China Feared CIA Worked with Sheldon Adelson's Casinos to Bust Officials

Chris McGreal
Guardian
China fears that casinos owned by Sheldon Adelson were used by the CIA to blackmail Chinese officials.

This Instagram Account Offers a New Perspective on China

Time
Some photographs show the surprisingly mundane moments in the life of regular Chinese, such as Albertazzi’s image of a group of men playing cards in their swim shorts on a hot summer afternoon in Beijing; others are images from long-term documentary...

China Box Office Booms with $284-Million Week; Foreign Films Remain Shut Out

Julie Makinen
Los Angeles Times
The depth and variety of local films suggests growth in China’s domestic production.

Want to Circumvent China’s Great Firewall? Learn These 9 Phrases First

Kuang Keng Kuek Ser
Public Radio International
A story about the newly updated e-book Decoding the Chinese Internet: A Glossary of Political Slang”

6 Arrested in China After Dressing Room Sex Video Goes Viral

Julie Makinen
Los Angeles Times
A 19-year-old man was charged with disseminating obscene material. The couple pictured and three others were detained.

Media

07.20.15

Taming the Flood

David Bandurski
In August 1975, Typhoon Nina, one of the most powerful tropical storms on record, surged inland from the Taiwan Strait, causing floods so catastrophic they overwhelmed dam networks around the city of Zhumadian in China’s Henan province. When Banqiao...

The Most-Viewed Fitting Room in China

Austin Ramzy
New York Times
Aside from shielding Internet users from political discussions the government considers deviant, China’s online censorship seeks to protect users minds from pornography.

China’s War Against One American Journalist

Casey Michael
Slate
Shohret Hoshur’s brothers are being disappeared by the Chinese government. Beijing is trying to silence an American reporter by sentencing his brothers to China’s gulag.

Thailand Deports 100 Muslim Uighurs to China

Noppart Chaichalearmmongkol and Te-Ping...
Wall Street Journal
Thailand deported some 100 members of a Turkic Muslim minority group wanted by China as illegal migrants, drawing a rare rebuke from the United Nations and causing protesters in Turkey to storm a Thai consulate. 

China’s Confucius Institutes and the Soft War

David Volodzko
Diplomat
The first Confucius Institute opened its door in November 2004 in Seoul, South Korea. Hanban, or the Chinese National Office for Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language.

'The Autobots' Hits Theaters, and Many Chinese Say They've Seen It Before

Amy Qin
New York Times
Many expressed outrage over the newest animated children’s movie, “The Autobots,” which bears an uncanny resemblance to Disney's "Cars.”

Hillary Clinton Says China Hacks into “Everything that Doesn’t Move”

Jake Flanigin
Quartz
The Democratic presidential candidate accused Chinese hackers of stealing “huge amounts of government information.”

Chinese Tourists Warned over Turkey Uighur Protests

BBC
China advised citizens against travelling to Turkey after it said several tourists were attacked in protests over the Chinese government's treatment of Uighur Muslims.

Media

07.02.15

On the Border

Sim Chi Yin
Minutes after we turned off the main road and into the Tumen Economic Development Zone, we spotted a group of workers weeding along an access road.From afar, all we could make out in the gentle early morning light was that they were women in...

Conversation

07.02.15

How Much Does the Chinese Market Matter to the World?

Yukon Huang, Ira Kalish & more
China’s main market, reflected in the Shanghai Composite Index, has fallen 24 percent since June 12, losing $2.4 trillion in value. While many analysts are focused on the financial crisis in Greece, some are beginning to wonder if China's woes...

Fears Raised as "A Third" of China Great Wall Vanishes

Maggie Hiufu Wong and Serena Dong
CNN
About 30%, of the ancient fortification built in the Ming Dynasty era has disappeared due to natural erosion and human damage, according to the Beijing Times.

Local Filmmakers Must Raise Their Game to Compete With Hollywood

Clifford Coonan
Hollywood Reporter
Chen Kaige says that while the movie industry booms in China, local filmmakers need to raise their standards to compete with Hollywood.

Foreign Films Rise Again at China’s Box Office

Laurie Burkitt
Wall Street Journal
China’s movie market is booming, with $3.3 billion worth of ticket sales in the first half of the year, up nearly 50% from the same period in 2014.

Media

07.02.15

Who Would China Vote for in 2016?

Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian
As 2016 draws nearer, a cascade of mostly Republican presidential hopefuls have announced their entry into the U.S. presidential race. Until a successor to current President Barack Obama is selected in November 2016, Americans can count on an...

Sinica Podcast

07.01.15

Who Will Save Us from the Self-help Revolution?

Kaiser Kuo, Jeremy Goldkorn & more
Someone desperately needs to call a fumigator, because China’s self-help bug is eating up the woodwork. Train station bookstores may always have served the genre’s trite pablum to bored businessmen legging it cross-country, but in recent months the...

