China’s New Security Challenge: Angry Mom-and-Pop Investors
As they watch their nest eggs dwindle, some hit the streets in protest.
China Warns Officials: No Unrest, Or Lose Your Job
The policy announcement comes two weeks after hundreds of unpaid coal workers took to the streets in the gritty northeastern city of Shuangyashan.
Hong Kong Riot Police Fire Warning Shots in Bloody Street Clashes
In the worst violence since 2014 pro-democracy protests, clashes erupted in Hong Kong when authorities tried to remove illegal street stalls.
China’s Workers Are Fighting Back as Economic Dream Fades
For workers like Li Jiang, factory closings
Conversation
09.30.15
The Future of Autonomy in Hong Kong
Yesterday, the governing board of Hong Kong University, one of the territory’s most esteemed institutions of higher education, voted to reject the promotion of Johannes Chan, a former law school dean, over the objections of the faculty and...
Rights Protesters, China Supporters Greet President Xi in Seattle
About 100 people protesting against human rights abuses in China greeted President Xi Jinping in Seattle.
Chinese Tourists Warned over Turkey Uighur Protests
China advised citizens against travelling to Turkey after it said several tourists were attacked in protests over the Chinese government's treatment of Uighur Muslims.
Viewpoint
05.19.15
Hong Kong’s Not That Special, And Beijing Should Stop Saying It Is
As political wrangling in Hong Kong continues over changes to...
China: Protests For High-Speed Rail Line To ‘Abandoned' City’ Triggers Violent Clashes
China: Protests For High-Speed Rail Line To 'Abandoned' City Triggers Violent Clashes http://www.ibtimes.com/china-protests-high-...
Media
05.06.15
Online Reaction to Baltimore Protests Reveals Much About Chinese Tension with African Immigrants
Several days ago, a Chinese friend and I were discussing the protests in Baltimore that erupted in response to the death of...
China Restricts Travel By Shenzhen Residents To Hong Kong
The move is designed to assuage Hong Kongers angry with mainlanders who buy up goods.
Features
04.02.15
Frank Talk About Hong Kong’s Future from Margaret Ng
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...
Claims of Retaliation in Detention of Chinese Anticorruption Campaigner
Ou Shaokun, 61, gained prominence by advising Guangzhou petitioners protesting government land seizures.
Hong Kong Delegates to China’s Parliament Seek Mainland Security Laws to Counter Protests
The last time Hong Kong tried to pass national security legislation was in 2003.
Hong Kong’s Leader Says Concessions to Protesters Could Lead to Anarchy
Leung Chun-ying, the chief executive of Hong Kong, offered the proposals in his first major policy package since the street demonstrations ended last month. Since Mr. Leung came to office in 2012, he has repeatedly vowed to redress the city’s...
Firebombs Thrown at Jimmy Lai’s Home and Company in Hong Kong
Apple Daily has been a vocal advocate of the recent demonstrations for expanded democracy in Hong Kong. Mr. Lai frequently attended the protests, which saw several main thoroughfares occupied for more than two months. He was arrested and released...
Conversation
01.08.15
What Does Hong Kong’s Post-Protest Report Signal For Relations with Beijing?
This week, we saw the release of the official government “Report on the Recent Community and Political Situation in Hong Kong.” It concluded...
China Shocked by Fatal Riot in Madagascar
"We hope the Madagascar government will take necessary measures to properly handle the attack at the Morondava sugar plant and to erase the ill impact this incident has brought to the country's international image and its ability to attract...
79 Days That Shook Hong Kong
Photo Essay: Hong Kong's street occupations have ended, but many demonstrators say this is only the beginning of their fight for free elections.
Hong Kong Democracy Protesters Brace for Final Camp Shutdown
The operation reflects the waning support for demonstrators after more than two months of civil disobedience and clashes that began over Beijing’s role in directing elections in the former British colony.
