ChinaFile Recommends
11.08.12In China, Self-Immolations Continue as Party Congress Opens
Los Angeles Times
As China launched its 18th Communist Party congress on Thursday, a record number of Tibetans immolated themselves in a stark illustration of the internal tensions facing the country's new leadership.Over a 48...
ChinaFile Recommends
11.02.12U.S. Rights Official Faults China on Tibetan Suppression
New York Times
Navi Pillay says she's disturbed by reports of detentions, disappearances and the excessive use of force.
ChinaFile Recommends
10.28.12Seven Tibetan Self-Immolations Hit China in One Week
Agence France-Presse
Two Tibetans set themselves on fire protesting Beijing's hardline rule, a rights group said.
Features
09.18.12
A Mosque of Their Own
The women of Sangpo know well they are the guardians of a 300-year-old custom that sets them apart in Islam and they are increasingly mindful that economic development could be that tradition’s undoing.Sangpo, a dusty hamlet about two hours from the...
Video
09.18.12
Last Call to Prayer
China’s Hui Muslims are unique in many respects. The country’s second-largest ethnic minority share linguistic and cultural ties with the majority in China that have allowed them to practice their religion with less interference and fewer...
Excerpts
09.17.12
The North Peak
The “voluntary” insurance at the entrance had cost just two yuan, about thirty-five cents, but I had been fleeced all the way from Beijing and somehow this was the final straw. Why did everything have to be so crass and commercialized? I whined to...
ChinaFile Recommends
09.04.12Jesus vs. Mao? An Interview with Yuan Zhiming
New York Review of Books
In the intellectual ferment leading up to the 1989 Tiananmen protests, a much-watched series on Chinese television called River Elegy became closely identified with the hopes of China’s reformers. The six-part series, which used...
The NYRB China Archive
09.04.12Jesus vs. Mao?
from New York Review of Books
In the intellectual ferment leading up to the 1989 Tiananmen protests, a much-watched series on Chinese television called River Elegy became closely identified with the hopes of China’s reformers. The six-part series, which used the Yellow River as...
ChinaFile Recommends
08.31.12Does China's Next Leader Have a Soft Spot for Tibet
Reuters
Few people know what Xi, whose ascent to the leadership is likely to be approved at a Communist Party congress later this year, thinks of Tibet or the Dalai Lama. But his late father, Xi Zhongxun, a liberal-minded former vice premier, had a...
Out of School
08.30.12
Refresher Course: The Silk Road
The “Silk Road” was a stretch of shifting, unmarked paths across massive expanses of deserts and mountains—not a real road at any point or time. Archeologists have found few ancient Silk Road bridges, gates, or paving stones like those along Rome’s...
The NYRB China Archive
08.16.12
News from the Dalai Lama
from New York Review of Books
“I told President Obama the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party are missing a part of the brain, the part that contains common sense,” the Dalai Lama said to me during our conversation in London in mid-June.But it can be put back in. I am hopeful...
ChinaFile Recommends
07.19.12A Catholic Wedding in Beijing (video)
New York Times
In China, people are flocking to the city’s oldest Catholic church for a sense of community, entertainment, or a wedding ceremony, even if they are not Catholic.
ChinaFile Recommends
07.16.12Yu Jie on His New Biography of Liu Xiaobo
New York Review of Books
Yu Jie is one of China’s most prominent essayists and critics, with more than thirty books to his name. His latest work is a biography of his friend, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo, that was published in Chinese in Hong Kong a few weeks ago...
The NYRB China Archive
07.14.12China’s ‘Fault Lines’
from New York Review of Books
Yu Jie is one of China’s most prominent essayists and critics, with more than thirty books to his name. His latest work is a biography of his friend, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo, that was published in Chinese in Hong Kong a few weeks ago...
ChinaFile Recommends
07.10.12Ordination of Bishops Increases Tensions Between China and Vatican
New York Times
In a sign of rising tensions between the Vatican and China, authorities in recent days have ordained one Catholic bishop without Rome’s consent and detained another after he made a dramatic break with the country’s Communist-run religious hierarchy.
ChinaFile Recommends
06.26.12Interview with Chen Guangcheng
New York Review of Books
The Chinese legal activist Chen Guangcheng arrived in the United States last month following top-level negotiations between US and Chinese officials. Several weeks earlier, Chen had dramatically escaped from house arrest in his village in northeast...
The NYRB China Archive
06.21.12Why the Dalai Lama is Hopeful
from New York Review of Books
“I told President Obama the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party are missing a part of the brain, the part that contains common sense,” the Dalai Lama said to me during our conversation in London Wednesday.But it can be put back in. I am hopeful...
ChinaFile Recommends
06.06.12In Chinese Blogosphere, Consensus on Abortion
What does it mean to be a “pro-life” Chinese person? Recently, many Western media have been calling Chen Guangcheng, the Chinese dissident who fled China by seeking protection at U.S. embassy in Beijing, a pro-life activist. Conservative websites...
The NYRB China Archive
05.29.12Finding Zen and Book Contracts in Beijing
from New York Review of Books
It’s a Sunday afternoon and Beijing’s biggest bookstore is preparing for a major event: the launch of a new book by a bestselling American author, who will be on hand for the occasion. Six-foot banners on the sidewalk out front announce the talk,...
