The Beijing municipal government now seems serious about leaving the old city center and move to the suburbs, a very old plan. For the New York Times journalist Ian Johnson dives into the history of the plans. Most reactions are mildly positive.Read More →
Journalist Ian Johnson will be in Berlin from half June to half September, and is available to share his insights on civil society, culture and religion. He is a Beijing-based writer for the New York Review of Books, and his stories also appear in the New York Times and ChinaFile.Read More →
Author Zhang Lijia attended in March the Bookworm International Literary Festival, and talked about the changing role of women in China´s society. Here is the report of Al Jazeera. Zhang Lijia is currently writing a novel on prostitutes in China.Read More →
China´s internet giants are looking increasingly abroad, not only to find new markets, but also to find new technology and good engineers, says Kaiser Kuo, director international communication at China´s largest search engine Baidu. In Knowledge CKGSB.Read More →
Beijing has only Almaty, Kazakhstan left as a competitor for the Olympic Wintergames in 2022. But many academics and environmentalists describe an upcoming disaster for the region, writes author Ian Johnson in the New York Times.Read More →
Yahoo has announced it will close its remaining Beijing R&D facility. A move that only makes sense, given the poor shape the former internet giant is in now, tells business analyst Shaun Rein in Livemint. 300 People are going to lose their jobs.Read More →
Chinese are becoming more adventurous in bed, told author Zhang Lijia Sunday at the Beijing Bookworm, with 71% having premarital sex (compared to 15% in 1989). Zhang Lijia prepares a novel “Lotus”, on prostitution in China, writes the Wall Street Journal. The Wall Street Journal: Only several decades ago, “Chinese womenRead More →
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 →