ChinaFile Recommends
02.10.14Chinese Official Made Job Plea to JP Morgan Chase Chief
New York Times
The episode underscores the dual forces driving JPMorgan and other Wall Street banks to hire the family and friends of China’s ruling elite. The banks sought to build good will with Chinese officials, who, in turn, expected favors from the banks...
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02.08.14China Tells Spain to Prevent Tibet-Related Lawsuits
Reuters
Two Tibetan support groups and a monk with Spanish nationality brought a case in Spain against former Chinese president Jiang Zemin and ex-prime minister Li Peng in 2006 over allegations they committed genocide in Tibet.
ChinaFile Recommends
02.08.14Tangling with China
New York Times
The international community should insist China abide the rule of law and heed the United Nations arbitration ruling where tensions around China’s claims in the South and East China Seas are concerned.
ChinaFile Recommends
02.08.14Film Director Zhang Yimou Pays 7.5 Million Yuan Fine Over Children
Agence France-Presse
Zhang admits he has two sons and a daughter with his current wife and a daughter with a previous wife.
ChinaFile Recommends
02.08.14Chinese Factories Are Ordered to Release Data on Real-Time Emission Levels
Businessweek
In a sign of progress for the environment and information transparency, China's central government in January ordered 15,000 large and small factories to make real-time data about air and water pollution public.
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02.08.14The State of Journalism in China
Nieman Journalism Lab
How reporters are trying to work around China’s resurgent censorship, 25 years after Tiananmen.
Media
02.06.14
Beijing’s State Secrets Law—Still Broad, Still Opaque
Beijing may be whittling back its widely reviled state secrets laws—but given their opacity, it’s hard to say for sure. Chinese Premier Li Keqiang signed a regulation, announced February 2, that would prohibit Chinese government organs from “using...
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02.06.14China Ends One Notorious Form Of Detention, But Keeps Others
NPR
Despite the closure of labor camps across China, groups targeted as political threats are still subject to incarceration in mental institutions and secret jails.
Conversation
02.05.14
What Should the U.S. Do about China’s Barring Foreign Reporters?
Last week, the White House said it was “very disappointed” in China for denying a visa to another journalist working for The New York Times in Beijing, forcing him to leave the country after eight years. What else should the U.S. government...
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02.04.14China to Ramp Up Military Spending
New York Times
China will spend $148 billion on its military this year, up from $139.2 billion in 2013, according to IHS Jane’s, a defense industry consulting and analysis company.
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02.03.14In China’s War On Bad Air, Government Decision to Release Data Gives Hope
Washington Post
China’s Communist state is hardly known for its transparency. So when environmental groups appealed for official air pollution data, they were not expecting much.
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02.03.14Justice in China: A Conversation with Yiyun Li
Guernica
Emily Parker talks with Yiyun Li about self-censorship in China, the line between fact and fiction, and whether it’s possible to create good art under a repressive regime.
ChinaFile Recommends
02.03.14Imax Faces a Threat in China
New York Times
Competitors in China could cut into Imax’s potential market share, but the company has charged in several courts that a Chinese system relies on technology that was blatantly stolen.
Environment
01.31.14
Beijing Passes Law to Curb Air Pollution
from chinadialogue
China’s first legally binding regulations for reducing PM2.5 levels have been approved by Beijing’s municipal congress.Beijing’s annual average PM2.5 level currently stands at 89.5 micrograms per cubic meter, far exceeding the 35-micrograms national...
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01.31.14China is Playing Chicken with the U.S. Military in the South China Sea
Global Post
Vessels from the U.S. military and other countries increasingly find themselves in high-stakes confrontations in the region.
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01.30.14White House ‘Very Disappointed’ NYT Reporter was Forced to Leave China
Weekly Standard
The statement also raised concerns about the treatment of foreign journalists in China.
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01.30.14China Forces New York Times Reporter to Leave Country
Washington Post
Ramzy’s forced departure will result in the first full-time Times correspondent stationed in Taiwan.
ChinaFile Recommends
01.29.14Mass Slaughter of Vulnerable Shark Species in China, Wildlife Group Says
New York Times
600 whale sharks are being slaughtered annually at a factory near Wenzhou for foreign and domestic use.
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01.28.14Why is the Chinese Communist Party so Afraid of Legal Activist Xu Zhiyong?
Foreign Policy
Some fear that Xu and his fellow activists in the New Citizens Movement had formed an “anti-CCP clique”.
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01.28.14Publisher of Book Critical of China’s Leader Is Arrested
New York Times
Yiu Mantin, a retired engineer from Hong Kong, had plans to distribute a withering denunciation of Xi Jinping.
