Viewpoint
01.22.21
In Xinjiang, Rare Protests Came Amid Lockdown
Six months after China rolled out its first coronavirus lockdown in Wuhan in late January 2020, Urumqi was placed under quarantine. The first lockdown specifically targeting the capital of the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, rather than the...
Reports
01.12.21
Precarious Progress
Darius Longarino
OutRight Action International
Whether state decisionmakers in the coming years and decades will pursue policies to protect the equal rights for LGBT people will come down to a mix of ideology, pragmatism, and public pressure. LGBT advocates are striving to turn that calculus in...
The NYRB China Archive
01.12.21
China’s First Big #MeToo Case Tests the Party
from New York Review of Books
In November, a court at last notified Zhou Xiaoxuan, known more commonly by her nickname, Xianzi, that it would try her case, a civil lawsuit filed in 2018 against television host Zhu Jun, who she alleges sexually harassed her. But when the trial...
Viewpoint
12.09.20
How the CCP Took over the Most Sacred of Uighur Rituals
The rooster hadn’t even stopped his crowing when the police arrived at my Uighur host’s courtyard in rural Turpan one early spring morning in 2008. Although they spoke calmly, almost apologetically, the uniformed Uighur officers demanded that the...
The NYRB China Archive
11.19.20
China’s Clampdown on Hong Kong
from New York Review of Books
Hong Kongers demonstrated about everything from the removal of hawkers selling fish balls during the Chinese New Year to fare increases on mass transit (which had also provoked protests under British rule). But mostly they have demonstrated against...
Conversation
09.25.20
Technical Difficulties
Citing national security concerns, the Trump administration announced September 18 that it was banning both TikTok and WeChat from mobile app stores starting Sunday, with further usage bans to come. While that date came and went without any impact...
Conversation
08.27.20
The Future of China Studies in the U.S.
As an extraordinarily fraught school year begins, the study of China on U.S. campuses (or their new virtual equivalents), as well as China’s role in university life more broadly, has recently become a subject of scrutiny and debate. What is the...
Viewpoint
08.20.20
How To Teach China This Fall
The coming academic year presents unique challenges for university instructors teaching content related to China. The shift to online education, the souring of U.S.-China relations, and new national security legislation coming from Beijing have...
Conversation
06.30.20
How Should Democracies Respond to China’s New National Security Law for Hong Kong?
July 1 will mark 23 years since Hong Kong’s return to Chinese sovereignty. Each of those years—and many that preceded them—has seen its share of disquiet over the future of the territory’s way of life and about the resilience of “one country, two...
Conversation
06.16.20
China’s Zoom Bomb
In the lead-up to the 31st anniversary of the Tiananmen Square demonstrations this spring, Zoom, the U.S.-based company whose online meeting platform has rocketed to global prominence amid the COVID-19 pandemic, received requests from China’s...
Conversation
05.19.20
What Are the Right and the Wrong Ways for the U.S. to Support Taiwan?
What are the right and wrong ways for the U.S. to support Taiwan? Traditionally, America’s goals have been to deter the mainland from aggression and coercion, support Taiwan’s democratic system, strengthen economic ties, and help it maintain...
03.05.20

China Alters Civil Society Rules, Allowing More Groups to Respond to Coronavirus
As the COVID-19 epidemic continues in China, so do the efforts of civil society organizations and concerned citizens to mitigate the harm. In the official approach to managing their involvement, there have been clumsy force-of-habit measures from...
Postcard
10.17.19
‘If We Give up on Our Husbands Today, Tomorrow Our Children Will Be Ashamed of Us’
This is a story about fear and the attempt to conquer fear. The wives of some of the lawyers who disappeared in China’s “709” crackdown have suffered house arrest, threats, and suppression. In their search to find their husbands, they hope no longer...
Books
10.04.19

The New Art of War
Brick Tower Press: The challenge is this: How can America’s fractured democracy and diverse society respond to a centrally orchestrated strategy from China that ultimately may challenge its interests and values?Some Chinese-Americans and Chinese residents—perhaps only a relative handful—have cooperated in obtaining technology for China. And many Chinese nationals who obtained years of experience working at American companies have returned to China to help competitors there.{chop}
Conversation
08.27.19
Can China’s Government Replace Hong Kong?
As the Hong Kong protests enter their fourth month with no end in sight, on August 18 Beijing announced that the nearby Chinese metropolis of Shenzhen would again become a new type of special economic zone. In a clear message to Hong Kong, the plan...
Viewpoint
08.08.19
The U.S. Recently Erected a New Hurdle to U.S.-China Academic Cooperation. Here’s What It Might Mean.
