home to 2,500 aquatic species and local communities in Mongolia and Russia revere the lake as the “...
Features
07.01.16The Rockets’ Red Glare
from Slate
The vast majority of the world’s fireworks come from China. And sometimes they explode early, with deadly consequences.
Caixin Media
06.30.16Chinese Investment in Euro Soccer Soars to Meet President’s Goals
Chinese companies are buying soccer teams across Europe, echoing the Beijing government’s ambitious plan to turn the nation into a soccer powerhouse.The powerhouse plan, which has backing from President Xi Jinping, has led to nine deals inked by...
Culture
06.29.16Using Free Sex to Expose Sexual Abuse in China
Nanfu Wang hoped that a woman called Ye Haiyan (“Hooligan Sparrow”), who had offered free sex on the Internet to draw attention to the plight of poor women selling their bodies to support their children, would lead her to the prostitutes she wanted...
Caixin Media
06.24.16China Has a Plan to Clean Up Its Soil But No Way to Pay For It
The 231-clause, 13,000-Chinese character action plan for Soil Pollution Prevention and Control was released May 31 by the State Council, China’s cabinet, after undergoing some 50 draft revisions over the previous three years.The final version was...
Media
06.22.16‘Wukan,’ Once a Byword For Chinese Democracy, Now Censored
A fishing village in southern Guangdong province, once a standard-bearer for small-time democracy in China, has now become a political disaster—and the most-censored term on Chinese social media.In September 2011, amid protests over land sales in...
Caixin Media
06.21.16Mother’s Fight to Exonerate Executed Son Highlights Gaping Holes in Justice System
More than two decades after a young man in the northern province of Hebei was executed for the alleged rape and murder of a woman, his mother is anxiously awaiting a retrial to clear his name.Zhang Huanzhi’s only son, Nie Shubin, was executed in...
Environment
06.16.16Can Cement Clean Up Its Act?
from chinadialogue
Cement is the most widely used substance on the planet after water. It is also one of the most polluting—producing between 5-8 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, more than twice that attributed to aviation. Cement’s carbon footprint...
Caixin Media
06.15.16Middle Class Chinese Flock to International High Schools, Eyeing College Abroad
A decade earlier, less than 4 percent of graduates from a popular high school in Beijing, known for high quality teachers who groomed students for elite universities, left to study abroad each year.The majority chose to pursue their higher studies...
Environment
06.09.16Namibia’s Secret Ivory Business
from chinadialogue
Many locals and wildlife conservation institutions I talked to didn’t even know about the existence of the ivory black market in Okahandja.It was a quiet evening in Zambezi, until a herdsman heard a gunshot in the wilderness. By the time the police...
Caixin Media
06.06.16Uncertain Future for China’s Market Status Bid
It’s been 15 years since China joined the World Trade Organization, and yet China is still waiting for the WTO to grant it market economy status. During this period, some Chinese businesses have expanded overseas while others have been accused of...
Caixin Media
06.03.16Bearing Witness to the China Story
In 1993, Fritz Hoffmann was a young American photojournalist ready for a new adventure. He had honed his picture-making skills while hitchhiking across the Pacific Northwest, harvesting crabs in Alaska, and working at newspapers in West Virginia and...
Media
05.31.16Will China’s ‘Taobao Villages’ Spur a Rural Revolution?
from chinadialogue
The province of Shanxi, in northern China, is famous for coal mining, and the industry’s impact is etched across the landscape. But the province’s southern counties, which lie near the Yellow River, are known for a very different commodity—red dates...
Viewpoint
05.26.16China and the End of Reform
Is the Chinese Communist Party putting an end to the decades-long process of China’s opening to the outside world? Is the era of liberal reform over? Consider the latest piece of evidence: on April 28, the Standing Committee of the National People’s...
Environment
05.26.16Beijing Calls South China Sea Island Reclamation a ‘Green Project’
Sand, cement, and Chinese military facilities now sit on top of some of the South China Sea’s once-thriving reefs; China has built over half a dozen new artificial islands in a bid to bolster its territorial claims in the hotly disputed region. Such...
Viewpoint
05.26.16Why Does Japan’s Wartime Ghost Keep Reemerging?
The ritual offerings made by Japanese Cabinet members and lawmakers at the Yasukuni Shrine in April once again brought Japan’s troubled wartime past back into the spotlight. An all-too familiar routine followed, with Beijing urging Japan to “make a...
Viewpoint
05.25.16Hong Kong’s International Law Problem
In the years leading up to Hong Kong’s return to Chinese sovereignty in 1997, Beijing was keen to reassure the world that nothing significant would change in the territory. Business elites and local politicians alike busied themselves with...
Caixin Media
05.25.16Search Giant Baidu Shuts Online Literature Forums to Stamp Out Piracy
Internet giant Baidu said May 23, it would gradually take down discussion forums on literature from its popular online bulletin board service to remove content suspected of infringing upon intellectual property rights.China’s biggest search engine...