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01.28.14Who is Xu Zhiyong?
Telegraph
Four people whose lives were change by Xu Zhiyong describe how he helped them.
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01.28.14Jailed Dissident’s Wife: ‘I Don’t Want You to Give Up’
Wall Street Journal
A public letter from the wife of Xu Zhiyong shows the emotional burden imposed on the family members of jailed dissidents.
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01.28.14China Appears Set to Force Times Reporter to Leave
New York Times
Austin Ramzy is the most recent of such journalists since a critical article about Wen Jiabao and his family was written in 2013.
Conversation
01.27.14
China’s Offshore Leaks: So What?
Two recent stories by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists detailed China’s elite funneling money out of China to tax havens in the Caribbean. We asked contributors to weigh the impact of the revelations.
Caixin Media
01.27.14
Time for Overhaul of China’s Land Market
The expected launch of land reform is dividing opinions. At a work meeting this month, the Minister of Land and Resources, Jiang Daming, said the central government would limit land supply in cities with more than five million residents. His words...
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01.27.14Chinese Trust Fund Avoids High-profile Default
Financial Times
One of China's biggest “shadow banks” raises Rmb3bn from investors, which was backed by a coal mine which later collapsed.
ChinaFile Recommends
01.27.14Chinese Court Places Heavy Sentence on Prominent Activist
Wall Street Journal
The most closely watched trial of a Chinese dissident in years calls attention to CCP clamp down on dissent.
ChinaFile Recommends
01.27.14China: Reverse Judgment in Show Trial of Xu Zhiyong
Human Rights Watch
The harsh conviction and four-year sentence of Xu Zhiyong is a pretext to chill popular protests against corruption.
ChinaFile Recommends
01.27.14China's Deluxed Hotels: Modern Sumptuary Laws
Economist
The new humility of both officials and hotels is a response to Xi's campaign against lavish spending.
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01.27.14China Accuses Uighur Intellectual of Separatism for His Advocacy Work
New York Times
The news comes at a time of intensifying bloodshed in Xinjiang despite a growing security presence by Chinese personnel.
Features
01.26.14
For Freedom, Justice, and Love
from China Change
Following is legal activist Xu Zhiyong’s closing statement at the end of his trial in Beijing on January 22, 2014. According to his lawyer, Xu was only able to read “about ten minutes of it before the presiding judge stopped him, saying it was...
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01.25.14Ilham Tohti’s Arrest Demonstrates China’s Renewed Hard Line on Xinjiang
Lowy Institute Interpreter
Economist Tohti was reportedly arrested after 30 police raided his apartment, confiscating documents, books and hard drives. He is most likely to be charged with ‘endangering state security,’ which carries heavy penalties including life imprisonment.
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01.24.14China Loses its Allure
Economist
Life is getting tougher for foreign companies. Those that want to stay will have to adjust.
ChinaFile Recommends
01.24.14Why China Needs to Rethink the Way It Treats the Foreign Press
New Yorker
A new report on elite wealth by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists suggests Beijing may need to change its whack-a-mole strategy of removing offending reporters one by one.
ChinaFile Recommends
01.22.14China Cannot Relax War on Corruption
Financial Times
(Editorial) “We should not dismiss the way Mr. Xi is trying to deal with the problem.”
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01.22.14China’s Scandal-Torn Oil Industry Embraces Tax Havens
International Consortium of Investigative Journalists
“If there’s a problem you can just close the company, walk away and deny you ever had anything to do with it.”
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01.22.14More Than Half of China’s Most Powerful Officials Have Links to Tax Havens. Now What?
Quartz
Relatively loose cencorship of the recent offshore tax reports has some thinking that the CCP is ready to talk.
ChinaFile Recommends
01.22.14ICIJ Offshore Records Reveal Tax Haven Clients in China, Hong Kong
International Consortium of Investigative Journalists
More than 50 reporting partners in Europe, North America, Asia and other regions investigated 2.5 million leaked files.
ChinaFile Recommends
01.22.14How We Did Offshore Leaks China
International Consortium of Investigative Journalists
Chinese, European and Western journalists worked together to successfully leak a highly sensitive and secretive story.
ChinaFile Recommends
01.22.14China's Princelings Storing Riches in Caribbean Offshore Haven
Guardian
The documents also disclose the central role of major Western banks and accountancy firms who acted as middlemen.
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01.22.14Secrecy for Sale: Inside the Global Offshore Money Maze
International Consortium of Investigative Journalists
The data illustrates the outsized dependency of China's economy on tiny islands thousands of miles away.
Conversation
01.21.14
Time to Escalate? Should the U.S. Make China Uncomfortable?