China Sentences 8 to Death for Attacks in Xinjiang
The Urumqi Intermediate People's Court in the capital of Xinjiang also handed out suspended death sentences to five others, China Central Television said, without mentioning when the trials were held.
Media
12.05.14
Repeat After Me: Taiwan’s Recent Elections Had Nothing to Do With Hong Kong
If China was in fact the invisible candidate in Taiwan’s local elections, it just lost in a...
Hong Kong Protests Have Produced No Real Winners
There appear to be no real winners from Hong Kong’s umbrella movement: not the demonstrators—who have failed to win the concessions for which they have fought so persistently—nor the authorities, who have veered between aggressive intervention...
How Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement Folded
An effective boycott by the relevant interlocutors, in the form of government officials, and for two months the lack of a face-to-face oppressor, in the form of police—who until last week appeared to have learned that gassing protesters was the...
China’s Crackdown in Hong Kong May Fuel a Long-term Democracy Movement
China's Communist authorities are nothing if not predictable. With a high-profile international summit hosted by President Xi Jinping this month behind them, they are ready for authorities in Hong Kong to crack down on a pro-democracy protest...
LIVE: Stand-off Ensues Between Protesters and Police in Mong Kok
Crowds of protesters are involved in stand-off with police in Mong Kok after officers earlier took control of the junction of Shantung Street and Sai Yeung Choi South Street by forcing people back on the pavement.
China Fires Journalist Who Tweeted In Support of Occupy Central
Wang Yafeng, who wrote editorials for Communist Party mouthpiece the Jiaxing Daily in the eastern province of Zhejiang, lost his job after sending out tweets highly critical of state media's line on the Hong Kong protests on his personal...
“Hunger Games” China Release Date canceled, Likely Due to “Revolutionary” Political Content
The film's sudden withdrawal may be due to the film's apparently incendiary content, depicting a fictitious revolution aimed at toppling a dystopian future government. It's feared that movie-goers might draw parallels to Taiwan's Sunflower...
China’s New Old Financial Capital
Hong Kong’s democracy protests are often said to be futile because the city is no longer China’s golden goose, protected from Beijing’s wrath by its economic importance. But Monday’s big news shows that things aren’t so simple: The opening of a “...
Britain Soft on China over Hong Kong Crisis, Says Chris Patten
Patten, the last British governor of Hong Kong before the 1997 handover, said China’s actions were “spit in the face” of the 1984 Joint Declaration on the conditions under which Hong Kong would be handed over.
Is China’s Grand Ethnic Experiment Working?
In a gleaming classroom at Chong Hua High School in the northern Chinese city of Tianjin, students peer at onion slices under microscopes. Their biology teacher calls on Abdurrahman Mamat to explain what he sees.
"Plasmolysis," he replies...
Taiwan Leader Stresses Support for Hong Kong Protests
“If mainland China can practice democracy in Hong Kong, or if mainland China itself can become more democratic, then we can shorten the psychological distance between people from the two sides of the Taiwan Strait,” President Ma Ying-jeou said....
Beijing Subway Bans Halloween Costumes
The Chinese capital banned Halloween costumes from its subway system, warning they could cause “panic” and “stampedes.”
In Hong Kong Photographer, China Sees Image of Spy
Dan Garrett, a gnarled, tattooed former Pentagon intelligence analyst, has attracted more stares than usual lately when he prowls the streets here with a camera fitted with a 300-millimeter lens, snapping images of pro-democracy demonstrations,...
Hong Kong Politician Likens Protesters to African-American Slaves
“American slaves were liberated in 1861, but did not get voting rights until 107 years later,” she was reported as saying by The Standard, an English-language Hong Kong newspaper. “So why can’t Hong Kong wait for a while?”
Nine out of 10 Hong Kong Activists Say Will Fight on for a Year
The most tenacious protests since the former British colony returned to Chinese rule in 1997 have already persisted beyond most expectations.
Taking Back Hong Kong’s Future
Since the return of Hong Kong to China in 1997, less than a year after I was born, the people of this city have muddled through with a political system that leaves power in the hands of the wealthy and the well-connected.
