Chinese Movie Mogul Promises New Party Leaders Will Open Market to Hollywood
A wise old cartoon turtle in Kung Fu Panda advises Po, the portly black and white star of the 2004 DreamWorks Animation blockbuster film, not to fret about honing his fighting skills, but rather to focus on the moment and do...
Clampdown on Gold Dredging in China Sees Switch to Mongolia and Russia
from chinadialogueThe Heilongjiang basin, in northeast China, was attracting gold prospectors as early as the late Qing dynasty, which collapsed in 1912. Panning for gold is damaging for rivers and wetlands, but at the time the region was sparsely populated and...
Hollywood Film Summit Draws Chinese Movie Moguls
LOS ANGELES—Hollywood and Chinese movie makers and industry hangers-on will gather Tuesday at the third annual Asia Society U.S.-China Film Summit on the campus of the University of California, Los Angeles.
At a gala dinner Tuesday night,...
Below-Belt Blows in Kungfu Restaurant Battle
The crestfallen former chairman of fast-food restaurant giant Kungfu Catering Management Co. Ltd. is awaiting a verdict after a trial on corporate embezzlement charges apparently instigated by his former business partner’s wife.
If Cai...
Tapping into Crowd Power with Website Finance
Investing like an angel now costs no more than an average duck dinner in Beijing.
The force driving China’s growing ranks of small-scale angel investors are crowdfunding websites, which offer individuals access to business financing pools...
Overfishing Pushes 80% of Chinese Fishermen Towards Bankruptcy
from chinadialogueIn mid-September, the fishing season got under way as usual in Ningbo, on China’s east coast, after the three-month season when fishing is forbidden. Over 2,000 steel-hulled boats headed out to sea. But, on board, there was little cause for...
Chinese Boycott Airline China Southern After Mysterious Death of Dog
from chinadialogueOn the morning of October 10, a high-profile lawsuit against China Southern, one of China’s “big three” airlines, opened at Chaoyang People’s Court in Beijing. The plaintiffs? Zhao Nan and Chen Lei, a couple from Tianjin, north China, who blame...
Bo Xilai as a Catalyst for Political Reform
No matter how you look at it, the disciplinary process surrounding the case of Bo Xilai will have historic implications.
Details of the crimes committed by Bo, his wife, Bogu Kailai, and his former right-hand man, Wang Lijun, reflect a...
Netizens React to Mo Yan’s Nobel Prize
Upon hearing the news that novelist Mo Yan was awarded the 2012 Nobel Prize in Literature, a flurry of messages about the fifty-seven-year-old Shandong native circulated on weibo, China’s equivalent of Twitter, expressing decidedly mixed opinions...
China’s New Leaders Must Respect Environmental Rights
from chinadialogueChina has achieved remarkable economic successes over the last three decades. For years, it has led the world in GDP growth. But widespread industrialization and urbanization, along with growth based on increased use of resources, mean the nation...
Will Mo Yan’s Nobel Prize Finally Mean Better Book Sales Abroad?
Literature in translation in the United States has wide but shallow roots, making English language stars out of the likes of Gabriel Garcia Márquez and Haruki Murakami, but leaving most of China’s writers struggling to take hold. Now, veteran...
Top Clothing Brands Linked to Water Pollution Scandal in China
from chinadialogueChina is the major hub of the international textile industry, exporting US$200 billion worth of textile and apparel products in 2010—accounting for 34 percent of global exports.
It’s provided cheap T-shirts and other clothes to people...
Decline of Bees Forces China’s Apple Farmers to Pollinate by Hand
from chinadialogueIn the last fifty years, the global human population has nearly doubled, while the average calories consumed per person has increased by about 30 percent.
To cope with the ever growing demand for food, more land has been brought into...
Bo Xilai Ousted from Communist Party
The Communist Party has expelled Bo Xilai, the former party chief of Chongqing, who’s been embroiled in corruption allegations since early this year.
The Politburo made the decision on September 28, the official Xinhua News Agency said. Bo...
After Panjin Killing, Public Deserves to Know
There is growing public skepticism about the veracity of a government report detailing a demolition-related incident in Panjin, Liaoning province, during which a police officer killed a villager for allegedly threatening his life.
...
Witnessing the Cultural Revolution at its Dawn
To this day, I am not sure why the Chinese government approved my request to visit the PRC in the summer of 1966.
On a hot and humid early August Sunday, a fellow student from the University of Hawaii and I walked across the border in Hong...
Wrapped Up: An Interview with Lin Tianmiao
Lin Tianmiao was born in Taiyuan, Shanxi in 1961 to an artistic family. Her father was a traditional painter and her mother a dancer. In the 1980s, she married video artist Wang Gongxin, moved to New York, and became a textile designer. It wasn’t...
Law Professor He Weifang on Why Wang Lijun’s Trial Scared Him
Today, the Chinese state news agency Xinhua announced that Wang Lijun, the former Chongqing police chief, has been found guilty by a court in Chengdu of four criminal charges, including defection, abuse of power, taking bribes, and bending...