A recent move by the U.S. Department of Commerce reminds us that academic relationships are not immune from the effects of deteriorating U.S.-China relations. In April 2019, the Department included several Chinese universities on its Unverified List...
Viewpoint
08.02.19
‘Once Their Mental State Is Healthy, They Will Be Able to Live Happily in Society’
We should pause before impetuously tracing the practice of describing Islam as an illness, disease, or even cancer to “Western” politicians. While the United States-led “War on Terror” and subsequent global anxieties over Islam have undeniably...
Conversation
06.19.19
Hong Kong in Protest
On June 16, an estimated 2 million people took to the streets to protest the Hong Kong government’s handling of a proposed extradition bill. This followed two massive demonstrations against the bill earlier in the month, including one where police...
Viewpoint
06.19.19
What Does the Pause of Hong Kong’s Extradition Bill Mean?
The Hong Kong people’s historic mass protests during the past 10 days have demonstrated their awareness that the now suspended extradition bill proposed by Chief Executive Carrie Lam represented a threat to Hong Kong’s promised “high degree of...
Viewpoint
05.31.19
Taiwan and Hong Kong Have a Stake in Mainland China’s Political Development. They Should Act on It.
A range of observers and experts predicted that mainland China’s rapid economic modernization since the early 1990s would lead to social and political liberalization. Needless to say, that has not come to pass. The mainland’s economic reforms have...
Features
05.15.19
ChinaFile Presents: Hong Kong’s Relationship with Beijing, An Update
ChinaFile hosted a conversation at the Asia Society on May 9, with veteran Hong Kong legislator and rule of law advocate Martin Lee, longtime journalist and media rights expert Mak Yin-ting, and democracy activist Nathan Law, moderated by ChinaFile...
Depth of Field
02.25.19
Living by the Rivers
from Yuanjin Photo
If the stories in this edition of Depth of Field share a common thread—apart from their distinguished photographic storytelling—it’s their interest in the flux and churn of life in China in 2019, where nothing seems fixed and pressure of constant...
The NYRB China Archive
02.07.19
‘Reeducating’ Xinjiang’s Muslims
from New York Review of Books
In a courtroom in Zharkent, Kazakhstan, in July 2018, a former kindergarten principal named Sayragul Sauytbay calmly described what Chinese officials continue to deny: a vast new gulag of “de-extremification training centers” has been created for...
Conversation
02.02.19
What Do the Huawei Indictments Mean for the Future of Global Tech?
The United States indictments against Huawei look set to significantly worsen already tense relations between China and the U.S. As America pressures allies to drop Huawei and other Chinese firms, U.S. and European officials point to China’s own...
Features
01.08.19
Where Did the One Million Figure for Detentions in Xinjiang’s Camps Come From?
As journalists and scholars have reported in recent months on the campaign of religious and cultural repression and incarceration taking place in the Chinese region of Xinjiang, a central question has emerged: How many people has China’s government...
Conversation
11.09.18
Forty Years on, Is China Still Reforming?
In late October, to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the “Reform and Opening Up” policy, China’s Chairman Xi Jinping visited the southern metropolis of Shenzhen, the first major laboratory for the Party’s post-Mao economic reforms. Like his...
Media
11.06.18
ChinaFile Presents: The Situation in Xinjiang
ChinaFile and the U.S.-Asia Law Institute of NYU School of Law co-hosted a discussion with historian Rian Thum and journalists Gulchehra Hoja of Radio Free Asia and James Palmer of Foreign Policy on the human rights crisis in the far-western region...
Conversation
10.17.18
The Taxman Cometh for Fan Bingbing. So How Widespread Is Tax Evasion in China?
Mega-famous Chinese actress Fan Bingbing emerged from months of silence to admit on Weibo that she had evaded taxes and owed over U.S.$100 million worth of civil fines to Chinese authorities. In a remarkable apology, Fan wrote that, “without good...
Viewpoint
10.05.18
Banning Chinese Students is Not in the U.S. National Interest
President Donald Trump has made no secret of his desire to radically revamp America’s immigration policies. Indeed, his family separation policies, which sparked nationwide protests and public revulsion after they were rolled out in May 2018, were...
Environment
10.03.18
The Anti-Corruption Campaign Takes on the War on Pollution
At last year’s 19th Party Congress, Xi Jinping vowed to confront the “principal contradiction” facing Chinese society: “the contradiction between unbalanced and inadequate development and the people’s ever-growing needs for a better life.” While the...
