ChinaFile Recommends
10.07.15Once Seed Was Planted, Chinese Headwear Fad Grew Like Weeds
New York Times
Across China, grown-ups are sporting plastic decorations on their heads in the shape of vegetables, fruit and flowers.
Sinica Podcast
10.05.15Edmund Backhouse in the Long View of History
from Sinica Podcast
Edmund Backhouse, the 20th century Sinologist, long-time Beijing resident, and occasional con-artist, is perhaps best known for his incendiary memoirs, which not only distorted Western understanding of Chinese history for more than 50 years, but...
ChinaFile Recommends
10.02.15China’s Butler Boom
New Yorker
On a recent morning at a butler-training school in Chengdu, China,;lessons began at 8 A.M.,with an exercise in “opening the villa.”
ChinaFile Recommends
09.30.15Chinese Team Expresses Interest in California High-Speed Rail Program
Xinhua
The Chinese High Speed Rail Delivery Team is among 35 U.S. and foreign entities that expressed their interest in participating in the California High-Speed Rail(CHSR) program.
Sinica Podcast
09.24.15Hip Hop in China
from Sinica Podcast
Kaiser Kuo and David Moser are joined today by Jerry Chan and Matt Sheehan for a look at hip-hop in China. Both guests should be familiar to long-time listeners in Beijing. Jerry has been involved with the local music scene for over a decade and now...
ChinaFile Recommends
09.01.15In China’s Heartland, Small Cities Flourish
Wall Street Journal
Even in slowdown, a Yangtze River town bursts with consumer vitality.
Environment
08.21.15Beijing Tells Mayors of Chinese Cities to Clean Up Their Air
from chinadialogue
In China, “APEC blue” was the sarcastic term used to refer to the unusually clear skies Beijing enjoyed when an Asia-Pacific leaders summit was in progress late last year.A similar phenomenon is now being seen in smaller Chinese cities, as mayors...
Culture
08.20.15Banned in China, Independent Chinese Films Come to New York
Three years ago this week I watched the 9th Beijing Independent Film Festival crumble under the weight of official fear—fear that the gritty low-budget, experimental dramas and documentaries screening in a remote Beijing suburb reflected a touch...
Caixin Media
08.18.15Official Stonewalling on Tianjin Explosions Sparks Outcry
While victims of the Tianjin explosions are still waiting to be told why their loved ones died or, how safe it is to go outside, officials remained evasive in the sixth press conference regarding the disaster.In response to a question from a Caixin...
ChinaFile Recommends
08.15.15In China, Single Women Live by Their Own Rules
New York Times
Though many single women have recently begun to push back on the term, traditional attitudes among China’s older generation still prevail: Get married young or risk becoming unwanted goods. Klaudia Lech, a photographer based in...
ChinaFile Recommends
08.13.15Military Sends Chemical Specialists to Blast Site, Death Toll Rises to 50
Xinhua
So far more than 1,000 firefighters, 151 fire engines and a drone have been dispatched to the blast site.
ChinaFile Recommends
08.13.15Tianjin Blast Rescuers Removing Toxic Chemical Substance from Scene
People’s Daily Online
Sodium cyanide has now been detected in the sewage and leakage has been confirmed.
ChinaFile Recommends
08.08.15ChinaFile Recommends
07.23.15What Did China Bring to the Iran Talks?
Diplomat
While China stood with the Western powers in insisting Iran give up its ambitions for nuclear weapons, Beijing took Iran’s side in calling for more rapid sanctions relief.
ChinaFile Recommends
07.23.15China Cracks Down on Hong Kong Evangelists
BBC
A 2014 survey of more than 1,000 Protestant churches in Hong Kong by the Hong Kong Church Renewal Movement gives some insight into their activities.
ChinaFile Recommends
07.23.15China May Adopt 'Two-child Policy, Demographic Timebomb Looms
Guardian
China could be on the verge of introducing a two-child policy, under which all Chinese couples would be allowed to have two children.
ChinaFile Recommends
07.21.15This Instagram Account Offers a New Perspective on China
Time
Some photographs show the surprisingly mundane moments in the life of regular Chinese, such as Albertazzi’s image of a group of men playing cards in their swim shorts on a hot summer afternoon in Beijing; others are images from long-term documentary...
ChinaFile Recommends
07.19.15As Beijing Becomes a Supercity, the Rapid Growth Brings Pains
New York Times
The planned megalopolis, a metropolitan area that would be about six times the size of New York's, is meant to revamp northern China's economy.
Caixin Media
07.14.15Uber CEO Enjoying a Fast China Ride
Demand for cross-town transportation is at the heart of an urban lifestyle that is defining modern China. It is also giving the American car-hire service Uber Technologies Inc. an incredible ride.Few are enjoying the ride more than Uber CEO Travis...
