Viewpoint
11.18.13
Xi Jinping Refills an Old Prescription
The reforms called for by the Third Plenum of the Eighteenth Party Congress have been, like so much else in China over the past few decades, part of an ongoing Chinese quest for national unity, wealth, and power. But, for those of us steeped in...
Caixin Media
11.18.13
What Do Investigative Reporters Do?
With the recent Chen Yongzhou scandal, many have called for an “investigation” into the investigative reporting business.I apply the term “investigative reporters” to those that often wade into the deeper, uncharted waters of the media’s realm. I...
ChinaFile Recommends
11.17.13China to Move Slowly on One-Child Law Reform
Wall Street Journal
China's family-planning agency is projecting a slow rollout for an easing of its one-child policy, underscoring reluctance by the government in moving too quickly to let some couples have two children and a law in place for decades.
ChinaFile Recommends
11.17.13China to Ease Longtime Policy of 1-Child Limit
New York Times
The Chinese government will ease its one-child family restrictions and abolish “re-education through labor” camps, significantly curtailing two policies that for decades have defined the state’s power to control citizens’ lives.
ChinaFile Recommends
11.17.13China Unveils Boldest Reforms in Decades, Shows Xi in Command
Reuters
China has relaxed its longstanding one-child policy and further freed up the markets in order to put the world's second-largest economy on a more stable footing.
Media
11.14.13
Westerners Aren’t the Only Ones Flummoxed by China’s Reform Plans
After the Third Plenum, a high-level meeting to discuss China’s future, ended on November 12, Beijing released a major document likely to affect many of its 1.3 billion citizens’ lives for years. Western media responded to the 5,000-plus character...
ChinaFile Recommends
11.13.13How Jimmy Kimmel’s Joke Became an Issue for the White House
Washington Post
Earlier this week, Kimmel aired a segment of his Kids Table, where he asks small children to address complex issues. When asked how the U.S. could solve the $1.3 trillion trade imbalance, one 6-year-old answered “Kill everyone in China.”...
ChinaFile Recommends
11.13.13China’s Party Platter of Overhauls
Wall Street Journal
There is hope that the Third Plenum, an important meeting in the life cycle of each five-year Party Congress, could bring real change in the spheres of real estate, banking, state-owned enterprises and currency.
ChinaFile Recommends
11.13.13China’s Communists Want Unattainable Goal of Affluence Without Freedom
Telegraph
The upcoming meetings on economic reform are a chance for China to break free of the "middle income trap", the fate of countless states in Latin America and around the world which all failed to make the switch in time to a grown-up growth...
Conversation
11.12.13
Spiked in China?
Last weekend, The New York Times and later, The Financial Times reported that, according to Bloomberg News employees, Bloomberg editor in chief Matthew Winkler informed reporters by telephone on October...
Caixin Media
11.11.13
How Ambition Buried an Official Known As ‘The Digger’
Cranes and bulldozers were quieter in the ancient city of Nanjing on October 16.News broke that day that the city’s fifty-seven-year-old mayor, Ji Jianye, was being investigated for “suspected serious discipline violations,” the Communist Party’s...
ChinaFile Recommends
11.11.13Activists Challenge Beijing by Going to Dinner
China Digital Times
On the last weekend of every month, government critics gather for unassuming meals in as many as 20 cities across the country to discuss issues from failures in the legal system to unequal access to education.
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11.11.13Explosions Kill 1, Injure 8 in North China City
Reuters
The official Xinhua news agency said what appeared to be small-scale bombs went off outside an office building of the Shanxi Provincial Committee of the Communist Party. Taiyuan is the capital of Shanxi province.
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11.11.13Chinese Authorities Blocked Protest Voyage to Senkakus, Activist Says
Global Post
Authorities barred a planned protest to the Japan-controlled Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea last month involving activists from both the mainland and Taiwan, but the protesters are now eyeing another try next month, one of the activists said...
