China calls itself a democracy, to the confusion of people living in democracies. China scholar Ian Johnson explains how China moves between democracy and dictatorship, and how both terms can be defined, in an explanatory video from the Council of Foreign relations.Read More →

Tense relations between China and the US, a pandemic, and limited access to the country are firmly limiting a new generation of China hands to explore a career in the second economy of the world, says China professor Victor Shih in the South China Morning Post. “China was [once] seen as a kind of land of opportunity for young foreigners. That is no longer the case,” said Shih, Read More →

China’s real economic problem: they increase capital spending, but are not able to improve productivity that is already at a shockingly low level, says leading economist Arthur Kroeber, author of China’s Economy: What Everyone Needs to Know®, at a panel at CSIS discussing with Thomas Orlik, Chief Economist for Bloomberg Economics, and author of the book, China: The Bubble That Never Pops. While an economic collapse is unlikely, a grinding halt to economic development might be its largest danger, Kroeber adds.Read More →

China’s internet censors took down a popular influencer showing a tofu tank, which suddenly made this year internet users aware of an issue that was mostly ignored: Beijing’s tank man on June 4, 1989. Political expert Shaun Rein explains how the censor shot into his own food at ABC News.Read More →

How will people remember the Wuhan lockdown, two years ago at the start of the global coronavirus crisis, asks CFR-scholar Ian Johnson in a debate at the NYU’s Institute for Public Knowledge on the book “The Wuhan Lockdown”, by Yang Guobin. How successful has the state been in suppressing the knowledge of this hiccup in communist rule in Wuhan, Ian Johnson asks the author.Read More →

Author Zhang Lijia talks about the importance of learning English, for herself and for the country, as anti-Western attitudes in China make it today less important for students to dive into learning English and other languages, she tells at the weblog of the China Institute.Read More →

The China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) has proposed over Christmas rules for Chinese firms who want to apply for an IPO at overseas stock markets. But those new rules lack much-needed clarity, says financial expert Winston Wenyan Ma at CNBC. “Domestic companies need to comply with relevant provisions in the areas of foreign investment, cybersecurity and data security, a draft said, without much elaboration,” writes CNBC.Read More →