Other
09.21.18
Reporting from Xinjiang
On September 20, 2018, ChinaFile and the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) co-hosted a discussion with BuzzFeed reporter Megha Rajagopalan on her reporting on state-sponsored ethnic and religious repression in Xinjiang and, in particular, on...
Viewpoint
08.23.18
It’s Too Easy to Wind up in a Chinese Psychiatric Hospital, and Far Too Hard to Get Out
Every day in China, hundreds of people are involuntarily confined in mental health facilities, some through their involvement in criminal cases, many more via the government’s civil commitment processes. Whether, how, and how long to detain the...
Infographics
08.15.18
Visualizing China’s Anti-Corruption Campaign
“Catching Tigers and Flies” is ChinaFile’s interactive tool for tracking and, we hope, better understanding the massive campaign against corruption that Xi Jinping launched shortly after he came to power in late 2012. It is designed to give users a sense of the scope and character of the anti-corruption campaign by graphically rendering information about more than 2,000 of its targets whose cases have been publicly announced in official Chinese sources.
ChinaFile Recommends
08.08.18China Tightens Grip on Foreign University Ventures
Financial Times
The directive, which took effect last year but whose existence is being revealed for the first time by the Financial Times, mandates foreign education institutions to include a clause that supports the establishment of a party organisation in any...
ChinaFile Recommends
08.08.18A Demonstration of Power: China Derails Protests before They Even Begin
Globe and Mail
It was after midnight and the slow train from Chengdu was nearing the end of its 30-hour journey when Ms. Yang decided to make a run for it. She was headed to Beijing to join a protest, but it was becoming clear that the authorities were closing in...
ChinaFile Recommends
08.07.18‘We’re a People Destroyed’: Why Uighur Muslims across China Are Living in Fear
Guardian
Gene A Bunin has spent the past 18 months talking to Uighur restaurant workers all over China. These conversations reveal how this Muslim minority feel the daily threat of arrest, detention and ‘re-education’
Viewpoint
08.02.18
Remaking China’s Civil Society in the Xi Jinping Era
Given his past animosity towards civil society, Xi’s actions have been seen by some as moving China towards a new form of totalitarianism and a closing of the space for civil society. I would argue instead that we should see Xi’s ascendancy,...
ChinaFile Recommends
08.02.18Chinese Spiritual Leader Is Accused of Harassing Female Followers
New York Times
In a 95-page document that circulated widely on social media this week, two male monks accused the Venerable Xuecheng, the abbot of Longquan Monastery in Beijing and a powerful religious official, of sending explicit messages and making unwanted...
ChinaFile Recommends
07.31.18Kazakh Trial Throws Spotlight on China’s Internment Centres
Financial Times
The trial of a Chinese citizen who fled to Kazakhstan has offered rare insight into China’s secretive internment system, with Beijing’s security campaign in the western region of Xinjiang increasingly putting neighbouring countries in central Asia...
ChinaFile Recommends
07.31.18Disgraced Former Chinese Internet Tzar Lu Wei Charged with Bribery
CNN
Lu Wei “accepted a large number of bribes” during his time as national propaganda chief, head of the Cyberspace Administration of China, deputy head of the official Xinhua news agency, and as a Beijing city official, according to state media.
ChinaFile Recommends
07.31.18China Set to Leapfrog US in the AI Race
It’s only been a year since TNW reported China’s announcement it was shifting its national strategy to claim the artificial intelligence crown. In that time China has advanced its agenda to a startling degree, at least according to the experts.
ChinaFile Recommends
07.26.18Chinese Internet Users Employ the Blockchain to Share a Censored News Article
Verge
Chinese netizens have turned to blockchain to share a censored news story about faulty vaccines given to small babies. Their efforts to repost an investigative piece about a large vaccine maker were largely thwarted by Internet monitors, but by...
ChinaFile Recommends
07.12.18Chinese Professor Accused of Sexual Harassment Is Barred From Teaching
A major university in southern China has barred a professor from teaching after female students went public with sexual harassment allegations against him, unhappy that the university had not taken swifter, firmer action.
ChinaFile Recommends
07.12.18China’s Human Rights Record, Aggressive Military Expansion Damage Its Soft Power Rating
South China Morning Post
China’s soft power has been weakened by its hard line on foreign policy and human rights, according to an annual survey released on Thursday.
ChinaFile Recommends
07.11.18Uighur Children Fall Victim to China Anti-Terror Drive
Financial Times
On a quiet street in the ancient Silk Road city of Kashgar, a house lies empty, padlocked from the outside, the family who lived there gone.
