Author and journalist Zhang Lijia will visit in January the Netherlands, join a panel on China on January 22 and Amsterdam in January 23, 24. That coincides with the publishing of her novel Lotus: A Novel on the position of women and prostitution in China. Starting point were the stories of her grandmother, who was a concubine.Read More →
This summer journalist and internet expert Kaiser Kuo left his position at Baidu, to return to the US and works as a host of the Sinica podcast at China-focused media startup SupChina. At CCTV he looks back at almost 30 years of change, he experienced. The 1980s saw still most profound change, he tells. Then the software, the mentality changed profoundly. Later it was mostly the hardware of the country that adjusted to those earlier changes.Read More →
Religions have become more popular in China, but the government tries now to tighten rules for religious group, writes journalist Ian Johnson, author of the upcoming book The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao in the New York Times. Rules on religion are changed for the first time in a decade.Read More →
The term ´middle class´ shows up in almost every analysis on China. But economist Arthur Kroeber, author of China’s Economy: What Everyone Needs to Know®, thinks the term creates more confusion than clarity, he explains to Knowledge CKGSB.Read More →
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 →
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 →