Books
06.25.15

City of Virtues

Throughout Nanjing’s history, writers have claimed that its spectacular landscape of mountains and rivers imbued the city with “royal qi,” making it a place of great political significance. City of Virtues examines the ways a series of visionaries, drawing on past glories of the city, projected their ideologies onto Nanjing as they constructed buildings, performed rituals, and reworked the literary heritage of the city.

Media
06.17.15

American Students in China: It’s Not as Authoritarian as We Thought

Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian

For some American students about to embark on a study abroad trip to China, the U.S. media reports of Chinese Internet censorship, jailing of dissidents, and draconian population control laws may dominate their perception of the country. But...

Features
06.16.15

Does Xi Jinping Represent a Return to the Mao Era?

Andrew G. Walder, Roderick MacFarquhar & more

...

Sinica Podcast
06.15.15

The People’s Republic of Cruiseland

Kaiser Kuo, Jeremy Goldkorn & more
from Sinica Podcast

We have enough favorite writers on China that we’ve had to develop a sophisticated classification system just to keep track of everyone. That said, one of our hardest to place within the long-form taxonomy is Chris Beam, who you may have heard on...

Books
06.10.15

China’s Millennials

Eric Fish

In 1989, students marched on Tiananmen Square demanding democratic reform. The Communist Party responded with a massacre, but it was jolted into restructuring the economy and overhauling the education of its young citizens. A generation later, Chinese youth are a world apart from those who converged at Tiananmen. Brought up with lofty expectations, they’ve been accustomed to unprecedented opportunities on the back of China’s economic boom. But today, China’s growth is slowing and its demographics rapidly shifting, with the boom years giving way to a painful hangover.

Media
06.09.15

Chinese Censorship of Western Books Is Now Normal. Where’s the Outrage?

Alexa Olesen

In September 2014, I was commissioned by the New York-based free speech advocacy group PEN American Center to investigate how Western authors were navigating the multibillion-dollar Chinese publishing world and its massive, but opaque, censorship...

Sinica Podcast
06.08.15

Writers: Heroes in China?

Kaiser Kuo, Jeremy Goldkorn & more
from Sinica Podcast

If you happen to live in the anglophone world and aren’t closely tied to China by blood or professional ties, chances are that what you believe to be true about this country is heavily influenced by the opinions of perhaps one hundred other...

Media
06.05.15

Hong Kong’s Long-Standing Unity on Tiananmen Is Unraveling

June 4, a day that changed mainland China forever, has become a cross that the city of Hong Kong bears. Each year, thousands of the city’s residents gather on an often steamy night and share anxious memories of 1989, when tanks rolled by bloodied...

The China Africa Project
06.04.15

NO! China is NOT Exporting Convict Labor to Africa!!!!

Eric Olander, Cobus van Staden & more

Fifteen minutes into almost any conversation about the Chinese in Africa, the question about Chinese labor invariably comes up. “The Chinese are exporting convicts to work on construction sites,” according to one of the pervasive myths, or, “...

The NYRB China Archive
06.04.15

In North Korea: Wonder & Terror

Ian Buruma
from New York Review of Books

The northeast of China used to be called Manchuria. Another name was “the cockpit of Asia.” Many wars were fought there. A French priest who traveled through the region in the 1920s wrote: “Although it is uncertain where God...

Postcard
06.03.15

Beijing Autumn

Ilaria Maria Sala

Then even August ended. China was disappearing from the news, as portentous events elsewhere thrust themselves to the forefront.

South Africa had started to come out of the dark age of apartheid. Eastern Europe had begun...

Media
06.02.15

Chinese Netizens to Fiorina: You’re Right, We Don’t Innovate

David Wertime

Carly Fiorina, the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard and a declared Republican candidate for U.S. president, evidently has strong opinions about the capacities of Chinese people. “Yeah, the Chinese can take a test,” Fiorina told an Iowa-based video...

The China Africa Project
05.27.15

Chinese Racist Views Towards Blacks and Africans

Eric Olander, Cobus van Staden & more

When riots broke out in the U.S. city of Baltimore in May 2015, the reaction across the Chinese social web was sadly predictable as Internet users posted countless anti-black racist comments. However, what was interesting about their posts is how...

