ChinaFile Recommends
03.26.18Putin to Visit China as Leaders Consolidate Power at Home
CNN
Russian President Vladimir Putin will visit China later this year, for his first meetings with senior Chinese officials since being elected for a fourth term.
ChinaFile Recommends
03.26.18The US and China Are in Talks to Try to Avoid a Trade War
CNN
The United States and China are acting tough over trade, but they’re also busy talking to try to stop the situation spiraling out of control.
ChinaFile Recommends
03.26.18North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un Is Said to Be Visiting China
Bloomberg
Kim Jong Un has made a surprise visit to Beijing on his first known trip outside North Korea since taking power in 2011, three people with knowledge of the visit said.
Culture
03.23.18What Chinese High School Students Learn in America
In 2011, when a rural prep school in Maine invited New York-based director Miao Wang to screen her first film, Beijing Taxi, she was surprised to find so many Chinese students enrolled at the archetypal New England establishment. Not Chinese-...
Books
03.23.18Curating 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)
ChinaFile Recommends
03.20.18China, Not North Korea, to Dominate Japan Military Planning
Reuters
North Korea’s growing missile arsenal might be the most obvious and immediate military threat facing Japan, but defense planners in Tokyo are focused on a much larger and more challenging foe as they prepare for the years ahead.
ChinaFile Recommends
03.20.18How China’s Government Has Changed after the NPC
BBC
A stronger military and more power to fight corruption are among the major changes revealed at China’s National People's Congress (NPC) this year.
ChinaFile Recommends
03.20.18China Approves Giant Propaganda Machine to Improve Global Image
Bloomberg
China has approved the creation of one of the world’s largest propaganda machines as it looks to improve its global image, according to a person familiar with the matter.
ChinaFile Recommends
03.20.18China Vows to Open Its Markets Further in Response to Trump’s Tariff Threats
Washington Post
China responded to the threat of a massive package of tariffs from the United States by vowing Tuesday to further open its own markets to foreign trade and investment, while warning that a trade war between the two nations would hurt both sides.
ChinaFile Recommends
03.20.18Xi Jinping Warns against Dividing China after U.S. Passes Taiwan Law
Wall Street Journal
Chinese President Xi Jinping said Tuesday that any “tricks” to divide China will be thwarted, a warning that followed U.S. legislation opening the door to high-level visits with Taiwan.
Books
03.16.18Young China
St. Martin’s Press: The author of Young China: How the Restless Generation Will Change Their Country and the World, who is in his twenties and fluent in Chinese, examines the future of China through the lens of the jiu ling hou, the generation born after 1990.{node, 45751}A close-up look at the Chinese generation born after 1990 exploring through personal encounters how young Chinese feel about everything from money and sex to their government, the West, and China’s shifting role in the world―not to mention their love affair with food, karaoke, and travel. Set primarily in the eastern second-tier city of Suzhou and the budding western metropolis of Chengdu, the book charts the touchstone issues this young generation faces. From single-child pressure to test-taking madness and the frenzy to buy an apartment as a prerequisite to marriage, from one-night-stands to an evolving understanding of family, Young China offers a fascinating portrait of the generation who will define what it means to be Chinese in the modern era.{chop}
ChinaFile Recommends
03.15.18Chinese Crackdown Separates Pakistani Husbands from Uighur Wives
Guardian
“Where is Mama?” screams Ahmed’s 10-year-old daughter in a WeChat message he can hardly bear to replay.
ChinaFile Recommends
03.15.18Hong Kong’s Judges Voice Fears over China Influence in Judiciary
Reuters
As Hong Kong’s judges and senior lawyers paraded in ceremonial wigs and gowns on Jan 8 to mark the start of the legal year, anxieties over China’s growing reach into the city’s vaunted legal system swirled with the wintry winds.
ChinaFile Recommends
03.15.18Hard-Charging Chinese Energy Tycoon Falls from Xi Government’s Graces
New York Times
A mysterious Chinese buyer surprised the financial world last year when it swooped in to buy a $9 billion chunk of Russia’s state oil company.
ChinaFile Recommends
03.15.18China, Russia Welcome Korean Peace Efforts with Diplomacy in Overdrive
Reuters
China’s President Xi Jinping offered encouragement for South Korea’s initiative to nurture peaceful engagement with North Korea, and Russia also expressed support, the South Korean official leading diplomatic efforts said on Thursday.
Viewpoint
03.15.18Who Really Haunts Xi Jinping, Mao or Gorbachev?
Last week, the Chinese National People’s Congress removed Presidential and Vice-Presidential term limits, effectively allowing current President (and Chinese Communist Party General Secretary) Xi Jinping to stay in power beyond the two terms that...
ChinaFile Recommends
03.14.18Trump Demands Aides Pump up Anti-China Tariffs
Politico
President Donald Trump is getting ready to crack down on China. Trump told Cabinet secretaries and top advisers during a meeting at the White House last week that he wanted to soon hit China with steep tariffs and investment restrictions in response...
The NYRB China Archive
03.14.18Chairman Xi, Chinese Idol
from New York Review of Books
For nearly sixty years since it opened in 1959, the Great Hall of the People has been the public focus of Chinese politics, a monumental granite block that extends 1,200 feet along the west side of Tiananmen Square. It is where the country’s leaders...
