Three Years in, Hong Kong’s National Security Law Has Entrenched a New Status Quo
What’s Behind the Youth Unemployment Statistics Beijing Just Decided to Stop Publishing?
This week, China’s National Bureau of Statistics announced it would cease collecting data on youth unemployment. The news came...
Xi Jinping’s Three Balancing Acts
from Foreign PolicyXi Jinping has ruled China for over a decade, but the way he rules it is changing. Xi faces domestic and international environments that are markedly worse than when he took office in 2012. The economy is struggling, confidence is faltering, debt...
For Beijing, Putting People Back to Work May Prove a Tough Job
In a small Chinese town where unemployment has run high during the COVID-19 pandemic, the local government has embraced a surprising remedy to joblessness: public toilets. Fugong Village, in Guangdong province, usually sees nearly half of its...
‘What Kind of Wish Is This?’
The writer Hao Qun, who publishes under the pen name Murong Xuecun, has spent the past two decades exploring Chinese society through his literature. After studying at Beijing’s prestigious China University of Politics and Law, he worked in the...
The U.S. May Be Overstating China’s Technological Prowess
China’s technological prowess is frequently invoked by U.S. policymakers hoping to get votes, attention, or enough bipartisan support to pass a bill. Competition with China was a central motivating factor in federal legislation like the CHIPS and...
‘They Are Men Who Acted out of Conscience’
from Bu Mingbai PodcastLast month, a Chinese court sentenced the civil rights activists and lawyers Xu Zhiyong and Ding Jiaxi to fourteen and twelve years in prison for “subverting state power,” a charge arising from an informal gathering of fellow activists the two...
Official PRC Place Names
These datasets list the official names of all the places (political units) in China. This information is openly available on the Chinese government’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) website, but not in an easily downloadable or searchable...
‘Beijing’s Global Media Offensive’
Over the past several years, there has been an active debate about Chinese influence overseas. Amidst allegations that Beijing has influenced foreign elections and politicians, state newswire Xinhua has expanded into one of the largest news...
Investing in Tourism in Xinjiang, Beijing Seeks New Ways to Control the Region’s Culture
In a county where authorities ran multiple internment camps in China’s northwest Xinjiang region, the local government has commissioned a new set of buildings for a very different demographic: tourists. These sites and services, which were...
Updates to Our Database of Arrests Related to the Hong Kong National Security Law
We updated our suite of graphics tracking the impact of Hong Kong’s National Security Law. It now includes information on the 248...
For China’s Urban Residents, the Party-State Is Closer than Ever
In a recent working paper, scholars Yutian An and Taisu Zhang argue that local urban governments in China emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic with far more...
‘A Stone Is Most Precious Where It Belongs’
Gulchehra Hoja is a longtime broadcaster with Radio Free Asia’s (RFA) Uyghur Service. She grew up in Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, and was a successful TV personality and journalist with Chinese state media there....
‘It Is Especially Scary to See Students’
As in many other aspects of public life in China under Xi Jinping, the space for independent inquiry and discussion within the academy has shrunk significantly in recent years. The Xi administration has released a slew of guidelines and...
The Future of China’s Climate Policy
With China accounting for more than a quarter of annual global greenhouse gas emissions, the future pathway of China’s emissions will play a central role in determining the extent to which the world can meet the Paris Agreement’s climate change...
Document 9, 10 Years Later
Ten years ago, in April 2013, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) promulgated a critical directive: its “Communiqué on the Current State of the Ideological Sphere...
How Much Does U.S.-China Tension Threaten Decarbonization?
A striking contradiction has emerged between Beijing’s growing geopolitical isolation on one hand, and its apparent continued commitment to tackling global climate change on the other. The big question, for China and for the world, is whether...
Touting ‘Ethnic Fusion,’ China’s New Top Official for Minority Affairs Envisions a Country Free of Cultural Difference
Pan’s election to the Central Committee suggests that the Xi administration’s hard turn toward assimilationism will likely continue and perhaps intensify. Pan is the second Han official in a row to head the Ethnic Affairs Commission, which for...
‘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...
National Security Law-Related Arrests in Hong Kong: An Update
We’ve just updated our suite of graphics tracking the impact of Hong Kong’s National Security Law. It now includes information on the 227...
Where Does Xi Jinping Go from Here?
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...
What Impact Would a U.S. Debt Default Have on China?
The big political drama in Washington in the next few months will be the fight over the federal debt ceiling. The worst-case scenario is that Congress refuses to raise the ceiling and the U.S. Treasury defaults on its debt. Since U.S. treasury...
For Your Weekend, January 6, 2023
A park bench in New York’s Central Park memorializes Li Wenliang, the Wuhan-based ophthalmologist who, just over three years ago, began issuing warnings about the dangerous pneumonia-like illness spreading in his city, that would soon come to be...
Planting the Flag in Mosques and Monasteries
Over the last few years, the Chinese Communist Party has physically remade places of religious worship in western China to its liking. This includes not only the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, but also other areas with mosques or Tibetan...
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,...
