Books
04.12.13

Lin Shu, Inc.

How could a writer who knew no foreign languages call himself a translator? How, too, did he become a major commercial success, churning out nearly 200 translations over twenty years? Lin Shu, Inc. crosses the fields of literary studies, intellectual history, and print culture, offering new ways to understand the stakes of translation in China and beyond. With rich detail and lively prose, Michael Gibbs Hill shows how Lin Shu (1852-1924) rose from obscurity to become China’s leading translator of Western fiction at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Sinica Podcast
04.12.13

Gady Epstein on The Internet

Kaiser Kuo, Jeremy Goldkorn & more
from Sinica Podcast

The Internet was expected to help democratize China, but has instead enabled the authoritarian state to get a firmer grip. So begins The Economist’s...

Toward a New Phase of U.S.-China Museum Collaborations

Asia Society

The 2012 U.S.-China Museum Directors Forum, organized by Asia Society and the Chinese People's Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries, brought together 17 Chinese and 15 American museum leaders for a two-day dialogue to assess common...

The NYRB China Archive
04.09.13

Tibet: The CIA’s Cancelled War

Jonathan Mirsky
from New York Review of Books

For much of the past century, U.S. relations with Tibet have been characterized by kowtowing to the Chinese and hollow good wishes for the Dalai Lama. As early as 1908, William Rockhill, a U.S. diplomat, advised the Thirteenth Dalai Lama that “...

Dangerous Waters: China-Japan Relations on the Rocks

International Crisis Group

The world’s second and third largest economies are engaged in a standoff over the sovereignty of five islets and three rocks in the East China Sea, known as the Diaoyu in Chinese and the Senkaku in Japanese. Tensions erupted in September 2012...

Excerpts
04.05.13

Living Underground

Ana Fuentes

They are called rats, and they have become a symbol of Beijing’s red-hot real estate market. Because of soaring housing costs, there are at least a million people living underground, only able to afford a rented room in the...

Sinica Podcast
04.05.13

The Transgressions of Apple Computer

Kaiser Kuo, Jeremy Goldkorn & more
from Sinica Podcast

While foreign media coverage these last two weeks has focused on environmental disasters, over-fishing, and emerging forms of the avian flu, the Chinese state media has turned its gaze towards the transgressions of Apple Computer, which found...

The NYRB China Archive
04.04.13

Will the Chinese Be Supreme?

Ian Johnson
from New York Review of Books

During the turbulent Maoist era from the 1950s to 1970s, China clashed militarily with some of its most important neighbors—India, Vietnam, the Soviet Union—and embarked on disastrous interventions in Indonesia and Africa. But by the 1980s, Deng...

Books
04.03.13

From the Dragon’s Mouth

Ana Fuentes

From The Dragon’s Mouth: Ten True Stories that Unveil the Real China is an exquisitely intimate look into the China of the twenty-first century as seen through the eyes of its people.

Enter the Dragon and the Elephant

Council on Foreign Relations

Among the emerging powers, China and India have long been critical to successfully addressing global health problems. Historically, infectious diseases that originated in either country have altered epidemiological patterns worldwide. The first...

Books
03.29.13

The Little Red Guard

When Wenguang Huang was nine years old, his grandmother became obsessed with her own death. Fearing cremation, she extracted from her family the promise to bury her after she died. This was in Xi’an, a city in central China, in the 1970s, when a national ban on all traditional Chinese practices, including burials, was strictly enforced. But Huang’s grandmother was persistent, and two years later, his father built her a coffin. He also appointed his older son, Wenguang, as coffin keeper, a distinction that meant, among other things, sleeping next to the coffin at night.

Sinica Podcast
03.29.13

Xi Jinping Goes to Russia

Kaiser Kuo & Jeremy Goldkorn
from Sinica Podcast

Xi Jinping’s trip to Moscow earlier this week, his first journey abroad as China’s new Head of State, has raised interesting questions about China’s ambitions in Asia, and coupled with Washington’s “pivot to Asia” is resurrecting the specter of a...

China’s Path to Consumer-Based Growth

International Monetary Fund (IMF)

This paper proposes a possible framework for identifying excessive investment. Based on this method, it finds evidence that some types of investment are becoming excessive in China, particularly in inland provinces. In these regions, private...

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.

China’s Demography and its Implications

International Monetary Fund (IMF)

In coming decades, China will undergo a notable demographic transformation, with its old-age dependency ratio doubling to 24 percent by 2030 and rising even more precipitously thereafter. This paper uses the permanent income hypothesis to...

China 2030: Building a Modern, Harmonious, and Creative Society

World Bank

Can China’s growth rate still be among the highest in the world even if it slows from its current pace? And can it maintain this rapid growth with little disruption to the world, the environment, and the fabric of its own society? This report...

