Why China and Japan Can't Get Along (Opinion)
There are few societies on earth more complementary than China's and Japan's. But Japan is afraid of China’s rise, and China is troubled by Japan.
Nicholas Kristof: Looking for a Jumpstart in China
The new paramount leader, Xi Jinping, will spearhead a resurgence of economic reform, and probably some political easing as...
Caixin Media
01.04.13
Why Are Entrepreneurs So Uneasy?
I’m often asked whether it’s more difficult for a Chinese company to survive now than it was in the 1980s, when I started my business. The two eras are indeed different. Many entrepreneurs with whom I shared the stage at awards ceremonies have...
Media
01.03.13
How a Run-Down Government Building Became the Hottest Item on China’s Social Web
It is perhaps a sign of the times in China that an image of nothing more than a ramshackle county government building could echo so widely. Since its posting on Sina Weibo, China’s Twitter, hours before New Year’s Eve, the image (see below) has...
A Meaty Tale, Carnivorous and Twisted
Nobel laureate Mo Yan's latest novel to be issued in English, “Pow!,” is a red-toothed fantasia about meat production and meat consumption.
Environment
01.02.13
China’s New “Middle Class” Environmental Protests
from chinadialogueChina’s urban residents (or the new “middle class”) protest on the streets only very rarely. Discontent is expressed almost exclusively online, via angry typing. But this has changed over the last five years—protests have come offline and on to...
Times Reporter in China is Forced to Leave over Visa Issue
A correspondent who applied for press accreditation in September left because authorities did not act by Dec. 31.
Chinese Taste for Fish Rankles
A Wall Street Journal report on the seizure of Chinese fishing boats off Argentina highlights China’s growing appetite for seafood and its geopolitical effects.
Rule of Law: A Ring to Bind China's Internet (Analysis)
China’s new propaganda chief, Liu Qibao, has laid out an agenda for increased political controls on the Internet.
For China’s ‘Great Renewal,’ 8 Trends to Keep an Eye On
The Bo Xilai scandal, an economic downturn and the leadership switch from Hu Jintao to Xi Jinping made 2012 one of China’s most eventful years. It is hard to imagine that next year will be as exciting, but there will be change.
The Wealth of China’s Princelings
To reveal the scale and origins of this red aristocracy, Bloomberg News traced the fortunes of 103 people, the Immortals’ direct descendants and their spouses. The result is a detailed...
China's Anti-Corruption Tool Kit: No Flowers, Expensive Booze or 'Empty Talk'
China's new leadership has made combating the country’s endemic corruption one of its publicly stated missions.
China Assails U.S. Over Alliance with Japan and Possible F-16 Sales to Taiwan
State-run news media attacked the passage of a new U.S. military spending bill that is awaiting President Obama’s signature.
Report Links Former Police Chief to Murder
A Chinese newspaper reports a former Chongqing police chief played a direct role in organizing the murder of a U.K. citizen.
The NYRB China Archive
12.21.12
Beijing’s Doomsday Problem
from New York Review of BooksOver 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
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...
The Top 10 Chinese Internet Memes of 2012
2012 saw social media supercharg one of contemporary China’s finest forms of cultural and political expression: the Internet meme.
China's Motorways: Get Your Kicks on Route G6
China is building a motorway across the Tibetan plateau. For some, reaching Lhasa by road is the ultimate dream.
Shifted by Officials
A mysteriouys and heavily guarded suburban Beijing courtyard isn't open to public, only to the petitioners corralled there.
U.S. Envoy Optimistic About Relations
Amb. Locke said Xi Jinping seems “more casual and at ease with people” than his predecessors but that much remains unclear.
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.
CCTV Airs “V for Vendetta”
When CCTV aired, uncut V for Vendetta about an anti-totalitarian masked crusader, viewers couldn’t believe their eyes.
China Watches Newtown: Guns and American Credibility
Authoritarian states ward off calls for political freedoms arguing that U.S.-style democracy is no guarantee of good policy.
Caixin Media
12.16.12
In Bo Xilai’s City, a Legacy of Backstabbing
A deathbed plea brought an unexpected guest to Li Zhuang’s home one day last March, setting in motion a legal process that soon may clear the Beijing lawyer’s name, throw out a number of convictions, and close a sordid chapter of the Bo Xilai...
Why Salman Rushdie Should Pause Before Condemning Mo Yan
Mo Yan, China's first Nobel laureate for literature, has been greeted withsome extraordinary hostility in the west. This week ...
Beijing’s Test of Tokyo
China and Japan have been drawing lines in the waters around the Senkaku Islands (Diaoyu Islands for the Chinese) almost daily since the Japanese government under Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda purchased these islands from a private owner on...
Tibet Is Burning
Over the last three years, close to 100 Tibetan monks and laypeople have set themselves on fire; 30 people did so between Nov. 4 and Dec. 3. ...
Media
12.12.12
The “Chinese Dream” Means One Thing to its Leaders, and Another to its People
Since China unveiled the new Politburo Standing Committee at the 18th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, the country’s Web users have been paying close attention to the new elite group of leaders who will set the country’s agenda...