The NYRB China Archive
05.27.15

China’s Invisible History: An Interview with Filmmaker and Artist Hu Jie

Ian Johnson
from New York Review of Books

Though none of his works have been publicly shown in China, Hu Jie is one of his country’s most noteworthy filmmakers. He is best known for his trilogy of documentaries about Maoist China, which includes Searching for Lin Zhao’s Soul (...

Sinica Podcast
05.26.15

Identity, Race, and Civilization

Kaiser Kuo, Jeremy Goldkorn & more
from Sinica Podcast

It doesn't take much exposure to China to realize the pervasiveness of identity politics here. Indeed, whether in the Chinese government’s occasionally hamfisted efforts to micromanage ethnic minority cultures or the Foreign Ministry’s soft-power...

Censorship and Conscience

PEN International

In this report, PEN American Center (PEN) examines how foreign authors in particular are navigating the heavily censored Chinese book industry. China is one of the largest book publishing markets in the world, with total revenue projected to...

The NYRB China Archive
05.15.15

Mao’s China: The Language Game

Perry Link
from New York Review of Books

It can be embarrassing for a China scholar like me to read Eileen Chang’s pellucid prose, written more than sixty years ago, on the early years of the People’s Republic of China. How many cudgels to the head did I need before arriving at...

Excerpts
05.14.15

The Bar

Suzanne Ma
She had been working at the bar for less than a week when the skin on her hands started to peel. Little bits of skin, translucent and pink, flaked off like Parmesan cheese. Then the cracks appeared. Tiny fissures ruptured at the joints and split her...
Conversation
05.14.15

The Future of NGOs in China

Isabel Hilton, Carl Minzner & more

Last week, China’s National People’s Congress released the second draft of a new law on “Managing Foreign NGOs.” Many foreign non-profits in China have operated in a legal gray area over the years. The law [full English translation...

Sinica Podcast
05.11.15

India Comes to China

Kaiser Kuo & Jeremy Goldkorn
from Sinica Podcast

This week’s Sincia Podcast is about the upcoming visit to China of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who served from 2001 to 2014 as Chief Minister of Gujarat and was sworn into office almost one year ago this month. Modi’s visit comes at an...

Environment
05.08.15

It’s Time to Fix China’s Food Safety Conundrum

 from chinadialogue

Food safety scandals have become so common in China that people are losing confidence in what they eat. The government has consistently emphasised the need for better regulation of the food industry, and it’s established an inter-ministerial...

The China Africa Project
05.07.15

China Malls Rise Amid Growing Xenophobia in South Africa

Cobus van Staden & Mingwei Huang

Chinese immigrants in South Africa have not been spared from the violent, anti-immigrant riots...

Features
05.06.15

Invasion of the Body Snatchers

Yaqiu Wang

On the morning of March 16, 48-year-old Huang Shunfang went to her local hospital located in Fanghu Township in the central Chinese province of Henan. Her doctor...

Media
05.06.15

Online Reaction to Baltimore Protests Reveals Much About Chinese Tension with African Immigrants

Viola Rothschild

Several days ago, a Chinese friend and I were discussing the protests in Baltimore that erupted in response to the death of...

Books
05.05.15

Meet Me in Venice

Suzanne Ma

When Ye Pei dreamed of Venice as a girl, she imagined a magical floating city of canals and gondola rides. And she imagined her mother, successful in her new life and eager to embrace the daughter she had never forgotten. But when Ye Pei arrives in Italy, she learns her mother works on a farm far from the city. Her only connection, a mean-spirited Chinese auntie, puts Ye Pei to work in a small-town café. Rather than giving up and returning to China, a determined Ye Pei takes on a grueling schedule, resolving to save enough money to provide her family with a better future.

Books
04.30.15

Fantasy Islands

The rise of China and its status as a leading global factory are altering the way people live and consume. At the same time, the world appears wary of the real costs involved. Fantasy Islands probes Chinese, European, and American eco-desire and eco-technological dreams, and examines the solutions they offer to environmental degradation in this age of global economic change.

Media
04.30.15

Will China Ban Katy Perry?

Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian

On April 28, American pop singer Katy Perry gave her first-ever concert in Taipei, the capital of Taiwan, the self-governing island which mainland China considers to be its sovereign territory. Tense relations between Taiwan and mainland China...

Media
04.28.15

Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor, Your Chinese Fugitives

Alexa Olesen

Meet China’s 100 international most-wanted: a history professor, a driving instructor, and a government propaganda office cashier. Chinese graft-busters want you to know that one of them might be your neighbor.

On April 22, China’s dreaded...

Sinica Podcast
04.27.15

Nationalism and Censorship

Kaiser Kuo, Jeremy Goldkorn & more
from Sinica Podcast

Christopher Cairns joins the hosts of Sinica for a discussion of his forthcoming paper, co-authored with Allen Carlson, scheduled for publication in ...

Viewpoint
04.23.15

China’s Leftists Are Embracing Confucius. Why?

Taisu Zhang

When Jennifer Pan and Yiqing Xu posted their new paper, “China’s Ideological Spectrum,” last week, it marked the first time that anyone has provided large-...

Sinica Podcast
04.20.15

China’s Ideological Spectrum

Kaiser Kuo & David Moser
from Sinica Podcast

Last week, Harvard doctoral student Jennifer Pan and MIT graduate student Yiqing Xu co-released a paper, “China’s Ideological Spectrum,” that has garnered a tremendous...

Environment
04.16.15

Petrochemical Plant Explosion Vaporizes Government Safety Assurances

 from chinadialogue

Opposing the construction of petrochemical plants making Paraxyline (PX), a key ingredient in plastic bottles and polyester...

Conversation
04.16.15

How Much Consumerism Can China Afford?

Andrew Batson & Matthew Crabbe

This week, a blockbuster movie celebrating speedy cars and the racing life landed atop China’s box office. The Hollywood import Fast and Furious 7 grossed...

Media
04.15.15

Online Support–and Mockery–Await Chinese Feminists After Release

Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian

On April 13, Chinese authorities released on bail five feminist activists detained for over a month without formal charges...

Wild Pigeon

“The underlying theme I heard when talking to people was that how you interpret things is how they will be, so its best to look at the bright side of things. You don’t mention bad dreams, or you try to interpret them in a positive way. People...

Media
04.14.15

Henry Paulson: ‘Dealing with China’

Eric Fish
from Asia Blog

Speaking at Asia Society New York on April 13 with New Yorker correspondent Evan Osnos, former U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson explained that it’s...

Media
04.13.15

The Chinese Internet Hates Hillary Clinton Even More than Republicans Do

Isaac Stone Fish

On the afternoon of April 12, Hillary Clinton announced her long-expected decision to run for president in 2016. Within hours, Chinese news sites shared the...

Sinica Podcast
04.13.15

Styling It in China

Kaiser Kuo, Jeremy Goldkorn & more
from Sinica Podcast

Sociologist Ben Ross, a doctoral student at the University of Chicago, focuses on Chinese labor migration and related issues. He first got noticed by Sinica in 2007 while writing...

The NYRB China Archive
04.13.15

China: What the Uighurs See

Ian Johnson
from New York Review of Books

Xinjiang is one of those remote places whose frequent mention in the international press stymies true understanding. Home to China’s Uighur minority, this vast region of western China is mostly known for being in a state of...

Photo Gallery
04.10.15

Stroller Factory, 1999

Willem Wernsen

In 1999, photographer Willem Wernsen spent ten days in the small city of Kengzi, in Guangdong province, about 30 miles northeast of Shenzhen in an industrial zone. This was part of a longer, five-week trip, Wernsen’s first to the People’s...

The China Africa Project
04.03.15

This Little Bridge Connects Guangzhou and Africa

Eric Olander, Cobus van Staden & more

The southern Chinese city of Guangzhou is home to China’s largest African migrant population, predominantly from...

Features
04.02.15

Frank Talk About Hong Kong’s Future from Margaret Ng

Margaret Ng, Ira Belkin & more

Following is the transcript of a recent ChinaFile Breakfast with Margaret Ng, the former Hong Kong legislator in discussion with Ira Belkin of New York University Law School and Orville Schell, ChinaFile Publisher and Arthur Ross...

Pages