ChinaFile Recommends
12.09.12The Struggle of 15-Year-Old Hukou Protester Zhan Haite
ChinaGeeks
A 15-year-old girl has made waves in the Chinese press recently for her fight against Shanghai authorities after she was banned from taking the college entrance examination because she does not hold a Shanghaihukou(household registration). She and...
ChinaFile Recommends
12.03.12Decline of Primary Schools in Rural China: Causes and Consequences
China Policy Institute Blog
“Half of rural primary schools have disappeared between 2000 and 2010 and such a trend is still an ongoing process”, says Twenty-first Century Education Research Institution, a NGO based in Beijing. The rapid decline of primary schools in rural...
ChinaFile Recommends
12.01.12The Price of Blood: China Faces HIV/AIDS Epidemic
CNN
Near World AIDS Day, China's Vice Premier Li Keqiang said HIV/AIDS is "not only a medical issue but also a social challenge."
Media
12.01.12
Chinese AIDS Activist Endures “Degradation” in New York, Determined to Finish What She Started
Chinese people translate “New Yorker” into “New York Ke” to designate people living in New York City, including Chinese immigrants. But in Chinese, “ke” means “visitor” or “guest.” It has been a sad word in Chinese literature and poems for thousands...
Out of School
11.30.12
Heirs of Fairness?
An unusual debate on what may seem an arcane topic—China’s imperial civil service examinations—recently took place on the op-ed page of the The New York Times. The argument centered on the question of whether or not China during the past 1000 years...
ChinaFile Recommends
11.27.12Ten Ways to Investigate Transition in China
New York Times
How can students learn what kind of place China is today? The Learning Network and The New York Times gathered 10 different ways of looking at the country.
Culture
11.27.12
Remember to Tell the Truth
The recording of memory brings history to life and creates a legacy of its own. In 2010, documentary filmmaker Wu Wenguang launched the Memory Project to try to shine a light on the long-shrouded memories of one of modern China’s most traumatic...
ChinaFile Recommends
11.19.12The Headache of Mo Yan, China’s Nobel Prize Winner in Literature
Washington Post
Mo Yan had a tuxedo made for the December 10 prize gala in Stockholm and is studying the waltz, in case he's invited to dance.
ChinaFile Recommends
11.11.12China Considers Limiting Foreign Education Agents
New York Times
The Education Ministry is considerting restricting the international education agencies that help Chinese students study overseas.
ChinaFile Recommends
11.02.12One-Child Policy Up for Reform in China?
Associated Press
The unpopular policy should be phased out, says a Chinese government think tank.
My First Trip
10.24.12
Struggling with Antonioni
My first sight of Beijing was puzzling. It was October 1973, at the end of a very long flight, and the city seemed so dark I could hardly believe we had arrived.
In those days, flights to China were not allowed to cross Soviet airspace—the two...
ChinaFile Recommends
10.18.12Li Lei and Han Meimei, The love affair of a whole generation
Offbeat China
Two characters in China’s English textbook used 20 years ago are back, sparking a wave of nostalgia.
ChinaFile Recommends
10.14.12Oxford Stars Building New China Center
New York Times
Oxford University breaks ground on Dickson Poon China Center, with £10 million from Hong Kong philanthropist.
ChinaFile Recommends
09.24.12Profiles of Key Contemporary Chinese Intellectuals
China Story
He Weifang 贺卫方 is a Chinese law professor affiliated with Peking University (PKU). Before being given tenure at PKU in 1992, he was the editor at Comparative Law 比较法研究 and Peking University Law Journal 中外法学, both published by the...
ChinaFile Recommends
09.08.12Amid Protest, Hong Kong Retreats on 'National Education' Plan
New York Times
Faced with tens of thousands of protesters contending that a Beijing-backed plan for “moral and national education” amounted to brainwashing and political indoctrination, Hong Kong’s chief executive backpedaled somewhat on Saturday and revoked a...
ChinaFile Recommends
09.03.12Questioning Kristof on Chinese Education
New York Times
Nicholas Kristof last wrote about Chinese schools shortly after the release of some stunning news: on a comprehensive exam testing students in 65 countries, China had come in first – thirty spots ahead of the U.S. in math. Kristof...
ChinaFile Recommends
08.28.12Chinese Parents Defrauded by “Perfect” Education
Guardian
For ambitious Chinese parents, the opportunity was too good to miss – even with its 100,000 yuan (£9,950) price tag. Their children would learn to read books in just 20 seconds and identify poker cards by touch. The most talented would instantly see...
ChinaFile Recommends
08.28.12Parents Reject China’s Classrooms for Home Schooling
Agence France-Presse
Giving up his successful career as the head of a medical research firm to spend his days at home reading from children's story books was a tough choice for Chinese father Zhang Qiaofeng. But Zhang, one of a small but growing number of Chinese...