Books
12.12.12
China’s Search for Security
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.
China’s Reforms–Now Comes the Hard Part
Since taking the reins of the Communist Party last month, Mr. Xi has chosen his words—and his symbols—carefully. His first tour outside of Beijing since taking the top job was to Guangdong—which spearheaded China’s economic reforms and was the...
China Reportedly Strips Shanghai Bishop of His Title
A Roman Catholic bishop who stunned congregants and Communist Party officials last July when he renounced his government position during his consecration has been stripped of his religious title, according to two Catholic Web sites that cited...
The “Just Sisters” Defense: China’s Sex-Scandal Surge
Faced with a sex scandal of breathtaking tackiness, a Chinese police district could be forgiven for feeling perhaps a flicker of relief last week when someone in the office stumbled on what must have felt like good news under the circumstances—a...
Culture
12.11.12
Sheng Keyi on Mo Yan: “Literature Supersedes Politics and Everything Else”
In a recent conversation at the Asia Society, novelist Sheng Keyi said she felt the critism of Mo Yan’s Nobel Prize was unjustified. The...
Culture
12.11.12
Yu Jie: Awarding Mo Yan the Nobel Prize Was a “Huge Mistake”
Mo Yan accepted his Nobel Prize for Literature in Stockholm on December 10.
The 57-year-old novelist often writes stories based on memories of his village childhood, and his work and his political views have triggered wide debate. ...
Out of School
12.11.12
What Mo Yan’s Detractors Get Wrong
When Chinese novelist Mo Yan accepted the Nobel Prize in Literature earlier this week, the relationship between literature and politics attracted much attention. The...
Are China's Censors Loosening Their Grip on Weibo?
Two hundred million Sina Weibo users found Tuesday they could search for Chinese leaders and were free to critiique.
In China, New Leadership and New Style
Xi Jinping is hitching himself to Deng Xiaoping’s legacy and style...
Keep Smiling! – You’re Being Watched
Frequent media reports of overwhelming popular support for mass surveillance are propagandistic in tone and content. However, is there nonetheless some truth in the ‘happy Chinese panopticon’? An international comparative survey on privacy and...
Mo Yan and the Hazards of Hollow Words
In Chinese, there are an impressive number of ways to describe saying nothing at all. When a person is determined to speak at length but not in depth, he can embark on a long jog of feihua—literally, wasted words—or perhaps pass the time at the...
The Struggle of 15-Year-Old Hukou Protester Zhan Haite
A 15-year-old girl has made waves in the Chinese press recently for her fight against Shanghai authorities after she was banned from taking the college entrance examination because she does not hold a Shanghaihukou(household registration). She...
Media
12.09.12
New Leaders’ Common Touch Gives Netizens “Great Hope”
Glad-handing with the locals. Kissing babies. Eating fast food. These are tried and true ways that American politicians seek to advertise their common touch; but when China’s new leaders employ these methods, it is greeted as a pleasant surprise...
Perry Link: Does This Writer Deserve the Prize?
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...
Xi Jinping heads to Shenzhen on first inspection trip
It is a move political observers say pays tribute to the famous southern tour of Deng Xiaoping in 1992 and sends a signal of commitment to deepening reform. A Shenzhen propaganda official said Xi, who will succeed Hu Jintao as president in March...
A Place for Asia
Pankaj Mishra, acclaimed novelist and historian of Asia’s modern development, would have none of it. In a scathing essay published in the London Review of Books, Mishra...
Nobel Literature Winner Skirts Support for Dissident
Nobel literature prize winner Mo Yan dodged requests Thursday to repeat comments supportive of Chinese countryman and jailed dissident Liu Xiaobo, and said censorship may be necessary to stop the dissemination of untrue rumors and insults but...
China GDP: If Not 10%, Then What
Standard Chartered economist says China's GDP is likely to grow 7% over the next five years without big interim reforms.
Mongolia Finds China Can Be Too Close for Comfort
In a global rush to get rich off China, Mongolia works to ensure that Chinese investment doesn't become Chinese dominance.
The NYRB China Archive
12.06.12
Does This Writer Deserve the Prize?
from New York Review of BooksOn 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...
James McGregor: An Open System with Closed Minds
China was a closed system with rapidly opening minds. Today, China is a much more open system with some purposely closing minds.
China Dismisses Nobel Demands for Liu's Release
China rejected a call from 134 Nobel laureates for the release from prison of dissident 2010 Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo.
The Hungry Years
Pankaj Mishra reviews two new books on Mao Zedong and the Great Famine of 1958-62.
New CPC Leadership Rejects Extravagance, Bureaucracy
The newly-elected leadership of China's ruling party has pledged to reject extravagance and reduce bureaucratic visits and meetings, in a bid to win the trust and support from the people. In a meeting of the Political Bureau of the Communist...
How Crash Cover-Up Altered China’s Succession
The outlines of the affair surfaced months ago, but it is now becoming clearer that the crash and the...
