China, the Death Star of Emerging Markets
On any list of banking accidents waiting to happen, China is assured a place at the very top. But could a crash there take the entire global economy down with it?
Xi Jinping’s Inner Circle: The Shaanxi Gang
This analysis is an excerpt of a paper examining the members of Xi Jinping's inner circle. It specifically looks at the “Shaanxi Gang,” national leaders tied to Shaanxi province whose ascent to leadership paralleled Xi’s own.
Secrecy for Sale: Inside the Global Offshore Money Maze
The data illustrates the outsized dependency of China's economy on tiny islands thousands of miles away.
Viewpoint
01.14.14
Xi, Mao, and China’s Search for a Usable Past
Since its founding, the United States has had understandable pride in its great achievements, but also has had to reckon with its complex moral history—beginning but hardly ending with the fact that our original Constitution accepted the evil of...
Conversation
01.06.14
Will Xi Jinping Bring a Positive New Day to China?
Chinese President Xi Jinping, just over a year in office, recently made a rare appearance in public in a Beijing restaurant, buying a cheap lunch and paying for it himself...
Other
12.23.13
[Transcript] One Year Later, China’s New Leaders
Nearly a year to the day after seven new leaders ascended to their posts on the Standing Committee of China’s Politburo, the Asia Society held a public...
The NYRB China Archive
11.21.13
Dreams of a Different China
from New York Review of BooksLast November, China’s newly installed leader, Xi Jinping, asked his fellow Chinese to help realize a “Chinese dream” of national rejuvenation. In the months since then, his talk has been seen as a marker in the new leadership’s thinking,...
Media
11.14.13
Westerners Aren’t the Only Ones Flummoxed by China’s Reform Plans
After the Third Plenum, a high-level meeting to discuss China’s future, ended on November 12, Beijing released a major document likely to affect many of its 1.3 billion citizens’ lives for years. Western media responded to the 5,000-plus...
Viewpoint
11.01.13
What the Heck is China’s ‘Third Plenum’ and Why Should You Care?
China’s economy is already two-thirds the size of the economy of the U.S., and it’s been growing five times as fast. But now, China’s economy is beginning to slow and is facing a raft of difficult problems. If China’s leaders don’t address these...
Conversation
10.25.13
Can State-Run Capitalism Absorb the Shocks of ‘Creative Destruction’?
Following are ChinaFile Conversation participants’ reactions to “China: Superpower or Superbust?” in the November-December issue of...
Features
10.25.13
Bo Xilai May Have Gotten Off Easy
On October 25, the Shandong High People’s Court rejected the appeal of Bo Xilai, the former Party Secretary of Chongqing who on September 22 was convicted of bribe-taking,...
The NYRB China Archive
10.15.13
Old Dreams for a New China
from New York Review of BooksEver since China’s new leader, Xi Jinping, first uttered the phrase “China Dream” last year, people in China and abroad have been scrambling to decipher its meaning. Many nations have “dreams”; in Canada, the country’s most prominent popular...
Conversation
10.07.13
Why Is Xi Jinping Promoting Self-Criticism?
Critics both within and without China have suggested that Xi Jinping’s promotion of self-criticism by Communist Party cadres has at least two motives: it promotes the appearance of concern with lax discipline while avoiding deeper reform, and it...
Sinica Podcast
09.13.13
Petroleum and Purges
from Sinica PodcastThe Beijing rumor-mill is back on overdrive. With the trial of Bo Xilai only barely concluded and the country now openly speculating on the length of the disgraced politician’s likely sentence, factional battles targeting Bo’s remaining...
Communist Party Members May Be Ineligible for U.S. Green Card
The U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act still makes ineligible for permanent residence any person who “is or has been a member of or affiliated with” the Chinese Communist Party (C.C.P.). There are certain exceptions and waivers, however...
Sinica Podcast
08.30.13
The Trial of the Century
from Sinica PodcastThe spectacular trial of Bo Xilai seized the media’s attention last week as the fallen politburo member—still widely admired in Chongqing and Dalian and heavily connected among the Party elite—defended himself with unexpected vigor against...
China Takes Aim at Western Ideas
Communist Party cadres have filled meeting halls around China to hear a somber, secretive warning issued by senior leaders. Power could escape their grip, they have been told, unless the party eradicates seven subversive currents coursing...
Where Is China’s Gorbachev?
Why China hasn't had—and isn't likely to have—a political reformer in the mold of the former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.
From Maoist Criminal to Popular Hero?
China will begin one of the most sensational trials in its modern political history, when Bo Xilai, the former rising star in the Politburo and Communist Party boss in the megacity of Chongqing, faces corruption charges.
Chinese Judges Disciplined for Cavorting With Prostitutes
Two judges and an official of the Shanghai high court have been expelled from the Communist Party and dismissed from their jobs after being seen on video apparently consorting with prostitutes in glitzy nightclubs.
Opposing Editorials Reflect Ideological Rift in Communist Party
The People’s Daily and Study Times, ran editorials expressing their opposing views on the issue of constitutionalism: limiting the government’s power by a higher system of laws that protects citizens’ rights.
Success Brings Scrutiny to Chinese Mystic
Wang Lin, an exponent of the ancient Chinese practice of qigong, claims he has used his powers to cure cancer and has performed other mysterious feats, like conjuring snakes out of thin air. But none of his abilities were enough to ward off the...
How China Made the Tiananmen Square Massacre Irrelevant
Though recognized and observed by groups and nations all over the world, in China itself, the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre will pass without any public acknowledgement.
