From Foreign Policy: The recent democratic revolutions in Georgia, Ukraine, and Kirgizstan sent small tremors through China’s leadership. To avoid its own “color revolution” Beijing is now quietly cracking down on those who would dare to show dissent. Its primary target? China’s civil society.
Read MoreFrom the New York Times, via the International Herald Tribune: The Communist Party leadership has approved an economic blueprint that it says will address China’s yawning wealth gap and reduce “outstanding contradictions” that have led to a rash of social unrest. Hu Jintao, president and Communist Party chief, concluding an annual planning session Tuesday, put […]
Read MoreKids enjoying Ronald McDonald in Shanghai, thanks to Howard W. French for the photo.
Read MoreFrom China Labour Bulletin In late 2003, the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) revealed that the total unpaid wages owing to the nation’s migrant workers (that part of the agricultural population who find work in cities but are not registered as urban residents) had reached 100 billion Yuan. On 23 May 2005, Beijing’s Legal […]
Read MoreFrom AP, via Business Week: U.S. Treasury Secretary John Snow was touring the financial center of Shanghai on Wednesday as he embarked on a visit expected to focus on China’s currency policies and its huge and growing trade surplus with the United States. Chinese officials said the currency issue would be on the agenda during […]
Read MoreFrom Reuters: China’s second manned spacecraft blasted off from a remote northwestern launch site on Wednesday, just two years after the country joined an elite club of space powers. Astronauts Fei Junlong, 40, and Nie Haisheng, 41, were handpicked from 14 fighter pilots and had been in the running for China’s first manned space launch […]
Read MoreFrom the Guardian: Mr Lu was beaten when he took the Guardian’s Shanghai correspondent to Taishi, the focus of a campaign by locals and civil rights activists to unseat the village chief, who they have accused of corruption… Mr Lu said yesterday that he knew it was dangerous, and that he was used to the […]
Read MoreThe World radio program reported on Chinese bloggers and Internet censorship today: Bloggers in China have rock-star status. Their popularity has Beijing concerned. While the bloggers avoid discussions of politics, they are drawing many young Chinese to the on-line world of Internet communication. The World’s Matthew Bell reports. Listen online here.
Read MoreFrom The South Asia Analysis Group: Ultra-leftist elements in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), claiming absolute loyalty to the late leader Mao Zedong and firmly against the regime’s reformist course both at home and abroad, may have become an insignificant factor in the country’s politics now, but what is intriguing is that the present […]
Read MoreFrom BBC NEWS: The World Press Photo foundation celebrates the 50th anniversary of its annual photographic competition this year. In the last of five pieces by photographers talking about their award-winning work, Charlie Cole describes how he captured the dramatic 1989 photo of a protester confronting a line of People’s Liberation Army tanks in Tiananmen […]
Read MoreFrom The Washington Post: As the Communist Party’s congress begins in Beijing, the media are full of speculation — not about potential reforms but about power. The question: Who will succeed Hu Jintao as nominal leader of China if he steps down on turning 70 in 2010? A scholar-official from the Ming or Qing dynasties […]
Read MoreFrom The International Herald Tribune: John Snow, the U.S. treasury secretary, visits Beijing this week to talk about what China can do to help cut a U.S. current-account deficit of more than 6 percent of gross domestic product – a record high, and one that is commonly agreed to be unsustainable. For months, the United […]
Read MoreFrom RConversation blog: When Guardian reporter Benjamin Joffe-Walt last saw Lu Banglie, the local democracy activist who was beaten by local thugs for leading him to Taishi village where villagers’ demands for democracy had caused such a ruckus the authorities had sealed off the area to journalists, here is how Joffe-Walt describes Lu’s physical condition: […]
Read MoreFrom The Guardian: Now that Mammon has replaced Mao, corruption is fuelling the rural inequality opened up by migration to the cities The case of Lu Banglie, who was beaten up by a mob near Taishi in southern China – as reported in yesterday’s Guardian – is not unusual. There has been a rapidly growing […]
Read MoreFrom The Guardian: Political reform is likely to be high on the agenda of a closed-door meeting of China’s communist leaders today amid growing strains between a population demanding more rights and a bureaucracy increasingly using illegal means to maintain its grip on power. Like most of the topics for discussion during the central committee’s […]
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