Pictures of the Day: January 15, 2015

A man walks along a newly built rainbow-colored tunnel in Zhengzhou, Henan province. The 400-meter-long tunnel is the first of this kind in China, local media reported.

Eating Alone in China

The first time I ate at a restaurant by myself, I live-tweeted the experience. “Hot-potting alone!” I enthused, posting a photo I’d taken of a burbling electric pot, ringed by plates of enoki mushrooms, plump squares of tofu, and green-bean-...

Caixin Media
01.12.15

China Turning Gray Over Pension Reform Stress

About 8,000 teachers in the northeastern city of Zhaodong stayed home for three days in November to protest an experimental pension scheme they called tantamount to a pay cut.

The teachers claimed they'd been illegally forced to...

Firebombs Thrown at Jimmy Lai’s Home and Company in Hong Kong

Apple Daily has been a vocal advocate of the recent demonstrations for expanded democracy in Hong Kong. Mr. Lai frequently attended the protests, which saw several main thoroughfares occupied for more than two months. He was arrested and released...

In China, Projects to Make Great Wall Feel Small

The plan here seems far-fetched—a $36 billion tunnel that would run twice the length of the one under the English Channel, and bore deep into one of Asia’s active earthquake zones. When completed, it would be the world’s longest underwater tunnel...

Caixin Media
01.09.15

Baby Hatch Programs Struggle to Cope With Number of Infants With Birth Defects

Giving birth to her first baby granted Zheng Yuling no happiness, but instead brought pain and sadness. The seriously ill girl died hours after birth, and Zheng's husband, Chen Dafu, was arrested on suspicion he abandoned the newborn.

...

Infographics
01.09.15

Think Renting in Your City is Bad? Try Beijing

David M. Barreda
from Sohu

Compared with the numbers of a few years ago, first and second tier cities in China have an oversupply of stock on the housing market...

Sinica Podcast
01.06.15

The Sinica Podcast’s Second Annual Call-In Show

Kaiser Kuo & Jeremy Goldkorn
from Sinica Podcast

If you’ve been following all of the news and gossip involving China for the last year, join Kaiser and Jeremy as they take call-in questions and talk insider politics on everything from the ongoing anti-corruption campaign to the question of...

Falling Through the Cracks of China’s Health-Care System

China says 95% of its 1.34 billion people are covered by medical insurance. That should have included Zhao Guomei, whose struggle with a rare but treatable disease shows how the system is failing for millions of China’s workers.

Beijing’s Art Scene Raises Its Profile

On a recent Sunday afternoon in the sunken terrace of Beijing’s sleek Opposite House Hotel, an art event was in full swing. The wine was chilling, the dumplings steaming and a few dozen locals and foreigners were looking on with curiosity as the...

Other
12.30.14

A Look Back at 2014

It’s hard to believe, but ChinaFile is almost two years old. It’s been an exciting year for us, and, as ever, an eventful year for China. It was a year of muscular leadership from Xi Jinping, who has now been in office just over...

China Indicts Jackie Chan’s Son on Drug Charge

Beijing police detained the younger Chan at his Beijing apartment in August along with Taiwanese movie star Ko Kai. Police said Chan and Ko both tested positive for marijuana and admitted using the drug, and that 100 grams (3.5 ounces) of it were...

China’s Housing Resists Efforts to Spur Market

Every urban real estate market is different in mainland China, driven by myriad municipal and provincial regulations and the varying strength of local economies. But the outcome is the same: The property market is under serious pressure.

In China, Expectant Dads Line Up to Experience Labor Pains

He described the treatment as creating a three-part sensation: hot steel balls dropping on his stomach and then a hook being gouged into him, followed by the ripping of his innards. “I treated her to a French dinner after,” says Mr. Li.

Diversity the New Game for Macau as Gambling Revenues Tumble

When inaugural chief executive Edmund Ho Hau-wah threw the liberalisation dice that took Macau's flagging gaming industry into the 21st century in 2002, few could have predicted its stellar rise to become the top city for global gaming, leaving...