How Effective are Macroprudential Policies in China?

International Monetary Fund (IMF)

This paper investigates macroprudential policies and their role in containing systemic risk in China. It shows that China faces systemic risk in both the time (procyclicality) and cross-sectional (contagion) dimensions. The former is reflected as...

Books
03.22.13

Pressures and Distortions

Hai Zhang

Pressures and Distortions looks at the design, building, and interpretation of cities from the point of view of their residents.The cities chronicled in depth include examples from China (Shanghai and Shenzhen), Latin America (Bogotá and Mexico City), and Indonesia (Banda Aceh). Shorter sections cover Lima and Rio de Janeiro. The authors show how residents respond creatively to environmental disaster, poverty, housing shortages, and surging urban population. They also show how governments, international relief agencies, architects, and planners can shape better urban environments.

Sinica Podcast
03.22.13

Unsavory Elements and Earnshaw Press

Kaiser Kuo

No, this week’s Sinica isn’t an attack on Element Fresh. Rather, it’s a discussion hosted by Kaiser Kuo about the new book Unsavory Elements, an anthology of stories and essays about the experiences of expats in China. And joining us for this...

The NYRB China Archive
03.21.13

Who Killed Pamela in Peking?

Jonathan D. Spence
from New York Review of Books

An ordinary winter evening in the Legation Quarter of Peking, where foreign embassies and consulates were located, January 7, 1937. Cold. The heavy sound of Japanese armored cars, out on patrol down the busy shopping streets that flank the...

Books
03.20.13

Green Innovation in China

As the greatest coal-producing and consuming nation in the world, China would seem an unlikely haven for wind power. Yet the country now boasts a world-class industry that promises to make low-carbon technology more affordable and available to all. Conducting an empirical study of China’s remarkable transition and the possibility of replicating their model elsewhere, Joanna I. Lewis adds greater depth to a theoretical understanding of China’s technological innovation systems and its current and future role in a globalized economy.

Sinica Podcast
03.15.13

A Discussion with Geremie R. Barmé

Kaiser Kuo & Geremie R. Barmé
from Sinica Podcast

On March 8, Kaiser Kuo hosted a conversation at Capital M in Beijing with Geremie R. Barmé, the well-known Sinologist and now Director of the Australian Centre for China in the World, as part of the Capital Literary Festival. This week on Sinica...

Sinica Podcast
03.08.13

Mo Yan and the Nobel Prize

Kaiser Kuo, David Moser & more
from Sinica Podcast

When Chinese author Mo Yan won the Nobel Prize for literature last year, many critics were fast to pounce on his selection,...

Between the Lines: Listening to Female Factory Workers in China

BSR

Women are crucial to China’s manufacturing sector. While women comprise more than 44% of the overall workforce, they represent about 60% of workers who migrate from rural areas to cities to work in factories. These female workers are diverse,...

Population, Policy, and Politics

Population Council

One of the main puzzles of modern population and social history is why, among all countries confronting rapid population growth in the second half of the twentieth century, China chose to adopt an extreme measure of birth control known as the one...

Challenged in China

Committee to Protect Journalists

As Xi Jinping takes office as president of China, the citizenry he governs is more sophisticated and interconnected than any before, largely because of the Internet. A complex digital censorship system—combined with a more traditional approach to...

China’s Central Asia Problem

International Crisis Group
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, China and its Central Asian neighbors have developed a close relationship, initially economic but increasingly also political and security. Energy, precious metals, and other natural resources flow into China...
Books
02.25.13

Star Spangled Security

Former U.S. Secretary of Defense Harold Brown served during the hottest part of the Cold War when the Soviet Union presented an existential threat to America. In Star Spangled Security, Dr. Brown, one of the most respected wise men of American foreign policy, gives an insider’s view of U.S. national security strategy during the Carter administration, relates lessons learned, and bridges them to current challenges facing America.

Sinica Podcast
02.21.13

Death, Fraud, and Corporate Skullduggery

Kaiser Kuo & Bill Bishop
from Sinica Podcast

This week on Sinica, we talk shop about Caterpillar’s discovery of massive accounting fraud and subsequent $580 million write-down from a Chinese company the American equipment manufacturer acquired. We also look at...

Books
02.19.13

Every Grain of Rice

Fuchsia Dunlop trained as a chef in China’s leading Sichuan cooking school and possesses the rare ability to write recipes for authentic Chinese food that you can make at home. Following her two seminal volumes on Sichuan and Hunan cooking, Every Grain of Rice is inspired by the vibrant everyday cooking of southern China, in which vegetables play the starring role, with small portions of meat and fish. 

