Despite often higher costs, Chinese consumers try to buy foreign brands, when they are looking for food products to avoid the pollution and scandals with domestic brands. Business analyst Shaun Rein, and author of The End of Copycat China: The Rise of Creativity, Innovation, and Individualism in Asia explains to Bloomberg why: they want peace of mindRead More →
Ai Xiaoming is one of China´s leading documentary makers, and all of them are officially banned in the country. Journalist Ian Johnson sits down with her for the NY Review of Books and discusses how it is to make banned documentaries, and (amongst many other subjects) why China has no intellectuals.Read More →
While China´s financial regulators have tried to prevent previous market panics, smaller banks have behind their backs been expanding credit lines to wealthy clients, says economist Arthur Kroeber, author of China’s Economy: What Everyone Needs to Know® to Dow Jones. The regulators now try to rein in those tools.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 →
President Xi Jinping might be the most powerful leader in China for decades, it does not mean he enjoys overwhelming support at the country´s political elites, says political scientist Victor Shih, author of Factions and Finance in China: Elite Conflict and Inflation, a leading publication on China´s elites in the Economist.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 →
2017 is going to be a productive year for both Zhang Lijia and Ian Johnson as they are going to publish their long-awaited books. Both are very well versed in documenting cultural change in China, a development that often remain undetected for the outside world.Read More →
Journalist Ian Johnson explores for the New York Times, the search by Yang Weidong into what he calls the soul of China. He interviewed and filmed 405 thinkers, artists, musicians, writers, historians — anyone who has thought hard about China’s future. “Some are government critics, others support the party, but all have opinions.”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 →
Although there is no reason to believe China´s economy is heading for a crash, the lack of real structural reforms still makes investors worried, writes economist Arthur Kroeber for the Brookings Institute and author of China’s Economy: What Everyone Needs to Know? While the state sector was supposed to shrink, it continues to grow.Read More →
Feminism is on the rise in China, and much has changed for the better, tells author and journalist Zhang Lijia of the upcoming novel Lotus: A Novel, in TakePart.Com, in an issue on feminism in China. But too many things have not yet changed, or change too slowly.Read More →
China´s state-owned shipping industry has already seen massive mergers over the past 18 months, and this week the State Council – the country´s highest administrative body – announced more mergers. But China veteran Paul French warns in Splash 247 to read too much into the announcement. Just an announcement does not mean it is a done deal.Read More →