An opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal by David Shambaugh on March 7 claims the Communist Party is falling apart. Economist Arthur Kroeber explains in ChinaFile why he is wrong. The next episode in a longstanding “China-is-collapsing” tradition.Read More →
China´s lawmakers are preparing for their annual sessions of the advisory CPPCC and the National People´s Congress. Among them a large amount of influential business people. Political analyst Victor Shih explains the interaction between business and politics in China in the New York Times.Read More →
Journalist Ian Johnson talked extensively to the famous Chinese architect Wu Liangyong, for the New York Times. His wide-ranging interview starts with a notorious debate among architects, where Wu explains why Rem Koolhaas was wrong on Beijing, and why president Xi Jinping supports Wu.Read More →
China´s labor conditions were notoriously bad, but the shift to higher-skilled, younger laborers, and better legislation has changed the country profoundly, writes urbanization expert Sara Hsu in the Diplomat. Although, there is still room for more improvement.Read More →
Journalist Ian Johnson interviewed democracy guru Liu Yu on her work and the political debate in China for the New York Review of Books. In this fragment they discuss how China´s internet users start to learn from those debates abroad, if they are interested, that is.Read More →
Officially gender discrimination is banned, but until recently that law was not enforced. That is changing now women take the offenders to court, and get their legal rights, writes author Zhang Lijia on her weblog. She discusses the cases of Huang Rong and Cao Ju.Read More →
Unlike many other large cities, China has been avoiding the establishment of large slums and related instability, argues author Jeremy Wallace in an interview with journalist Ian Johnson at the New York Times. The abolishment of the hukou system is not expected any time soon, since it serves the government well.Read More →
Much has been written about China´s slowing economic growth, its new outspoken foreign policy and general assertiveness. Xi Jinping´s project is on track, writes analyst Arthur Kroeber in the Huffington Post, and we better get used to it.Read More →
Baidu is about to release a new feature into the internet of things: a smartbike. Baidu director communication Kaiser Kuo explains the features in investors.com. First release will be in China, but “there’s no reason necessarily we would leave it only in China.”Read More →
A large chuck of China´s financial markets are underground. Every now and then, authorities dig up those illegal enterprises in an effort to curtail their power. Financial analyst Sara Hsu looks in the Diplomat at the position of those banks.Read More →
The rate cut by China´s central bank PBOC took the markets by surprise on Friday. Business analyst Shaun Rein sees at CNBC some weaknesses in the countries economy, but no reason for panic. China is moving towards services and innovation, and that transition comes with some bumbs.Read More →
President Xi Jinping´s call for a “new type of thinktank with Chinese characteristics” has triggered off a old debate on the position of intellectuals towards their government. Author Zhang Lijia argues at her weblog the government should no longer silence the voice of its scholars.Read More →