The Trust Deficit
Can China and the United States work together to play a leadership role in global governance to meet such urgent global challenges as nonproliferation and climate change? An analysis on how Beijing views Obama’s ‘Asia Pivot’....
Chinese Leaders Warn Against ‘Dangerous’ Western Values
The demands for ideological conformity show that Mr. Xi and other leaders want to inoculate the public from expectations of major political liberalization, even as they explore loosening some state controls over the economy....
A Dangerous Rift Between China and Japan
On the surface, the dispute is about history, about which country has the best claim to sovereignty over the Senkaku/Diaoyu. It is more about politics, domestic and international, revealing the tangled relations in a region where history is...
China Officials Seek Career Shortcut With Feng Shui
As Marxist ideology has faded in China, ancient mystical beliefs once banned by the Communist Party are gaining ground. This mystical revival is attracting devoted followers in that most forbidden of realms: the marbled, atheistic halls of...
What Is China’s Plan on the Middle East?
Xi Jinping’s meetings with Israeli and Palestinian leaders in May 2013 have as much to with Israel and Palestine as it does with the United States whose diplomacy with these countries is not looking...
Conversation
05.21.13
U.S.-China Economic Relations—What Will the Next Decade Bring?
On Monday, within hours of the announcement that Chinese President Xi Jinping will meet U.S. President Barack Obama on a visit to...
China Dips a Toe Into Middle East Peace
China took a modest step into Middle East diplomacy early May 2013, hosting back-to-back visits from Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of the Palestinian Authority, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel.
China Doesn’t Want Your Trash Anymore
The Chinese government just began forbidding the import of certain types of solid waste and other illegal waste mixed in with the good stuff. China is the primary source of demand of the U.S.’s to-be-recycled plastics.
China Detains Activist for Subversion After Pressuring Leaders On Wealth
President Xi Jinping’s administration has detained at least 10 activists who have led a campaign for officials to publicly disclose their wealth - the first coordinated crackdown by the new government on activists.
S.P.C. Directive on Handling Suits Related to Internet “Management”
A translation of a directive that reveals, among other things, just how many layers of oversight, guidance, and coordination Chinese courts are subject to.
More Citizens Detained in China for Demanding Public Disclosure of Officials’ Personal Wealth
Dissident intellectuals pointed out that the regime is not afraid of what you say, no matter how strong; however, it is fearful of any form of organization and collective activities, and it has been cracking down harshly on these street...
Bank of China Closes Account of Key North Korean Bank
The closure is the first significant, publicly announced step taken by a Chinese entity to curb its dealings with North Korea in the wake of international pressure to punish Pyongyang over its banned nuclear and ballistic missile programs...
Palestinian Leader Seeks Chinese Support
China has tried to maintain firm ties with both Israel and the Palestinian Authority while supporting Palestinian demands for statehood and occasionally chiding the Israeli government for its policies toward the Palestinians....
India Says China Agrees Retreat to De Facto Border in Faceoff Deal
India and China have ended a three-week standoff on a windswept Himalayan plateau where they fought a war 50 years ago by agreeing to pull forces back to positions held before the confrontation.
China Warns Officials Against ‘Dangerous’ Western Values
The Chinese Communist Party has warned officials to combat “dangerous” Western values and other perceived ideological threats, in a directive that analysts said on Monday reflected the determination of China’s leader to preserve top-down...
A Long Ride Toward a New China (Video)
Every summer, the 59-year-old Chinese blogger Zhang Shihe rides his bicycle thousands of miles to the plateaus, deserts and hinterlands of North Central ...
Chinese Suggestions for Improving Internet Disappear
Few things irritate Chinese netizens as much as how their government acts on the Internet: blocking access to many foreign websites, censoring content and comments on Chinese websites and directing ...
The Pollution Crisis and Environmental Activism in China: A Q&A with Ralph Litzinger
The last year has seen a dramatic uptick in press coverage of Chinese environmental issues. There have also been a number of books published on the subject, with more due out soon. So this seemed a good moment to get in touch with my friend ...
Chinese Protesters Oppose Petrochemical Plant in Kunming
Today, hundreds of protesters shut down traffic in the ...