Media
07.14.15Megacity Chongqing Now
Earlier this month, photographer Tim Franco visited Asia Society to show his work from Chongqing, a city of more than 25 million where he has been reporting since 2009. Many of the images Franco showed appear in his latest book, Metamorpolis (...
ChinaFile Recommends
07.02.15At Least Eleven People Killed in a Bus Crash in China
Independent
Eleven people died in a bus crash after the vehicle fell off a highway bridge in north-eastern China.
ChinaFile Recommends
07.01.15Thousands Protest on Anniversary of Hong Kong’s Return to China
New York Times
As Hong Kong marks the 18th anniversary of its handover from Britain from China, thousands take to the street to rally for democracy.
ChinaFile Recommends
07.01.15China's Military Must Help Xinjiang Modernize
Guardian
China’ wants to bring “modern civilisation” to the southern areas of Xinjiang, where Muslim ethnic Uighurs are in a majority, and help develop its economy
ChinaFile Recommends
07.01.15China Concerned Over Turkish Religious Complaints
Washington Post
China expressed displeasure with Turkey’s complaints about restrictions on worship and fasting by Uighur Muslims during Ramadan.
Features
07.01.15Hong Kong’s Umbrella Protests Were More Than Just a Student Movement
For almost three months in late 2014, what came to be known as the Umbrella Movement amplified Hong Kong’s bitter struggle for the democracy its people were promised when China assumed control of the territory from Britain in 1997. Originally a...
ChinaFile Recommends
07.01.15Russia Delivers Submarine To Vietnam For Defense Over South China Sea Dispute
International Business Times
The submarines are Vietnam's effort to deter China's military from building up in the South China Sea.
ChinaFile Recommends
06.26.15Techies Are Trying to Get Chinese Consumers to Rack Up Debt
Wired
In recent years, as the growth of the Chinese economy has slowed—thanks to declining demand for exports and new real estate projects—the government has been desperate to get its thrifty citizens to spend, spend, spend and drive economic growth from...
Books
06.25.15City of Virtues
Throughout Nanjing’s history, writers have claimed that its spectacular landscape of mountains and rivers imbued the city with “royal qi,” making it a place of great political significance. City of Virtues examines the ways a series of visionaries, drawing on past glories of the city, projected their ideologies onto Nanjing as they constructed buildings, performed rituals, and reworked the literary heritage of the city. More than an urban history of Nanjing from the late 18th century until 1911―encompassing the Opium War, the Taiping occupation of the city, the rebuilding of the city by Zeng Guofan, and attempts to establish it as the capital of the Republic of China―this study shows how utopian visions of the cosmos shaped Nanjing’s path through the turbulent 19th century.―University of Washington Press{chop}
ChinaFile Recommends
06.25.15China Aims to Move Beijing Government Out of City’s Crowded Core
New York Times
Officials finalize plans to move Beijing’s municipal government, including tens of thousands of civil servants to Tongzhou.
Environment
06.24.15High Off the Hog
Hongshaorou—“red braised” pork belly, a classic Chinese dish—is cooked with ginger, garlic, and soy sauce until the squares of fatty meat are so tender they dissolve in the mouth. Once a luxury, this succulent delicacy was known to be a favorite...
Sinica Podcast
06.23.15The Brother Orange Saga
from Sinica Podcast
The story started when a Buzzfeed editor lost his iPhone in an East Village bar in February of last year and blossomed into the Sino-American romance of the century, and probably the most up-lifting and altogether unlikely China story that we can...
Books
06.10.15China’s Millennials
In 1989, students marched on Tiananmen Square demanding democratic reform. The Communist Party responded with a massacre, but it was jolted into restructuring the economy and overhauling the education of its young citizens. A generation later, Chinese youth are a world apart from those who converged at Tiananmen. Brought up with lofty expectations, they’ve been accustomed to unprecedented opportunities on the back of China’s economic boom. But today, China’s growth is slowing and its demographics rapidly shifting, with the boom years giving way to a painful hangover.Immersed in this transition, Eric Fish, a millennial himself, profiles youth from around the country and how they are navigating the education system, the workplace, divisive social issues, and a resurgence in activism. Based on interviews with scholars, journalists, and hundreds of young Chinese, his engrossing book challenges the idea that today’s youth have been pacified by material comforts and nationalism. Following rural Henan students struggling to get into college, a computer prodigy who sparked a nationwide patriotic uproar, and young social activists grappling with authorities, Fish deftly captures youthful struggle, disillusionment, and rebellion in a system that is scrambling to keep them in line—and, increasingly, scrambling to adapt when its youth refuse to conform.—Rowman & Littlefield{chop}
ChinaFile Recommends
06.09.15Uber Spends Heavily to Establish Itself in China
New York Times
Fat with almost $6 billion in venture capital, San Francisco-based Uber is doling out bonuses up to three times its fares.
