‘I Wonder How the Protesters Felt When They Heard Their Own Voices’
On Sunday, February 5, after a polar vortex brought the coldest weekend in decades to the region, scores of people gathered in the heart of Boston to commemorate the third anniversary of the passing of Dr. Li Wenliang, the young Chinese...
In China’s Diaspora, Visions of a Different Homeland
At the beginning, there were songs. It’s the Monday after Thanksgiving. In the storied New England town, over a hundred of us had gathered for the candlelight vigil. After a fire claimed at least ten lives in a locked-down building in Urumchi,...
Hong Kong from the Inside
from New York Review of BooksIn November 2019, some one thousand young pro-democracy protesters occupied the campus of Hong Kong’s Polytechnic University, which is located at a crucial junction of two highways and the cross-harbor tunnel. They disrupted...
The Protest Families of Pro-Democracy Hong Kong
from New York Review of BooksThey met at a crossroads in October 2019. That day, Hong Kong’s people came out in their tens of thousands, to protest the proposed Extradition Bill, which would allow the territory to detain and transfer citizens to mainland China. Hoikei was...
New Data Show Hong Kong’s National Security Arrests Follow a Pattern
Will Protests against China Push Beijing to Intervene in Myanmar?
Angry with the results of the November election, which saw a landslide win for the ruling National League for Democracy party, Myanmar’s military claimed electoral fraud. On February 1, they seized power from the civilian government, rounding up...
Playing by the Informal Rules
Growing protests in non-democratic countries are often seen as signals of regime decline. China, however, has remained stable amid surging protests. Drawing on a nationwide dataset of protest and multi-sited ethnographic research, this book presents a bird’s-eye view of Chinese contentious politics and illustrates the uneven application of informal norms across regions, social groups, and time.
Vigil
The rise of Hong Kong is the story of a miraculous post-war boom, when Chinese refugees flocked to a small British colony, and, in less than 50 years, transformed it into one of the great financial centers of the world. The unraveling of Hong Kong, on the other hand, shatters the grand illusion of China ever having the intention of allowing democratic norms to take root inside its borders. Hong Kong’s people were subjects of the British Empire for more than a hundred years, and now seem destined to remain the subordinates of today’s greatest rising power.
The Art of Political Control in China
When and why do people obey political authority when it runs against their own interests to do so? This book is about the channels beyond direct repression through which China’s authoritarian state controls protest and implements ambitious policies from sweeping urbanization schemes that have displaced millions to family planning initiatives like the one-child policy. Mattingly argues that China’s remarkable state capacity is not simply a product of coercive institutions such as the secret police or the military. Instead, the state uses local civil society groups as hidden but effective tools of informal control to suppress dissent and implement far-reaching policies.
Is Violence in Hong Kong’s Protests Turning off Moderates?
How China’s Rise Has Forced Hong Kong’s Decline
from New York Review of BooksFor nearly six months, people around the world have watched the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong with one question in the back of their minds: When will Beijing lose patience and the repression begin? Journalists expecting to cover Tiananmen...
Violence by Hong Kong Protesters Won’t Advance Their Cause
I have watched with growing concern as violence has intensified in Hong Kong. I have been deeply dismayed to see escalating police violence, which has fundamentally damaged the reputation of a police force once known as among Asia’s best. And I...
How Should Universities Respond to China’s Growing Presence on Their Campuses?
How should universities encourage respectful dialogue on contentious issues involving China, while at the same time fostering an environment free of intimidation, harassment, and violence? And how should university administrators and governments...
‘If We Give up on Our Husbands Today, Tomorrow Our Children Will Be Ashamed of Us’
This is a story about fear and the attempt to conquer fear. The wives of some of the lawyers who disappeared in China’s “709” crackdown have suffered house arrest, threats, and suppression. In their search to find their husbands, they hope no...
Can China’s Government Replace Hong Kong?
As the Hong Kong protests enter their fourth month with no end in sight, on August 18 Beijing announced that the nearby Chinese metropolis of Shenzhen would again become a new type of special economic zone. In a clear message to Hong Kong, the...
China’s Government Wants You to Think All Mainlanders View Hong Kong the Same Way. They Don’t.
Mainland Chinese flood the Internet with messages calling protesters in Hong Kong “useless youth.” They send obscene messages and death threats to supporters of the Hong Kong demonstrations. But reports on episodes like this, while important, are...
Six Questions and Four Articles About Tiananmen Square
Why can’t we banish history from our memories? The author Ling Zhijun titled his 2008 exploration of Mao Zedong’s disastrous people’s communes “History No Longer Lingers,” and it sometimes feels counterintuitive that we cannot forget past...
This Year, I Couldn’t Avoid May Fourth
The one hundredth anniversary of the 1919 May Fourth Movement came and went last week much as one would have expected...For some, myself included, the anniversary evoked a set of more complicated emotions. For years, these complications have...
Forty Years on, Is China Still Reforming?
In late October, to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the “Reform and Opening Up” policy, China’s Chairman Xi Jinping visited the southern metropolis of Shenzhen, the first major laboratory for the Party’s post-Mao economic reforms. Like his...
China Has an Online Lending Crisis and People Are Furious about It
The outcry shines a light on a murky corner of China's financial industry that authorities allowed to grow rapidly with little oversight. Promises of double-digit returns attracted people looking for more lucrative places to put their...
A Demonstration of Power: China Derails Protests before They Even Begin
It was after midnight and the slow train from Chengdu was nearing the end of its 30-hour journey when Ms. Yang decided to make a run for it. She was headed to Beijing to join a protest, but it was becoming clear that the authorities...