Border Dispute Between China And India Persists
Two weeks ago the Chinese sent an unusual number of military patrols into a remote high-altitude desert at the northern tip of India. As its economic might has grown, China has become increasingly assertive in its territorial claims across...
Conversation
05.14.13
Why Can’t China Make Its Food Safe?—Or Can It?
The month my wife and I moved to Beijing in 2004, I saw a bag of oatmeal at our local grocery store prominently labeled: “NOT POLLUTED!” How funny that this would be a selling point, we thought.
But 7 years later as we prepared to return...
Viewpoint
05.13.13
Maoism: The Most Severe Threat to China
Ma Licheng (马立诚) is a former Senior Editorials Editor at People’s Daily, the Communist Party’s most important mouthpiece, and the author of eleven books. In 2003, when...
Being A Chinese Government Official Is One Of The Worst Jobs In The World
Chinese officials, like political dissidents or regular citizens, also suffer under a party that is accountable chiefly to itself and a government that arbitrarily enforces laws.
The NYRB China Archive
05.09.13
Chen Guangcheng in New York
from New York Review of BooksFollowing are excerpts from a recent conversation among Chen Guangcheng, the blind legal activist who was recently permitted to leave China and is currently a distinguished visitor at New York University School of Law; Jerome A. Cohen,...
Conversation
05.07.13
Why Is a 1995 Poisoning Case the Top Topic on Chinese Social Media?
With a population base of 1.3 billion people, China has no shortage of strange and gruesome crimes, but the attempted murder of Zhu Ling by thallium poisoning in 1995 is burning up China’s social media long after the trails have gone cold. Zhu, a...
The PEN Report: Creativity and Constraint in Today’s China
PEN International
The report which follows measures the conditions for freedom of expression through literature, linguistic rights, Internet freedom and legal obligations. This is an approach anchored both in the breadth of history and in today’s realities, one...
Books
05.02.13
China and the Environment
Sixteen of the world’s twenty most polluted cities are in China. A serious water pollution incident occurs once every two-to-three days. China’s breakneck growth causes great concern about its global environmental impacts, as others look to China as a source for possible future solutions to climate change. But how are Chinese people really coming to grips with environmental problems? This book provides access to otherwise unknown stories of environmental activism and forms the first real-life account of China and its environmental tensions.
The Wall Street Journal: Covering China Past and Present
The Wall Street Journal was one of the first American publications to set up a bureau in Beijing. Since its establishment, scores of the Journal’s correspondents have traveled in and out of the country to cover China’s economic and...
A Sino-Japanese Clash In The East China Sea
The United States, as a treaty ally of Japan but with vital strategic interests in fostering peaceful relations with China, has a major stake in averting a clash between the two forces and resolving the dispute, if possible....
China, Japan Island Spat Resurfaces
Japan and China faced off anew over a group of disputed islands after visits to a controversial war shrine by Japanese politicians rankled Tokyo’s neighbors, raising concerns that tensions may be returning after a period of relative calm....
Steps To Improve U.S.-China Relations
More crosscutting dialogues are in order, more effort needs to be directed at concrete steps, not just talk, and both sides must be more creative about how to get senior leaders more time together to engage on 21st-century challenges....
Earthquake Response And Political Tensions Return To The Spotlight
Though better than the response to the 2008 earthquake in Wenchuan, survivors face a third night with no shelter and little food or water. The economic impact from the earthquake should be...
Hu Shuli: China Has Still Not Compiled A Common Dream
Hu, who has been described as the most dangerous woman in China because of her investigative reporting, gives an interview about the challenges facing new president Xi Jinping in 2013.
In China, U.S. Top Military Officer Defends U.S. Pivot To Asia
“We seek to be a stabilizing influence in the region,” Dempsey said at a news conference at China’s Ministry of National Defense. “In fact, we believe it would be our absence that would be destabilizing in the region, not our presence.”...
U.S. Eyes Pushback On China Hacking
Current and former officials said the offensive shift turned on two developments: new intelligence showing the Chinese military directing cyberspying campaigns, and a sudden change in U.S. companies’ willingness to acknowledge Chinese...
China Expands Crackdown On Anticorruption Activists
The arrests of four activists have both infuriated and disappointed reformers and human rights advocates, who say the crackdown bodes ill for Mr. Xi’s widely trumpeted war on graft.
