Why the African Union Stopped the Donkey Hide Trade with China
The African Union’s unprecedented decision to ban the trade of donkey skin ended a hitherto fast-evolving China-Africa business. It also is the result of an unusual agreement between the 55 African Union member countries on a matter that affects...
For Beijing, Putting People Back to Work May Prove a Tough Job
In a small Chinese town where unemployment has run high during the COVID-19 pandemic, the local government has embraced a surprising remedy to joblessness: public toilets. Fugong Village, in Guangdong province, usually sees nearly half of its...
Little Town on the Prairie
from New York Review of BooksLiang Village sits on the edge of the North China Plain, about 650 miles south of Beijing. The area was settled by migrants who came in waves throughout Chinese history, attracted by the fertile soil in what was traditionally one of the country’s...
How Much Does Beijing Control the Ethnic Makeup of Tibet?
The idea of swamping, which the Dalai Lama himself elaborated in 2008, holds that China’s government has been seeking to solve its problems in Tibet and other “ethnic minority” areas such as Xinjiang by turning local indigenous ethnic groups (...
Beijing’s Long Struggle to Control Xinjiang’s Mineral Wealth
The Silk Road Economic Belt—the overland component of Xi Jinping’s signature Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)—promises to bind China to Central Asia and beyond through a new infrastructural network. Connecting through China’s far western Xinjiang...
Visualizing China’s Anti-Corruption Campaign
“Catching Tigers and Flies” is ChinaFile’s interactive tool for tracking and, we hope, better understanding the massive campaign against corruption that Xi Jinping launched shortly after he came to power in late 2012. It is designed to give users...
China Has an Online Lending Crisis and People Are Furious about It
The outcry shines a light on a murky corner of China's financial industry that authorities allowed to grow rapidly with little oversight. Promises of double-digit returns attracted people looking for more lucrative places to put their...
‘We’re a People Destroyed’: Why Uighur Muslims across China Are Living in Fear
Gene A Bunin has spent the past 18 months talking to Uighur restaurant workers all over China. These conversations reveal how this Muslim minority feel the daily threat of arrest, detention and ‘re-education’
Kazakh Trial Throws Spotlight on China’s Internment Centres
The trial of a Chinese citizen who fled to Kazakhstan has offered rare insight into China’s secretive internment system, with Beijing’s security campaign in the western region of Xinjiang increasingly putting neighbouring countries in central...
One in Five Arrests Take Place in ‘Police State’ Xinjiang
Analysing publicly available government data, the advocacy group Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD), found 21% of all arrests in China in 2017 were in Xinjiang
China’s ‘Digital City’ Showcases Xi’s Grand Ambition
Transformation of rural backwater into the new Shenzhen is still some way off.
China's 'Jack the Ripper', Gao Chengyong, Sentenced to Death
A serial killer in China has been sentenced to death for the murder of 11 women.
China Hands out Free TVs to Beam Propaganda into Poorest Regions
China is distributing 300,000 television sets to some of its poorest regions as Beijing seeks to spread its propaganda into some of the country's most hard to reach households.
China Wages War on Funeral Strippers
China has launched its latest crackdown against a phenomenon which just won’t seem to die in rural areas - funeral strippers.
‘You Are Our Lucky Star’: Chinese Media in Overdrive on Xi Jinping’s New Year Tour
Xi Jinping has flown into one of rural China’s most deprived corners to champion his war on extreme poverty before the country’s week-long Lunar New Year holiday.
Chinese Civil Society in 2018: What’s Ahead?
The impetus for this event is it’s about a year since the new Foreign NGO Law was implemented in China. There was also another law implemented in 2016, the Charity Law, that governs how domestic NGOs function in China. But there’s a lot more...
‘She’ll Die If She Stays with Us’: a Baby Abandoned in China
The 6-month-old girl was found alone at night in a park in southern China, sleeping in a stroller. Next to her, in a lime-green backpack, was a bottle of infant formula, diapers and a two-page note from her parents.
Alibaba’s Jack Ma Thinks He Knows How to Save China's ‘Left-Behind Children’ — He’s Asking Other Entrepreneurs to Buy In
The founder and executive chairman of e-commerce behemoth Alibaba said that investing in rural boarding schools could provide a solution for China’s “left-behind children” and ensure a more prosperous future for the next generation.
China’s Propagandists Wanted a Hero. ‘Frost Boy’ Fit the Bill.
His frazzled face, rosy cheeks and icy hair lit up the internet. Now Wang Fuman, the 8-year-old Chinese student known as Frost Boy, is taking on a new role: propaganda star.
Xi Jinping Makes China’s Toilets a Number Two Priority
Chinese urged to ‘Advance the Toilet Revolution Steadily’ and do away with squalid communal facilities as a national imperative.
Fake Girlfriends, Chengdu Rappers, and a Chow Chow Making Bank
from Yuanjin PhotoLonely dog owners in Beijing and a rented girlfriend in Fujian; the last Oroqen hunters in Heilongjiang and homegrown hip hop in Chengdu; young Chinese in an Indian tech hub and Hong Kong apartments only slightly larger than coffins—these are...
Down From the Mountains
At 14 years old, Wang Ying doesn’t want to be a mother. She scowls darkly as her younger brother and sister squabble in the corner while she does the housework. But she grudgingly cleans up after them and cooks them a potato stew...
The Human Cost of China’s Economic Reforms
Mr Yu is worried that millions of workers the Chinese government plans to lay off from failing state owned companies will be “abandoned” like he says he was 15 years ago.