Viewpoint
05.24.16“It’s Time for Us To Set a New Political Agenda for Hong Kong”
Last month, midway through a whirlwind tour of United States universities, Hong Kong democracy activist Joshua Wong took a break for a crab cake and mac-and-cheese lunch at a Manhattan brasserie. Wong, 19, came to international prominence during the...
Media
05.20.16The Chinese Trolls Who Pump Out 488 Million Fake Social Media Posts
They are the most hated group in Chinese cyberspace. They are, to hear their ideological opponents tell it, “fiercely ignorant,” keen to “insert themselves in everything,” and preen as if they were “spokesmen for the country.” Westerners bemoan...
Environment
05.19.16Clear as Mud: How Poor Data is Thwarting Water Clean-Up
from chinadialogue
China’s central and local governments have barely made a start in trying to clean up the country’s heavily polluted water, despite fast-approaching deadlines for improvements and the launch of a comprehensive “ten point plan” over a year ago.Behind...
Media
05.19.16Backward Thinking about Orientalism and Chinese Characters
For those of us who teach and research the Chinese language, it is often difficult to describe how the Chinese characters function in conveying meaning and sound, and it’s always a particular challenge to explain how the writing system differs from...
Media
05.18.16My 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,...
Green Space
05.18.16Time Traveling Through Dramatic Urbanization in China Over Decades
Twenty-six years ago, only 26 percent of the Chinese population lived in urban areas. Since then, China’s urbanization rate has risen to almost 56 percent, meaning hundreds of millions of people have packed themselves into the country’s 662 cities...
Caixin Media
05.17.16Government Forces Big Pharma to Swallow a Bitter Pill
China’s latest round of healthcare market controls could be a bitter pill for multinational pharmaceutical companies that now, after years of what some call easy profits, are adapting to a tougher business climate.The National Health and Family...
Environment
05.13.16Why China's Nuclear Exports May Struggle to Find a Market
from chinadialogue
China’s nuclear power industry has eyed up a big push to export its technologies as countries around the world consider low-carbon alternatives to coal.But despite an increasingly clearer field for Chinese nuclear exports—mainly because of the woes...
Media
05.12.16The End of China’s Economic Miracle? A Discussion with ‘Financial Times’ Writers
On April 20, 2016, a panel of Financial Times correspondents and editors with China experience, joined by financier and occasional FT columnist George Soros, discussed rural-to-urban migration, wage growth, real estate ups and downs, the increasing...
Media
05.12.16Chinese Is Not a Backward Language
Even in the age of China’s social media boom, and billion-dollar valuations for Beijing-based IT start-ups, prejudice against the Chinese language is alive and well. One would be forgiven for thinking that by 2016, the 20th century’s widespread...
Green Space
05.11.16The Dark Side of Country Life
The last time we peeked at Lei Hu’s photo blog, Lei was giving us a cheery look at a China that we rarely get to see: the countryside and its beauty. But there’s a dark side to country life in China, as well, and a new blog post from Lei explores...
Caixin Media
05.09.16Yao Ming’s Biggest Game: Hoops Reform in China
Retired basketball superstar and Shanghai Sharks team owner Yao Ming is finding efforts to reform China’s professional sports environment a lot tougher than a slam dunk.The former Houston Rockets center, who hung up his high tops in 2011, is trying...
Postcard
05.05.16If China Builds It, Will the Arab World Come?
In May 2016, the Emirates airline inaugurated its new direct service to the Chinese city of Yinchuan. Yinchuan joins Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou as destinations served by Emirates, meaning that a passenger who boards a plane in Dubai is now...
Green Space
05.04.16Vaccine Scandal Rocks China
China was rocked last month by another public health scandal, after Chinese police announced the discovery of a criminal organization selling millions of improperly stored vaccines in 24 provinces and municipalities. The affected vaccines have a...
Media
05.03.16Scandal Highlights China’s Weak Environmental Enforcement
from chinadialogue
For many Chinese, the country’s soil pollution crisis has become increasingly acute in recent weeks after several hundred children fell ill from attending a school built close to a former fertilizer factory.Almost 500 students at the Changzhou...
Features
04.22.16Drinking the Northwest Wind
Like so many of Mao’s pronouncements, it sounded simple. “The South has a lot of water; the North lacks water. So if it can be done, borrowing a little water and bringing it up might do the trick.” And thus, in 1952, the foundation was laid for what...
Environment
04.20.16Book: ‘Black Dragon River’—Russia’s Wild Window into China
from chinadialogue
Russia’s Far East is supposedly a strategically important area for President Vladimir Putin’s administration, with the government repeatedly declaring that development of the remote territory is one of its top priorities. But, as any Russian expert...
Culture
04.19.16A Newly Translated Book Revisits Japan and China’s Wartime History
Award-winning screenwriter and author Geling Yan has written more than 20 novels and short story collections about China, many adapted to film or TV, including Coming Home and The Flowers of War, both of which became feature films directed by Zhang...