ChinaFile Recommends
11.11.13Minitrue: Chen Yongzhou Admits Accepting Bribes
China Digital Times
Directive from the Ministry of Truth to media: “New Express reporter Chen Yongzhou accepted bribes to publish a number of inaccurate reports. The media must use the full text of Xinhua News Agency wire copy regarding this incident, no...
Features
11.08.13
Document 9: A ChinaFile Translation
This weekend, China’s leaders gather in Beijing for meetings widely expected to determine the shape of China’s economy, as well as the nation’s progress, over the next decade. What exactly the outcome of this Third Plenum of the Eighteenth Party...
ChinaFile Recommends
11.08.13Chinese Police Hunt for Two Xinjiang Men After Tiananmen Crash
Guardian
Chinese police are hunting for two or more men from the troubled region of Xinjiang amid growing suspicion that a fatal car crash and explosion in Tiananmen Square on Monday was a suicide attack.
ChinaFile Recommends
11.08.13Police Examine Possible Xinjiang Link in Deadly Tiananmen Crash
New York Times
After the car crash in Tiananmen Square, Chinese authorities have now named two suspects from Xinjiang, the troubled western region whose ethnic Uighur population has become increasingly disenchanted with Chinese policies.
ChinaFile Recommends
11.08.13In Mess Bo Left Behind, An Opportunity for Beijing to Set Things Right
Wall Street Journal
Bo Xilai’s “Smash the Black” campaign used ruthless measures to curb organized crime. The recent guilty verdict handed to Bo gives the Chinese leadership an opportunity to demonstrate that illegalities committed in the course of...
Viewpoint
11.08.13
China, One Year Later
In November 2012, seven men were appointed to the Politburo Standing Committee, China’s supreme governing body. At the time, economic headwinds, nationalist protests, and the Bo Xilai scandal presented huge challenges for the regime. Would the...
Media
11.07.13
After Party Headquarters Explosions, Netizens Debate Value of Violence
On the morning of November 6, an unknown assailant or group of assailants reportedly detonated several bombs outside the front door of the provincial government headquarters of Taiyuan, the capital of Northern China’s Shanxi province. China’s state-...
Viewpoint
11.07.13
Deciphering Xi Jinping’s Dream
On November 9, the Chinese Communist Party will host its Third Plenary Session of the Eighteenth Central Committee. This conference will be a key to deciphering the ruling philosophy of the new Chinese leadership, who will run the country for the...
Media
11.07.13
Chinese State Media: U.S. Bullying ‘Obsolete’
Stop being a bully, and start respecting the rule of the global village. That’s the takeaway from a November 1 editorial in Chinese state media, which castigates the United States in the wake of revelations that the NSA has tapped the phones of...
The NYRB China Archive
11.07.13
How to Deal with the Chinese Police
from New York Review of Books
A casual visitor to China today does not get the impression of a police state. Life bustles along as people pursue work, fashion, sports, romance, amusement, and so on, without any sign of being under coercion. But the government spends tens of...
Sinica Podcast
11.05.13
Terrorism in Tiananmen, Politics at Peking University
from Sinica Podcast
This week on Sinica, we return to our China roots with a show covering recent developments in the news including the recent terrorist attack in Beijing and political hiring-and-firing at Peking University. Joining Kaiser and Jeremy to talk about...
Caixin Media
11.04.13
China’s Chilling Effect for Investor Research
Shanghai investor Wang Weihua’s final microblog post October 12 was brief and ominous: “The police are coming.”Three days later, Wang’s family said he’d been taken into custody by police officers who traveled more than 3,600 kilometers to Wang’s...
Media
11.01.13
Apologies for a Horrific Past
On October 9, a farmer named Zhang Jinying appeared on the television show Please Forgive Me, a program usually dedicated to public apologies by unfaithful husbands and wayward sons. But the sixty-one-year-old Zhang’s apology had a depth and a...