China’s Lost Generation Finds Itself in Ukraine

A working class high-school graduate who scored abysmally on China's college entrance exam, Mei now owns his own business, claims title to three-quarters of an acre of land, lives in a split-level house, and is married to an eighteen-year-old who...

79 Days That Shook Hong Kong

Photo Essay: Hong Kong's street occupations have ended, but many demonstrators say this is only the beginning of their fight for free elections.

Infographics
12.15.14

Is Studying Abroad Worth the Cost?

from Sohu
The number of Chinese students who choose to study abroad has increased by more than 1,000% since 2000. Yet education costs abroad also continue to rise. This infographic looks at reasons why Chinese students are choosing an education overseas.

China: Inside an Internet Gaming Disorder Rehab Center

There are about 113,000 Internet cafes and bars in China, according to official figures. Lower-end establishments are typically a sole means of accessing the Web for China’s migrant labor population and the poor—or at 24-hour locations, a place...

Fidel Castro Wins China’s Alternative Peace Prize

In line with past recipients, the ailing Castro did not come to Beijing to pick up his award and it was unclear whether he was aware of the honour. The prize, in the form of a gold statuette and certificate, was instead handed to a Cuban foreign...

China Sentences 8 to Death for Attacks in Xinjiang

The Urumqi Intermediate People's Court in the capital of Xinjiang also handed out suspended death sentences to five others, China Central Television said, without mentioning when the trials were held.

China Watchdog Says TV Censorship Rules Should Apply Online Too

A more censorious environment coincides with a boom in tie-ups between China and Hollywood. HBO and Tencent have agreed to make HBO content available on a broad basis in China, including shows like The Newsroom, Boardwalk Empire, Rome and Band of...

Hong Kong Protests Have Produced No Real Winners

There appear to be no real winners from Hong Kong’s umbrella movement: not the demonstrators—who have failed to win the concessions for which they have fought so persistently—nor the authorities, who have veered between aggressive intervention...

Hong Kong IPOs Become Losing Bets for Investors

Hong Kong is one of the world’s top venues for initial public offerings, thanks to listings by Chinese companies over the years, but most of the IPOs have been a losing bet for investors, with the bulk of them lagging behind the market in recent...

How Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement Folded

An effective boycott by the relevant interlocutors, in the form of government officials, and for two months the lack of a face-to-face oppressor, in the form of police—who until last week appeared to have learned that gassing protesters was the...

China’s Rich Want to Send Children Abroad for Education

The report said that some 80 percent of the country's rich people have plans to send children abroad, the highest ratio in the world. By contrast, Japan has less than 1 percent and Germany has less than 10 percent of its rich people having such...

Journeys Along the Seventh Ring

The story of Beijing’s Ring Roads is in many ways the story of Beijing’s urban development. The original ring (known confusingly as the Second Ring) was constructed in the early 1980s, at the behest of city planners, who, in embracing reform-...

Driverless Cars Compete in China

China has been holding its sixth driverless car competition, with the unmanned vehicles having to navigate their way through various obstacles.

China’s New Old Financial Capital

Hong Kong’s democracy protests are often said to be futile because the city is no longer China’s golden goose, protected from Beijing’s wrath by its economic importance. But Monday’s big news shows that things aren’t so simple: The opening of a “...

Ali Baba’s Cave and Pandora’s Box

When Lu Wei — the man who reportedly led the crackdown on the “Big V” Weibo account holders last year — was asked at a press conference why sites like Facebook (which is blocked in China) had been “shut down,” he responded with a homespun...

China Puts the Brakes on Car Makers

Global car makers sounded new warnings that demand in China, the auto market’s strongest growth engine in recent years, is cooling further and clouding prospects after several reported disappointing October sales in the country.

China Rolls out the Red Carpet for APEC

The APEC summit of nations that collectively represent more than half the global economy is more about dialogue and non-binding commitments than implementing change.

Is China’s Grand Ethnic Experiment Working?

In a gleaming classroom at Chong Hua High School in the northern Chinese city of Tianjin, students peer at onion slices under microscopes. Their biology teacher calls on Abdurrahman Mamat to explain what he sees.

"Plasmolysis," he replies...

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