Caixin Media
04.18.16Chinese Electric Vehicle Manufacturer BYD’s Image Hurt by Scandal Involving Dealer’s Suicide
China’s largest electric vehicle manufacturer, BYD Auto Co., is under intense scrutiny following the death of a Nanjing auto dealer who accused the company of bilking a government subsidy program and a Caixin probe suggesting the charge may have...
Media
04.15.16A ‘Lost’ Daughter Speaks, and All of China Listens
A woman in her mid-40s cradled a scrap of blue cloth checkered with red. “Have you seen this before?” she asked. “Do you recognize this pattern?”I held it up to the light and noticed the cotton edges had frayed and tattered over years. “We already...
Media
04.14.16‘Taiwan Independence’ Doesn’t Mean What You Think
On February 23, all eyes were on Taiwan’s new Member of Parliament Freddy Lim as he took the podium at the Legislative Yuan for the first time. Lim is now best known as the heavy metal rock star who, following January 2016 elections on the self-...
Green Space
04.13.16Chinese Love Affair with Cars, and Tesla
Chinese love their cars. With the emergence of a large middle class, and in spite of restrictions on daily car use in some cities, many Chinese households are choosing to keep a second and sometimes even a third automobile. The world’s most populous...
Caixin Media
04.12.16Chinese Telecoms Gear Maker ZTE Fighting U.S. Export Ban
The second-largest maker of telecoms gear in China is scrambling to get off a U.S. export blacklist that threatens to dry up supplies of critical components.“The investigations are still in progress, and may result in criminal and civil liabilities...
Environment
04.08.16China Pulls Emergency Stop on Coal Power Construction
from chinadialogue
China’s central government has ordered local authorities to delay or cancel construction of new coal-fired power plants, as regulators attempt to reduce a glut in capacity, just one year after decisions were delegated to the provinces.The National...
Viewpoint
04.06.16Will China Ever Have Its Own Cinematic Superhero?
As Batman v Superman attempts to barnstorm cinema box offices worldwide, including in China—now the world’s No. 2 movie marketplace—I’ve been watching a different kind of hero movie: Jian Bing Man.This 2015 Chinese blockbuster isn’t exactly a...
Media
04.05.16Chinese Censors Rush to Make ‘Panama Papers’ Disappear
On April 3, the Washington, D.C.-based non-profit International Committee of Investigative Journalists dropped what struck many as a bombshell: news that a leaked trove of 11.5 million previously secret files from Panama-based law firm Mossack...
Caixin Media
04.05.16No Point in Ramping Up Personal Debt to Help Property Market
Having banks and local governments deleverage and trim overcapacity are part and parcel with central government efforts to maintain stable growth by nurturing the supply side of the economy. But even as this is happening, the housing market has been...
Caixin Media
04.01.16China’s Rural Youngsters Drop Out of School at Alarming Rate
Like many other teenagers in his village in the mountains of the northwestern province of Shaanxi, Chen Youliang decided to quit school early so he could follow in the footsteps of his migrant worker parents and find a job in a big city.Chen, who...
Environment
03.29.16Xinjiang Ban on Glacier Tourism Ignores the Bigger Problem
from chinadialogue
The Xinjiang government has banned tourists from glaciers under the 13th Five-Year Plan in order to try and save the far northwestern province’s fast-disappearing ice caps. Home to China’s largest glaciers, the Xinjiang province has seen its...
Media
03.29.16‘River Town’ the Movie
from China Film Insider
Not since Iron and Silk premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 1991 has a movie based on a memoir about teachers on the front lines of U.S.-China relations come to the big screen. Director Shirley Sun’s mostly-English-language film adaptation of...
Green Space
03.25.16Facebook CEO Defies China Smog; Spoof Projects Nostril-Hair Air Filters
At least a few of Facebook’s 1.5 billion users now know that founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg ran several miles in some of Beijing’s most notorious smog on Friday March 18 while he was in the city attending a conference. Famously sharing his...
Viewpoint
03.24.16Why China’s Economy Can’t Collapse
from Radio Free Asia
China’s economic outlook once again became the focus of attention for many last week. For one thing, the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) listed the possibility of a hard landing for China’s economy as the topmost of the world’s top 10 risks. There...
Viewpoint
03.24.16German President Joachim Gauck’s Speech at Tongji University in Shanghai
from Der Bundespräsident
On Wednesday, March 23, German President Joachim Gauck addressed an audience of university students in Shanghai. Among many views not typically aired in public in China, Gauck, a former Luterhan minister and anti-communist organizer, told the crowd...
Caixin Media
03.23.16Fall of Shanghai’s Utilities Chief Unravels Web of Corruption
A graft probe into the head of a state-run utilities firm in Shanghai put investigators on the trail of two top local government officials, people with knowledge of the matter say.Feng Jun, the former general manager of State Grid Shanghai Electric...