Green Gold: How China Quietly Grew into a Cannabis Superpower
Every year in April, Jiang Xingquan sets aside part of his farm in northern China to grow cannabis. The size of the plot varies with market demand but over the last few years it has been about 600 hectares.
China's Crackdown on North Korea over U.N. Sanctions Starts to Pinch
Trucks packed with seafood were backed up, bumper to bumper, at the Chinese border with North Korea. Protesters carried red banners demanding compensation. And Chinese businessmen who have been making big money from North...
Love, Robots, and Fireworks
from Yuanjin PhotoIncluded in this Depth of Field column are stories of love, community, remembrance, and the future, told through the discerning eyes of some of China’s best photojournalists. Among them, the lives of African migrants in Guangzhou, seven years...
China Landslide: Families' Frustration Grows as More Than 100 Feared Dead
Families affected by huge slip that buried Xinmo village say they are concerned by a lack of information and the fate of orphaned children
China Drive to Relocate Millions of Rural Poor Runs into Trouble
Villagers return home after struggling with lack of jobs in urban apartments
Welfare, Work, and Poverty
Welfare, Work, and Poverty provides the first systematic and comprehensive evaluation of the impacts and effectiveness of China’s primary social assistance program—the “dibao,” or “Minimum Livelihood Guarantee”—since its inception in 1993. The dibao serves the dual function of providing a basic safety net for the poor and maintaining social and political stability. Despite currently being the world’s largest welfare program in terms of population coverage, evidence on the dibao’s performance has been lacking.
Belt and Road: A Symphony in Need of a Strong Conductor
In just a few weeks, the Chinese president will host the Belt and Road summit—Xi Jinping’s landmark program to invest billions of dollars in infrastructure projects across Asia, Africa, and Europe. Reactions to the project have...
Trafficked into Wedlock
When Buntha left Cambodia to marry a Chinese man, she did so for money, not for love.
Thirty-two years old at the time, and never married, she had few opportunities to earn money for her family in her village in Kampong...
Xinhua Insight: Procedures unveiled for birth of Xiongan New Area
Plans for Xiongan New Area, an economic zone about 100 kilometers south of Beijing, are becoming more clear. President Xi Jinping said, “The capital's core functions should be preserved and strengthened, and some inappropriate functions adjusted...
Xiongan District Becomes Hot Property in China
A sleepy district in Hebei province has suddenly become the center of China’s latest property craze and the talk of the country.
Refugees from Myanmar, Migrant Workers, and the Lantern Festival
from Yuanjin PhotoThis month, we feature galleries published in February that showcase photographers’ interest in China’s borders and its medical woes, the lives of its minorities and their traditions and customs, and—in the case of Dustin Shum’s...
The Killing Wind
Over the course of 66 days in 1967, more than 4,000 “class enemies”—including young children and the elderly—were murdered in Daoxian, a county in China’s Hunan province. The killings spread to surrounding counties, resulting in a combined death toll of more than 9,000. Commonly known as the Daoxian massacre, the killings were one of many acts of so-called mass dictatorship and armed factional conflict that rocked China during the Cultural Revolution.
How China’s Insatiable Demand for Timber Threatens Congo’s Rainforests
In this episode, award-winning Shanghai-based environmental journalist Shi Yi joins Eric and Cobus to discuss the emerging crisis over the illegal trade of Congolese bloodwood. She recently reported on how surging demand in China...
When the Chinese Were Unspeakable
from New York Review of BooksThe Xiao River rushes deep and clear out of the mountains of southern China into a narrow plain of paddies and villages. At first little more than an angry stream, it begins to meander and grow as the basin’s 63 other creeks and...
House Calls on the Tibetan Plateau, Children of Divorce, Celebrity Secrets
from Yuanjin PhotoIn the final galleries of 2016, the publishing juggernaut Tencent again shows its leadership in the documentary photography space, but iFeng’s choice to publish a personal photo gallery by Zhou Xin is also worth a good look, especially since...
Migrant-School Students Face Difficulty Getting Into College, Study Finds
Less than 6% of students in Beijing schools for migrant children entered college. In local public schools, 60% did
Seeing 2016 Through Eyes on China
In June 2015, a couple dozen China-based photographers—some Chinese, some not—founded the Instagram account Eyes on China. Their goal, as member photographer Gilles...
Dongbei’s Last Match Factory, Capital Straphangers, Retracing the Long March...
from Yuanjin PhotoIn October, several publications marked the 80th Anniversary of the Chinese Communists’ Long March. We have chosen two stories that revisited this event and that were standouts, visually. Elsewhere, photographers...
Land of Fish and Rice
The lower Yangtze region, or Jiangnan, with its modern capital Shanghai, has been known since ancient times as a “land of fish and rice.” For centuries, local cooks have harvested the bounty of its lakes, rivers, fields, and mountains to create a cuisine renowned for its delicacy and beauty. In Land of Fish and Rice, Fuchsia Dunlop draws on years of study and exploration to present the recipes, techniques, and ingredients of the Jiangnan kitchen.
China Land Reform Opens Door to Corporate Farming
Move to bring capital into large-scale agriculture keeps bar on individual ownership
Resettling China’s 'Ecological Migrants'
These are the people the government has relocated from lands distressed by climate change, industrialization, and poor policies to hastily built villages
Living in China’s Expanding Deserts
People on the edges of the country’s vast seas of sand are being displaced by climate change
Poignant Portraits Show What it is Like Being LGBT in China
Despite being decriminalized in 1997, homosexuality is still heavily stigmatized in China.