The NYRB China Archive
02.15.13

Dancing in Empty Beijing

Ian Johnson
from New York Review of Books

The Lunar New Year began last week as it always does, with a new moon. The empty sky seemed to empty Beijing of up to half its residents—authorities estimate that an incredible nine million people left the city, which usually has a population of...

Books
02.12.13

Zhao Ziyang and China’s Political Future

Wu Guoguang

What legacies have previous reformers like Zhao Ziyang left to today’s China? Does China have feasible political alternatives to today’s repressive ‘market Leninism’ and corrupt ‘state capitalism’? Does Zhao’s legacy indicate an alternative to the past and for the future?

The NYRB China Archive
02.09.13

Blogging the Slow-Motion Revolution

Ian Johnson
from New York Review of Books

Huang Qi is best known in China as the creator of the country’s first human rights website, Liusi Tianwang, or “June 4 Heavenly Web.” A collection of reports and photos, as well as the...

Sinica Podcast
02.08.13

Revenge of the Call-in Show

Kaiser Kuo, Jeremy Goldkorn & more
from Sinica Podcast

Curious what happened to Sinica last week? Well ... as it turns out, our call-in show from two weeks ago wasn’t exactly pleased with how quickly we managed to...

The China Africa Project
02.03.13

Rally Cry for the U.S. to Catch Up to the Chinese in Africa

Eric Olander & Cobus van Staden

In this episode of the China in Africa Podcast, hosts Eric Olander and Cobus van Staden focus on Delaware Senator Chris Coons' warning that unless the United States places a greater emphasis on Africa, it will be too late to catch up to the...

Books
01.31.13

Tombstone

An estimated 36 million Chinese men, women, and children starved to death during China’s Great Leap Forward in the late 1950s and early ’60s. One of the greatest tragedies of the twentieth century, the famine is poorly understood, and in China is still euphemistically referred to as the “three years of natural disaster.”

Sinica Podcast
01.25.13

The Call-in Show

Kaiser Kuo, Jeremy Goldkorn & more
from Sinica Podcast

So our show this week isn’t technically a call-in show, given the lack of phones in our studio, but it is as close as we can get it, so thanks to everyone who sent us a pre-recorded question. We had a lot more responses than we expected, and the...

Books
01.24.13

Shangri-La

Michael Yamashita

The legendary Chamagudao, the Tea Horse Road, winds through dizzying mountain passes, across famed rivers like the Mekong and the Yangtze, and past monasteries and meadows in a circuitous route from Sichuan and Yunnan provinces in western China to the Tibetan capital city of Lhasa. Actually a network of roads, trails, and highways, rather than one distinct route, the Chamagudao once stretched for almost 1400 miles (2350 km)—a conduit along which the historic trade between the mighty Chinese empire and the nomadic Tibetans linked remote villages and ethnic groups.

Sinica Podcast
01.18.13

China’s Urban Billion

Kaiser Kuo & Jeremy Goldkorn
from Sinica Podcast

Lurking silently behind practically every story on Chinese economic growth over the last thirty years has been the country’s unprecedented shift from being an overwhelmingly rural society to what is now a largely urban one, with almost 700...

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.

Sinica Podcast
01.11.13

The Southern Drama

Kaiser Kuo, Jeremy Goldkorn & more
from Sinica Podcast

Mere months after China’s handling of the Eighteenth Party Congress suggested the country would undergo a peaceful leadership transition, the issue of freedom of the press surged to attention this week after a censored editorial in Southern...

China, America, and the Pivot to Asia

Cato Institute

Despite the United States’ focus on the Middle East and the Islamic world for the past decade, the most important international political developments in the coming years are likely to happen in Asia. The Obama administration has promoted a “...

The NYRB China Archive
01.08.13

The Old Fears of China’s New Leaders

Jonathan Mirsky
from New York Review of Books

I felt a shudder of déjà vu watching the mounting protests inside China this week of the Communist Party for censoring an editorial in Southern Weekend, a well-known liberal newspaper in the southern city of Guangzhou. It is all too...

Books
01.04.13

The Rise and Fall of the House of Bo

John Garnaut

When news of the murder trial of prominent Communist Party leader Bo Xilai’s wife reached public attention, it was apparent that, as with many events in the secretive upper echelons of Chinese politics, there was more to the story.

Sinica Podcast
12.28.12

Return of the China Blog

Kaiser Kuo, Jeremy Goldkorn & more
from Sinica Podcast

All of you Sinica old-timers might remember a show we ran two years ago on the death of the China blog, in which Jeremy, Kaiser, and Will Moss mused about whether the...

Sinica Podcast
12.22.12

China Versus the SEC

Jeremy Goldkorn, Patrick Chovanec & more
from Sinica Podcast

An ongoing battle between the American Securities and Exchange Commission and China over whether Chinese accounting firms can release accounting information required by U.S. law or whether these constitute “state secrets” is pushing China and the...

