Notes from ChinaFile
02.01.24

“It’s Too Convenient to Say That Xi Jinping Is a Second Mao”

Nick Frisch & Chun Han Wong

The Chinese Communist Party, an organization of over ninety million members, remains opaque to many outsiders, even within China. Wall Street Journal reporter Chun Han Wong spent years in Beijing documenting social, political, and...

The NYRB China Archive
12.07.23

A Fallen Artist in Mao’s China

Perry Link
from New York Review of Books

This book will be denounced in Beijing. Ha Jin’s The Woman Back from Moscow is a novel based on the life of Sun Weishi, an adopted daughter of Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai, whose brilliant mind and intensive study in Moscow...

Viewpoint
01.31.23

Where Does Xi Jinping Go from Here?

Neil Thomas

Popular narratives about Chinese leader Xi Jinping are in flux. Just a few months ago, he was widely seen as an unassailable force. But unusually widespread protests in late November, followed by a complete reversal of his zero-COVID policy, have...

Conversation
12.02.22

Jiang Zemin, 1926-2022

Julia Lovell, Ian Johnson & more

Former Chinese leader Jiang Zemin died on Wednesday at the age of 96, shortly after anger about the zero-COVID policy had boiled over into a wave of protest last weekend. Jiang took the country through the boom years of the 1990s, a time now...

The NYRB China Archive
03.14.18

Chairman Xi, Chinese Idol

Ian Johnson
from New York Review of Books

For nearly sixty years since it opened in 1959, the Great Hall of the People has been the public focus of Chinese politics, a monumental granite block that extends 1,200 feet along the west side of Tiananmen Square. It is where the country’s...

Conversation
02.25.18

Xi Won’t Go

Richard McGregor, Taisu Zhang & more

In a surprise Sunday move, Beijing announced that the Communist Party leadership wants to abolish the two-term limit for China’s president and vice president, potentially paving the way for China’s 64-year-old President Xi Jinping to stay in...

The NYRB China Archive
01.18.18

The Red Emperor

Roderick MacFarquhar
from New York Review of Books

This fall, the Nineteenth Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (C.C.P.) gave proof that during his five years as general secretary Xi Jinping has become the most powerful leader of China since Mao Zedong died in 1976. Most observers, Chinese...