Books

02.25.13

Star Spangled Security

Harold Brown with Joyce Winslow
Former U.S. Secretary of Defense Harold Brown served during the hottest part of the Cold War when the Soviet Union presented an existential threat to America. In Star Spangled Security, Dr. Brown, one of the most respected wise men of American foreign policy, gives an insider’s view of U.S. national security strategy during the Carter administration, relates lessons learned, and bridges them to current challenges facing America.Brown describes his part in the SALT negotiations, the normalization of relations with China, the Camp David Accords, the development of a new generation of ballistic missiles, and more. Drawing on his earlier years as the director of the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, as director of defense research and engineering, as Air Force secretary, and as president of Caltech, Brown uses his hard-won wisdom, especially during the painful Iran hostage crisis, to offer specific recommendations and key questions to ponder as America copes with challenges in a turbulent world.Highly readable, Star Spangled Security is for anyone wishing to better understand the debates about defense and its budget, its effect on the entire economy, and America’s relationship with allies during conflict and peace. Brown’s access to the leading forces in national security over sixty years spans ten presidents, giving the reader entrée into the inner circle of decision makers.Since leaving public office, Brown has served on the boards of directors of a dozen corporations. His unique economic, military, research, university, and government experience—at the top of all institutions he served—makes his a voice well worth heeding. —Brookings Institution Press

China Muscles U.S. in the Pacific

John Garnaut
Age
Within two decades the United States will be forced out of the western Pacific, says a senior Chinese military officer, amid concerns that increasingly militarised great-power rivalry could lead to war.

Vows of Change in China Belie Private Warning

Chris Buckley
New York Times
Xi Jinping told party insiders during a visit to Guangdong Province in December, China must still heed the “deeply profound” lessons of the former Soviet Union.

Conversation

02.15.13

U.S.-China Tensions: What Must Kerry Do?

Dorinda Elliott, Elizabeth Economy & more
Dorinda Elliott:On a recent trip to China, I heard a lot of scary talk of potential war over the disputed Diaoyu Islands—this from both senior intellectual types and also just regular people, from an elderly calligraphy expert to a middle-aged...

North Korea, China Do Their Usual Dance

Joseph Bosco
Christian Science Monitor
North Korea and China have done it again—call it the Pyongyang-Beijing two-step. Though Beijing registered ‘firm opposition’ to North Korea’s nuclear weapons test, it is unlikely to exercise its unique leverage on North Korea to encourage change.

American Policy Towards China: Getting Beyond the Friend-Or-Foe Fallacy

Ely Ratner and Steven Weber
New America
It is not widely accepted that any meaningful relationship can be boiled down to a single index that quantifies where it is at any moment and whether it is “better’’ or “worse” than a week or a month ago.

Waiting for the Next Act

Dorinda Elliott
Cairo Review
“The Taoists have always spoken of an un-carved block, and I think that we should look on the new Chinese leadership as being something like that,” says Orville Schell, Arthur Ross director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society.

Ordering Off the Menu in China Debates

Jeffrey Wassterstrom
Oxford University Press Blog
Mo Yan’s Nobel Prize win last fall led some foreign commentators into an “Ai Weiwei or Zhang Yimou” trap. The former is an artist locked into an antagonistic relationship with the government, the latter a filmmaker who has been...

Five Ways China Could Become a Democracy

Minxin Pei
Diplomat
Few have seriously thought about the probability and the various plausible scenarios of a regime transition in China—until now.

Rebuilding a Relationship, an Interview with Japan’s Ambassador to China

Huang Shan and Takehiro Masutomo
Japan's new envoy to Beijing, Masato Kitera, says his country will never escalate tensions with China, and points out the two countries have a range of issues they cooperate on.

Conversation

02.13.13

North Korea: How Much More Will China Take and How Should the U.S. Respond?

Winston Lord, Tai Ming Cheung & more
China is increasingly frustrated with North Korea and may even see more clearly that its actions only serve to increase allied unity, stimulate Japanese militarism and accelerate missile defense. For all these reasons the U.S. should lean on Beijing...