China’s Crackdown on Dissent Shows How Nervous Its Leaders Are
The legal assault on a critic of Mao gives a flavor of the current climate. Tie Liu is the pen name of Huang Zerong, 81, who has collected and published memoirs of people who were purged by Chinese dictator Mao Zedong in the 1950s and 1960s.
The Secret History of Hong Kong’s Stillborn Democracy
By September 29 peaceful protesters had been clogging Hong Kong’s downtown for less than a day, but to the Chinese Communist Party this already smacked of ingratitude.
China Began Push Against Hong Kong Elections in ’50s
Beginning in the 1950s, the colonial governors who ran Hong Kong repeatedly sought to introduce popular elections but abandoned those efforts in the face of pressure by Communist Party leaders in Beijing.
Pro-Democracy Movement’s Vote in Hong Kong Abruptly Called Off
The referendum boiled down to two simple questions: Did voters endorse demanding that the Hong Kong government press Beijing to make democratic concessions on election rules, and did they agree that the changes should apply to city Legislative...
Media
10.24.14
Hong Kong Documentary Explores the Roots of Dissent
To many observers, Hong Kong’s “Umbrella Movement”—thousands of students and other citizens in the streets demanding to choose their own political leaders—seemed to unfurl, fully formed, out of nowhere. Residents of the former colony were...
Hong Kong’s High Court Orders Protesters Off Roads in Mong Kok and Admiralty
In an interview with The New York Times, Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying hinted at possible intervention by the central government if the situation remained unresolved.
Viewpoint
10.21.14
‘We Can Only Trust Each Other and Keep the Road’
Snip. Snip. Snip. The officer’s face shows concentration as he cuts one yellow ribbon after another along a metal fence on Queensway in the Central district of Hong Kong. Next to him, other policemen have just finished dismantling the barricades...
Hong Kong’s Leader Blames Foreigners for Fanning Protests
“There is obviously participation by people, organizations from outside of Hong Kong,” Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying said in an interview on Asia Television Ltd.
Unrest in China Leaves 22 Dead Following Xinjiang Attack
A new ethnic clash in the restive region of Xinjiang, on China’s central Asian frontier, saw 22 people killed after Uighur assailants attacked Han Chinese merchants at a wholesale food market near the border with Kyrgyzstan.
The Hong Kong Protesters Who Won't Negotiate
Pro-democracy protests took a violent turn in Hong Kong, as police officers clashed with demonstrators in the territory's Mong Kok neighborhood.
What China Means by ‘Rule of Law’
There’s plenty of evidence that China sees the rule of law in nuanced and complex ways.
The U.S. Is No Role Model in Hong Kong’s Democracy Fight
C.Y. Leung explains the protests that continue to paralyze parts of Hong Kong, after thwarting a police crackdown over the weekend: they are being supported by “external forces."
LIVE: Police With Shields and Batons Push Back Protesters On Lung Wo Road
Hundreds of police with power tools tore down protesters’ barricades on Queensway in Admiralty, following a swiftly executed dawn operation to remove a number of blockades in Causeway Bay.
Hong Kong Heats Up Again
Masked men attacked pro-democracy protesters for the second time in as many weeks on the morning of October 13th near Hong Kong’s Admiralty business district.
The Unrest In Hong Kong And China's Bigger Urban Crisis
China, whose urban growth has been a great success story, now must consider changing development patterns, perhaps looking at lower density and more dispersed development.
Taiwan Leader: China Should Try Democracy—Starting with Hong Kong
Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou's comments reflect popular local support for the tens of thousands of Hong Kong residents who launched democracy protests on Sept. 27 in the semi-autonomous Chinese territory.
Chinese Communist Party as the Mafia Boss
The next surprise for the protesters came as assaults from members of the mafia, posing as ordinary citizens. We now have enough evidence that the Anti-Occupy Central crowd, emblazoned with blue ribbons, can count on the government’s support, if...