Viewpoint
11.01.13
What the Heck is China’s ‘Third Plenum’ and Why Should You Care?
China’s economy is already two-thirds the size of the economy of the U.S., and it’s been growing five times as fast. But now, China’s economy is beginning to slow and is facing a raft of difficult problems. If China’s leaders don’t address...
Media
10.31.13
Tiananmen Attack Spotlights China’s Beleaguered Uighurs
On October 28, a jeep plowed into a group of pedestrians and burst into flames on the avenue next to Tiananmen Square, the massive public square in Beijing that is the symbolic heart of the Chinese capital. According to Chinese state media reports,...
Books
10.31.13
The China Choice
China is rising. But how should the West—and the United States in particular—respond? This could be the key geopolitical question of the twenty-first century, according to strategic expert Hugh White, with huge implications for the future security and prosperity of the West as a whole. The China Choice confronts this fundamental question, considering the options for the Asian century ahead.As China’s economy grows to become the world’s largest, the U.S. has three choices: it can compete, share power, or concede leadership in Asia. The choice is momentous—as significant for the future as any the U.S. has ever faced. China is already more formidable than any country the U.S. has faced before—and if America does not want to find itself facing China as an enemy, it must accept it as an equal partner. Weighing the huge difficulties of accepting China as an equal with the immense cost and risks of making it an enemy, in the end the choice is simple, even if it is not easy. The U.S. simply must share power with China in Asia. The alternative is too terrible to contemplate. —Oxford University Press{chop}
Conversation
10.30.13
Trial By TV: What Does a Reporter’s Arrest and Confession Tell Us About Chinese Media?
The latest ChinaFile Conversation focuses on the case of Chen Yongzhou, the Guangzhou New Express journalist whose series of investigative reports exposed fraud at the Changsha, Hunan-based heavy machinery maker Zoomlion. Chen later was arrested and...
Books
10.28.13
In Line Behind a Billion People
Nearly everything you know about China is wrong! Yes, within a decade, China will have the world’s largest economy. But that is the least important thing to know about China. In this enlightening book, two of the world’s leading China experts turn the conventional wisdom on its head, showing why China’s economic growth will constrain rather than empower it. Pioneering political analyst Damien Ma and global economist Bill Adams reveal why, having thirty-five years of ferocious economic growth, China’s future will be shaped by the same fundamental reality that has shaped it for millennia: scarcity.{node, 4231}Ma and Adams drill deep into Chinese society, illuminating all the scarcities that will limit its power and progress. Beyond scarcities of natural resources and public goods, they illuminate China’s persistent poverties of individual freedoms, cultural appeal, and ideological legitimacy—and the corrosive loss of values and beliefs amongst a growing middle class shackled by a parochial and inflexible political system. Everyone knows “the 21st century is China’s to lose”—but, as with so many things that “everyone knows,” that’s just wrong. Ma and Adams get beyond cheerleading and fearmongering to tell the complex truth about China today. This is a truth you need to hear—whether you’re an investor, business decision-maker, policymaker, or citizen. —Pearson{chop}
Excerpts
10.28.13Stark Choices for China’s Leaders
One Beijing morning in early November 2012, seven men in dark suits strode onto the stage of the Great Hall of the People. China’s newly elected Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Chairman Xi Jinping stood at the center of the ensemble, flanked on each...
Caixin Media
10.28.13
How Police Got It So Wrong Arresting a Journalist
The arrest of a journalist for allegedly damaging the reputation of an equipment manufacturer has spurred debate in both the media and legal circles. The discussions revolve around the rights of the press, interpretation of the law, and possible...
ChinaFile Recommends
10.28.13China Seeks End to Japan’s Diaoyu Provocation
Xinhua
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying responded to a media report that the Japanese Foreign Ministry have released a video online claiming sovereignty over the Diaoyu Islands.