Books

02.12.13

Zhao Ziyang and China’s Political Future

Guoguang Wu, Helen Lansdowne (Editors)
What legacies have previous reformers like Zhao Ziyang left to today’s China? Does China have feasible political alternatives to today’s repressive ‘market Leninism’ and corrupt ‘state capitalism’? Does Zhao’s legacy indicate an alternative to the past and for the future?For those who are familiar with the development of Chinese politics since the reform years, Zhao is now widely regarded as a major architect of the nation’s profound transition. His contributions to China’s post-Mao development are rich and multi faceted, including those on rural and urban economic reforms extending to accountable governance, liberal policies concerning domestic affairs and China’s foreign relations.Featuring contributions from leading experts in the field such as Richard Baum and Xiaonong Cheng, this book explores the historical development of China’s political reform issues, and how his political legacies are relevant to China’s political development since the 1980s to the future. Using recently translated recollection articles by veteran reformers who worked with Zhao in the 1980s, like Du Runsheng, An Zhiwen, Li Rui, Bao Tong, Zhao Ziyang and China's Political Future is a valuable contribution for students and researchers interested in the Chinese politics, Asian politics and political development in Asia.—Routledge

Zhuang Zedong, Skilled in China Foreign Relations and Ping-Pong, Dies at 72

Douglas Martin
New York Times
In 1971, at the world table tennis championships in Japan, an American player mistakenly boarded a bus carrying the Chinese team. The team had been told not to talk to Westerners, and an awkward silence descended. Ten minutes elapsed. Then the best...

In China, Shock and Acceptance of Pope’s Resignation

Didi Kirsten Tatlow
New York Times
In China, where official relations with the Vatican are a “never ending crisis,” as the Vatican Insider put it recently, the news of the resignation of Pope Benedict has been slow to spread. The Chinese state doesn’t recognize the Pope as the leader...

North Korea’s Nuclear Test: Are You Listening America?

Economist
EARS shut to the impending chorus of international condemnation, North Korea conducted its third nuclear test on February 12th. It said the detonation was of a “smaller and light” atomic bomb that was different from its previous two, and that it had...

Nuclear Test Poses Big Challenge to China’s New Leader

Jane Perlez
New York Times
North Korea's nuclear test in defiance of China’s warnings leaves that country’s new leader, Xi Jinping, with a choice: Does he upset North Korea just a bit by agreeing to stepped up United Nations sanctions, or does he rattle the regime by...

Greenland: China’s Foothold in Europe?

Paula Briscoe
Council on Foreign Relations
China’s current and planned investments in Greenland raise concerns, not only about Chinese access to more of the world’s resources but also about China’s longer term objectives and the foothold in Europe that a strong partnership with Greenland...

Staying Safe During Spring Festival: A Teacher’s Advice to his Students

Jeremiah Jenne
Rectified.name
An actual email from one foreign teacher to his Chinese students—he thought it also might be useful to any first time Spring Festival-ers out there.

Media

02.11.13

Covering China: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow

On February 5, 2013, ChinaFile celebrated its official launch by bringing together a panel of former and current New York Times correspondents, whose collective China experience spans the course of half a century, to discuss their coverage of China...

Vipers and Beasts in the Year of the Little Dragon

Geremie Barme
China Story
A certain wariness surrounds the Snake, one of the twelve zoological signs of the traditional Chinese calendar, and not only because the reptile inspires fear and repulsion. 

Japan Protests to China After Radar Pointed At Vessel

Kiyoshi Takenaka
Reuters
A Chinese vessel pointed a type of radar normally used to help guide missiles at a Japanese navy ship near disputed East China Sea islets, prompting the Japanese government to lodge a protest with China, Japanese public broadcaster NHK said.

Reformers Aim to Get China to Live up to Own Constitution

Edward Wong and Jonathan Ansfield
New York Times
After the chaos of the Cultural Revolution, the surviving Communist Party leaders pursued a project that might sound familiar to those in the West: Write a constitution that enshrines individual rights and ensures rulers are subject to law, so that...

