The NYRB China Archive
10.21.21

The CCP’s Culture of Fear

Perry Link
from New York Review of Books

One way to measure China’s urge to transform itself is to note how often the word new has been used by Chinese leaders. In 1902, the concept of the “new citizen” took hold in Liang Qichao’s New Citizen Journal. 20 years later, the May Fourth...

Viewpoint
07.02.20

It’s True That Democracy in China Is in Retreat, But Don’t Give up on It Now

Li Fan

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...

Features
09.13.16

The Destruction of Baishizhou

Eli MacKinnon

Early this spring, the Chinese character for “demolish” (“拆”) showed up in red spray paint on a strip of shops in Shenzhen’s Baishizhou neighborhood. Wang An, 41, has been selling women’s underwear from one of these shops for the...

Sinica Podcast
02.02.15

Shanghai and the Future Now

Kaiser Kuo, Jeremy Goldkorn & more
from Sinica Podcast

Expats in Beijing may be partial to our rugged smogtropolis, but even the most diehard northerner will admit that Shanghai is the more romantic of the two cities, with its very name conjuring up images of 19th century opium dens, jazz bars in the...

Cultural Reflection Can Improve Modern Governance

During the latest in a series of collective studies among the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, Xi said the CPC should follow successful examples in Chinese history to learn from their merits and avoid shortcomings.

Getting Real About China

China’s harsh suppression of political dissent, from Hong Kong to Xinjiang, and its close ties to Russia, Iran and North Korea, have finally laid to rest the dream many Western leaders have had since the 1990s.

Environment
04.10.14

With Dietary Shift, China Facing Health Crisis

from chinadialogue

Tom Levitt: What are the dietary changes going on in China today?

Barry Popkin: There are three or four big changes taking place. Firstly, people in China are purchasing more and more of their food from...

The NYRB China Archive
11.21.13

Dreams of a Different China

Ian Johnson
from New York Review of Books

Last 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,...

Excerpts
07.02.13

Rejuvenation (复兴)

Orville Schell & John Delury

If any of the makers of modern China who agonized over their country’s enfeebled state and dreamed of better times during the past century and a half could have visited Beijing’s...

The NYRB China Archive
06.06.13

Faking It in China

Ian Johnson
from New York Review of Books

One of the most striking features about daily life in China is how much of what one encounters has been appropriated from elsewhere. It’s not just the fake iPhones or luxury watches—pirated consumer goods are common in many developing countries....

The NYRB China Archive
04.07.12

‘Worse Than the Cultural Revolution’

Ian Johnson
from New York Review of Books

Tian Qing may be China’s leading cultural heritage expert. A scholar of Buddhist musicology and the Chinese zither, or guqin, the sixty-four-year-old now heads the Chinese Intangible Cultural Heritage Protection Center, an institution...

The NYRB China Archive
06.12.03

AsiaWorld

Ian Buruma
from New York Review of Books
To stand somewhere in the center of an East Asian metropolis, Seoul, say, or Guangzhou, is to face an odd cultural conundrum. Little of what you see, apart from the writing on billboards, can be described as traditionally Asian. There are the faux-...
The NYRB China Archive
07.18.91

China on the Verge

Jonathan D. Spence
from New York Review of Books

During the play-off matches for the intercollegiate East China soccer title in the early 1920s, passions ran high. The president of Shanghai’s prestigious Communications University was no less a soccer fan than anyone else, but he was also a...

The NYRB China Archive
11.07.68

Pekinology

Martin Bernal
from New York Review of Books

Mr. Pye is disarming and sensible in his description of his method. From the start he makes it clear that The Spirit of Chinese Politics is an “interpretive and largely speculative essay.” He refuses to cite specific examples to...