Notes from ChinaFile
03.13.23

‘It Is Especially Scary to See Students’

Jue Jiang

As in many other aspects of public life in China under Xi Jinping, the space for independent inquiry and discussion within the academy has shrunk significantly in recent years. The Xi administration has released a slew of guidelines and...

Excerpts
07.31.19

What Role Will Intellectuals Play in China’s Future?

Sebastian Veg

As we commemorate the thirtieth anniversary of China’s 1989 democracy movement, it is hard to imagine students and intellectuals playing a similar role today. In China’s highly marketized and politically controlled society, the space for...

Conversation
03.28.19

What Does the Punishment of a Prominent Scholar Mean for Intellectual Freedom in China?

Donald Clarke, David Yeliang Xia & more

This week, Xu Zhangrun, a law professor at Beijing’s Tsinghua University who in recent months has penned a series of essays critical of policies of the Chinese Communist Party and of its leader, Xi Jinping, was banned from teaching, relieved of...

Culture
03.23.18

What Chinese High School Students Learn in America

Jonathan Landreth

In 2011, when a rural prep school in Maine invited New York-based director Miao Wang to screen her first film, Beijing Taxi, she was surprised to find so many Chinese students enrolled at the archetypal New England establishment. Not Chinese-...

Viewpoint
11.03.17

The Future of Particle Physics Will Live and Die in China

Yangyang Cheng
from Foreign Policy

“Don’t you dare kill my project.”

My phone interview with a senior official at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) had started with bland, yet polite, responses. But it took a sharp turn toward audible agitation and...