(Essay) Masters of Subserviance

Louisa Lim
New York Times
The Chinese author Wang Xiaofang learned to write corruption exposés the hard way. His decade as a pen-pushing civil servant culminated in a three-year investigation for corruption while his boss, the deputy mayor of the rust-belt city of Shenyang,...

Xu Liangying, 92, Scientist and Advocate, Dies

Chris Buckley
New York Times
“Superstition is the great enemy of truth,” Xu told a Chinese magazine, Caijing, last year. “We must use science and democracy to eradicate modern superstitions of every kind, to eradicate superstitions that are born of loyalty.”

Books

01.31.13

Tombstone

Yang Jisheng
An estimated 36 million Chinese men, women, and children starved to death during China’s Great Leap Forward in the late 1950s and early ’60s. One of the greatest tragedies of the twentieth century, the famine is poorly understood, and in China is still euphemistically referred to as the “three years of natural disaster.”As a journalist with privileged access to official and unofficial sources, Yang Jisheng spent twenty years piecing together the events that led to mass nationwide starvation, including the death of his own father. Finding no natural causes, Yang lays the deaths at the feet of China’s totalitarian Communist system and the refusal of officials at every level to value human life over ideology and self-interest.Tombstone is a testament to inhumanity and occasional heroism that pits collective memory against the historical amnesia imposed by those in power. Stunning in scale and arresting in its detailed account of the staggering human cost of this tragedy, Tombstone is written both as a memorial to the lives lost—an enduring tombstone in memory of the dead—and in hopeful anticipation of the final demise of the totalitarian system. —Farrar, Straus and Giroux

China’s Ethnic Manchus Rediscovering Their Roots

Barbara Demick
Los Angeles Times
Aristocracy is no longer a dirty word in China, and those with ties to the nation's last imperial rulers are now embracing their past.

Conversation

01.30.13

China, Japan and the Islands: What Do the Tensions Mean?

Orville Schell, John Delury & more
How did the Diaoyu, Spratly, and Paracel islands come to replace Taiwan as the main source of tension for maritime Asia? And how are we to explain the fact that China’s foreign policy toward its Asian neighbors has now morphed from such slogans as...

China Announces Naval Exercises Amid Japan Tensions

Christopher Bodeen
Associated Press
China said Wednesday that its navy would proceed with a deep-water training exercise amid a continuing spat with Japan over disputed islands in the East China Sea that has sparked regular confrontations among patrol boats from each side.

China Leader Affirms Policy on Islands

Christopher Buckley
New York Times
China won't bargain over what it deems to be “core” territorial and security interests, the country’s top leader, Xi Jinping, said in his first published speech setting out his foreign policy views since taking over as head of the Communist...

Dissident Chen Sure 1-Party China Will Change

The Associated Press
Associated Press
“It’s an inevitability of history, whether the party likes it or not,” Chen said. “Once the people are waking up, change is coming for sure.”

Xi Jinping’s Opposition to Political Reforms Laid out in Leaked Internal Speech

John Kennedy
South China Morning Post
Beijing-based writer Gao Yu’s writing on a speech Xi Jinping made during his “southern  tour” in December, suggests Xi, who blames those not “man enough” to do what had to be done to save the Soviet Communist Party from itself, has even...

Beijing Observation: Xi Jinping the Man

Gao Yu
Seeing Red in China
Xi Jinping’s “new southern tour speech,” made in December, began circulating last week in the party. It reads like a confirmation of Harvard Professor Roderick MacFarquhar’s prediction that the likelihood of the Chinese Communist Party reforming...

New Komeito, LDP at Odds Over How to Improve Ties with China

Norihisa Hoshino and Atsushi Okudera
Asahi Shimbun
New Komeito leader Natsuo Yamaguchi's meeting on Jan. 25 with Chinese leader Xi Jinping highlighted the differences emerging within the ruling coalition over how to improve ties with Beijing.

Peak Toil

Economist
In the first of two articles about the impact of China’s one-child policy, The Economist looks at China's shrinking working-age population.

