Vigil,
@jwassers
' new book on Hong Kong, is in part about city on watch, trying to keep alert as to pieces of itself begin to disappear.
WATCH MORE about the book:
He could have left Ukraine, but instead this Chinese vlogger stays in Odessa, his dispatches a daily rebuke to Beijing's position on the war and how Chinese people are supposed understand it.-
"Where do you really think you are taking China?" Legal scholar and activist Xu Zhiyong's open letter calling on Xi Jinping to step down, appeared on online earlier this month. Here is Geremie Barmé's translation-
JUST PUBLISHED! “State of Surveillance” ChinaFile’s analysis of a new database of some 76,000 publicly available Chinese procurement documents related to purchases of surveillance tech and services from 2004 through the spring 2020. -
Nurlan Pioner’s sentencing document, smuggled out of China and translated from Kazakh for
@chinafile
provides one of the most detailed official accounts available of the way routine Islamic practice has been criminalized across Xinjiang.
@dtbyler
reports-
In his videos, which not only report his observations of the war but also overtly and implicitly critique China's position, Wang Jixian, is speaking not only from Urkraine, but from a place Geremie Barmé calls "The Other China."
Here's a thread of scenes from today in Wuhan we'll be updating.
After 10am this morning in the Hankou section of Wuhan, shoppers in line up outside the Yongwang supermarket.
Yesterday was the 10th anniversary of ChinaFile’s launch.
We will be celebrating in a variety of ways over the coming months & using the occasion to reflect on how much has changed about China since 2013 and about trying to cover it.
China's officials view Uyghur food as backward, bland, unhealthy and politically dangerous--except when it's served to Han tourists.
@GroseTimothy
on Beijing's project to change what Uyghurs eat. -
.
@ChinaFile
has taken down our interview with Roseann Lake. We invite authors to promote books on our site on the assumption their work respects basic scholarly and journalistic principles. At present, we don't feel confident of that assumption in the case of Leftover in China.
A 2018 speech by China's Minister of Public Security, the transcript of which is included in the newly released
#xinjiangpolicefiles
offers evidence of Xi Jinping’s informed and active role in directing mass detentions in Xinjiang-
On October 13, ChinaFile will host the virtual launch of "In the Camps: China's High Tech Penal Colony" distinguished Xinjiang scholar and ChinaFile contributor
@dtbyler
's forthcoming book. Here are the details.
On February 4th, Tsinghua University law professor and prominent Xi Jinping critic, Xu Zhangrun, posted this essay on the coronavirus outbreak. Here is Geremie Barmé's annotated translation-
How old were you when you first heard about what happened in Tiananmen Square in 1989? How did you learn about it? How did you feel? How did you tell your kids about it? Or why didn't you? We want to hear your story-
Ha Jin’s new novel is about Sun Weishi, the adopted daughter of Zhou Enlai, a playwright and director, whom, during the Cultural Revolution, Zhou sent into detention, where she died.
@perrylink
reviews:
"Criticisms of decisions to ban Huawei often point out that there is no smoking gun...But this is not a legal issue but a question of risk calculus informed by Xi Jinping’s declaring quite explicitly: “The Party leads everything.”'-
On the 35th anniversary of the Tiananmen Protests and their deadly suppression by China's government, a selection of ChinaFile's work on the subject over the years.
Shawan is a small, Han-majority town in Xinjiang. So why does it need such an extensive, cutting-edge surveillance system?
@dtbyler
uses Chinese government documents to find out.
"The coming academic year presents unique challenges for university instructors teaching content related to China," write 5 China-focused political scientists, here are their recommendations for how educators should respond.-
Earlier this year, we emailed ChinaFile's contributors past and present and asked them about their plans to return to China once COVID travel restrictions ease.
We mourn the loss of Rod MacFarquhar who taught so many of us so much, with generosity and charm and wit. Here is a collection of his writing on China, for
@nybooks
and for ChinaFile. We will miss him.
One of the most respected scholars of Chinese politics, Rod MacFarquhar, has died. In his 88 years he served in the British Army, worked as a journalist, was a member of Parliament and was a much-beloved Harvard professor. His course on the Cultural Revolution was legendary.
“Taiwan meets all the requirements for recognition as a ‘state,’ and no U.N. resolution or other international law stands in the way.”
@jeromeacohen
on Taiwan’s standing at the United Nations.
READ this week’s Conversation on US-Taiwan-PRC relations:
Just under a year ago, Liu Xia, widow of 2010 Nobel Prize winner Liu Xiaobo moved to Germany and began life in exile. On May 4, she spoke to artist Ai Weiwei and scholar Perry Link
ChinaFile
@ChinaFile
8s
For those of you following the historic sexual harassment case against a CCTV anchor that began yesterday in Beijing, some background:
1. Our photo essay on Zhu's former intern and accuser, Xianzi
NEW
@ChinaFile
investigation: How a For-Profit Industry Helps China’s Leaders ‘Manage Public Opinion’ by Jessica Batke &
@MareikeOhlberg
based on analysis of some 3000 Chinese government procurement documents-
NEW: According to previously unreported government records, in 2015, a Public Security bureau in Xinjiang announced plans to purchase equipment from the US company Promega to help build a national DNA database via Jessica Batke +
@MareikeOhlberg
-
Zha Jianying on whether Germany's reckoning w/ its own past can be a template for China: "Let's imagine a scenario where Germany was not defeated, the Nazi party stayed in power, and you have the portrait of Hitler still hanging in the center of [a] Berlin square..."
