ChinaFile Recommends
07.19.17‘Making China Great Again’: Beijing-Run Media Crows as U.S. Stumbles
CNBC
A Communist Party mouthpiece is crowing that malfunctioning U.S. leadership is making China “great again” on the eve of highly anticipated bilateral trade talks between the two countries.
ChinaFile Recommends
07.18.17Despite Ban, Rhino Horn Flooding Black Markets across China
National Geographic
The country is pledged to end the trade in elephant ivory this year, but will it take steps to help save rhinos?
ChinaFile Recommends
07.17.17Is New Transformers a Sign of China’s Hollywood Fatigue?
Financial Times
Like a high-flying space robot shot out of the sky, the Transformers film franchise has crash-landed in China—singeing a promising Hollywood business model in the process.
The NYRB China Archive
07.14.17Liu Xiaobo: The Man Who Stayed
from New York Review of Books
In 1898, some of China’s most brilliant minds allied themselves with the Emperor Guangxu, a young ruler who was trying to assert himself by forcing through reforms to open up China’s political, economic, and educational systems. But opponents...
Viewpoint
07.13.17The Chinese Think Liu Xiaobo Was Asking For It
from Foreign Policy
Liu Xiaobo, the Nobel Peace Prize winner and Chinese dissident writer, is dying of liver cancer. He’s been in prison since 2009, his “crime” being the publication of a charter calling for political reform. But he’s not a hero to his countrymen. Most...
The NYRB China Archive
07.13.17The Passion of Liu Xiaobo
from New York Review of Books
In the late 1960s Mao Zedong, China’s Great Helmsman, encouraged children and adolescents to confront their teachers and parents, root out “cow ghosts and snake spirits,” and otherwise “make revolution.” In practice, this meant closing China’s...
ChinaFile Recommends
07.12.17Guo Wengui Told Niece and Other Executives to Fraudulently Obtain Loans, Court Hears
South China Morning Post
The niece of exiled tycoon Guo Wengui was one of three executives he instructed to use fake documents to obtain loans for his Henan real estate firm, a court in central China heard on Wednesday.
ChinaFile Recommends
07.12.17KFC—Yes That KFC—Is Selling Its Own Smartphones in China
CNBC
Kentucky Fried Chicken celebrated its 30th anniversary of operations in China by unveiling a limited edition smartphone it had collaborated on with Chinese smartphone maker Huawei.
ChinaFile Recommends
07.12.17Diplomats Fear Beijing Is Stalling on Allowing Liu Xiaobo out of China
Guardian
Diplomats in Beijing say time is running out for the ailing Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo to go overseas for treatment and fear China’s top leaders are deliberately stalling the process until it is no longer safe for medics to move him.
ChinaFile Recommends
07.07.17Chinese Umbrella-Sharing Firm Remains Upbeat Despite Losing Most of Its 300,000 Brollies
South China Morning Post
Just weeks after making 300,000 brollies available to the public via a rental scheme, Sharing E Umbrella announced that most of them had gone missing, news website The Paper reported on Thursday.
Caixin Media
07.07.17Court Rules Hospital Violated Gay Man’s Liberty
A gay man in Henan province has been awarded 5,000 yuan (U.S.$735) in compensation from a local psychiatric hospital where he was locked up for 19 days and forced to take pills and injections as therapy for his homosexuality. In its decision on June...
ChinaFile Recommends
07.06.17At the Movies in China, Some Propaganda With Your Popcorn
New York Times
Chinese cinemas have been ordered to play one of four government-issued videos before every movie screening.
ChinaFile Recommends
07.06.17Liu Xiaobo Vigil: Doctors Tell Chinese Nobel Laureate’s Family to Prepare for His Death
South China Morning Post
Family and friends of Chinese Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo are keeping vigil after doctors warned that the dissident’s condition had worsened.