ChinaFile Recommends
10.28.13Who Will Win Control of the South China Sea?
New York Times
To understand how Second Thomas Shoal could become contested ground is to enter into a morass of competing historical, territorial and even moral claims in an area where defining what is true or fair may be no easier than it has proved to...
Conversation
10.25.13
Can State-Run Capitalism Absorb the Shocks of ‘Creative Destruction’?
Following are ChinaFile Conversation participants’ reactions to “China: Superpower or Superbust?” in the November-December issue of The National Interest in which author Ian Bremmer says that China’s state-capitalism is ill-equipped to absorb the...
Features
10.25.13
Bo Xilai May Have Gotten Off Easy
On October 25, the Shandong High People’s Court rejected the appeal of Bo Xilai, the former Party Secretary of Chongqing who on September 22 was convicted of bribe-taking, embezzlement, and abuse of power and sentenced to life in prison.At the end...
Books
10.24.13
The Grass-Mud Horse Lexicon
Over the years, China Digital Times (CDT) has collected hundreds of words and turns of phrase invented by China’s citizens of the Internet, its “netizenry.” Playfully evading online censors, netizens have created a world of “grass-mud horses” and “river crabs,” forever locked in battle in the “Mahler Desert.” CDT’s Grass-Mud Horse Lexicon is a collection of politically-charged terms which represent netizen resistance discourse. This eBook includes a selection of “classic” terms which have endured beyond the events which generated them. They are arranged by category, and indices in alphabetical order by both English and pinyin are included. This is the netizen language you need to know to understand China’s Internet. —China Digital Times{chop}
The NYRB China Archive
10.24.13
China: “Capitulate or Things Will Get Worse”
from New York Review of Books
The massacre of protesters in Beijing on June 4, 1989, and the harsh repression during the months immediately following put China into a foul mood. Among ordinary Chinese, the prestige of the Communist Party, whose leaders had ordered the brutal...
ChinaFile Recommends
10.23.13China to Announce Decision on Bo Xilai Appeal
Reuters
A court in eastern China said it would announce a decision on October 25 on whether to accept an appeal by ousted former senior politician Bo Xilai over his guilty verdict and life sentence on charges of bribery, corruption and...
ChinaFile Recommends
10.23.13Top Chinese University Expels Outspoken Economist
Associated Press
Peking School of Economics’ Xia Yeliang was expelled for his political views and activism, including his vocal support of democracy, his involvement in the drafting of Charter 08, and his refusal to comply with government directives to de-politicize...
Media
10.23.13
How to Say “Truthiness” in Chinese
“Official rumors” is more than just an oxymoron. The phrase—pronounced guanyao—has become a useful weapon in Chinese Internet users’ linguistic guerrilla warfare against government censorship. That battle has intensified during a government-led...
Reports
10.22.13
The Long Shadow of Chinese Censorship
Center for International Media Assistance
This report provides a survey of the phenomenon of censorship and its recent evolution as it pertains to the news media sector, though similar dynamics also affect the film, literature, and performing arts industries. Specifically, this report...
Reports
10.22.13
CCTV’s International Expansion: China’s Grand Strategy for Media?
Center for International Media Assistance
China Central Television has come a long ways since its founding as a domestic party propaganda outlet in 1958. The domestic service has been supplemented by an international service, boasting three major global offices in Beijing, Washington, and...
ChinaFile Recommends
10.21.13China Companies Rank Lowest in Survey of Transparency Reporting
Bloomberg
The report draws attention to a Chinese business environment corrupt due to minimal public-reporting requirements. Party leaders have warned that corruption threatens their grip on power and have announced anti-graft investigations of a number of...
Caixin Media
10.21.13
Is Freedom of Thought in China Just a Dream?
The Shanghai Free Trade Zone was recently launched. The measure is commonly regarded as an attempt by the leadership of the Communist Party to further economic reform, which has slowed over the past decade. It is also part of what policymakers call...
