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 →
Since Deng Xiaoping China’s leaders did have relatively limited power. But all that is changing under current president Xi Jinping, writes policy analyst Victor Shih at the Policy Forum, and that might not be good news. “The policy-making environment has changed completely.”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 →
Beijing is regaining its position of China’s spiritual universe, writes author Ian Johnson of The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao in the New York Times. While much of its past has been destroyed, the city where Johnson lives is now regaining its position of China’s spiritual capital. A struggle between commerce, communist and traditional values.Read More →
Financial analyst Sara Hsu looks at the new chairman of the China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC), Guo Shuqing, and the man he replaces, Shang Fulin. What has Shang done to deal with this murky financial sector, and can Guo do better, she wonders in Asia Times.Read More →
Veteran China foreign correspondent and Pulitzer Price winner Ian Johnson has won the prestigious Shorenstein Journalism Award for 2016, the organization announced. Ian Johnson is currently working for the New York Times and the New York Review of Books. In a few weeks time his book The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao will be available.Read More →
China annual political meetings passed without any great upheaval, but not all is well for president Xi Jinping, writes veteran journalist Ian Johnson, author of The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao in the New York Review of Book. No legal reforms, no successor, and then there is the economy.Read More →