China Rebuffs Criticism of Decision to Bar British Activist from Hong Kong
China has rebuffed criticism of its decision to bar a prominent British activist from Hong Kong, declaring itself unshakably opposed to foreign interference in the former colony’s affairs.
China 'Feminist Five' Activist Handed 10-Year Travel Ban
One of China’s “Feminist Five” group of women who were arrested for campaigning against sexual harassment has been barred from leaving the country for a decade, in the latest example of Beijing’s ever-tightening grip on civil society.
Political Prisoners in Hong Kong
On August 17, a Hong Kong appeals court sentenced student democracy activists Joshua Wong, Alex Chow,...
The Passion of Liu Xiaobo
from New York Review of BooksIn the late 1960s Mao Zedong, China’s Great Helmsman, encouraged children and adolescents to confront their teachers and parents, root out “cow ghosts and snake spirits,” and otherwise “make revolution.” In practice, this meant...
China Charges Labor Activist for ‘Picking Quarrels’
A Chinese activist who for years has documented worker unrest faced charges of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” on Friday, in a trial seen as a bellwether of Beijing’s approach to containing labor tensions.
Hundreds Protest in Shanghai over Ban on Selling Converted Flats
Rare demonstration came after city authorities barred owners from selling apartments converted from office or commercial space.
Rare Public Protest in China's Shanghai over Property Rule Change
Hundreds of demonstrators have marched through a shopping district in the Chinese city of Shanghai protesting against changes to housing regulations, in a rare show of public dissent in the financial hub.
Anti-Gay Faith-Based Groups in Taiwan Vow to Take Fight against Same-Sex Marriage to next Level
On Wednesday afternoon, cheers rang out in the streets of Taipei as Taiwan’s top constitutional court ruled in favor of same-sex marriage, but not everyone present was so overjoyed. The ruling has left anti-gay groups on the island in shock, with...
Lotte Stores Feel Chinese Wrath as South Korea Deploys U.S. Missile System
A wave of anti-South Korean sentiment has broken out across China after the South’s embrace of an American missile defense system that China says can be used to spy on its territory.
Chinese Students in the U.S. Are Using “Inclusion” and “Diversity” to Oppose a Dalai Lama Graduation Speech
On Feb. 2, the University of California, San Diego formally announced that the Dalai Lama would make a keynote speech at the June commencement ceremony. The announcement triggered outrage among Chinese students who view the exiled Tibetan...
Fighting on Behalf of China’s Women—From the United States
Among hundreds of thousands of women who took to the streets for the Women’s March on Washington were Lu Pin and more than 20 other Chinese feminists who live in the United States and belong to the Chinese Feminism Collective
China Labor Unrest Spreads to ‘New Economy’
Retail and logistics sectors hit by strikes and protests once focused on industry
China’s ‘Silk Road’ Push Stirs Resentment, Protest in Sri Lanka
China signed a deal with Sri Lanka late last year to further develop the strategic port of Hambantota and build a huge industrial zone nearby, a key part of Beijing’s ambitions to create a modern-day “Silk Road” across Asia.
There Are Echoes of China in Today’s America
We are troubled by how often lately we experience a strange sort of China-related déjà vu when following events in the U.S.
In China, Pollution Fears Are Both Literal and Metaphorical
Last month, as China encountered some of its worst pollution yet, artists in Chengdu did something bold: They put smog-filtering cotton masks over the faces of statues representing ordinary urbanites that dot a centrally located shopping street...
Chinese Middle Class in Uproar Over Alleged Police Brutality
Thousands are signing online petitions to protest the dropping of a police brutality case, representing a rare display of white-collar outrage with Beijing
China Riot Police Seal Off City Center After Smog Protestors Put Masks on Statues
Clampdown in Chengdu after protesters place masks on statues in anger at air pollution choking the city
Chinese and American City-Dwellers Differ on Trump Win
City-dwellers in China and the United States are among the greatest beneficiaries of the international trade deals President-elect Trump...
In a First, China Moves to Bar 2 Hong Kong Legislators From Office
The extraordinary intervention in the affairs of this semiautonomous former British colony could prompt a constitutional crisis and incite more street protests
Why Newly Elected Hong Kong Legislators Cursed and Protested—At Their Own Swearing-In
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...
China Warns “Hostile Forces” Trying to Undermine Military Reform
After protests erupted in Beijing over lay-offs, China's military warned that "hostile forces" were spreading damaging online rumors
Protests Outside Chinese Defense Ministry at Army Cuts
More than 1,000 people walk and chant in Beijing in demonstration believed to be about pensions and personnel cuts
Provincial Boss Ordered Crackdown on China's 'Democracy Village' with Eye on National Power
Wukan is Hu Chunhua's tryout for the Politburo Standing Committee
The Chinese Democratic Experiment that Never Was
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...
China: The People’s Fury
from New York Review of BooksIt has long been routine to find in both China’s official news organizations and its social media a barrage of anti-American comment, but rarely has it reached quite the intensity and fury of the last few days. There have been...
Skepticism in China After Wukan Confession
Chinese protesters are not convinced by Mr. Lin’s video confession.....
Hundreds of Residents of South China 'Rebel' Village Protest, Poised for Showdown
Villagers called for the return of seized land and the release of a former protest leader who was elected village chief in 2012.
Protests Erupt After Hong Kong Bookseller Breaks Silence on China Detention
Lam Wing-Kee has described how mainland authorities held him isolated for months. He said Hong Kong would become helpless if he “remained silent.”