Despite recent crackdowns on feminists and human rights activists, China´s judicial systems is slowly but surely moving into a more independent force in China´s bureaucracy, says Judge Jiang Huiling of the Supreme Court in an interview with journalist Ian Johnson for the New York Times. Courts get more autonomy, be it limited.Read More →

Beijing underwent for the first time a code red for pollution: officially the worst air quality ever. But the air had been worse before, even a week earlier. Beijing-based journalist Ian Johnson sees a silver lining on the code red: the people and the politicians start to see things have to change, he writes in the New York Review of Books. And that is good new for the Paris talks.Read More →

President Xi Jinping´s “China Dream” comes along with a slick propaganda campaign. But the center piece of the campaign, a clay figurine of a chubby peasant girl in a red smock, has split the artisan Tianjin family who made the image, discovered journalist Ian Johnson for the New York Times.Read More →

Compared to his predecessor Hu Jintao, China seems on the move under president Xi Jinping. But is he really. Journalist Ian Johnson wonders in the New York Review of Books after three years of Xi rule whether under the cosmetic moves, so much is changing.Read More →

Chinese are looking for new meanings in their life, says journalist Ian Johnson. They are looking for religious values, both condoned by the government or illegal, but also shop around for other spiritual values. And mostly the government supports that search, as long as there are no foreign links.Read More →

China´s traditional medicine suddenly got into the limelight as Tu Youyou was awarded the Nobel Prize for medicine. But the experts in traditional medicine had very mixed feelings, writes journalist Ian Johnson for the New York Times. Tu might have her roots in traditional medicine, but the Nobel Prize certainly did not honor that work.Read More →