How should the United States respond to China’s new level of assertiveness in the Asia Pacific? In the past few months as Beijing has stepped up territorial claims around China's maritime borders—and in the skies above them—the Obama...
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01.21.14The Trial of the Chinese Dream
New Yorker
Xu Zhiyong tried to change China from the inside, but now he will be tried by the inside.
ChinaFile Recommends
01.18.14China’s Detention of Uighur Professor Ilham Tohti Worries U.S.
Los Angeles Times
The U.S. government and human rights activists are voicing concern about the detention of a professor who has been an outspoken advocate for China’s Uighur minority group.
ChinaFile Recommends
01.18.14China, Japan Slug It Out in World’s Press
Associated Press
Escalating disputes between Japan and China are spilling onto newspaper opinion pages around the globe as the rivals try to sway attitudes abroad and placate nationalist fervor at home.
ChinaFile Recommends
01.18.14Left-Behind Children of China’s Migrant Workers Bear Grown-Up Burdens
Wall Street Journal
About 61 Million Chinese Kids Haven’t Seen One or Both Parents for at Least Three Months
ChinaFile Recommends
01.16.14Chinese Activists Test New Leader and Are Crushed
New York Times
Prominent activist, Xi Zhiyong, is indicted in a harsh warning to the New Citizens Movement.
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01.16.14In Rare Video, Wife of Jailed Nobel Laureate Reads Poems While Under House Arrest
New York Times
The video was filmed by the Independent Chinese PEN Center, a free-speech advocacy group established by Ms. Liu.
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01.09.14China Fines ‘House of Flying Daggers’ Director for Breaching One-child Policy
Guardian
Film-maker Zhang Yimou, who has three children with wife Chen Ting, has to pay £750,000 for breaking law.
ChinaFile Recommends
01.08.14Slowly, Asia’s Factories Begin to Turn Green
New York Times
Despite a lack of legal restriction, foreign companies in Asia are beginning to set up environmentally sustainable factories to their financial benefit.
ChinaFile Recommends
01.04.14Snowden Lied About China Contacts
Daily Beast
The New York Times has urged the Obama administration to offer Edward Snowden “a plea bargain or some form of clemency,” calling the former NSA contractor “a whistle-blower” for his exposure of “the vast scope” of the NSA’s “reach into the lives of...
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01.03.14Police Seize 3 Tons Meth in South China Village
Los Angeles Times
Call it “Breaking Bad: China Edition.” More than 3,000 police officers equipped with helicopters and motorboats and accompanied by dogs descended on a southern Chinese village notorious for making crystal meth, seizing 3 tons of the drug and 23 tons...
Environment
01.03.14
Predictions for China’s Environment in 2014
from chinadialogue
From dead pigs in the Shanghai river to toxic smog in major cities, 2013 was a year of dramatic environmental stories in China. We asked some of our contributors for their predictions on how these and other stories are likely to develop in the...
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01.02.14With Downed Balloon, China and Japan Cooperate
New York Times
A Chinese balloonist took off from the coastal province of Fujian, trying to land on an island claimed by both China and Japan. Unfortunately, the balloonist, a cook by profession, didn’t make his target.
ChinaFile Recommends
01.02.14U.S. Frees Last of the Chinese Uighur Detainees From Guantánamo Bay
New York Times
In what the Pentagon called a “significant milestone” in the effort to close the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, the military announced that the United States had transferred three Chinese detainees to Slovakia.
ChinaFile Recommends
12.28.13China Formally Passes Law Easing One-Child Policy
Wall Street Journal
China's legislature on Saturday formally eased two restrictive social policies of its authoritarian system, allowing some couples to have a second child and ending a form of extralegal detention. The standing committee of the National People...
Other
12.26.13
2013 Year in Review
As the year draws to a close, we want to take a moment to look back at some of the stories ChinaFile published in 2013. We hope you’ll find something that interests you to read—or watch—over the holidays.It’s hard to remember a recent year that didn...
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12.23.13Paying a Price to Cross China’s Border
Washington Post
For Chinese critics of the government, the border long ago acquired a political toll booth: Whichever way you cross, you pay a price.
ChinaFile Recommends
12.21.13Top Chinese Security Official Is Investigated
New York Times
Li Dongsheng, a vice minister of public security, is being investigated by the Communist Party for “suspected serious law and discipline violations,” according to Xinhua, the state news agency.
Viewpoint
12.20.13‘Community Corrections’ and the Road Ahead for Re-Education Through Labor
Chinese and foreign observers welcomed the recent announcement that the Chinese government will “abolish”—not merely reform—the administrative punishment system known as re-education through labor (RTL). The proclamation, part of a sixty-point...