China Wouldn’t Mind a Unified Korea--Just Not Yet

Matt Schiavenza
Atlantic
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, China has had the dubious distinction of being North Korea’s only ally and friend on the world stage.

Sen. Kerry’s Approach to China as Secretary of State

Nina Hachigian
Center for American Progress
On his first trip to China as Secretary of State, Sen. Kerry should make the rhetorical case for a positive future vision of the bilateral relationship based on rules.

Books

01.24.13

Shangri-La

Michael Yamashita
The legendary Chamagudao, the Tea Horse Road, winds through dizzying mountain passes, across famed rivers like the Mekong and the Yangtze, and past monasteries and meadows in a circuitous route from Sichuan and Yunnan provinces in western China to the Tibetan capital city of Lhasa. Actually a network of roads, trails, and highways, rather than one distinct route, the Chamagudao once stretched for almost 1400 miles (2350 km)—a conduit along which the historic trade between the mighty Chinese empire and the nomadic Tibetans linked remote villages and ethnic groups. The Chinese military needed strong horses for their wars against Mongol invaders from the north, and the fiercely religious Tibetans desired tea for sacred rituals and sustenance. Once tea was introduced into Tibet around the 10th century, demand for it grew. Tea soon became a staple for Tibetans, especially when combined with their other staple, yak butter. But with Tibet’s extreme temperatures and altitudes, tea cultivation on a large scale was impossible. This set the stage for the tea-horse trade, which, by the 11th century, flourished along the Chamagudao, continuing until the 1950s. But getting these prized commodities to their growing markets was no easy feat. To transport the tea over the mountains meant many months of hard and dangerous travel for the hundreds of porters.Today, as Chinese culture merges with and even absorbs Tibetan traditions, the Tea Horse Road is a relic of a vastly different time. The Chinese are rapidly paving dirt roads to make highways for cars and trucks. Soon there will be little evidence of this once vital trade route. Though horses are no longer a military imperative for the Chinese army, Tibet has a new commodity that is in much demand in China. A homely caterpillar infected by a parasitic fungus has replaced the horse trade in Tibet. The yartsa gombu is prized for its medicinal qualities. Now Tibetans nomads drive Land Cruisers and motorcycles instead of horses, thanks to the profits they make collecting and selling the miracle mushroom worth more than gold. So trade continues, even though relics of the tea-horse trade are becoming harder to find. Following the Chamagudao, this book is a rare intimate look into the changing world of Tibet—both ancient and modern, sacred and commonplace, the rarefied and the gritty—before the legends and mysteries of the Tea Horse road disappear into the Tibetan mist. —White Star {chop}

Enduring Mao’s China Led Geomagic’s Ping Fu To See The World In 3D

Anthony Wing Kosner
Forbes
Bend Not Break is  Ping Fu's memoir of growing up during the Cultural Revolution and winding up founding a successful, important tech company in America.

Viewpoint

01.24.13

China at the Tipping Point?

Perry Link & Xiao Qiang
Of all the transformations that Chinese society has undergone over the past fifteen years, the most dramatic has been the growth of the Internet. Information now circulates and public opinions are now expressed on electronic bulletin boards with...

Ex-China Leader Steps Back, Fueling Speculation

Chris Buckley
New York Times
A decade after Jiang Zemin stepped down as China’s top leader he has used the death of a former rival to signal that he may allow his political shadow to recede.

(Editorial) Fate of the World Rests with SIno-U.S. Ties

Global Times
The gap between the strength of China and the US will narrow. Previous experiences in international politics will be viewed as realistic reasons to exacerbate tensions between the two sides. This is a dangerous era.

When Tibet Loved China

Isaac Stone Fish
Foreign Policy
Rare Cultural Revolution Era photos from the Land of Snows.

The Next War?

Michael Klare
TomDispatch
China, Japan, and various other Asian countries insist a group of tiny islands are theirs alone. Toss in national pride and you have the potential for one of the dumber, more destructive face-offs in recent history.