Books
07.06.17China’s Asian Dream
“China,” Napoleon once remarked, “is a sleeping lion. Let her sleep, for when she wakes she will shake the world.” In 2014, President Xi Jinping triumphantly declared that the lion had awoken. Under his leadership, China is pursuing a dream to restore its historical position as the dominant power in Asia.From the Mekong River Basin to the Central Asian steppe, China is flexing its economic muscles for strategic ends. By setting up new regional financial institutions, Beijing is challenging the post-World War II order established under the watchful eye of Washington. And by funding and building roads, railways, ports, and power lines—a New Silk Road across Eurasia and through the South China Sea and Indian Ocean—China aims to draw its neighbors ever tighter into its embrace.Combining a geopolitical overview with on-the-ground reportage from a dozen countries, China’s Asian Dream offers a fresh perspective on one of the most important questions of our time: what does China’s rise mean for the future of Asia. —Zed Books{chop}
ChinaFile Recommends
07.04.17China Says It Has Invited Foreign Physicians to Treat Imprisoned Nobel Laureate Liu Xiaobo
Time
The judicial bureau for the northeastern city of Shenyang said Wednesday in an online statement that Liu’s family members made a request for foreign experts and Liu’s medical team agreed. Liu, China’s best-known political prisoner, is being treated...
ChinaFile Recommends
06.30.17Chinese Ways of Empire, Then and Now
New York Times
In 30 more years, Hong Kong will fully revert to the mainland. Much could happen between now and 2047, and the tea leaves are already out there waiting to be read: There are many old — even ancient — historical precedents showing how the Chinese...
ChinaFile Recommends
06.30.17China’s Richest Man Builds World’s Biggest Indoor Ski Resort, Giving Harbin Year-Long Winter
South China Morning Post
Harbin Wanda City, the $6 billion resort development built by China’s wealthiest tycoon Wang Jianlin, opened for business on Friday, the conglomerate’s sixth theme park as it pushes further into the country’s leisure and entertainment industry to...
Depth of Field
06.29.17Love, Robots, and Fireworks
from Yuanjin Photo
Included in this Depth of Field column are stories of love, community, remembrance, and the future, told through the discerning eyes of some of China’s best photojournalists. Among them, the lives of African migrants in Guangzhou, seven years inside...
ChinaFile Recommends
06.27.17Tycoon’s Claims Reverberate in China Despite Censorship and Thin Evidence
New York Times
Since taking office, President Xi Jinping has cultivated an aura of austere probity and stern control. But now a garrulous billionaire living in a lavish apartment in Manhattan, taunting the authorities beyond the easy grasp of Chinese security...
ChinaFile Recommends
06.27.17Liu Xiaobo: China Tells U.S. not to Interfere Over Jailed Dissident
BBC
Beijing has hit back at Washington for "irresponsible remarks" after the US criticised its treatment of Chinese Nobel peace laureate Liu Xiaobo.
ChinaFile Recommends
06.26.17Liu Xiaobo, Jailed Chinese Nobel Laureate, Is Moved from Prison for Cancer Treatment
New York Times
Liu Xiaobo, the jailed Chinese dissident who received the Nobel Peace Prize for his writings promoting democracy, has been moved from prison to be treated for late-stage cancer, two of his lawyers said on Monday.
ChinaFile Recommends
06.26.17China’s Mistress-Dispellers
New Yorker
How the economic boom and deep gender inequality have created a new industry.
ChinaFile Recommends
06.24.17China Charges Labor Activist for ‘Picking Quarrels’
Wall Street Journal
A Chinese activist who for years has documented worker unrest faced charges of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” on Friday, in a trial seen as a bellwether of Beijing’s approach to containing labor tensions.
Sinica Podcast
06.23.17Islamophobia in China, Explained
from Sinica Podcast
Islamophobia isn’t a phenomenon limited to Trump’s America or the Europe of Brexit and Marine Le Pen. It has taken root in China, too—in a form that bears a striking resemblance to what we’ve seen in recent years in the West. The Chinese Party-state...
ChinaFile Recommends
06.23.17China's Government Tightens Its Grip On Golf, Shuts Down Courses
NPR
By 2004, many of China's hundreds of golf courses were found to be built on valuable farmland through corrupt land deals.
The NYRB China Archive
06.22.17Novels from China’s Moral Abyss
from New York Review of Books
Modern China was built on the nearly thirty ruthless years of Mao’s rule. The country’s elite—the “literati” of educated small landowners who held the empire together at the local level—was brutally eliminated. Almost everyone’s personal life was...
ChinaFile Recommends
06.21.17The Dark Side of China’s National Renewal
Financial Times
The race-based ideas of the country’s leaders have unwelcome historical echoes.
