Conversation
10.06.16Is the Growing Pessimism About China Warranted?
from Washington Quarterly
There are few more consequential questions in world affairs than China’s uncertain future trajectory. Assumptions of a reformist China integrated into the international community have given way in recent years to serious concerns about the nation’s...
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10.05.16America’s Best Idea May Now Be China’s Too, as It Expands It’s National Park System
Los Angeles Times
With U.S. guidance, China is launching a pilot project that spans nine provinces
ChinaFile Recommends
10.04.16China’s Rising Threat to the U.S. Movie Industry
Politico
With firms like Dalian Wanda gaining influence in the U.S., would a war movie called South China Sea ever play in one of Wanda’s theaters?
ChinaFile Recommends
10.04.16China Struggles to Curb Housing Bubble
Nikkei Asian Review
Even as Chinese authorities desperately try to cool down an overheated housing market, their efforts are unlikely to halt the rise of speculators greased by low borrowing costs
ChinaFile Recommends
10.04.16Forget Those 18 Olympic Medals, Most Chinese Can’t Swim
USA Today
Drowning is now the #1 killer of Chinese children under the age of 14, topping traffic accidents and infectious disease
ChinaFile Recommends
10.04.16Propaganda and Censorship Remain China’s Favored Tools of Control
South China Morning Post
Recent court rulings rapping people questioning the party-state’s tales about war heroes reflect leaders’ insecurity over their rule
ChinaFile Recommends
10.03.16Fate Catches Up to a Cultural Revolution Museum in China
New York Times
The museum was covered up and shut down in the spring, a few weeks before the 50th anniversary of the start of the Cultural Revolution.
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10.03.16589 Million Chinese Tourists Will Spend $72 Billion in Just 7 Days Celebrating “Golden Week”
Quartz
Unexpectedly, the new hot destination is Morocco
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09.30.16A Storied Hong Kong Newspaper Feels the Heat from China
NPR
After recently shutting down its Chinese-language website and deleting archives, the South China Morning Post announced more cuts.
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09.30.16China Says Countering Dalai Lama is Top Ethnic Priority in Tibet
Reuters
Region's Communist Party boss vows to uproot the monk's "separatist and subversive" activities
ChinaFile Recommends
09.30.16When China Began Streaming Trials Online
BBC
Boot up your laptop or turn on your smartphone and take a peek inside legal proceedings
ChinaFile Recommends
09.30.16China Plans to Teach Developing Countries and the UN About Protecting Human Rights
Quartz
Like many of Beijing’s edicts, it is being criticized as a blatant piece of propaganda
The China Africa Project
09.29.16Humanizing the China-Africa Relationship with Film
When independent filmmaker Carl Houston Mc Millan was growing up in the tiny southern African country of Lesotho, he saw firsthand the effects of China’s surging engagement in Africa. Even in this remote country, embedded within South Africa, far...
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09.29.16China’s Maternal Mortality Rate Rises 30% in First Half
Increase in women older than 35 getting pregnant after easing of the One-Child Policy may have led to spike in deaths
ChinaFile Recommends
09.29.16Peyton Manning is Looking for the Yao Ming of Football in China
Bloomberg
Former quarterback says ‘no-brainer’ for NFL to play in China
ChinaFile Recommends
09.29.16China’s Streaming Craze Launches a Billion Shooting Stars
Wall Street Journal
The owner of streaming app Inke is China’s newest unicorn thanks to a 19-fold increase in value
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09.29.16Chengguan, Widely Despised Officers in China, Find Refuge and a Kind Ear
New York Times
China’s first Psychological Crisis Center for Chengguan opened in Nanjing this week
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09.29.16How China’s Progress is Killing the Instant Noodle
Sydney Morning Herald
As China's economy has slowed, so too has its appetite for instant noodles
The NYRB China Archive
09.29.16‘The Songs of Birds’
from New York Review of Books
Day and night,I copy the Diamond Sutraof Prajnaparamita.My writing looks more and more square.It proves that I have not gone entirelyinsane, but the tree I drewhasn’t grown a leaf.—from “I Copy the Scriptures,” in Empty ChairsEvery month, the...