China Warns Officials Against ‘Dangerous’ Western Values
The Chinese Communist Party has warned officials to combat “dangerous” Western values and other perceived ideological threats, in a directive that analysts said on Monday reflected the determination of China’s leader to preserve top-down...
The NYRB China Archive
05.09.13
Chen Guangcheng in New York
from New York Review of BooksFollowing are excerpts from a recent conversation among Chen Guangcheng, the blind legal activist who was recently permitted to leave China and is currently a distinguished visitor at New York University School of Law; Jerome A. Cohen,...
Viewpoint
04.26.13
Sino-American Relations: Amour or Les Miserables?
Winston Lord, former United States Ambassador to China, tells us he recently hacked into the temples of government, pecking at his first-generation iPad with just one finger—a clear sign that both Beijing and Washington need to beef up their ...
Elite In China Face Austerity Under Xi’s Rule
Warning that graft and gluttony threaten to bring down the ruling Communists, Mr. Xi has ordered an end to boozy, taxpayer-financed banquets and the bribery that often takes the form of Louis Vuitton bags.
Caixin Media
03.23.13
Achieving Real Progress in How Government Functions
After months of speculation, the reorganization of the State Council has finally been approved by the National People’s Congress.
Under the shake-up, China’s rail business will no longer be managed by the regulator. Three national agencies...
China’s Public Expression Philosophy: A Case Of Too Little Theory?
For the foreseeable future, accepting pluralism, in all its colours and guises, is simply inconceivable in the epistemology of the Communist Party, and so are liberal conceptions of free expression and democracy.
Media
03.13.13
Chavez and Bo Xilai Gone: Death of a Political Model?
Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez’s death on March 5, 2013 came in the same week as the “Two Sessions” began in China, when China’s national legislature meets in Beijing. It was also almost exactly a year since the spectacular political demise of...
China’s Richer-Than-Romney Lawmakers Reveal Reform Challenge
The growing presence of wealthy people in the legislature coincides with Xi's efforts to address the concern that the Communist Party no longer represents the interests of ordinary Chinese.
Chen Guangcheng Q&A
The blind lawyer and human rights activists answers questions regarding China's constitution, rule of law in China, and the inevitability of change in the Chinese government.
Culture
02.28.13
Classical Music with Chinese Characteristics
On a frigid Friday morning at the end of 2012, a stream of expectant concertgoers poured through the cavernous lobby of the China National Center for the Performing Arts. They had come to...
After The First 100 Days Of Xi Jinping
A look at what Xi has done so far and what is on the horizon, including environmental and economic reforms. loosening media restrictions, and Xi’s formally replacing Hu Jintao as president.
Viewpoint
02.25.13
Xi Jinping Should Expand Deng Xiaoping’s Reforms
A month after the conclusion of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) 18th National Congress, the new Secretary General of the CCP and Central Military Commission, comrade Xi Jinping, left Beijing to visit Shenzhen, the first foothold of...
Government Reform: Super-Size Me
Officials say fewer, bigger ministries can mean smaller government. Not everyone agrees.
Chinese Netizens Liked Seeing Partisanship at State of the Union
The partisan dissonance exhibited at President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address was a sight for sore eyes for some users on Sina Weibo, China’s microblogging platform.
Waiting for the Next Act
“The Taoists have always spoken of an un-carved block, and I think that we should look on the new Chinese leadership as being something like that,” says Orville Schell, Arthur Ross...
Reformers Aim to Get China to Live up to Own Constitution
After the chaos of the Cultural Revolution, the surviving Communist Party leaders pursued a project that might sound familiar to those in the West: Write a constitution that enshrines individual rights and ensures rulers are subject to law, so...
China Appoints New Tibet Governor, Hardline Policies to Remain
China named Losang Gyaltsen Tibet’s new governor, signalling the government won’t ease control of the Himalayan region...
Xi Jinping’s Opposition to Political Reforms Laid out in Leaked Internal Speech
Beijing-based writer Gao Yu’s writing on a speech Xi Jinping made during his “southern tour” in December, suggests Xi, who blames those not “man enough” to do what had to be done to save the Soviet Communist Party from itself, has even less...
Beijing Observation: Xi Jinping the Man
Xi Jinping’s “new southern tour speech,” made in December, began circulating last week in the party. It reads like a confirmation of Harvard Professor Roderick MacFarquhar’s prediction that the likelihood of the Chinese Communist Party reforming...
Pressures at Home, Tensions Offshore
It is tempting to conclude that the increasingly dangerous dispute between China and Japan over the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands is driven in part by Beijing’s need to distract its populace from problems at home
In China, Discontent Among the Communist Party Faithful
Some Chinese say that they are starting to realize that a secure life is dependent on the defense of certain principles, perhaps most crucially freedom of expression.
Viewpoint
01.13.13
Is Xi Jinping a Reformer? It’s Much Too Early to Tell
Last weekend, Nicholas Kristof wrote in the pages of The New York Times that he feels moderately confident...
The NYRB China Archive
01.08.13
The Old Fears of China’s New Leaders
from New York Review of BooksI felt a shudder of déjà vu watching the mounting protests inside China this week of the Communist Party for censoring an editorial in Southern Weekend, a well-known liberal newspaper in the southern city of Guangzhou. It is all too...
Report Links Former Police Chief to Murder
A Chinese newspaper reports a former Chongqing police chief played a direct role in organizing the murder of a U.K. citizen.
The NYRB China Archive
12.21.12
Beijing’s Doomsday Problem
from New York Review of BooksOver the past ten days, China has been riveted by accounts of what authorities say are its very own doomsday cult: the church of Almighty God, which has prophesized that the world will end today. Authorities have said the group staged illegal...