Who Would China Vote for in 2016?

Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian
Foreign Policy
Though media discussion of domestic politics remains muzzled in China, people there generally enjoy greater freedom to debate international news and politics.

The Truth About China’s New National Security Law

Ankit Panda
Diplomat
China’s national legislature passed a national security law who's mandate covers politics, the military, finance, religion, cyberspace, and even ideology and religion.

Dalai Lama at Glastonbury Music Festival

Alex Ritman
Hollywood Reporter
The Dalai Lama praised the Pope's recent comments on climate change before Patti Smith and attendees sang "Happy Birthday" ahead of his 80th birthday

Episode 36 – Sim Chi Yin

Sharron Lovell & Sim Chi Yin
Multimedia Week
Sharron Lovell speaks with Sim Chi Yin about crossing the lines between journalism and advocacy. Chi Yin recently published her four year story following a Chinese gold miner suffering with the lung disease silicosis, caused by years of inhaling...

Media

06.26.15

‘Why Do Chinese Lack Creativity?’

Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian
On June 19, the University of Washington and elite Tsinghua University in Beijing announced a new, richly funded cooperative program to be based in Seattle and focused on a topic that has become a sore point in China: innovation. Republican...

Media

06.26.15

A Chinese Feminist, Made in America

Nancy Tang
In August 2010, two weeks after turning 18, I traveled about 6,700 miles from Beijing, China to attend Amherst, a liberal-arts college in Massachusetts in the northeastern United States. I packed a copy of Harvard economist N. Gregory Mankiw’s...

China's Alibaba to Remove Listings with Confederate Flag Imagery

John Ruwitch and Jane Lanhee Lee
Reuters
Alibaba pledged to pull down links to products with Confederate flag imagery in the wake of the shooting in South Carolina.

China Invests in the World

Shannon Tiezzi
Diplomat
China’s outward foreign direct investment for the first five months of 2015 is up 50 percent from the same period in 2014, says Chinese Ministry of Commerce.

Rare Access to China's Restive Far West

Wyatt Massey
CNN
Raphael Fournier's "Around Taklamakan," is a series of photographs from China's Xinjiang province which emphasize cultural tensions and daily life.

China plays favorites with endangered species

Kristie Lu Stout
CNN
“The Chinese government has put so much money and so much effort into preserving pandas but there are so many other species that need addressing.”

Charleston Shooting: A U.S. Expat’s View From Afar

Alyssa Abkowitz
Wall Street Journal
There’s perspective that’s gained by watching the US from afar; it helps expats understand why locals may view America as dangerous.

Sinica Podcast

06.23.15

The Brother Orange Saga

Kaiser Kuo, Jeremy Goldkorn & more from Sinica Podcast
The story started when a Buzzfeed editor lost his iPhone in an East Village bar in February of last year and blossomed into the Sino-American romance of the century, and probably the most up-lifting and altogether unlikely China story that we can...

Hunt for Deep Panda Intensifies in Trenches of U.S.-China Cyberwar

Jeremy Wagstaff
Reuters
Deep Panda is one of several hacking groups that cybersecurity companies accuse of hacking U.S. networks.

Attack Gave Chinese Hackers Privileged Access to U.S. Systems

David Sanger, Nicole Perlroth and...
New York Times
Chinese intruders' attack gave them “administrator privileges” into Office of Personnel Management computer networks.

China’s Controversial Technology Partnership with South Africa

Eric Olander & Cobus van Staden
The Chinese and South Africa governments have signed a pact, or a “plan of action,” where Beijing will provide a broad array of technology training, skills transfer, and ICT (information and communications technology) development for South Africa’s...

China’s Annual Dog-Eating Festival Prompts Social Media Firestorm

Lindsey Bever and Nick Kirkpatrick
Washington Post
At a solstice festival in China 10,000 canines are said to be beaten, killed and cooked for human consumption.

China Extends Reach into Hong Kong to Thwart Democrats

James Pomfret and Greg Torode
Reuters
Democrats rejected a Beijing-backed Hong Kong electoral reform package but face an increasingly organized Chinese government.

CAA China’s Leader on Censorship, Why China Needs a Global Hit and Translating for Spielberg

Clifford Coonan
Hollywood Reporter
The first U.S. talent agency with full-time representation in China marks 10 years in Beijing.

China Military Says Two More top Officers Probed for Graft

Reuters
Serving and retired Chinese military officers have said military graft is so pervasive it could undermine China's ability to wage war.

Former CIA Chief Says Government Data Breach Could Help China Recruit Spies

Damian Paletta
Wall Street Journal
Retired Gen. Michael Hayden calls records a ‘legitimate foreign intelligence target’.

‘Jurassic World’ Speaks A Universal Language

Neda Ulaby
NPR
Jurassic World was No. 1 last week in China, where only about 30 Hollywood movies may screen officially each year.