Viewpoint
04.26.13
Sino-American Relations: Amour or Les Miserables?
Winston Lord, former United States Ambassador to China, tells us he recently hacked into the temples of government, pecking at his first-generation iPad with just one finger—a clear sign that both Beijing and Washington need to beef up their ...
‘Unmade In China’ - When China Tries Calling A Filmmaker’s Shots
Unmade in China is nominally about filmmaking, but what Kofman and Barklow do well is to use their unusual position within the Chinese state machine - sponsored and controlled by the government - to make a thinly veiled movie about politics...
China To Send North Korea Envoy To Washington
China will send its special envoy on North Korea to the United States next week for talks on maintaining peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula, the foreign ministry said on Friday.
Will The State Department Sanction China And Russia For Human Trafficking
This year the State Department must either promote Russia and China to Tier 2 status or demote those countries to Tier 3, the lowest classification, which opens those countries to sanctions from the U.S. government.
Bo’s Campaign ‘Worse Than Cultural Revolution’
Chongqing, the largest Chinese municipality, was the epicenter of a Maoist revival campaign under Bo, who spearheaded an effort to crack down on gangs and corruption and promoted the public singing of nostalgic revolutionary songs...
China Responds To Gun-Control Failure
To the Chinese who awoke to the news Thursday, it was a confusing object lesson in what they are so often told is a model political system.
Tale Of China’s Leader In A Taxicab Is Retracted
The state-run news media, which had initially given credence to the story, abruptly reversed course, and the tale was in shreds. What does it mean when feel-good propaganda cannot be trusted even on its own fanciful terms?
...
The NYRB China Archive
04.25.13
The ‘Breaking of an Honorable Career’
from New York Review of Books1.
In the 1950s, the late John King Fairbank, the dean of modern China studies at Harvard, used to tell us graduate students a joke about the allegation that a group of red-leaning foreign service officers and academics—the four Johns—had...
The NYRB China Archive
04.25.13
China’s Sufis: The Shrines Behind the Dunes
from New York Review of BooksLisa Ross’s luminous photographs are not our usual images of Xinjiang. One of China’s most turbulent areas, the huge autonomous region in the country’s northwest was brought under permanent Chinese control only in the mid-twentieth century....
China Gives Breakdown Of Its Military, Criticizes U.S.
For the first time ever Beijing outlined in broad strokes its People’s Liberation Army, which includes ground, air and naval forces. The defense white paper also took the U.S. to task for its shift to Asia, as well as the ongoing conflict...
Conversation
04.23.13
How Would You Spend (the Next) $300 Million on U.S.-China Relations?
Orville Schell:
When Stephen A. Schwarzman announced his new $300 million program aimed at sending foreign scholars to Tsinghua...
Challenges Mount For China’s President
Whatever honeymoon President Xi Jinping of China may have been having appears to be over. Now the president must grapple with the H7N9 virus, tensions over North Korea, an economic slowdown, corruption, and a host of other issues....
Kerry: China Must Do More To Resolve N. Korean Missile Crisis
Kerry believes that the instability created by Pyongyang’s belligerence is enough to push China to intervene more thoroughly; if China does not, Kerry says the U.S. will open direct talks with North Korea.
Stuck In The Middle: Korea In Chinese History
For more than two thousand years, successive Chinese dynasties have seen Korea as a tributary to be protected, a prize to be coveted, or as a dangerous land bridge which might convey “outer barbarians” into China. China unsurprisingly has a...
Kerry In China To Seek Help In Korea Crisis
Mr. Kerry suggested that the United States could remove some newly enhanced missile defenses in the region, though he did not specify which ones. Any eventual cutback would address Chinese concerns about the buildup of American weapons...
North Korean Leader Strains Ties With Chinese
How far the alliance between the powerhouse China and the impoverished North Korea has soured is now debated openly in the Chinese news media. Few call it a serious rift, though a spirited debate is under way within the Chinese government...
What Kerry Should Tell China
On April 13, 2013, when John Kerry pays his first visit to China as the U.S. secretary of state, North Korea will be at the top of his agenda, with Iran’s nuclear program and cyberattacks also extremely important.