Jonathan Ansfield reports for Newsweek magazine from Beijing, where he has lived for over eight years. His freelance work has also appeared in The Asian Wall Street Journal, Wallpaper, and The News York Times. From 2001 to 2004, he served as a general news correspondent for Reuters. His main area of interest is the Chinese media and its political and market roles in democratic change.
The probe into the Shanghai pension fund scandal keeps on yielding handy political dividends for China’s top leaders, and in particular, for the tough diet they’re trying to enforce to curb the state’s building bulge. First the party Feds busted Shanghai’s free-spending boss, Chen Liangyu. Now they’ve nailed the rather laissez-faire reformist who kept the […]
Read MoreWhat to make of Qiu Xiaohua’s abrupt removal from his job as China’s chief statistician? No one really knows for sure yet. Last week’s tersely worded Xinhua news agency item sounded an alarm bell that something was amiss. Word around Beijing is that Qiu will not be reassigned: he committed a “severe disciplinary violation” (‰∏•ÈáçËøùÁ∫™). […]
Read More“For the Central Publicity Department, the main focus with regard to the nuclear test is how we report North Korea’s relationship with China,” one Communist Party newspaper editor told Biganzi earlier this week. “That is to say, we really aren’t supposed to at all.” Words of caution that are not at all surprising, but are […]
Read MoreUsed to be that the domestic headlines from a “golden week” ended with little besides big, bullish numbers: the record-setting throngs of shoppers at malls, the umteen newlyweds tying the knot at mass weddings, the swelling tides of humanity making homecomings and tourist pilgrimages by plane, train and automobile. More and more, though, local metropolitans […]
Read MoreSomebody got Propaganda’s blood up last week. We’d like to know who. At a Central Publicity Department (CPD) meeting with senior editors on the eve of the October 1 holiday, a deputy propaganda chief fingered one particular publication for taking an independent stab at news of Shanghai party boss Chen Liangyu’s firing, according to a […]
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