ChinaFile Recommends
06.21.17China’s Dog Meat Festival Opens Despite Rumours of a Ban
Agence France-Presse
A notorious Chinese dog meat festival opened on Wednesday with butchers hacking slabs of canines and cooks frying the flesh despite rumours that the authorities would impose a ban this year.
ChinaFile Recommends
06.20.17China Shames Jaywalkers Through Facial Recognition
Agence France-Presse
Chinese cities are cracking down on jaywalkers by installing facial recognition kits at intersections to identify and shame them by posting their photo on public screens.
ChinaFile Recommends
06.19.17China Propels Rise of Electric Ultra-High-Performance Cars
New York Times
Want an insanely fast ride with zero emissions? Startup NIO has the car: An electric two-seater with muscular European lines and a top speed of 195 miles per hour (313 kilometers per hour). The catch: The EP9 costs nearly $1.5 million. NIO, a...
ChinaFile Recommends
06.18.17China, Where the Pressure to Marry Is Strong, and the Advice Flows Online
New York Times
Although women in their 20s are greatly outnumbered by men in the same age group in China, a product in part of the since-abandoned one-child family policy and a cultural preference for sons, they face enormous pressure to marry. Those who do not...
ChinaFile Recommends
06.14.17‘Lazy’ Chinese Driver Turns Shop into an Instant Drive-Through
South China Morning Post
A man drove his car into a convenience store in eastern China to save time from having to park his vehicle, according to Chinese media. Surveillance footage from the store in Zhenjiang, Jiangsu province, showed a grey car being driven through the...
ChinaFile Recommends
06.13.17Chinese Man Caught with 500 Imprisoned Cats Destined for Restaurants
Washington Post
Many of the cats were found in cages in the back of a small truck, some near death and mewing faintly in the heat. The man had used sparrows and caged birds to lure both stray cats and domestic ones in the city of Jiujiang in southern...
Sinica Podcast
06.12.17How Does Investigative Reporting Happen in China?
from Sinica Podcast
Li Xin is the Managing Director of Caixin Global, the English-language arm of China’s most authoritative financial news source, Caixin. For over 10 years, she has worked closely with the Editor-in-Chief of Caixin, Hu Shuli, whose famously fearless...
ChinaFile Recommends
06.12.17China Accuses 2 More Provinces Of Faking Data
Financial Times
China’s anti-corruption watchdog has highlighted fake economic data in the Northern provinces of Inner Mongolia and Jilin, in the country’s grain heartland.
ChinaFile Recommends
06.12.17China Drive to Relocate Millions of Rural Poor Runs into Trouble
Financial Times
Villagers return home after struggling with lack of jobs in urban apartments
ChinaFile Recommends
06.11.17Hundreds Protest in Shanghai over Ban on Selling Converted Flats
South China Morning Post
Rare demonstration came after city authorities barred owners from selling apartments converted from office or commercial space.
ChinaFile Recommends
06.11.17Online Gossip Clampdown in China Leads to Netizen Outcry
Financial Times
Chinese netizens have decried a government campaign to shut down many of the nation's top celebrity gossip outlets as Beijing escalates its control over online content.
ChinaFile Recommends
06.10.17Godfather of Beijing’s Indie Music Scene Dissects China’s Experimental Soundscape
China’s alternative-punk music scene has evolved from a genre that represented the rebelliousness of a niche group of well-off educated urbanites to one that’s international, hip, and popular. Chinese bands now play to sold-out gigs not only in old...
The NYRB China Archive
06.08.17China’s Astounding Religious Revival
from New York Review of Books
If there were just one Chinese in the world, he could be the lonely sage contemplating life and nature whom we come across on the misty mountains of Chinese scrolls. If there were two Chinese in the world, a man and a woman, lo, the family system is...
Viewpoint
06.05.17China Has a New Domestic Violence Law. So Why Are Victims Still Often Unsafe?
In rural Hunan province, about two hours from the city of Changsha, a young woman named Zhang Meili married a violent man. According to local police, Zhang had trouble coping with her husband’s strong sexual appetite and he became jealous and...