Books
05.19.15No Ordinary Disruption
Our intuition on how the world works could well be wrong. We are surprised when new competitors burst on the scene, or businesses protected by large and deep moats find their defenses easily breached, or vast new markets are conjured from nothing. Trend lines resemble saw-tooth mountain ridges.The world not only feels different. The data tell us it is different. Based on years of research by the directors of the McKinsey Global Institute, No Ordinary Disruption: The Four Forces Breaking All the Trends is a timely and important analysis of how we need to reset our intuition as a result of four forces colliding and transforming the global economy: the rise of emerging markets; the accelerating impact of technology on the natural forces of market competition; an aging world population; and accelerating flows of trade, capital, and people.Our intuitions formed during a uniquely benign period for the world economy—often termed the Great Moderation. Asset prices were rising, cost of capital was falling, labor and resources were abundant, and generation after generation was growing up more prosperous than their parents.But the Great Moderation has gone. The cost of capital may rise. The price of everything from grain to steel may become more volatile. The world’s labor force could shrink. Individuals, particularly those with low job skills, are at risk of growing up poorer than their parents.What sets No Ordinary Disruption apart is depth of analysis combined with lively writing informed by surprising, memorable insights that enable us to quickly grasp the disruptive forces at work. For evidence of the shift to emerging markets, consider the startling fact that, by 2025, a single regional city in China—Tianjin—will have a GDP equal to that of the Sweden, or that, in the decades ahead, half of the world’s economic growth will come from 440 cities including Kumasi in Ghana or Santa Carina in Brazil that most executives today would be hard-pressed to locate on a map.What we are now seeing is no ordinary disruption but the new facts of business life—facts that require executives and leaders at all levels to reset their operating assumptions and management intuition.—PublicAffairs{chop}
Infographics
05.18.15Submerged
Urban planner and cartographer Jeffrey Linn mapped a possible future for China’s coast, where some 43% of its population currently lives, when the earth's polar ice caps and glaciers have all melted and the sea rises if the planet’s temperature...
ChinaFile Recommends
05.16.15Want a Green Card? Invest in Real Estate
New York Times
Developers also take the search for investors in their projects on the road, primarily to China.
ChinaFile Recommends
05.12.15Searching for Identity in China’s Outer Lands
New York Times
“ ‘China’s Outer Lands’ is about people instinctively looking for their own identity, between conformity or originality or autonomy or dependence,” Mr. Sakamaki said. “It’s natural, it’s happening in not only China, it’s everywhere.”
ChinaFile Recommends
05.12.15Fatal Police Shooting Under Investigation: Ministry
Xinhua
There are clear rules on the carrying and use of fire arms by police officers, and it will take time to confirm whether police had opened fire legally in the case.
Books
04.30.15Fantasy Islands
The rise of China and its status as a leading global factory are altering the way people live and consume. At the same time, the world appears wary of the real costs involved. Fantasy Islands probes Chinese, European, and American eco-desire and eco-technological dreams, and examines the solutions they offer to environmental degradation in this age of global economic change.Uncovering the stories of sites in China, including the plan for a new eco-city called Dongtan on the island of Chongming, mega-suburbs, and the Shanghai World Expo, Julie Sze explores the flows, fears, and fantasies of Pacific Rim politics that shaped them. She charts how climate change discussions align with U.S. fears of China’s ascendancy and the related demise of the American Century, and she considers the motives of financial and political capital for eco-city and ecological development supported by elite power structures in the U.K. and China. Fantasy Islands shows how ineffectual these efforts are while challenging us to see what a true eco-city would be. —University of California Press{chop}
ChinaFile Recommends
04.15.15Wild Pigeon
Daylight
“The underlying theme I heard when talking to people was that how you interpret things is how they will be, so its best to look at the bright side of things. You don’t mention bad dreams, or you try to interpret them in a positive way. People told...
Sinica Podcast
04.13.15Styling It in China
from Sinica Podcast
Sociologist Ben Ross, a doctoral student at the University of Chicago, focuses on Chinese labor migration and related issues. He first got noticed by Sinica in 2007 while writing a blog about working as the only foreign "hair-washing trainee...
The China Africa Project
04.03.15This Little Bridge Connects Guangzhou and Africa
The southern Chinese city of Guangzhou is home to China’s largest African migrant population, predominantly from Nigeria. In the city’s Little North Road neighborhood there is a small pedestrian bridge where immigrants from all over the world go to...
Media
03.26.15Brother, Can You Spare a Renminbi?
Who deserves to be poor in modern China? One man in China’s southern Zhejiang province certainly seemed sympathetic: Each day, he pushed himself along the street on a homemade wooden skateboard, his apparently paralyzed legs tucked under his body,...