The NYRB China Archive
12.21.12

Beijing’s Doomsday Problem

Ian Johnson
from New York Review of Books

Over the past ten days, China has been riveted by accounts of what authorities say are its very own doomsday cult: the church of Almighty God, which has prophesized that the world will end today. Authorities have said the group staged illegal...

The NYRB China Archive
12.20.12

The New Chinese Gang of Seven

Ian Johnson
from New York Review of Books

In traditional Chinese religion, a fashi, or ritual master, will recite a set of phrases to turn an ordinary space into a sacred area where the gods can descend to receive prayers and rejuvenate the community. The ceremony can last days...

Books
12.17.12

Socialism Vanquished, Socialism Challenged

Socialism Vanquished, Socialism Challenged examines the twenty-year aftermath of the 1989 assaults on established, state-sponsored socialism in the former Soviet bloc and in China. Editors Nina Bandelj and Dorothy J. Solinger bring together prominent experts on Eastern Europe and China to examine the respective trajectories of political, economic, and social transformations that unfolded in these two areas, while also comparing the changes that ensued within the two regions.

Sinica Podcast
12.14.12

China 3.0

Kaiser Kuo & Jeremy Goldkorn
from Sinica Podcast

Today on Sinica, join us for a discussion on economics, politics, and geopolitics with Mark Leonard from the European Council on Foreign Relations. Our specific focus is China 3.0, the council’s recent compendium of essays on...

Books
12.12.12

China’s Search for Security

Andrew J. Nathan

Despite its impressive size and population, economic vitality, and drive to upgrade its military capabilities, China remains a vulnerable nation surrounded by powerful rivals and potential foes. The key to understanding China’s foreign policy is to grasp these geostrategic challenges, which persist even as the country comes to dominate its neighbors. Andrew J. Nathan and Andrew Scobell analyze China’s security concerns on four fronts: at home, with its immediate neighbors, in surrounding regional systems, and in the world beyond Asia.

Sinica Podcast
12.07.12

Time to Leave China?

Kaiser Kuo, Jeremy Goldkorn & more
from Sinica Podcast

It wasn’t very long ago that the Chinese blogosphere became engrossed with two near-simultaneous and very public posts by well-known expats marking their decisions to leave China for greener pastures. While grumbling about this country is nothing...

The NYRB China Archive
12.06.12

Does This Writer Deserve the Prize?

Perry Link
from New York Review of Books

On October 11 Peter Englund, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy in Stockholm, announced that the Nobel Prize in Literature for 2012 will go to the fifty-seven-year-old Chinese writer Guan Moye, better known as Mo Yan, a pen name that...

Books
12.04.12

Tangled Titans

David Shambaugh

Tangled Titans offers a current and comprehensive assessment of the most important relationship in international affairs—that between the United States and China. How the relationship evolves will have a defining impact on the future of world politics, the Asian region, and the citizens of many nations. In this definitive book, leading experts provide an in-depth exploration of the historical, domestic, bilateral, regional, global, and future contexts of this complex relationship.

Is China Over-Investing and Does it Matter?

International Monetary Fund (IMF)

Now close to 50 percent of GDP, this paper assesses the appropriateness of China’s current investment levels. It finds that China’s capital-to-output ratio is within the range of other emerging markets, but its economic growth rates stand out,...

The NYRB China Archive
11.22.12

China: Worse Than You Ever Imagined

Ian Johnson
from New York Review of Books

Last summer I took a trip to Xinyang, a rural area of wheat fields and tea plantations in central China’s Henan province. I met a pastor, a former political prisoner, and together we made a day trip to Rooster Mountain, a onetime summer retreat...

Culture
11.21.12

A New Tower of Babel

Sheila Melvin

Xu Bing, the renowned Chinese artist whose many laurels include a MacArthur Foundation “genius” award and an appointment as vice president of China’s Central Academy of Fine Arts, has long...

Books
11.20.12

Mao: The Real Story

Alexander V. Pantsov

Mao Zedong was one of the most important figures of the twentieth century, the most important in the history of modern China. A complex figure, he was champion of the poor and brutal tyrant, poet and despot.

Sinica Podcast
11.16.12

The State of the Navy

Kaiser Kuo
from Sinica Podcast

After two weeks focusing on developments at the Eighteenth Party Congress, and with the next generation of China’s leadership now...

Sinica Podcast
11.10.12

Eighteenth Party Roundup

Kaiser Kuo, Jeremy Goldkorn & more
from Sinica Podcast

This week on Sinica, our hosts Kaiser Kuo and Jeremy Goldkorn are joined by Gady Epstein from the Economist and we turn our attention to the Eighteenth Party Congress, which officially started in Beijing earlier this week. As China’s...

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