Books
06.01.17Welfare, Work, and Poverty
Welfare, Work, and Poverty provides the first systematic and comprehensive evaluation of the impacts and effectiveness of China’s primary social assistance program—the “dibao,” or “Minimum Livelihood Guarantee”—since its inception in 1993. The dibao serves the dual function of providing a basic safety net for the poor and maintaining social and political stability. Despite currently being the world’s largest welfare program in terms of population coverage, evidence on the dibao’s performance has been lacking. This book offers important new empirical evidence and draws policy lessons that are timely and useful for both China and beyond. Specifically, author Qin Gao addresses the following questions:How effective has the dibao been in targeting the poor and alleviating poverty?Have dibao recipients been dependent on welfare or able to move from welfare to work?How has the dibao affected recipients’ consumption patterns and subjective well-being?Do they use dibao subsidies to meet survival needs (such as food, clothing, and shelter) or to invest in human capital (such as health and education)?Are they distressed by the stigma associated with receiving dibao, or do they become more optimistic about the future and enjoy greater life satisfaction because of dibao support?And finally, what policy lessons can we learn from the existing evidence in order to strengthen and improve the dibao in the future?Answers to these questions not only help us gain an in-depth understanding of the dibao’s performance, but also add the Chinese case to the growing international literature on comparative welfare studies. Welfare, Work, and Poverty is essential reading for political scientists, economists, sociologists, public policy researchers, and social workers interested in learning about and understanding contemporary China. —Oxford University Press{chop}Related Reading:“Welfare, Work, and Poverty: How Effective is Social Assistance in China?,” by Qin Gao, China Policy Institute: Analysis
Sinica Podcast
05.26.17Chinese Power in the Age of Donald Trump
from Sinica Podcast
When Joseph Nye, Jr., first used the phrase “soft power” in his 1990 book Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power, China did not factor much into his calculus of world order: It had relatively little military and economic power, and...
ChinaFile Recommends
05.24.17‘Taiwan Says Yes!’: In Historic Decision, Top Court Rules in Favor of Same-Sex Marriage
Washington Post
A Taipei court on Wednesday ruled in favor of allowing same-sex marriage, paving the way for Taiwan to become the first nation in Asia to legalize same-sex unions and cementing its status as a beacon for LGBT rights.
ChinaFile Recommends
05.24.17Chinese Student’s Commencement Speech in U.S. Isn’t Going over Well in China
NPR
A Chinese student who praised the “fresh air of free speech” in the U.S. during her commencement address at the University of Maryland is facing an online backlash from classmates and from people in China who say she insulted her own country.
Reports
05.24.17China’s Social Credit System: A Big-Data Enabled Approach to Market Regulation with Broad Implications for Doing Business in China
Mirjam Meissner
Mercator Institute for China Studies
Under the catchphrase “Social Credit System,” China is currently implementing a new and highly innovative approach to monitoring, rating, and regulating the behavior of market participants. The Social Credit System will have significant impact on...
ChinaFile Recommends
05.18.17Yulin in China to Ban Sale of Dog Meat Ahead of Annual Dog Meat Festival, Say Chinese Animal-Rights Activists
South China Morning Post
Chinese officials are set to ban the sale of dog meat at the annual Yulin festival, according to China-based activists.
Conversation
05.09.17Can China’s Approach to Internet Control Spread around the World?
Earlier this month, citing concerns over “cyber sovereignty,” China’s Internet regulators announced new restrictions on the country’s already tightly controlled Internet—further curbing online news reporting and putting Party-appointed editors in...
Books
05.08.17The Souls of China
From journalist Ian Johnson, a revelatory portrait of religion in China today—its history, the spiritual traditions of its Eastern and Western faiths, and the ways in which it is influencing China’s future.The Souls of China tells the story of one of the world’s great spiritual revivals. Following a century of violent anti-religious campaigns, China is now filled with new temples, churches, and mosques—as well as cults, sects, and politicians trying to harness religion for their own ends. Driving this explosion of faith is uncertainty over what it means to be Chinese and how to live an ethical life in a country that discarded traditional morality a century ago and is searching for new guideposts.Johnson first visited China in 1984. In the 1990s, he helped run a charity to rebuild Daoist temples, and in 2001 he won a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the suppression of the Falun Gong spiritual movement. While researching this book, he lived for extended periods with underground church members, rural Daoists, and Buddhist pilgrims. Along the way, he learned esoteric meditation techniques, visited a nonagenarian Confucian sage, and befriended government propagandists as they fashioned a remarkable embrace of traditional values. He has distilled these experiences into a cycle of festivals, births, deaths, detentions, and struggle—a great awakening of faith that is shaping the soul of the world’s newest superpower. —Pantheon{chop}
Caixin Media
05.05.17Belt and Road: A Symphony in Need of a Strong Conductor
In just a few weeks, the Chinese president will host the Belt and Road summit—Xi Jinping’s landmark program to invest billions of dollars in infrastructure projects across Asia, Africa, and Europe. Reactions to the project have been, understandably...