Conversation
03.13.18When Trump and Kim Meet, What Will Xi Do?
On March 8, South Korea’s National Security Advisor announced that Donald Trump had agreed to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un by May. Although now-ousted Secretary of State Rex Tillerson previously downplayed the announcement, a summit...
ChinaFile Recommends
03.13.18A Malaysian Insta-City Becomes a Flash Point for Chinese Colonialism — and Capital Flight
New York Times
A futuristic city funded by China is rising from the sea off Malaysian coast.
ChinaFile Recommends
03.13.18A Reporter Rolled Her Eyes, and China’s Internet Broke
New York Times
A reporter's eye-roll at China's legislature meeting went viral.
ChinaFile Recommends
03.13.18China Sets up New Foreign Aid Agency to Better Project Influence Abroad
Washington Post
The communist government establishes a new agency to coordinate its foreign aid program.
ChinaFile Recommends
03.13.18Beijing Watches and Waits While Trump Talks up His Meeting with Kim Jong Un
CNBC
The milestone summit suits Beijing's interests so the communist state isn't expected to interfere.
ChinaFile Recommends
03.13.18China Unveils Overhaul of Government Bureaucracy
Wall Street Journal
Plan follows constitutional amendments that boost President Xi Jinping’s power.
Reports
03.13.18Forbidden Feeds: Government Controls on Social Media in China
PEN International
Based on extensive interviews with writers, poets, artists, activists, and others personally affected by the government’s grip on online expression, as well as interviews with anonymous employees at Chinese social media companies, this report lays...
Viewpoint
03.12.18Chinese History Isn’t Over
One of the simplest and least useful ways to understand the future is to take exactly what’s happening today and project it forward, rigidly and predictably, into tomorrow. This view is more than just a form of mental inertia; it is a breed of...
Excerpts
03.12.18A Chinese Mayor-to-Be Tells His Story
When I lived with Tom in the city of Chengdu in 2015 and into 2016, he was a 23-year-old probationary member of the Chinese Communist Party, on his way to joining the organization’s nearly 90 million full members. He wanted to embark on a career in...
ChinaFile Recommends
03.12.18Xi Jinping Clear to Rule Indefinitely as China Scraps Presidential Term Limits
Wall Street Journal
Legislature votes to repeal 10-year presidential term limit imposed after Mao’s death.
ChinaFile Recommends
03.12.18Ending Term Limits for China’s Xi Is a Big Deal. Here’s Why.
New York Times
What is at stake when China ends term limit on Xi’s presidency?
ChinaFile Recommends
03.12.18Trump’s China Whisperer: How Billionaire Stephen Schwarzman Has Sought to Keep the President Close to Beijing
Washington Post
This American investor has one of the closest relationships to Beijing.
ChinaFile Recommends
03.12.18South Korea Moves to Ease Chinese Jitters over U.S.-North Korea Talks
CNN
South Korean officials met with Xi about Trump-Kim Meeting.
ChinaFile Recommends
03.12.18China Says Trade War with U.S. Will Only Bring Disaster to Global Economy
Reuters
Beijing criticizes proposed tariffs by Washington amid fears it could shatter global growth.
ChinaFile Recommends
03.12.18China’s Arms Sales Rise as It Vies with U.S. for Influence on the World Stage
South China Morning Post
Research group highlights Beijing’s growing share of global arms trade as it tries to strengthen ties with key allies.
Books
03.09.18End 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
03.09.18US’s Tillerson Warns African Nations Not to ‘Forfeit Their Sovereignty’ by Taking Chinese Loans
CNBC
U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has warned against African nations accepting Chinese cash in agreements which could “forfeit their sovereignty.”
ChinaFile Recommends
03.09.18Xi Jinping Says China’s Authoritarian System Can Be a Model for the World
Quartz
Chinese president Xi Jinping has repeatedly told the world that China is ready to lead on issues like free trade and climate change.
ChinaFile Recommends
03.09.18Chinese Students in America Say ‘Not My President’
Foreign Policy
The first posters appeared on a bulletin board at University of California, San Diego on March 1.
ChinaFile Recommends
03.09.18How China Is Challenging American Dominance in Asia
New York Times
As China grows more powerful, it is displacing decades-old American preeminence in parts of Asia. The outlines of the rivalry are defining the future of the continent.
ChinaFile Recommends
03.09.18China, Europe Slam Trump’s Tariffs as U.S. Metalworkers Cheer
Wall Street Journal
China and Europe lashed out against new U.S. steel and aluminum tariffs, while officials and executives from several American allies caught in the crossfire reacted more cautiously, embracing what the White House promised would be some flexibility...
ChinaFile Recommends
03.09.18Trump Takes the Bait from Musk, Attacks China Auto Import Duties
Bloomberg
President Donald Trump may not follow Elon Musk on Twitter, but the Tesla Inc. chief’s posts decrying China’s automotive trade practices managed to catch his attention.