ChinaFile Recommends
08.24.12Iron Rice Bowl Redux? Official Jobs No. 1, Says Survey
WSJ: China Real Time Report
Government jobs are now the top choice for many of China’s job seekers, according to a survey released this week, in a finding that illustrates an undercurrent of unease in the world’s No. 2 economy.
ChinaFile Recommends
08.06.12Advising Chinese Leaders: Futile Efforts?
WSJ: China Real Time Report
At a recent conference of Chinese political scientists and international relations scholars in Beijing, a western academic remarked that he was struck by how Chinese scholars often seemed keen to use their research to come up with advice for the...
ChinaFile Recommends
07.30.12Hong Kong Protests Patriotism Classes
China Digital Times
Amid fears that the mainland is increasing their involvement in Hong Kong politics, the San Francisco Chronicle reports parents, students, and teachers took to the streets in Hong Kong to protest China’s planned curriculum change.
ChinaFile Recommends
07.26.12Educational Detente Across Taiwan Strait
New York Times
The government of Taiwan, the self-ruling island over which Beijing claims sovereignty, has been inching toward more amicable relations with the mainland in recent years. The full opening of the island’s universities to students from across the...
ChinaFile Recommends
07.23.12Chinese Students Living in Fear in the USA
Danwei
While there are certainly plenty of Chinese students overseas who are spoiled brats, often called ‘second generation rich’ and ‘second generation officials’ (fu erdai and guan erdai) who live off the fruits of their parents’ corruption or enterprise...
ChinaFile Recommends
07.19.12A Liberal Arts Education, Made in China
New York Times
No one, it seems, is pleased with China’s educational system. Chinese nationalists fret that students are graduating without the critical and creative skills necessary to compete globally. Foreign observers worry that heavy political indoctrination...
ChinaFile Recommends
07.19.12China's New Dictionary: Agricultural Cooperative Is Out, Hair Gel Is In
Time
When saying goodbye, people in China often say "Bye Bye." But until this July there was no Chinese way of writing that. There is now: Beijing's guardians of the language have deemed "Bai Bai" the correct written form, and it...
ChinaFile Recommends
07.19.12Detention for New Oriental
Wall Street Journal
The education of U.S. investors on the risks of overseas-listed Chinese stocks continues. Shares in New Oriental Education & Technology Group, one of China's largest private education providers, plunged 57% in the last two days, wiping...
Out of School
07.15.12
France’s Baccalauréat Sparks Debate on Chinese Education
What does one gain by working?Are all beliefs contrary to reason?Comment on an excerpt of Spinoza’s Theologico-Political Treatise Do we have a duty to seek the truth?Would we be freer without the state?Explicate an excerpt of Émile by Jean-...
ChinaFile Recommends
07.11.12The Uncertain Future of Beijing's Migrant Schools
China Digital Times
As the gap between China’s urban and rural economies continues to expand, the largest rural-urban migration in world history persists. When those from the countryside arrive in the city, the current hukou system blocks their access to the social...
ChinaFile Recommends
07.02.12Teaching Tiananmen
Perspectives on History
With more than two decades of hindsight, it has become clear that 1989 marked a key turning point in world history. It is now possible to analyze the momentous events of 1989 in a historical fashion, and also to teach history classes about them. In...
ChinaFile Recommends
06.30.12Burden of China's College Entrance Exams
New York Times
Millions of high school graduates across China have been furiously dialing telephone hot lines or gathering with family members around the home computer in recent days in a nail-biter of a ritual not unlike that of waiting for a winning lottery...
ChinaFile Recommends
06.27.12Got a Dream and an Idea, Go to China
New Yorker
America is not the only great power struggling with how to handle the future of foreigners in its midst. As the Supreme Court indicated in its mixed decision Monday on Arizona’s immigration-enforcement law, the question of how we regard those who...
ChinaFile Recommends
06.26.12Is Its Educational System Pulling China Up or Holding It Back?
Atlantic
China wants inventors and entrepreneurs, but its schools, built around the notorious gaokao exam, are still designed to produce cookie-cutter engineers and accountants.
Reports
06.25.12
U.S.-China Public Perceptions Opinion Survey 2012
Committee of 100
The re-establishment of U.S.-China relations in 1971 marked a strategic step that ended China’s isolation and transformed the global balance of power. Since that historic milestone, the United States as an established superpower and China as an...
Media
06.11.12
A Great Massacre, a Great Earthquake, and a Great Famine
The head of the Gansu branch of People’s Daily, Lin Zhibo, provoked the ire of many netizens for remarks he made regarding the Great Famine on his Weibo account. Lin claimed that in many of the villages in Anhui and Henan (the two provinces that...
