Forty years after Mao Zedong passed away, the country and its people are still struggling with the legacy of its former leader. Time to get clear on that legacy, writes Zhang Lijia, author of her autobiography”Socialism Is Great!”: A Worker’s Memoir of the New China on her weblog, and time to move on and change into a modern society.Read More →

Foreign companies and their business organizations used the G20 meeting in Hangzhou as an opportunity to point at the restrictions they face when they want to invest in China, while outbound investments from China go through the roof. You only have to look at the basic figures to see they are right, says author Arthur Kroeber of China’s Economy: What Everyone Needs to Know® to the South China Morning Post.Read More →

Beer has always been a poor-people product, but has been going upmarket, now China´s elite discover the more fancy beers, tells retail analyst Shaun Rein to the Boston Globe. Although, in the sales, craft beers in China hardly show up, that is going to change.Read More →

Author Paul French has added yet another subject to his long list of current and historical affairs with his latest book Gypsies of Shanghai: The Roma Community of Late 1930s and 1940s Shanghai and Their Role in the City’s Entertainment Industry. The book is small and cheap, Paul adds on his weblog, but it illustrates the amazing diversity of pre-war Shanghai.Read More →

An almost forgotten episode under Communist rule was the Third Front, an 200 billion Renminbi effort to move from 1964 much of the economic power to China´s inland. Journalist Ian Johnson with historian Covell Meyskens his work on an upcoming monography and his weblog with 5,000+ pictures for the New York Times.Read More →

President Xi Jinping has developed into one of the strongest leaders in China since Deng Xiaoping, and it looks like he is going to stay on longer as party secretary, says political analyst Victor Shih to AFP. Since there is no obvious successor, China´s political elites might have to accept that, as they gather for their annual conclave at the Beidaihe beach resort .Read More →

The doping scandal in Russia got intensive coverage before the start of the Olympic Games in Rio, but other countries, including China, have their doping issues too. Journalist Ian Johnson dives into some scandals, including China´s position, for the New York Review of Books.Read More →