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 →
When it comes to reviving moral values in China, most attention goes to Christianity. But in an interview for the New York Times with Matthew S. Erie, author of China and Islam: The Prophet, the Party, and Law journalist Ian Johnson hears the Islam is a similar emerging religious force. Ian Johnson is the author of the upcoming book The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After MaoRead 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 →
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 →
The world´s most populous country is facing an unprecedented crisis, as its population ages fast, tells former New York Times Shanghai-bureau chief Howard French to PBS. The fast rising demand for social security, health care and a diminishing work force, will narrow down China´s economic expansion in the near future. The aging crisis not only shows the immense failure of the one-child policy, it will also force the country to become more welcoming to much-needed immigrants.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 →
Author Alec Ash published after four years of study Wish Lanterns: Inside the Young Lives of China, documenting the life of the millenniums in China. Journalist Ian Johnson of the New York Times sat down with him to discuss how they are bringing change to China.Read More →
Zhang Lijia´s upcoming novel Lotus: A Novel will only appear early 2017, but the first raving reviews are already coming in. Renowned Indian author Amitav Ghosh praises the story the main figure migrant Lotus and the way she ends up in prostitution.Read More →
China´s country-side has a generation of left-behind children, children who grew up while their parents worked in the big cities, some with their grandparents, some even alone. Author Zhang Lijia visited four-year old Diandian, who lives with his grandparents and writes up his story at her weblog.Read More →
China´s demographic problems might stop its economic development in its tracks, writes author Howard French in the Atlantic. Not only can China not deal with its aging population, “some Chinese experts now say that the country’s economic output may never match that of the U.S..”Read More →
Kaiser Kuo is leaving China after twenty years, and internet giant Baidu after six year. On May 4 he will get an award of the Asia Society Northern California, where he will settle down to work professionally on his Sinica Podcast. For Asia Society Kaiser looks back, on the internet and foreign correspondents.Read More →