Media
03.08.18Weibo Whack-a-Mole
from Weiboscope
China might be the world’s second-largest economy, and have more Internet users than any other country, but each year it is ranked as the nation that enjoys the least Internet freedom among the 65 sample nations scored by the U.S.-based Freedom...
Excerpts
03.08.18Reversing Reform
Political stability, ideological openness, and rapid economic growth were the hallmarks of China’s post-1978 reform era. But they are ending. China is entering a new era—the counter-reform era.
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.
ChinaFile Recommends
03.07.18New Chinese Agency Could Undercut Other Anti-Corruption Efforts
Brookings Institution
China’s National People’s Congress is expected to ratify legislation during the next two weeks to create a new supra-agency, the National Supervision Commission, to institutionalize President Xi Jinping’s signature anti-corruption campaign as a...
ChinaFile Recommends
03.07.18China Protectionism Creates Tech Billionaires Who Protect Xi
Bloomberg
China’s tech giants will add star power to the country’s political festivities this week, paying homage to President Xi Jinping and endorsing constitutional changes for him to remain president indefinitely.
ChinaFile Recommends
03.07.18China Unhappy with US Aircraft Carrier’s Visit to Vietnam, State Media Says
South China Morning Post
Beijing is unhappy with the visit of a US aircraft carrier to a Vietnamese port, the first by such a vessel since the Vietnam war, and is monitoring developments, according to a state newspaper report on Wednesday.
ChinaFile Recommends
03.07.18Talks with North Korea? China Approves (No Matter the Outcome)
New York Times
When China hosted the last serious talks on North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, in the mid-2000s, the setting was a huge, hexagonal table covered in green felt, in a government guesthouse in Beijing.
ChinaFile Recommends
03.07.18The West Is Doing Its Best to Help China
Financial Times
Most of it is unintentional. Yet the west could not be helping China more if it tried.
ChinaFile Recommends
03.06.18India Is Willing to Snub the Dalai Lama to Please China
Quartz
On March 17, 1959, a 23-year-old Buddhist monk disguised as a soldier fled Tibet, travelling for three weeks across the Himalayas before reaching the border with India.
ChinaFile Recommends
03.06.18Box Office: Will ‘Black Panther’ Conquer China?
Hollywood Reporter
At nearly $900 million worldwide and counting, Marvel’s latest is a certified historic hit, but Ryan Coogler’s blockbuster faces a final challenge to “conventional wisdom” in the world's second-largest film market.
ChinaFile Recommends
03.06.18China Boosts Defense Budget in Quest for ‘World Class’ Military but Tells Neighbors Not to Worry
Washington Post
China’s government said Monday that it will boost its defense spending by 8.1 percent this year, the biggest increase in three years, even as it insists that it poses no threat to other countries.
Conversation
03.06.18China’s Military Spending
On March 5, during the opening of the National People’s Congress, China’s annual parliament, Beijing announced it plans to spend U.S.$175 billion on its military in 2018, an 8.1 percent rise from 2017. China’s military budget is the world’s second...
Conversation
03.02.18How Will Trump’s Tariffs Affect U.S.-China Relations?
Arguing that America is harmed by other countries’ trade practices, President Donald Trump said on March 1 that the U.S. will impose a new 25 percent tariff on imported steel and 10 percent tariff on imported aluminum. “People have no idea how badly...
The NYRB China Archive
03.02.18The Brands That Kowtow to China
from New York Review of Books
There’s been no joking as the apologies to China have come thick and fast in recent weeks, issued not by teenage singers but by some of the largest and richest multinational corporations in the world—the German luxury car manufacturer Daimler, the...
ChinaFile Recommends
03.01.18As Xi Tightens His Grip on China, U.S. Sees Conflict Ahead
New York Times
A few weeks after Stephen K. Bannon left the White House in August, he was invited to a dinner at the Council on Foreign Relations to discuss American policy toward China.
ChinaFile Recommends
03.01.18A Summer Vacation in China’s Muslim Gulag
Foreign Policy
Since announcing a “people’s war on terror” in 2014, the Chinese Communist Party has created an unprecedented network of re-education camps in the autonomous Xinjiang region that are essentially ethnic gulags.
ChinaFile Recommends
03.01.18An Anbang-Linked Revolutionary Heir Dies in China. Speculation Begins.
Wall Street Journal
The sudden death of a revolutionary scion linked to troubled Chinese insurer Anbang Insurance Group Co. is reverberating through China’s battered private business community.
ChinaFile Recommends
03.01.18China Energy Group Bonds Crash after Detention Report
Financial Times
Bonds of mysterious Chinese energy firm CEFC crashed on Thursday amid reports that its chairman Ye Jianming had been detained, complicating its deal to buy a $9bn stake in Russian oil company Rosneft.
ChinaFile Recommends
03.01.18How the West Got China Wrong
Economist
Last weekend China stepped from autocracy into dictatorship. That was when Xi Jinping, already the world’s most powerful man, let it be known that he will change China’s constitution so that he can rule as president for as long as he chooses—and...
ChinaFile Recommends
03.01.18Why China Is Censoring Winnie the Pooh—and the Letter ‘N’
Fortune
Chinese President Xi Jinping has had a fruitful five plus years in his current position.