@AsiaSociety
New:
@peterhessler
reflects on attacks on his reporting during his time in Chengdu from 2019 to 2021 and on the importance of being on the ground in China despite them-
A cache of declassified documents sheds light on the Bush administration's response to the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre. David Shambaugh, Evan Madeiros,
@suea_thornton
,
@byjamesmann
, James Green, &
@orvilleschell
discuss in this week’s ChinaFile Conversation.
Many sympathetic voices toward Ukraine are being censored on the Chinese internet. I'm starting a thread to document them. Some translations are shortened for brevity. Errors remain mine.
1. 5 profs issued a joint statement today urging Russia to back off. (deleted on WeChat)
Our latest: Hong Kong Watch's
@anoukwear
describes her first-hand experiences in UN meetings as Hong Kong delegates have morphed from restrained professionals to wolf warrior-style delegates.
1/6
Here is
@JimMillward
's exceptionally clear and chilling overview of the situation in Xinjiang. Now up on
@ChinaFile
thanks to our partnership with
@nybooks
-
Work begins on the new hospital Wuhan is building to treat patients with
#2019nCoV
. Construction of the 1000 bed facility is supposed to be completed in 6 days.
“But the paradox of propaganda, exposed by Pew research, is that the more Europeans are exposed to China the less they like it.”
@TheresaAFallon
in this week’s ChinaFile Conversation on how COVID-19 is impacting Europe-China relations:
On October 29th in NYC we'll host a public discussion of the (newly codified) campaign of repression and incarceration of Muslim ethnic minorities in Xinjiang with
@RianThum
, Gulchehra Hoja, Jessica Batke and
@BeijingPalmer
.
Read our Latest Investigation:
A vast network of "New Era Civilization Practice Centers" is the CCP's latest bid to wins hearts and minds across China.
Chinese officials often view Uighurs through the prism of mental illness and speak of their incarceration as a form of "treatment."
@GroseTimothy
explains why. With thanks to
@badiucao
for the illustration-
"With Beijing clearly calling the shots now, it would seem their first step will be breaking the weekly cycle of protests. Beijing will have a clear deadline in mind: the 70th anniversary of the founding of the PRC in October."
@antd
on Hong Kong protests
These young Uyghurs have become prominent lifestyle vloggers on Chinese video-sharing platforms. A new analysis by anthropologists who collected thousands of examples, shows the videos are likely part of a state propaganda campaign-
In 'Patriot Number One' Lauren Hilgers introduces many Chinese in NYC's biggest Chinatown, including Karen, a college grad whose mother imagined a bold American life for her, who now works part-time in a nail salon and attends vocational school
"Looking at local governance in China right now, compared to, let’s say, 2011, I think no one can deny that the difference is really dramatic. The feeling of how close the state is to you has just fundamentally changed"-
Don't miss the second part of the
@nytimes
project on government surveillance in China: this highly detailed account of the present and future of Chinese policing, based in part off of procurement documents collected by
@ChinaFile
"It has become increasingly important that the rest of the world understand what the doctors and nurses in Wuhan—several of whom I now call friends—experienced and are still experiencing."
"Going to China now" writes
@AmyGadsden
of
@Penn
"is just as important—if not more important—than it was when China’s booming economy generated interest on our campuses."
Authorities in at least 998 counties—one third of all counties in China—in nearly every corner of the country purchased surveillance equipment of some type in 2019 alone. Surveillance isn't just happening in Xinjiang.
China's United Front Work Department is not a household name outside of China. If you have heard of it at all, it's probably because of what the it does, or is purported to do, outside of China. But it also has a wide ranging agenda at home.
There's been a lot of talk lately (inside and outside of China) about the prospect of Beijing's instigating a military conflict with Taiwan. How likely is it?-
In
@joshchin
@lizalinwsj
's Surveillance State this account of Qian Xuesen, whose ordeals in McCarthy-era America led him to return to China, to become an intellectual progenitor of the theories of social control that ungird surveillance in China today.-
This fall, Tibet pursued "Zero-COVID" by tens of thousands to poorly equipped, mass "isolation" facilities, raising alarm across China that other regions might follow suit. Incredible detail and insight on this from
@RobbieBarnett
& colleagues-
In their aggregate and in the richness of their individual details, the tens of thousands of procurement documents the authors analyzed sharpen what has been a blurry picture of this highly consequential aspect of Chinese governance.
Since 2017, approximately a tenth of all adult Uyghurs and Kazakhs in Xinjiang have been sent to various forms of detention. This began with internment camps and pre-trial detention, but since 2018 has increasingly shifted toward mass imprisonment.
Tomorrow night join us online for a discussion with Uyghur lawyer and activist
@nuryturkel
on his memoir, No Escape.
@ChinaFile
's Jessica Batke will moderate.-