After a decades-long infrastructure spending spree, many of China’s local governments now find themselves saddled with unsustainable levels of debt and a surplus of vastly ambitious but often underutilized infrastructure...
According to reports on Hunan TV, Global Times, and related WeChat public accounts, the spouses of 140 high-ranking cadres in Hunan province recently attended an “anti-corruption” educational activity sponsored by the provincial...
In a recent essay, Lu Dewen (吕德文, Lǚ Déwén)—a sometimes controversial Wuhan University sociologist whose research focuses on rural governance—argues that bureaucratic formalism, meaningless busywork, and technological hegemony...
An undergraduate’s video mimicking official “inspection” tours has become a flashpoint of discussion over cadres’ imperious attitudes and the reflexive deference shown to them in society. Shot on the campus of Yunnan State Land...
After 200 days, the long-running “Arctic Catfish” scandal has reached a conclusion, dissatisfying and anticlimactic as it may be. It began after social media user “Arctic Catfish” (北极鲶鱼, Běijí Niányú), a young Chinese woman...
Surveillance in Chinese cities is ubiquitous, with highly visible security cameras trained on most every intersection, public space, and building, but over the past decade, it has been seeping into the countryside as well. In an...
A novel propaganda method—a “video call” from Xi Jinping delivering Lunar New Year’s well-wishes—inspired titters after China Central Television (CCTV) shared it on Weibo. The Weibo link sent users to a faux WeChat...
The following article addresses “central government policymakers” and poses ten direct questions about China’s long-running “zero-COVID” policy, which was in effect until a sudden policy shift on December 7, 2022. Its form and...
Jeremy Wallace, associate professor of Government at Cornell University, joined CDT to discuss his new book, Seeking Truth and Hiding Facts: Information, Ideology, and Authoritarianism in China. In a wide-ranging conversation,...
On August 30, the Chengde High-Tech Industry Development Zone in Hebei province announced a range of detailed and draconian punishments for anyone violating local pandemic prevention measures. Most extraordinarily, the...
Are cadres the answer to China’s property market crunch? Some local officials seem to believe so. Hundreds of thousands of homebuyers across China have boycotted their mortgages payments in protest against the stalled...
As state media rings with Xi Jinping’s pronouncement that “persistence is victory” in Shanghai’s fight against Omicron—now sometimes referred to as “The Battle to Protect Shanghai”—a different martial metaphor reigns on social...
Recently, a recording of a five-minute phone call made by an elderly Shanghai man to his neighborhood committee has been circulating on the Chinese internet and social media. During the call, the man [identified here only as...
The Chinese Communist Party Central Committee’s Politburo has met this week and set the date...
Jonathan Sudworth reports on his encounter with Xiao Wunan, a former high-ranking CCP official who...
China’s Communist Party leaders issued a memo in April known as Document No. 9 to...
A few anonymous essays brought misfortune to a provincial cadre. On July 9, 2008, Rao Wenwei, the...
The planned copper plant in Sichuan Province over which protesters and riot police clashed earlier this week has been cancelled, and those detained during the confrontation released. From Keith Bradsher at The New York Times:...
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