China: Back to Authoritarianism
from New York Review of BooksOver the past decade, Xi has become a transformational figure on a par with the two other giants of Chinese Communist Party rule: Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping. Like them, he has reversed earlier policies, in Xi’s case the relative openness that...
‘China’s Search for a Modern Identity Has Entered a New and Perilous Phase’
In 1980, writing the last paragraph of the last chapter of Coming Alive: China After Mao, I declared that China was moving “from totalitarian tyranny to a system more humane, part of a struggle by this nation to free itself from a straitjacket...
In Defense of Diplomacy with China
Critics of the last four decades of China policy have incorrectly and simplistically labeled diplomacy a failure because the People’s Republic did not become a liberal democracy. That was never the goal or an achievable objective of U.S. policy....
Dear Chairman Xi, It’s Time for You to Go
In this open letter, the author urges Xi Jinping to step down. Xu Zhiyong went into hiding in late 2019. The following open letter, which was released on 4 February 4, 2020, was written while he was on the run. On February 15, Xu was detained in...
China: Back to the Future
from New York Review of BooksIn 2023, Xi Jinping will conclude his second term as China’s president. Ever since Deng Xiaoping revised the country’s constitution more than 35 years ago, two consecutive terms have been the most that a president can legally serve. But it has...
The Red Emperor
from New York Review of BooksThis fall, the Nineteenth Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (C.C.P.) gave proof that during his five years as general secretary Xi Jinping has become the most powerful leader of China since Mao Zedong died in 1976. Most observers, Chinese...
America’s Top Trade Negotiator in 2001 Looks at China Today
from Sinica PodcastCharlene Barshefsky was a name you couldn’t avoid if you were in Beijing in the late 1990s. As the United States Trade Representative from 1997 to 2001, she led the American team that negotiated China’s accession to the World...
China: The Struggle at the Top
from New York Review of BooksThe Chinese were gloating over the flaws of the American political system long before the election of Donald J. Trump. Coming from an obsessively orderly system, they were again and again baffled by an institutional setup that...
Singapore Former PM Meets with Chinese Leaders
Pepople's Daily photo archive of the late Lee Kwan Yew's meetings with five of China's top leaders.
Q. and A.: David Shambaugh on the Risks to Chinese Communist Rule
Shambaugh’s recent essay argued that the “endgame of Chinese communist rule has now begun.”
Spanish Judge Orders Arrest of China's Former President Jiang Zemin
A Spanish judge seeks to arrest Jiang and four others for alleged genocide in Tibet under a ‘universal jurisdiction’ doctrine that can prosecute human rights cases which took place outside Spain.
Xi, Mao, and China’s Search for a Usable Past
Since its founding, the United States has had understandable pride in its great achievements, but also has had to reckon with its complex moral history—beginning but hardly ending with the fact that our original Constitution accepted the evil of...
Ex-China Leader Steps Back, Fueling Speculation
A decade after Jiang Zemin stepped down as China’s top leader he has used the death of a former rival to signal that he may allow his political shadow to recede.
The New Chinese Gang of Seven
from New York Review of BooksIn 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...
Tale of the Kidnapped Princeling
It was there that Ji realized how the rumor he had inadvertently spread was potentially destabilizing to Jiang and the thousands of officials who depend directly and indirectly on the former President'sprotection and patronage. Ji's captors...
China's Powerbrokers Block Reformers
Retired leaders in China's Communist Party used a last-minute straw poll to block two pro-reform candidates from joining the policymaking standing committee, including one who had alienated party elders, sources with ties to the leadership said. ...
Age of China’s New Leaders May Have Been Key to Their Selection
Earlier this week, before the new Politburo Standing Committee (PBSC) and Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party were announced, I argued that the Party faces the difficult problem of how to allocate power in the...
Ex-President of China, Said to Be Ill, Appears in Beijing
Jiang Zemin, the former Chinese president who was said to have fallen gravely ill in July,...
David Levine’s China
from New York Review of BooksDavid Levine’s depictions of Chinese notables—and everyone else he drew, for that matter—are so sublime that very often after seeing an image, one is left hardly able to remember what the real person actually looked like.
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Reading Deep Red
On the question of political reform, there is one important terminology in particular we should remain alert to if we hope to read, between the lines as it were, the larger political climate of the 18th National Congress: the “Four Basic...
The Party Isn’t Over
from New York Review of Books1.
Early in the years following China’s post-Mao reforms, a Chinese sociologist told Princeton’s Perry Link, “We’re like a big fish that has been pulled from the water and is flopping wildly to find its way back in. In such a condition...
China’s New Rulers: The Path to Power
from New York Review of BooksFollowing are the members of the Chinese Communist Party Politburo Standing Committee, whose election is expected in November 2002, listed by their rank according to protocol, with their main Party and future state positions. Ages are given...
Misfortune in Shanghai
from New York Review of BooksConnoisseurs of traditional Peking opera would have enjoyed the recent meeting in Shanghai sponsored by Fortune to consider “China: The Next 50 Years.” The audience of approximately three hundred CEOs of US and other companies and over a...
The Jiang Zemin Mystery
from New York Review of BooksHow China Lost Taiwan
from New York Review of Books1.
For foreign correspondents who had been present in Peking’s Tiananmen Square in June 1989, the events of the night of March 17, 1996, in the plaza in front of the Taipei city hall, showed more clearly than any other what the China-...