Desertification in Tibet’s Wetlands Threatens the Yellow River
from chinadialogueThe “kidneys” of the Tibetan plateau are failing.
The Zoige Wetland National Nature Reserve, which sits on the northeastern fringe of western China’s Qinghai-Tibet plateau, contains the largest alpine peat wetlands in the world. It is also...
Hit TV Show Sings Song of Media Model Success
A reality-talent TV songfest popular in more than forty countries around the world has become an instant hit in China, underpinning enthusiasm for an experimental business model linked to media sector reform.
The Voice of China’s...
How a Protest in Beijing Stuck to the Script
On the afternoon of September 16, rows of policemen and security personnel in black T-shirts lined Beijing’s Liangmaqiao Road near the Japanese embassy during protests over the Diaoyu Islands controversy. Security guards were visible everywhere,...
No Excuse for the Excuses Officials Hand Us
Putting the right spin on one’s words is a science, and civil servants with fiduciary responsibility have to master this subject. It helps to shift blame to someone else; a child, a spouse, or a convenient foreigner will do.
Several weeks...
What Microblogs Aren’t Telling You About China
In China, where notions of freedom of speech and freedom of expression are seen by the government as secondary to the all-important ideal of social stability, there is little space, if any, for truly open and unmediated public conversation....
Moneyless Pensions Yield No Gold for the Old
SHENYANG—Morning breezes turn chilly in late August, signaling fall’s approach in the Tiexi factory district.
For the unemployed men and women standing on sidewalks between a labor bureau office and a park every day at 6 a.m., the change...
Local Governments Bet Big on New Investment
They’re still hung over from a 4 trillion yuan spending spree initiated by the central government nearly four years ago, but local governments across China are pressing ahead anyway with huge new investment plans.
In late August, for...
Despite Regulations, Bus Travel Still Risky
Thirty-six people died recently on a Shaanxi province highway when a double-decker bus slammed into a fuel tanker.
The crash underscored ongoing demands for beefing up traffic law enforcement and improving the design of these often-crowded...
Tangled in the Party Line
Netizens on China’s popular microblogging service Sina Weibo are in a fit of pique over remarks made by a PLA major general about the importance of Chinese TV...
Sinking Shanghai “Not Prepared to Admit” Climate Change Threat
from chinadialogueIt’s been a brutal summer for much of urban China. From the once-in-sixty-years storm that lashed Beijing in July, killing seventy-nine people and costing US$1.6...
Chinese Fear Price Hikes After Electricity Reforms
from chinadialogueThis summer, Chinese people have been thinking twice before turning on their air conditioners.
In July, tiered electricity pricing came into effect across China, except in the far western regions of Tibet and Xinjiang. This means the people...
“Naked Official” Streaks to U.S.
On Monday, the People’s Daily confirmed rumors that Wang Guoqiang, a senior official of Fengcheng city, Liaoning province, fled China in April to the United...
In Guangdong, Tea Oil Greases Official Palms
In the financial documents for a Guangdong province grower and processor of tea seed oil is a list of key shareholders who also happen to be the relatives of local government officials.
Off the record, Guangdong Xindadi Biotechnology Co....
Milk Price War Puts Squeeze on China’s Dairy Farmers
from chinadialogueChina’s dairy industry has been in a precarious state since 2008, the year of the Sanlu milk-powder scandal, when babies across the country were poisoned by melamine-tainted infant formula. This incident revealed to the world the flaws in China’s...
Chinese “Traitors” and the Foreign Press
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On June 2nd, local family planning officials forced Feng Jianmei, a...
China’s South-North Water Transfer is “Irrational”
from chinadialogueRuth Matthews, executive director of the Water Footprint Network, tells Tom Levitt how food has come to dominate our water use and why China may need to re-think its South-North water transfer project.
Tom Levitt:...
Revamping the Landscape of Forex Flow
Capital flows out of China may be accelerating, a phenomenon commonly associated with waning confidence in a nation’s economy. But the foreign exchange regulator says the change is a step in the right direction.
In the first six months of...
Agnès Varda’s China, 1957
from LeapIn 1957, the filmmaker Agnès Varda assumed the role of photographer during a two-month journey around both urban and rural China with a delegation of French dignitaries. Fifty-five years later, Varda resolved to display the photographs she took...
Tibetans Fight Tourism on Holy Lakes
from chinadialogueMining, dam construction, sand excavation, poaching, and grassland degradation are seriously damaging the Qinghai-Tibet plateau, the world’s most fragile ecosystem. But without a second thought, the tourism industry has joined their ranks. The...
Economist Lin Yifu on State-Sustained Growth
Standing up to a wave of pessimism about China’s prospects for continuing high-level economic growth is no easy task.
But economist Lin Yifu, who recently retired as a senior vice president and chief economist at the World Bank, is holding...
Can New Trials Boost Chinese Wind?
from chinadialogueFor the last half year, the National Energy Administration (NEA) has been making its interest in Inner Mongolia’s western regions crystal clear. This part of north China, rich in wind-power potential, has hosted group after group of energy...