Caixin Media
03.17.15Chinese Businesses Eye Purchasing Power of LGBT Community
Chinese businesses are starting to show interest in the purchasing power of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) consumer market, often referred to as the “pink dollar,” a trend led by e-commerce giant Alibaba Group...
Media
03.09.15China’s Real Inconvenient Truth: Its Class Divide
China is talking about its pollution problem, but its equally serious class problem remains obscured behind the haze. Smog leapt to the forefront of Chinese national discourse after the February 28 release of "Under the Dome," a 103-minute...
Sinica Podcast
03.09.15Under the Dome
from Sinica Podcast
Under the Dome, Chai Jing's breakout documentary on China's catastrophic air pollution problem, finally hit insurmountable political opposition last Friday after seven days in which the video racked up over 200 million views. The eventual...
Environment
03.04.15Clearing Skies
from Sierra Club
After dark is when the pollution arrives on the outskirts of Shanghai. On a bright night, when moonlight refracts through the smog, you can see black clouds of soot pouring out of small workshop smokestacks silhouetted against the sky. In case you...
Sinica Podcast
03.02.15Keep in Touch, Nightman
from Sinica Podcast
In 1997, Beijing was smaller city, and Keep in Touch, Jamhouse, and Nightman were the hippest venues around. There was no traffic on the ring roads, and if you got tired of Chinese food you might take a trip to Fangzhuang to visit this Italian...
Books
02.10.15The People’s Republic of Chemicals
Maverick environmental writers William J. Kelly and Chip Jacobs follow up their acclaimed Smogtown with a provocative examination of China’s ecological calamity already imperiling a warming planet. Toxic smog most people figured was obsolete needlessly kills as many as died in the 9/11 attacks every day, while sometimes Grand Canyon-sized drifts of industrial particles aloft on the winds rain down ozone and waterway-poisoning mercury in America.In vivid, gonzo prose blending first-person reportage with exhaustive research and a sense of karma, Kelly and Jacobs describe China’s ancient love affair with coal, Bill Clinton’s blunders cutting free-trade deals enabling the U.S. to "export" manufacturing emissions to Asia in a shift that pilloried the West's middle class, Communist Party manipulation of eco-statistics, the horror of cancer villages, the deception of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, and spellbinding peasant revolts against cancer-spreading plants involving thousands in mostly-censored melées. Ending with China’s monumental coal-bases decried by climatologists as a global warming dagger, The People's Republic of Chemicals names names and emphasizes humanity over bloodless statistics in a classic sure to ruffle feathers as an indictment of money as the real green that not even Al Gore can deny. —Rare Bird Books, A Vireo Book {chop}
Sinica Podcast
02.02.15Shanghai and the Future Now
from Sinica Podcast
Expats in Beijing may be partial to our rugged smogtropolis, but even the most diehard northerner will admit that Shanghai is the more romantic of the two cities, with its very name conjuring up images of 19th century opium dens, jazz bars in the...
Sinica Podcast
01.26.15Inside the Property Revolution
from Sinica Podcast
Luigi Tomba, expert on municipal government in China, fellow at the Australian Centre on China and the World, and author of the book The Government Next Door: Neighborhood Politics in Urban China, is this week's Sinica Podcast guest. Since 2005...
Environment
01.23.15China’s Air Pollution: The Tipping Point
Last November, Beijing saw a stretch of solidly clear skies and the Chinese media coined a phrase to describe them: APEC blue. After the diplomats and businesspeople gathered in China’s capital for the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum...
Environment
01.21.15‘New Measures Needed’ To Take China’s Cars Off the Roads
from chinadialogue
As air pollution once more soared to hazardous levels last week in Beijing, in Washington a panel of Chinese and other international experts explained some of the solutions to taking cars off the roads in the world’s most populous country, but there...
ChinaFile Recommends
01.21.15China Labor Activists Say Facing Unprecedented Intimidation
Reuters
The number of strikes more than doubled in 2014 to 1,378 from 656 the year before, according to China Labor Bulletin, a Hong Kong-based advocacy group. April saw the biggest strike in decades, when about 40,000 employees of Adidas and Nike supplier...
The China Africa Project
01.15.15Religion Among African Immigrants in China
Nestled in apartments and offices throughout the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou are dozens of improvised churches that cater to the region’s Pentacostal Africans, largely from Nigeria. These churches not only serve the community’s religious...
ChinaFile Recommends
01.15.15China Is Using ‘Charlie Hebdo’ to Justify Its Own Crackdown on Free Speech
New Republic
“The world is diverse and there should be limits on press freedom,” read the editorial by Paris bureau chief Ying Qiang. “Unfettered and unprincipled satire, humiliation, and free speech are not acceptable.”