Books
12.04.12

Tangled Titans

David Shambaugh

Tangled Titans offers a current and comprehensive assessment of the most important relationship in international affairs—that between the United States and China. How the relationship evolves will have a defining impact on the future of world politics, the Asian region, and the citizens of many nations. In this definitive book, leading experts provide an in-depth exploration of the historical, domestic, bilateral, regional, global, and future contexts of this complex relationship.

The Mistress Industrial Complex

Conjugal entanglements of power, politics, money, and men, usually involving multiple sex partners, are hardly new in China, but how this video came to light was novel: Zhu Ruifeng, a 31-year-old former investigative journalist at the respected...

Top 10 Myths About China in 2012

This year may prove to be a pivot point, when the myths that China and the world had adopted about the politics and economics of the People’s Republic began to erode.

 

My First Trip
12.03.12

A China Frontier: Once the Border of Borders

Orville Schell

In 1961, when I first arrived in Hong Kong as an aspiring young China scholar, there was something deeply seductive about the way this small British enclave of capitalism clung like a barnacle to the enormity of China’s socialist revolution....

Caixin Media
12.03.12

When Hope Dies

A nationwide uproar paralleled the investigation that led to the identification of five street children who suffocated in a large rubbish bin in the city of Bijie, Guizhou province.

Officials learned the victims were the sons of three...

Caixin Media
12.03.12

Toxic Effects and Environmental Nondisclosure

High-profile talk emphasizing environmental action at the Communist Party’s 18th national congress attracted a lot of attention. News from the November proceedings spurred industry demands for more information and pushed stock prices...

Alarm as China Issues Rules for Disputed Area

New rules announced by a Chinese province last week to allow interceptions of ships in the South China Sea are raising concerns in the region, and in Washington, that simmering disputes with Southeast Asian countries over the waters will escalate...

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...

Chinese Media Partly Retreat After Black Jails Verdict

A brief news article published on Sunday by a score of state-run news media outlets offered an account of an unexpected judicial verdict: a Beijing municipal court had sentenced 10 people to jail for illegally detaining and assaulting a group of...

Media
12.01.12

Chinese AIDS Activist Endures “Degradation” in New York, Determined to Finish What She Started

Chinese people translate “New Yorker” into “New York Ke” to designate people living in New York City, including Chinese immigrants. But in Chinese, “ke” means “visitor” or “guest.” It has been a sad word in Chinese literature and poems...

Out of School
11.30.12

Heirs of Fairness?

Taisu Zhang

An unusual debate on what may seem an arcane topic—China’s imperial civil service examinations—recently took place on the op-ed page of the The New York Times. The argument centered on the question of whether or not China during the past...

Environment
11.28.12

Russia’s Siberian Dams Power “Electric Boilers” in Beijing

 from chinadialogue

The underdeveloped, sparsely populated Eastern Siberia region that shares a 4,000-kilometer border with China has vast resources to offer its heavily populated and fast-developing neighbor. Hydroelectricity is key among them.

A major new...

Media
11.27.12

Spotted on Weibo: Chinese Leaders Share a Human Moment

An active Beijing-based micro-blogger named Dongdong Wang recently tweeted this image on Sina Weibo, China’s Twitter: {vertical_photo_right}

At first glance, it doesn’t look like much: Outgoing Premier Wen Jiabao (left) and outgoing...

Culture
11.27.12

Remember to Tell the Truth

Maya E. Rudolph

The recording of memory brings history to life and creates a legacy of its own. In 2010, documentary filmmaker Wu Wenguang launched the Memory Project to try to shine a light on the long-shrouded memories of one of modern China’s most traumatic...

Caixin Media
11.23.12

Asset Transparency Urged to Fight Government Graft

Calls for government officials to disclose personal and family assets are growing louder in China, mainly in reaction to the rising number of corruption cases affecting officialdom.

And some officials are listening. A local Communist Party...

The NYRB China Archive
11.22.12

China: Worse Than You Ever Imagined

Ian Johnson
from New York Review of Books

Last summer I took a trip to Xinyang, a rural area of wheat fields and tea plantations in central China’s Henan province. I met a pastor, a former political prisoner, and together we made a day trip to Rooster Mountain, a onetime summer retreat...

Media
11.21.12

Official Online Poll: Chinese Want Democracy

With China’s new leadership now set, Chinese Web users have turned their attention to answering the key question: “What’s next?” In concert with the 18th Party Congress, the website of Communist Party-sanctioned Peoples’s Daily...

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. ...

Corruption in China's Orphanages

One of my children is from an orphanage where the director, a government official, has created a nice little business in orphan homecomings, which include a lavish meal, hugs from the caregivers, and a shower of gifts for the returning child. The...

The Key to Bringing Democracy to China

For many years, Western leaders have couched the argument for greater political openness and democratization in China in moral terms, citing the universality of both human rights and the aspirations for freedom and independence. In May, defending...

Media
11.19.12

A Conservative Commentator Calls Out Chinese Liberals, and Liberals Shout Back

Speech on the Chinese Internet, it seems, is beginning to thaw once more following the country’s leadership transition. After months of speculation, new Chinese leader Xi Jinping was announced on November 16 at the close of the 18th...

Photo Gallery
11.19.12

China’s Footprint in Myanmar

Sim Chi Yin

President Barack Obama’s visit to Yangon (also known as Rangoon) today shines a spotlight on a story that has already captured the world’s attention: namely, the remarkable political transformation that has been underway over the past year in...

Getting Over Ai Weiwei

There are, though, significant dangers in the upholding of Ai as our sole representative/mediator of artistic resistance to authority within China. While Ai’s bluntly confrontational and often bombastic stance can be readily digested within...

Caixin Media
11.17.12

Political Reform: The Way to Go

Sections of the 18th National Party Congress report that have justifiably generated the most attention are references to political reform.

Anyone who did not harbor unrealistic hopes about the congress and its outcome can read...

Caixin Media
11.17.12

As 18th Congress Ends, a Peek into the Process

Over the past twenty years, economist Zhang Zhuoyuan has witnessed and actively participated in building the nation’s economic policy.

He participated in the drafting of reports at each of the Communist Party’s three previous national...

Sinica Podcast
11.16.12

The State of the Navy

Kaiser Kuo
from Sinica Podcast

After two weeks focusing on developments at the Eighteenth Party Congress, and with the next generation of China’s leadership now...

China’s New Chief

When it was all over this morning, and the seven men had returned once again to the secluded backstage of the Great Hall of the People, trailed by their security, and the stage where they had stood was suddenly empty. I walked up to the spot...

Viewpoint
11.15.12

Age of China’s New Leaders May Have Been Key to Their Selection

Susan Shirk

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...

Environment
11.15.12

An Insight into the Green Vocabulary of the Chinese Communist Party

 from chinadialogue

After years of neglect, the environment is gradually gaining more attention from China’s leaders. The most noticeable manifestation of this is in their vocabulary.

Six months ago, Hu Jintao, speaking at the opening of a study session for...

Viewpoint
11.14.12

The Future of Legal Reform

Carl Minzner

Carl Minzner, Professor of Law at Fordham University, talks here about the ways China’s legal reforms have ebbed and flowed, speeding up in the early 2000s, but then slowing down again after legal activists began to take the government at its...

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