ChinaFile Presents: Nury Turkel, No Escape
For Your Weekend, November 4, 2022
Asian Labour Review published a translated first-hand account of one of the...
In Tibet, Officials’ Pursuit of Zero-COVID Sent Tens of Thousands into Mass ‘Isolation’ Facilities
The general attitude in Lhasa since early September has been marked by concern and discontent. Its focus has been primarily on the mass transfer by city officials of thousands of citizens to isolation camps, and on the ways in which officials...
For Your Weekend, October 28, 2022
For those interested in the nuts and bolts of Party priorities and self-representation, the Substack Ginger River has provided a line-by-line review...
How to Become a Better Firefighter in Gansu? Read ‘1984,’ ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People,’ and ‘The Complete Book of Jewish Wisdom’
On April 23, 2022, the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) marked World Book Day with a meeting in Beijing...
For Your Weekend, October 7, 2022
An article from Emily Feng at NPR, “A public payphone in China began ringing and...
Thanks to a County in Utah, Same-Sex Couples Can Get Married—In China
When Juying attended her son Yangming’s wedding this summer, she was not in a banquet hall or a church but in her apartment. On Zoom, she watched Yangming—3,000 kilometers away in the southern metropolis of Guangzhou—stand next to...
Elections? No Thank You. Performance Reviews? Maybe.
New Export Controls on Chinese Semiconductors May Prove Self-Defeating
New restrictions are not only likely unnecessary, they may ultimately prove self-defeating. Overly zealous controls that limit older semiconductor equipment sales to China will inflict collateral damage on American, and potentially international...
ChinaFile Presents: Surveillance State—Inside China’s Quest to Launch a New Era of Social Control
Wall Street Journal reporters Josh Chin and Liza Lin discussed their new book with ChinaFile Senior Editor Jessica Batke and Arthur Ross Director of Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations Orville Schell. Surveillance State: Inside China’s...
Forbidden Writer
from Mekong ReviewFrom his humble beginnings as a propaganda writer, Yan Lianke has gone on to become among China’s most controversial writers—one whose work is frequently censored for its focus on the lives of those devastated by Beijing’s policies. “When people...
For Your Weekend, September 9, 2022
Sixth Tone recently published a striking photo series featuring people in the city of Xi’an who have...
For Your Weekend, September 1, 2022
As we go into the last weekend of the summer, and a holiday weekend for those in the U.S., we recommend this New Yorker...
For Your Weekend, August 25, 2022
This weekend, we recommend this superb exploration of Chinese documentary film winning awards at fake documentary film festivals, from our friends...
For Your Weekend, August 11, 2022
The most recent episode of the Sinica Podcast, with former U.S. intelligence officer John Culver, was recorded last week...
In What Purport to be Lifestyle Videos, Uyghur Influencers Promote Beijing’s Narrative on Their Homeland
For the past few years, Uyghur and other young members of ethnic minority groups from Xinjiang have been creating videos like Anniguli’s in which they appear to display details of their personal lives while simultaneously evincing support for the...
For Your Weekend, July 28, 2022
For your weekend, we recommend Ian Johnson’s review of a new English language translation of Wang Xiaobo’s 1992 novella The Golden Age...
Confession and Reconciliation in the Cultural Revolution’s Aftermath
Last week, frequent ChinaFile contributors Geremie Barmé and Zha Jianying joined editor Susan Jakes on Twitter Spaces to discus Zha’s recent short story for ChinaFile, “The Prize Student.” The story takes place in Nanjing in 1983, as a prominent...
From My Anguished Heart—A Letter to My Daughter
In early July 2020, Xu Zhangrun was detained for supposedly having “solicited prostitutes” during a trip with friends to Sichuan in late 2019. He was being persecuted for his unsparing critiques of Xi Jinping, starting in July 2018. The following...
Arrests and Charges Related to Hong Kong's National Security Law
Since May 2021, Lydia Wong, Eric Yan-ho Lai, and Thomas Kellogg, from the Center for Asian Law at Georgetown University, have tracked the implementation of Hong Kong’s National Security Law, tallying up arrests and prosecutions as well as...
2021 (Most Recent) Official PRC Place Name Data Available for Download
For the last few years, ChinaFile has collected and hosted the list of official names of all the places (political units) in China. This information is openly available on the Chinese government’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) website, but...
Participation in Xinjiang Surveillance Program Can Lead to Smoother Career Enhancement
Since 2014, authorities in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region have, as Human Rights Watch phrases it, sent “cadres from...
A Note on Notes From ChinaFile
As ChinaFile approaches its 10th birthday, we find ourselves occasionally having something on the short side to say. Notes from ChinaFile will provide a dwelling place on our site for recommendations of books or articles, shrewd thoughts we...
Public Security Minister’s Speech Describes Xi Jinping’s Direction of Mass Detentions in Xinjiang
Closing the U.S. to Chinese Biotech Would Do Far More Harm Than Good
Biotechnology intrinsically blurs boundaries between science and commerce, market and state, the global and the national, and even personal privacy and collective interest. Progress depends more heavily in biotech than in other high-tech...