China’s economy looks better for 2024, says business analyst Shaun Rein, as multinationals are moving back their investments to China away from other destinations. Both consumer confidence and real estate are still in bad shape, but sentiments are moving in the right direction, he says at CNBC, despite the geopolitical tensions with the US.Read More →

Author Ian Johnson recently published Sparks: China’s Underground Historians and their Battle for the Future, and discusses the dominance of women as underground historians with Jeffrey Wasserstrom at the Los Angeles World Affairs Council. Women are relative outsiders in China’s power structures which puts them in a good position to document the country’s history, he says.Read More →

Foreigners have left China in large numbers, but the most important reasons were other than COVID-19, argues intercultural coach and consultant Gabor Holch in his video. Already before the coronacrisis, the exodus was taking place because economic growth was dropping, career opportunities for expats were diminishing and the expat community was already severely hit before the lockdowns, he argues.Read More →

China journalist, senior fellow at the Council of Foreign Relations, and Pulitzer prize winner Ian Johnson discusses his time as a foreign correspondent in China since 1994. He was expelled in 2020 but returned to finish his latest book, Sparks: China’s Underground Historians and their Battle for the Future, in 2023. At the Asia Society for the China Books Review Launch, he is interviewed by his former colleague Dave Barboza.Read More →

Geopolitical tensions and the crisis in real estate have hurt consumer confidence over the past 18 months, says Shanghai-based business analyst Shaun Rein at ABC. He does not expect a big-scale stimulus, since the government is short of money to spend, but a slow recovery of retail is emerging, he adds.Read More →

China veteran Ian Johnson tells how he got expelled from China and what he found when he returned in 2023 to Foreign Affairs—and discovered what had changed over the past three years with COVID-19 hitting the country. He found a country is in stagnation, he tells in a gloomy diagnosis, although he also discovered dissent was not wholly stifled.Read More →

Hong Kong-based marketing expert Ashley Dudarenok dives into the lessons to learn from China and the future of retail in China, together with Kathryn Read. How did she start off in China, and evolved into one of the leading voices for both Chinese and foreign companies?Read More →

Ian Johnson discusses at the Council on Foreign Relations his new book, Sparks: China’s Underground Historians and Their Battle for the Future, which describes how some of China’s best-known writers, filmmakers, and artists have overcome crackdowns and censorship to forge a nationwide movement that challenges the Communist Party on its most hallowed ground: its control of history.Read More →

Leading economist Arthur Kroeber discusses China’s economic state and looks at the gloomy predictions from other economists. We do not have enough post-COVID-19 data to draw firm conclusions, he argues, and goes on to take down three schools of gloom in current economic thinking about China’s future, at the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies. Read More →

China is the only economy that has survived in history several downturns successfully, is the second largest economy, and as the largest country in population, we should focus on it, says Singapore-based super-investor Jim Rogers in an interview with FSC Board Member Andrew Pancholi.Read More →