ChinaFile Recommends
07.11.18Inside China’s Dystopian Dreams: A.I., Shame and Lots of Cameras
New York Times
In the Chinese city of Zhengzhou, a police officer wearing facial recognition glasses spotted a heroin smuggler at a train station.
ChinaFile Recommends
07.11.18Ex-Apple Engineer Arrested on His Way to China, Charged with Stealing Company’s Autonomous Car Secrets
Washington Post
For about two years, Xiaolang Zhang was privy to information to which many in the tech world can only dream of having access: the inner workings of Apple’s secretive autonomous car research.
ChinaFile Recommends
07.11.18Qin Yongmin: Prominent Chinese Dissident Jailed for 13 Years
BBC
One of China’s highest-profile democracy campaigners has been sentenced to 13 years in prison for “subversion of state power”.
Books
06.20.18

The Third Revolution
Oxford University Press: In The Third Revolution, eminent China scholar Elizabeth C. Economy provides an incisive look at the transformative changes underway in China today. Chinese leader Xi Jinping has unleashed a powerful set of political and economic reforms: the centralization of power under Xi, himself; the expansion of the Communist Party’s role in Chinese political, social, and economic life; and the construction of a virtual wall of regulations to control more closely the exchange of ideas and capital between China and the outside world. Beyond its borders, Beijing has recast itself as a great power, seeking to reclaim its past glory and to create a system of international norms that better serves its more ambitious geostrategic objectives. In so doing, the Chinese leadership is reversing the trends toward greater political and economic opening, as well as the low-profile foreign policy, that had been put in motion by Deng Xiaoping’s “Second Revolution” 30 years earlier.Through a wide-ranging exploration of Xi Jinping’s top political, economic, and foreign policy priorities—fighting corruption, managing the Internet, reforming the state-owned enterprise sector, improving the country’s innovation capacity, enhancing air quality, and elevating China’s presence on the global stage—Economy identifies the tensions, shortcomings, and successes of Xi’s reform efforts over the course of his first five years in office. She also assesses their implications for the rest of the world, and provides recommendations for how the United States and others should navigate their relationship with this vast nation in the coming years.{chop}
ChinaFile Recommends
06.12.18Washington Opens De Facto Embassy in Taiwan, Angering China
CNN
China has lodged a protest with the US following the official opening of Washington’s new de facto embassy in Taiwan, a self-ruled island off China's southeastern coast that Beijing considers a renegade province.
Conversation
06.04.18
How Should the World Respond to Intensifying Repression in Xinjiang?
Deliberate, systematic human rights abuses are happening in China’s northwest. Reporting and research published in recent weeks shows that the Chinese government is targeting the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region’s roughly 11 million Muslims for “re...
ChinaFile Recommends
05.18.18Cleared of Spying for China, She Still Doesn’t Have Her Job Back
New York Times
It is the case that the government simply will not let die.
ChinaFile Recommends
05.15.18China Gave Trump a List of Crazy Demands, and He Caved to One of Them
Washington Post
China’s list of economic and trade demands that suggest its negotiating position.
Features
05.11.18
Central and Regional Leadership for Xinjiang Policy in Xi’s Second Term
from China Leadership Monitor
After the 19th Party Congress last fall and the recent “two meetings” in March, the Party-state has now completed its quinquennial leadership turnover and announced a major restructuring of a number of Party and state entities. This institutional...
ChinaFile Recommends
05.10.18With Jail Sentences and Corporate Flameouts, China Is Tackling its Debt
New York Times
A Shanghai court imprisoned a tycoon who used a mountain of debt to buy the Waldorf Astoria hotel.
ChinaFile Recommends
05.09.18Former CIA Officer Charged With Spying For China
NPR
An ex-CIA officer arrested in January at New York’s John F. Kennedy airport has been charged with conspiracy to commit espionage on behalf of China years after FBI agents turned up notebooks containing classified information in a search of his hotel...
ChinaFile Recommends
05.08.18One-Time Potential Rival to China’s Xi Draws Life Sentence
Wall Street Journal
A former top Communist Party official once seen as a potential successor and rival to Chinese President Xi Jinping received a life sentence on corruption charges—a punishment state media portrayed as lenient.
ChinaFile Recommends
04.27.18China Guards Its Historical Heroes with New Law
Wall Street Journal
As President Xi Jinping entrenches Communist Party rule, new law mandates ‘all of society’ honor its heroes and martyrs.
Conversation
04.25.18
Does China Want the Koreas to Reconcile?
This Friday, April 27, the South Korean and North Korean leaders will meet in the demilitarized zone dividing their estranged countries to discuss improving relations and possibly even formally ending the Korean War, which has continued in the form...