The NYRB China Archive
01.13.12Notes from a Chinese Cave: Qigong’s Quiet Return
from New York Review of Books
Lift up your head Calm your eyes Look far away, as far as you can Look beyond the walls What do you see?The Jinhua caves are located in a wooded, hilly area about 200 miles southwest of Shanghai. The most famous cave, Double Dragon Cave, is entered...
The NYRB China Archive
10.29.11Are China’s Rulers Getting Religion?
from New York Review of Books
With worsening inflation, a slowing economy, and growing concerns about possible social unrest, China’s leaders have a lot on their plates these days. And yet when the Communist Party met at its annual plenum earlier this week, the issue given...
The NYRB China Archive
04.07.11On the Sacred Mountain
from New York Review of Books
A powerful, unexpected scene suddenly surfaces near the beginning of Colin Thubron’s characteristically beautiful, though uncharacteristically haunted, new book of travel. As he walks through the mountains of Nepal, toward the holy peak of Mount...
The NYRB China Archive
05.24.10Talking About Tibet: An Open Dialogue Between Chinese Citizens and the Dalai Lama
from New York Review of Books
Following is an English translation of an Internet dialogue between the Dalai Lama and Chinese citizens that took place on May 21. The exchange was organized by Wang Lixiong, a Chinese intellectual known for his writing on Tibet and for theorizing...
The NYRB China Archive
04.09.09‘A Hell on Earth’
from New York Review of Books
“The situation inside Tibet is almost like a military occupation,” I heard the Dalai Lama tell an interviewer last November, when I spent a week traveling with him across Japan. “Everywhere. Everywhere, fear, terror. I cannot remain indifferent.”...
Reports
03.17.09
The Tibetan Policy Act of 2002: Background and Implementation
Peony Lui
Congressional Research Service
U.S. policy on Tibet is governed by the Tibetan Policy Act of 2002 (TPA), enacted as part of the Foreign Relations Authorization Act of FY2003 (P.L. 107-228). In addition to establishing a number of U.S. principles with respect to human rights,...
Reports
06.30.08
Tibet: Problems, Prospects, and U.S. Policy
Peony Lui
Congressional Research Service
On March 10, 2008, a series of demonstrations began in Lhasa and other Tibetan regions of China to mark the 49th anniversary of an unsuccessful Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule in 1959. The demonstrations appeared to begin peacefully with small...
Reports
06.01.08
Tibet Autonomous Region: Access Denied
Amnesty International
This report, written in the aftermath of the widespread Tibetan unrest in Tibet and Tibetan regions of China in the spring of 2008, addresses the Chinese government with immediate demands. In cracking down on unrest, the Chinese government sealed...
Reports
05.14.08
China’s Protestants
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
The number of religious believers in China continues to grow almost exponentially, far outpacing population growth. Of the officially tolerated faiths, Christianity has grown at the fastest pace. As of 2005, Christians were approaching 5 percent of...
Reports
12.17.01
China’s Relations with Central Asian States and Problems with Terrorism
Peony Lui
Congressional Research Service
Over a number of years, the United States has been actively engaged in efforts to improve human rights conditions in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). However, some analysts suggest that the events of September 11, 2001, may make it more...
The NYRB China Archive
10.04.01The Muslims of Tibet
from New York Review of Books
Jamyang Norbu, writes in response to Ian Buruma’s article “Tibet Disenchanted” and Buruma replies.
The NYRB China Archive
05.17.01On the Road
from New York Review of Books
Books that “follow in the steps of” a well-known traveler are more and more ubiquitous these days, but many of them are slightly suspect. Following in the footsteps of some distinguished predecessor can look a little like a gesture of defeat,...
The NYRB China Archive
10.21.99Room at the Top
from New York Review of Books
The last time I was in the Himalayas, I met a young, highly Westernized Tibetan who, misled perhaps by my Indian features (born in England, I’ve never lived in the subcontinent), started talking to me about the strange ways of the exotic foreigners...
The NYRB China Archive
01.15.98Lost Horizons
from New York Review of Books
Tibet has always cast a dangerously strong spell upon visitors from abroad. When the first major European expedition marched on Lhasa in 1904, led by Colonel Younghusband at the behest of his old friend Lord Curzon, it ended up slaughtering in just...
The NYRB China Archive
06.12.97Peking’s Choice
from New York Review of Books
The recent sentence to six years in prison of one of Tibet’s supreme monks shows Peking’s determination to dominate all events in the region and bring to an end a period of intense confusion within the Chinese Communist Party. For a brief time the...
The NYRB China Archive
10.22.92The Other China
from New York Review of Books
On the same late fall day in 1991, two stories about China appeared in the Western press. One announced that thirty-five drug dealers had just been executed in the southwestern Chinese city of Kunming, probably by a single police bullet fired into...
The NYRB China Archive
05.30.85Mission Impossible
from New York Review of Books
John Hersey’s The Call is an epitaph for 120 years of Protestant missions in China. From 1830 to 1950, the China missions had a steadily growing place in American public sentiment. At the turn of the century, John R. Mott of the Student Volunteer...