Sinica Podcast

06.15.15

The People’s Republic of Cruiseland

Kaiser Kuo, Jeremy Goldkorn & more from Sinica Podcast
We have enough favorite writers on China that we’ve had to develop a sophisticated classification system just to keep track of everyone. That said, one of our hardest to place within the long-form taxonomy is Chris Beam, who you may have heard on...

Chinese Hackers Circumvent Popular Web Privacy Tools

Nicole Perlroth
New York Times
The attackers compromised websites frequented by Chinese journalists as well as China’s Muslim Uighur ethnic minority.

Media

06.11.15

Zhou Yongkang’s Mask of Fear Falls Quietly Away

David Wertime
Zhou Yongkang—erstwhile oil czar, former chief of China’s dreaded state security apparatus, a man once swaggering and fit enough to perform 50 to 100 pushups in front of fawning onlookers—has completed his transformation into a sad historical...

Viewpoint

06.11.15

Why I Publish in China

Peter Hessler
A couple of weeks ago, I received a request from a New York Times reporter to talk about publishing in China. The topic has been in the news lately, with the BookExpo in New York, where Chinese publishers were the guests of honor. In May, the PEN...

Breaking Beijing?

Lynette H. Ong
Foreign Affairs
The government's harsh crackdown could crack the regime.

China Blacklists 38 Cartoons, Violence, Porn Cited

Clifford Coonan
Hollywood Reporter
Among the banned are a 2014 animated TV series set in a Tokyo after a terrorist attack has destroyed the city.

Media

06.09.15

Chinese Censorship of Western Books Is Now Normal. Where’s the Outrage?

Alexa Olesen
In September 2014, I was commissioned by the New York-based free speech advocacy group PEN American Center to investigate how Western authors were navigating the multibillion-dollar Chinese publishing world and its massive, but opaque, censorship...

Obama Vows to Boost U.S. Cyber Defenses Amid Signs of China Hacking

Jeff Mason and Mark Hosenball
Reuters
U.S. officials said the probe into a massive breach of federal government networks has yielded growing signs of a direct Chinese role.

Alibaba’s Jack Ma Visiting U.S. to Lure Businesses Into China

Spencer Soper
Bloomberg
Ma is looking for revenue beyond China, where the nation’s economy is projected to grow at its slowest pace since 1990.

Sinica Podcast

06.08.15

Writers: Heroes in China?

Kaiser Kuo, Jeremy Goldkorn & more from Sinica Podcast
If you happen to live in the anglophone world and aren’t closely tied to China by blood or professional ties, chances are that what you believe to be true about this country is heavily influenced by the opinions of perhaps one hundred other people,...

With Over 440 Expected Dead, the Yangtze River Cruise Sinking is China’s Worst Boating Disaster

Liliy Kuo
Quartz
Rescuers initially heard voices of those trapped inside the overturned ship's hull. 

Media

06.05.15

Hong Kong’s Long-Standing Unity on Tiananmen Is Unraveling

June 4, a day that changed mainland China forever, has become a cross that the city of Hong Kong bears. Each year, thousands of the city’s residents gather on an often steamy night and share anxious memories of 1989, when tanks rolled by bloodied...

Survivor Accounts Raise Questions About Yangtze Ship’s Final Moments

Andrew Jacobs
New York Times
Four days after the ship, the Oriental Star, flipped over in a ferocious storm, leaving 442 dead or missing.

China Tries To Put A More Positive Spin On Cruise Ship Sinking

Frank Langfitt
NPR
Dozens are confirmed dead and the number is expected to pass 400.

Alibaba to Invest in China Business News

Wei Gu and Gillian Wong
Wall Street Journal
E-commerce giant to pay about $200 million for a 30% stake.

Postcard

06.03.15

Beijing Autumn

Ilaria Maria Sala
Then even August ended. China was disappearing from the news, as portentous events elsewhere thrust themselves to the forefront.South Africa had started to come out of the dark age of apartheid. Eastern Europe had begun the march to unshackle itself...

Divers Comb Capsized China Ship, Hopes Fade for Survivors

John Ruwitch, Engen Tham
Reuters
Rescuers have not slackened off, even though about 200 divers face difficulties such as cabin doors blocked by tables and beds.

Media

06.02.15

Top Chinese Authors Show Up at Book Expo, but Where Are the Readers?

Zhang Xiaoran
Last week, 20,000 publishers convened in New York’s Javits Center for BookExpo America (BEA), the publishing industry’s annual trade show. Among their ranks was a delegation from China 500 strong, attending the convention in the capacity of “guest...

Media

06.02.15

Chinese Netizens to Fiorina: You’re Right, We Don’t Innovate

David Wertime
Carly Fiorina, the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard and a declared Republican candidate for U.S. president, evidently has strong opinions about the capacities of Chinese people. “Yeah, the Chinese can take a test,” Fiorina told an Iowa-based video blog...