China Says U.S. Culpable in Japan Island Dispute

The Associated Press
Associated Press
China says the U.S. has "undeniable historical responsibility" in Beijing's dispute with Japan over islands in the East China Sea.

A New Opportunity for China-South Korea Relations Under Park Geun-hye and Xi Jinping?

Scott A. Snyder
Council on Foreign Relations
South Korea and China are natural economic partners, but North Korea continues to rear its head as a challenging sticking point between the two sides.

China Seeks Peaceful End to Dispute as Japan Pledges Calm

Michael Wei, Stephen Tan and Isabel...
Bloomberg
China wants to settle territorial issues peacefully and criticized U.S. Secretary of State Clinton for comments made after she met Japan’s Foreign Minister.

Infographic Map: Territorial Disputes Involving Japan

The New York Times
New York Times
Territorial disputes linked to Japan’s 20th-century military expansion across Asia, which ended in World War II, persist today.

Abe Adviser: Japan, China Need “Rules of the Game”

Reuters
Reuters
China scrambled two J-10 fighters last week after two Japanese F-15s followed a Chinese military aircraft on a "routine patrol".

The Drums of War: China and Japan Square Up

The Economist
Economist
Watch Chinese TV these days and you might conclude that the outbreak of war with Japan over what it calls the Senkaku and China the Diaoyu islands is imminent.

Talking Trust with China's Army

Didi Kirsten Tatlow
New York Times
With suspicion apparently the order of the day in East and Southeast Asia, an American scholar's visit to a Chinese military forum turned up some fascinating things to say.

Viewpoint

01.15.13

Will Xi Jinping Differ from His Predecessors?

Andrew J. Nathan
As part of our continuing series on China’s recent leadership transition, Arthur Ross Fellow Ouyang Bin sat down with political scientist Andrew Nathan, who published his latest book, China’s Search for Security, in September.In the three videos...

China Censorship Protest "Living in Truth" (Opinion)

Christian Science Monitor Editorial...
Christian Science Monitor
Protests erupt following a strike by journalists at a Chinese newspaper whose editorial on free speech was censored. Unlike most other protests in China, this one is about living in the truth.

The Old Fears of China’s New Leaders

Jonathan Mirsky from New York Review of Books
I felt a shudder of déjà vu watching the mounting protests inside China this week of the Communist Party for censoring an editorial in Southern Weekend, a well-known liberal newspaper in the southern city of Guangzhou. It is all too similar to the...

Why China and Japan Can't Get Along (Opinion)

Odd Arne Westad
New York Times
There are few societies on earth more complementary than China's and Japan's. But Japan is afraid of China’s rise, and China is troubled by Japan.

My First Trip

12.31.12

After Ping Pong, Before Kissinger

Robert Keatley
My first trip to China apparently began in Montreal.It was April 1971, and the American ping-pong team had just been invited to China, opening the public part of the complex diplomacy that eventually brought Richard Nixon to Beijing and direct...

Caixin Media

12.28.12

Uncertain Future for Architectural Treasures

Nestled between mountains and a winding river in a scenic corner of Shanxi province is Zhongyang County, the home of an exquisite Confucian temple built during the Ming dynasty.The colorful wooden temple graced this idyllic valley for hundreds of...

Out of School

12.24.12

Politics and the Chinese Language

Perry Link
The awarding of the 2012 Nobel Prize in Literature to the Chinese novelist Mo Yan has given rise to energetic debate, both within China’s borders and beyond. Earlier this month, ChinaFile ran an essay by Chinese literature scholar Charles Laughlin...

Beijing's Doomsday Problem

Ian Johnson
New York Review of Books
Over the past 10 days, China's been riveted by accounts of what authorities call a doomsday cult: the church of Almighty God. 

In the People’s Liberation Army

Mo Yan
New York Review of Books
Mo Yan, recent recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature, describes an experience in the People's Liberation Army in the 1970s. This text is excerpted from his part fiction, part memoir Change.

In China, New Leadership and New Style

Bill Bishop
New York Times
Xi Jinping is hitching himself to Deng Xiaoping’s legacy and style and is serious about reinvigorating reforms.