Lai Ching-te is now president-elect of Taiwan, after a hard-fought race in which Beijing made its preference for his opponents clear. Lai is an outspoken advocate for Taiwan’s sovereignty, though he has said he wants to keep the status quo with...
China’s popularity in the world is plummeting, and antagonism between China and the United States is growing. Many blame China for allowing a series of new viruses to emerge, for failing to stop COVID-19 when it first appeared, and for not...
Local elections are democratic in name only. The party picks its preferred candidates and leaves no room for an upset
On the morning of Election Day, I joined He Haibo, a legal scholar at Tsinghua University in Beijing, as he spent several hours observing a polling station in the upscale Graham and Parks public elementary school in Cambridge,...
Between August and December, China is holding staggered local elections all across the country – an exercise in “grass-roots democracy” on a daunting scale
The extraordinary intervention in the affairs of this semiautonomous former British colony could prompt a constitutional crisis and incite more street protests
There’s a bit of a nanny state in the city of Hong Kong. The government is quick to issue advice and admonitions about all matter of hazards—high ocean waves, food waste...
A photojournalist’s job is to capture the unique and the universal—to portray brief moments that tell individual stories, yet are instantly relatable to a wide audience. The delightful task of curating that type of Chinese...
Wukan is Hu Chunhua's tryout for the Politburo Standing Committee
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...
On September 4, Hong Kong elected a batch of its youngest and most pro-democratic lawmakers yet. Six new legislators, all under 40, won on platforms that called for Hong Kongers to decide their own fate. The youngest is 23-year-old Nathan Law, a...
Last month, midway through a whirlwind tour of United States universities, Hong Kong democracy activist Joshua Wong took a break for a crab cake and mac-and-cheese lunch at a Manhattan brasserie. Wong, 19, came to international...
In January, Taiwan’s voters handed the traditionally pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) a landslide victory, giving it control of both the parliament and presidency for the first time ever. The victory came at the expense of the...
Washington less likely to indulge Beijing over its policy after victory of island’s pro-independence party
The Africa-China summit will provide an opportunity to see how the Chinese President is responding to democratic developments in Africa.
Meritocracy has worked for Beijing, but to survive, the system needs more openness.
The rejection was expected and will likely appease activists who demanded a veto of what they call "fake" reforms.
As Hong Kong’s legislature began debate this week on the reform package that could shape the future of the local political system, the former British colony’s pro-democracy lawmakers swore again they will reject electoral reforms proposed by the...
Following is the transcript of a recent ChinaFile Breakfast with Margaret Ng, the former Hong Kong legislator in discussion with Ira Belkin of New York University Law School and Orville Schell, ChinaFile Publisher and Arthur Ross...
Thousands of Hong Kong university students abandoned classes on Monday to rally against Chinese government limits on voting rights, a bellwether demonstration of the city’s appetite for turning smoldering discontent.
Tung Chee-hwa leads 70-strong delegation to Beijing; members come out strongly against Occupy Central, saying don't harm Hong Kong
In an interview, Anson Chan talked about what she sees as increasing control from Beijing, which had guaranteed Hong Kong a high degree of autonomy until 2047 under the “One Country, Two Systems” formula.
China is "ready to work with the new Indian government to maintain high-level contact, strengthen cooperation and communication in all areas," former Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi told Ambassador Ashok Kumar Kantha.
In Egypt in 2011, what was by all accounts a free and fair democratic election resulted in the victory of Mohammed Morsi, a controversial figure whose brief rule ended last week after being overthrown by the Egyptian military. With Western media...
Without much fanfare, Beijing has introduced significant reforms and established an elaborate system of what can be called “selection plus election.”
The events in Taiwan since March 19, the day before the presidential election, can be seen as a Taiwanese version of the long wrangle between Al Gore and George W. Bush more than three years ago. No matter how the election is resolved, something...
For foreign correspondents who had been present in Peking’s Tiananmen Square in June 1989, the events of the night of March 17, 1996, in the plaza in front of the Taipei city hall, showed more clearly than any other what the China-...
