The decision by the Cambridge University Press to bow to Chinese censorship and block over 300 articles on its China site has shocked the academic world. Journalist Ian Johnson , author of The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao, reports on the issue for the New York Times and tested from Beijing what he could no longer get.Read More →

Author Zhang Lijia of Lotus: A Novel on prostitution in China discusses Buddhism, freedom and fun as part of the background for her book with Radii China. “Without the inhibition of writing in my mother tongue, I can take an adventure in my adopted language” .Read More →

Chinese companies are running for cover as president Xi Jinping’s powerplay is also hitting the economy. China regularly pulls the reins, when too much financial power is flowing outside the state economy, says renowned economist Arthur Kroeber, author of China’s Economy: What Everyone Needs to Know® in the Financial Times.Read More →

President Xi Jinping’s position at the helm of his country seems pretty secure, says political analyst Victor Shih, author of Factions and Finance in China: Elite Conflict and Inflation to the Economist. Although, his support at the next layer in the Party seems pretty meagre, he adds.Read More →

Author Zhang Lijia, author of the bestseller Lotus: A Novel, wrote a short story, the Silk Road, for Discovery the magazine of Cathay Pacific and tells in an interview about her preferences while traveling and a new book project on China’s left-behind children.Read More →

Western analysts often miss the point, when they look at the way China conducts business, says China watcher Andrew Batson at his weblog, and he points at an interesting aside in Ian Johnson’s book The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao , when he writes about soft openings in China. Case in point: comments on China’s One-Belt, One-Road initiative. Batson: ” It’s already clear it’s the China book of the year.”Read More →

Often reviewers tend to look at the emergence of world religions like Christianity, Islam and Buddhism, when they summarize Ian Johnson’s book The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao. But the most moving chapter is that on the 80 pilgrim associations from Beijing, writes professor Richard Madsen in the Washington Post.Read More →

Prostitution is a mirror of society, tells Beijing-based author Zhang Lijia at the BBC. Her book Lotus: A Novel shows some of China’s most urgent problems related to prostitution: migration, the gap between men and women and moral decline.Read More →

Journalist Ian Johnson documented in this book The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao how an estimated 350 million Chinese citizens found solace in religion, despite a ambiguous governments. In TimesOut Shanghai he tells how he feels that movement will develop in the future.Read More →

Howard French, author of Everything Under the Heavens: How the Past Helps Shape China’s Push for Global Power explains at the Pulitzer Center how China is searching for power at an international stage, and how the global power might change its relationship with Hong Kong and Taiwan.Read More →