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09.28.16China Grapples With HIV Cases Among Gay Men, but Stigma Runs Deep
Wall Street Journal
Surge in infections worries health authorities and prompts soul-searching in a conservative society
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09.28.16Chinese State Media Say U.S. Debate Shows Vote is ‘Lose-Lose’
Bloomberg
Party paper report calls Trump nervous, Clinton well-prepared
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09.28.16Typhoon Megi: Deadly Storm Batters Taiwan and Mainland China
BBC
At least 5 have been killed, hundreds injured
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09.28.16Chinese Tourists Encouraged to Behave Ahead of Mass Vacation
WSJ: China Real Time Report
Public urination and defacing monuments are no-nos
Sinica Podcast
09.27.16Fakes, Pirates, and Shanzhai Culture
from Sinica Podcast
Fakes, knockoffs, pirate goods, counterfeits: China is notorious as the global manufacturing center of all things ersatz. But in the first decade after the People’s Republic joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, a particular kind of knockoff...
The China Africa Project
09.27.16What Do Zambians Really Think of Chinese Immigrants?
For decades, Zambia had been the flash point of anti-Chinese sentiment in Africa. Late president and outspoken opposition leader Michael Sata was unrivaled in his seething criticisms of both China and the Chinese who had migrated to his country...
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09.27.16Long Absent in China, Tipping Makes a Comeback at a Few Trendy Restaurants
NPR
Scan your server's QR code if you like your service
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09.23.16China Will Resume Imports of U.S. Beef After a Ban Long Seen as Political
Time
For an American industry that relies increasingly on global demand, the news is welcome
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09.23.16Mother’s Killing of 4 Children Reveals Cracks in Anti-Poverty Drive
Corruption, red tape has led to most vulnerable citizens receiving little help
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09.23.16Provincial Boss Ordered Crackdown on China's 'Democracy Village' with Eye on National Power
Reuters
Wukan is Hu Chunhua's tryout for the Politburo Standing Committee
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09.22.16Mystery of China’s ‘Ghost Uber Drivers’
Financial Times
An eruption of creepy faces on driver profiles has spooked potential passengers
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09.22.16How to Counter China’s Global Propaganda Offensive
New York Times
It has been a difficult year for many Western democracies — and China is rubbing it in.
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09.22.16Meet Pizza, the World’s Saddest Polar Bear
Quartz
Pizza is just one of thousands of “wild” animals languishing in China's malls
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09.22.16‘Botched’ Repair to China’s Great Wall Inspires Outrage
New York Times
The shoddy paving over of a stretch of the Wall criticized for effacing the ancient monument
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09.22.16ChinaFile Recommends
09.21.16The End of China’s One-Child Policy Has Put Huge Pressure on the Nation’s Sperm Banks
Time
China is looking for quality sperm
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09.20.16A New Literary Genre Critiques the Scariest Part of Life in China: Reality
Quartz
Enter chaohuan, the "ultra-unreal"
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09.20.16Gay Pride: China Activists Fight ‘Conversion Therapy’
Hong Kong Free Press
Coming out was never going to be easy, but Yu never thought it would see him committed
ChinaFile Recommends
09.20.16Once a Voice of Young China, Han Han Stakes Out a Different Path
New York Times
Han Han discusses his writings, the turns his life has taken and what people in the West fail to understand about China
Sinica Podcast
09.20.16What is the Chinese-American Identity?
from Sinica Podcast
What is the Chinese-American identity? How has the rise of China affected American attitudes toward ethnically Chinese people in the United States and elsewhere? How do the 3.8 million Chinese-Americans impact U.S.-China relations, and what role...
Media
09.14.16The Chinese Democratic Experiment that Never Was
Protesters in southern China are up in arms. They feel that Beijing’s promises that they’d be able to vote for their own local leaders have been honored in the breach. They’re outraged at the show of force in the face of peaceful protest, and...
Features
09.13.16The Destruction of Baishizhou
Early this spring, the Chinese character for “demolish” (“拆”) showed up in red spray paint on a strip of shops in Shenzhen’s Baishizhou neighborhood. Wang An, 41, has been selling women’s underwear from one of these shops for the last 10 years. “...
Depth of Field
09.12.16African Migrants in Guangzhou, Forgetting, Family Planning’s Fate, and More...
from Yuanjin Photo
Photographing the aftermath of catastrophic events is challenging—one that photographer Mu Li handles with creativity and grace looking back at the chemical explosion in Tianjin that damaged as many as 17,000 homes August 12, 2015. Another challenge...