ChinaFile Recommends
10.21.13A Muzzled Chinese Artwork, Absent but Speaking Volumes
New York Times
Exiled sculptor Wang Keping’s controversial piece “Silence” — a wooden head with a plug stuffing its gaping mouth — has not been allowed in China since it was shown in 1979 and 1980, but the artist is now showing newer art in Beijing.&...
ChinaFile Recommends
10.21.13Seeing Its Own Money at Risk, China Rails at U.S.
New York Times
China has become shrill in its criticism of the fiscal train wreck in the United States, arguing that the answer to a potential government default is to begin creating a “de-Americanized world.”
ChinaFile Recommends
10.21.13What China Thinks of the Shutdown
Diplomat
The notion of a government shutdown is strange for the average Chinese person because its consequences in the People’s Republic would go far beyond closed federal agencies and parks, but it has also helped the Chinese better understand the U.S...
The NYRB China Archive
10.19.13
Who’s Afraid of Chinese Money?
from New York Review of Books
“China is what it is. We have to be here or nowhere.” Chancellor George Osborne, Britain’s second-highest official, was laying out the British government’s view last week, near the end of his trip aimed at selling Britain to Chinese companies...
Media
10.17.13Journalist’s Call for ‘de-Americanized World’ Provokes Alarm in U.S., Fart Jokes in China
As fears mounted this week about a possible (and now, it seems, averted) U.S. government default, the U.S. press stumbled upon an October 13 editorial in Xinhua, China’s largest news agency, calling for a “de-Americanized...
Conversation
10.16.13
Uncomfortable Bedfellows: How Much Does China Need America Now?
Bill Bishop:The D.C. dysfunction puts China in a difficult place. Any financial markets turmoil that occurs because of a failure of Congress to do its job could harm China’s economy, and especially its exports. The accumulation of massive foreign-...
Viewpoint
10.16.13
Innovation in Britain and What it Means for China
On the occasion of a high-level British delegation’s visit to Beiing this week, Vincent Ni, the long-time New York-based U.S. correspondent for the independent Caixin Media group, shared his views about China’s ability to innovate relative to what...
Viewpoint
10.15.13
Trust Issues: Hong Kong Resists Beijing’s Advances
When Hong Kong reverted to Chinese sovereignty in 1997, expectations were high—in Beijing and among the pro-mainland forces in Hong Kong—that identification with the Chinese nation would slowly but surely strengthen among the local population,...
ChinaFile Recommends
10.15.13China Denounces Spanish Court’s Tibet Case Against Ex-President
Reuters
China denounced on Monday a decision by a Spanish criminal court to indict former Chinese president Hu Jintao for genocide as part of an investigation into whether his government committed abuses in Tibet.
ChinaFile Recommends
10.15.13‘Where Are the Riots?’: China Watches the Shutdown
New Yorker
In China’s social media - what amounts to China’s largest and most liberal classroom - microbloggers are taking the opportunity to teach one another the difference between federal and local authority in America and the protections, and perils, of...
ChinaFile Recommends
10.15.13Calm Down, Washington: China Doesn’t Really Want to ‘De-Americanize’
Washington Post
We can calm down on the threat to "de-Americanize". The fact that China is so rightly panicked about the possibility of a U.S. default just goes to show that Beijing knows it is, and will long continue to be, reliant on a U.S.-...
ChinaFile Recommends
10.15.13U.S. Fiscal Failure Warrants a De-Americanized World
Xinhua
A recent op-ed piece published on Xinhua challenges America’s placement at the center of global matters, suggesting reforms in the world’s international economic and political organizations so that it may avoid America’s negative influences.
ChinaFile Recommends
10.15.13The Vitamin C Cartel (Video)
New America
A Chinese cartel has come to control 100% of the Vitamin C that is contained in foods found in American supermarkets, an unprecedented circumstance which will have political and economic ramifications in the near future.