Features
07.10.23

For Beijing, Putting People Back to Work May Prove a Tough Job

Eva Xiao

In a small Chinese town where unemployment has run high during the COVID-19 pandemic, the local government has embraced a surprising remedy to joblessness: public toilets. Fugong Village, in Guangdong province, usually sees nearly half of its...

China Tightens Grip on Foreign University Ventures

The directive, which took effect last year but whose existence is being revealed for the first time by the Financial Times, mandates foreign education institutions to include a clause that supports the establishment of a party...

Books
08.21.17

China’s Banking Transformation

In this timely and provocative book, James Stent, a banker with decades of experience in Asian banking and fluency in Chinese language, explains how Chinese banks work, analyzes their strengths and weaknesses, and sets forth the challenges they face in a slowing economy.

Caixin Media
03.27.17

Expert Doubts Incentives Would Boost China’s Birth Rate

Proposed incentives for couples to have a second baby—including tax breaks and extra maternity leave—won’t lead to a significant spike in China’s birth rate, a renowned demographer said.

Liang Zhongtang’s comments come amid...

Books
03.16.17

Hollywood Made in China

China’s entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001 ignited a race to capture new global media audiences. Hollywood moguls began courting Chinese investors to create entertainment on an international scale—from behemoth theme parks to blockbuster films. Hollywood Made in China examines these new collaborations, where the distinctions between Hollywood’s “dream factory” and Xi Jinping’s “Chinese Dream” of global influence become increasingly blurred.

Media
11.06.15

‘A Brutality Born of Helplessness’

Alexa Olesen

When China finally scrapped its one-child policy after more than three decades of brutality, almost no one lamented its passing. But Paul R. Ehlich, a Stanford-educated biologist and author of the 1968 fear-baiting classic The...

Infographics
09.29.15

China’s New Roads Are Taking a Toll

from Sohu

On July 21, the Ministry of Transport issued a revised...

Caixin Media
09.15.15

Stock Market Volatility Is Not a Harbinger of Collapsing Growth

It would be a sad end to an amazing story. An economic miracle—one that lifted 300 million people from poverty and shifted the world's economic center of gravity—collapsing under the weight of risky investments and a financial crisis.

This...

Beijing Works to Calm Tumbling Stock Market

Beijing will do whatever it takes to avert a collapse in the stock market; authorities have already taken steps to boost sentiment and liquidity, including an interest rate cut.

Caixin Media
05.19.15

Why Xinjiang’s Economy Is Sputtering

It has been almost one year since a terrorist bombing in Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang region, shocked the nation and brought economic woes and social conflicts in the largely Uighur-populated area into the spotlight again.

I arrived...

5 Takeaways from China’s GDP

For much of the last two decades, China has been working overtime to drive the growth of the world economy. Now, it’s slowing to suborbital speeds.

China Reports Sharp Rise in HIV Cases

China had nearly half a million people living with the virus or disease by the end of August last year, with 70,000 of them newly diagnosed in the first eight months of 2014, official statistics showed.

China’s Regulations on Sale of Birth By-product in Chaos

In a cramped, quiet room, several bloody placentas sit in a machine, drying. Some workers then ground them down and filled capsules with the viscera. This gory scene is not from a horror movie but the day-to-day business of an underground...

Media
02.06.14

Beijing’s State Secrets Law—Still Broad, Still Opaque

Beijing may be whittling back its widely reviled state secrets laws—but given their opacity, it’s hard to say for sure. Chinese Premier Li Keqiang signed a regulation, announced February 2, that would prohibit Chinese government organs from “...

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...

Congressional-Executive Commission on China: 2013 Annual Report

United States Congress

The Commission notes China’s lack of progress in guaranteeing Chinese citizens’ freedom of expression, assembly, and religion; restraining the power of the Chinese Communist Party; and establishing the rule of law under the new leadership of...

Books
03.28.13

China Goes Global

David Shambaugh

Most global citizens are well aware of the explosive growth of the Chinese economy. Indeed, China has famously become the “workshop of the world.” Yet, while China watchers have shed much light on the country’s internal dynamics—China’s politics, its vast social changes, and its economic development—few have focused on how this increasingly powerful nation has become more active and assertive throughout the world.

Books
01.14.13

Governing Health in Contemporary China

Yanzhong Huang

The lack of significant improvement in people’s health status and other mounting health challenges in China raise a puzzling question about the country’s internal transition: why did the reform-induced dynamics produce an economic miracle, but fail to reproduce the success Mao had achieved in the health sector? This book examines the political and policy dynamics of health governance in post-Mao China. It explores the political-institutional roots of the public health and health care challenges and the evolution of the leaders’ policy response in contemporary China.

The NYRB China Archive
09.30.10

The Party: Impenetrable, All Powerful

Ian Johnson
from New York Review of Books

In the next few weeks, an event will take place in Beijing on a par with anything dreamed up by a conspiracy theorist. A group of roughly three hundred men and women will meet at an undisclosed time and location to set policies for a sixth of...

The NYRB China Archive
06.09.94

The Old Man’s New China

Perry Link
from New York Review of Books

The Communist Party of China has regularly warned Western observers like Merle Goldman not to interfere in China’s internal affairs. China, it says, has its own culturally distinctive ideas on topics like freedom, democracy, and human rights. So...