Books
04.21.17A New Deal for China’s Workers?
China’s labor landscape is changing, and it is transforming the global economy in ways that we cannot afford to ignore. Once-silent workers have found their voice, organizing momentous protests, such as the 2010 Honda strikes, and demanding a better deal. China’s leaders have responded not only with repression but with reforms. Are China’s workers on the verge of a breakthrough in industrial relations and labor law reminiscent of the American New Deal?In A New Deal for China’s Workers? Cynthia Estlund views this changing landscape through the comparative lens of America’s twentieth-century experience with industrial unrest. China’s leaders hope to replicate the widely shared prosperity, political legitimacy, and stability that flowed from America’s New Deal, but they are irrevocably opposed to the independent trade unions and mass mobilization that were central to bringing it about. Estlund argues that the specter of an independent labor movement, seen as an existential threat to China’s one-party regime, is both driving and constraining every facet of its response to restless workers.China’s leaders draw on an increasingly sophisticated toolkit in their effort to contain worker activism. The result is a surprising mix of repression and concession, confrontation and cooptation, flaws and functionality, rigidity and pragmatism. If China’s laborers achieve a New Deal, it will be a New Deal with Chinese characteristics, very unlike what workers in the West achieved in the last century. Estlund’s sharp observations and crisp comparative analysis make China’s labor unrest and reform legible to Western readers. —Harvard University Press{chop}
Media
04.19.17ChinaFile Presents: Ian Johnson on ‘The Souls of China’
On April 13, ChinaFile and The New York Review of Books co-hosted the launch of author Ian Johnson’s new book The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao at the Asia Society’s New York headquarters. Johnson discussed the book with Ian...
Video
04.19.17Trafficked into Wedlock
When Buntha left Cambodia to marry a Chinese man, she did so for money, not for love.Thirty-two years old at the time, and never married, she had few opportunities to earn money for her family in her village in Kampong Cham, Cambodia. The China she...
Conversation
04.14.17Ivanka: A ChinaFile Conversation
At a time of strained and erratic relations between the U.S. and China, Ivanka Trump, the President’s daughter and, more recently, a member of his administration, has emerged as an unlikely but singularly potent emissary, not to just to China’s...
Media
04.12.17Chinese Blame America for United Airlines
from Foreign Policy
The video of David Dao being dragged kicking and screaming off a United Airlines flight by Chicago police set the American Internet aflame Monday. That’s not a surprise: Whether you blame the greed of American airlines or late capitalism, the video...
ChinaFile Recommends
04.12.17China’s Aged and Sick Flock to a Hamlet Known for Longevity
New York Times
Once a largely undisturbed hamlet hidden in the karst mountains of Guangxi Province, Bama has in recent years become a magnet for China’s sick and aged.
ChinaFile Recommends
04.12.17China and the Legend of Ivanka
New Yorker
That such a vexed figure may serve as the role model for Chinese women who are just beginning to grapple with their identity in a society that has historically been hostile to their empowerment seems like a regression.
Viewpoint
04.06.17What Do Trump and Xi Share? A Dislike of Muslims
During the 1980s, as an idealistic, ambitious Uighur growing up under repressive Chinese conditions in the city of Kashgar, there was one nation to which I pinned my hopes for freedom and democracy. To me, the United States was a symbol of my...
ChinaFile Recommends
04.03.17Canada Deports Hundreds to China Each Year with No Treatment Guarantee
Globe and Mail
The Canadian government is deporting hundreds of people to China each year without receiving any assurances that they will not be tortured or otherwise mistreated, statistics provided to The Globe and Mail reveal.
Features
04.03.17Boxing For Survival in a Chinese Fight Club
“I was supposed to be fighting some IT guy,” Bo Junhui groaned afterward. Instead, the 18-year-old student was up against someone a year older, ten pounds heavier, and a lot hungrier. Xia Tian has never worked behind a desk; he’d spent the last few...