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09.12.16The South China Morning Post Has Suddenly Shut Down Its Chinese-language Website
Quartz
In one fell swoop, years of reporting from SCMP is gone.
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09.12.16Marriage Falls in China, Transforming Finances and Families
New York Times
The decline in marriages means a decline in the kind of spending China needs to drive economic growth.
Viewpoint
09.08.16Mao the Man, Mao the God
Mao Zedong was dying a slow, agonizing death. Diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) in July 1974, he gradually lost control of his motor functions. His gait was unsure. He slurred his speech and panted heavily. The decline was...
The China Africa Project
09.08.16Why More Africans Are Learning Mandarin
The South African government’s 2015 decision to start offering Mandarin Chinese classes as a foreign language option at schools nation-wide sparked an uproar that baffled people in other, often more affluent, societies around the world where the...
The NYRB China Archive
09.08.16The People in Retreat
from New York Review of Books
Ai Xiaoming is one of China’s leading documentary filmmakers and political activists. Since 2004, she has made more than two dozen films, many of them long, gritty documentaries that detail citizen activism or uncover whitewashed historical events...
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09.07.16Tens of Thousands of Jobs Go as China’s Biggest Banks Cut Costs
Bloomberg
The cuts suggest that employment has peaked at the firms that are the world’s biggest providers of banking jobs.
Sinica Podcast
09.07.16Yiwu, a City at the Core of Cheap Chinese Goods
from Sinica Podcast
Renowned as a trading town during the Qing dynasty, the eastern city of Yiwu again became famous for its markets after China’s economic reforms kicked in during the 1980s. Since then, the metropolis of 1.2 million people has transformed into a hub...
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09.06.16Giant Pandas Are No Longer Endangered in China
Public Radio International
The improvement came from the hard work of controlling poaching and replanting bamboo forests.
Sinica Podcast
08.31.16What Is Cultural About the Cultural Revolution? Creativity Amid Destruction
from Sinica Podcast
This year marked the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, a chaotic decade of Chinese history made infamous in the West through books such as Wild Swans and Life and Death in Shanghai, which describe in horrific detail the...
Excerpts
08.18.16Why an Elite Chinese Student Decided Not to Join the Communist Party
“Wish Lanterns” follows the lives of six Chinese born between 1985 and 1990 as they grow up, go to school, and pursue their aspirations. Millennials are a transformational generation in China, heralding key societal and cultural shifts, and they are...
Media
08.17.16How the Philippines Can Win in the South China Sea
The Philippine Islands has a problem. It has international law on its side in its quarrel with China over maritime territory, but no policeman walking his beat to enforce the law. That means that, despite an international court’s findings, the...
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08.15.16Why China’s Plan to Build a New Silk Road Runs Through Singapore
Bloomberg
Cultural ties make city-state key gateway to Southeast Asia.
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08.11.16China Takes A Gamble in Scapegoating the West
Financial Times
This type of propaganda gives license to ordinary people to indulge their most primitive prejudices.
Media
08.08.16How Chinese Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Their Military Again
Every evening, as regular and obstreperous as a rooster, the People’s Liberation Army (P.L.A.) soldiers sing from the barracks outside my Beijing home, a chorus of teenage troops reminding the neighborhood when it’s dinner time:“Unity is strength,...
Sinica Podcast
08.08.16Clay Shirky on Tech and the Internet in China
from Sinica Podcast
The Internet expert and author of “Here Comes Everybody” gives his take on China's successes and challenges in the online world. In an hour-long conversation Shirky delves into the details and big-picture phenomena driving the globe’s largest...
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08.08.16In China, Some Schools Are Playing With More Creativity, Less Cramming
NPR
Educators are hopeful that these new teaching methods will produce young people who are curious, self-motivated and independent critical thinkers.
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08.08.16Week of TV Trials in China Signals New Phase in Attack on Rights
New York Times
Legal experts and supporters of four defendants denounced the hearings, held on consecutive days in Tianjin, a port city near Beijing, as grotesque show trials.
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08.08.16China Is Angry Over These Olympics
Fortune
The state press and internet users are lashing out after an Australian swimmer’s comments.