Media
06.08.12
Students Tear Up Books Before Big Exam
The gaokao, China’s annual National Higher Education Entrance Examination, is known for being extremely difficult and a stressful rite of passage for Chinese students. Due to the society’s traditional emphasis on education, many Chinese people still...
ChinaFile Recommends
05.25.12Confucius Institutes Not About Confucius
Useless Tree
They are not about Confucius. Rather, the PRC government has chosen to use the name of Confucius as a trademark of sorts for a global soft power branding project. The Institutes, most of which in the US are hosted by colleges or universities, focus...
ChinaFile Recommends
05.22.12State Department Directive Could Disrupt Confucius Institutes
Chronicle of Higher Education
A policy directive sent by the U.S. Department of State to universities that sponsor Confucius Institutes suggests that the language and cultural centers that are a key piece of the Chinese government's diplomatic outreach will have to change...
Media
05.16.12
Du Fu Is Very Busy
The 1300th birthday anniversary of the great Chinese poet Du Fu will be celebrated this year. An illustration of Du Fu in Chinese literature textbooks has recently been the inspiration for a spat of creative graffiti and videos. In them, he has been...
Out of School
02.29.12
A New China Website Helps Dissertations Find Readers
Dissertations dominate the lives of doctoral students. A PhD candidate spends years researching, writing, and editing his or her dissertation, inching toward the day when the whole process is finished. Finally, he or she can leave behind the nagging...
Culture
02.28.12
The Educators
from Leap
The question of art education in China, like just about every question in China, is a complicated one, tied to the myriad issues facing a society in the throes of a massive transition. There is no easy solution, and acknowledging the obstacles is a...
Reports
01.01.12
A Preliminary Mapping of China-Africa Knowledge Networks
The Social Science Research Council
Given the growing importance of Chinese engagement in Africa, over the past year, the Conflict Prevention and Peace Forum (CPPF) of the SSRC has expanded its research engagement and policy outreach on China-Africa. The origins of this preliminary...
Sinica Podcast
12.16.11
Learning Chinese
from Sinica Podcast
Shortly after his arrival in China, the late great 19th-century Sinologist Robert Hart would write his frustrations in his private diary, confiding that the convoluted phonemes of the Chinese language struck him like nothing so much as “the sounds...
Reports
08.01.11
Measuring the Economic Gain of Investing in Girls
World Bank
This report discusses the economic impact of the exclusion of girls from productive employment in developing countries. The paper explores the linkages between investing in girls and potential increases in national income by examining three widely...
Reports
07.14.11
Strangers at Home: North Koreans in the South
International Crisis Group
As the number of defectors from North Korea arriving in the South has surged in the past decade, there is a growing understanding of how difficult it would be to absorb a massive flow of refugees. South Korea is prosperous and generous, with a...
My First Trip
07.09.11Nandehutu
In 1972, a man named Jack Chen showed up in New York. He was the younger son of Eugene Chen, who had been an associate of Sun Yat-sen’s and intermittently foreign minister for various GMD governments. Jack’s mother was Trinidadian. He grew up there...
Sinica Podcast
01.14.11
Amy Chua and the Tiger Mother Furor
from Sinica Podcast
Judging from the explosive reaction to her recent Wall Street Journal editorial, it’s clear that Amy Chua's memoir Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother has set off a storm of controversy over the appropriateness of “Chinese parenting” in America. Or...
Reports
01.01.11
Early Childhood Development and Education in China: Breaking the Cycle of Poverty and Improving Future Competitiveness
World Bank
Given China's goal to develop a harmonious society and to improve the competitiveness of its future workforce in order to overcome the challenges of an aging population and move toward a high-income society, there is an urgent need to identify...
Reports
04.12.08
Denied Status, Denied Education: Children of North Korean Women in China
Human Rights Watch
This report delves into the situation of the children of undocumented North Korean refugees and Chinese nationals in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture. It explains that many children of North Korean parents are not able to be registered with...
The NYRB China Archive
10.24.91John King Fairbank (1907–1991)
from New York Review of Books
John Fairbank, who died on September 14 at the age of eighty-four, read virtually all serious Western works on China. Reviewing them, principally for The New York Review in the last several years, was for him one way of keeping abreast of China...
The NYRB China Archive
12.02.82‘Red’ or ‘Expert’?
from New York Review of Books
Mao’s last decade was as full of confusion and surprises as the 1790s in France. In size and complexity the Cultural Revolution was of course a much bigger event than the French Revolution. At any rate it will be studied from many angles for a long...
The NYRB China Archive
03.23.72Who’s Who in China
from New York Review of Books
Written Chinese is extremely difficult. Before the revolutions of the twentieth century, the literary language was a barrier protecting the Confucian elite. Anyone who could jump over that barrier by passing the official examinations immediately...