Polling Chinese about religion is a field where western researchers fast get lost in translation, journalist Ian Johnson argues in The New York Times, looking at a Win/Gallup poll. Last year Johnson forced the Pew Research Centre to retract their conclusions on atheism in China. Why is it so hard to get a poll on religion in China right?Read More →
Journalist Ian Johnson interviews for the New York Review of Book one of the famous Chinese documentary filmmakers, Hu Jie, whose films have never been shown in China itself, covering subjects like Mao, the Cultural Revolution and the Great Famine. A life of dealing with tough issues.Read More →
Reform of the health care is high on the political agenda, but to eradicate the massive inefficiencies will prove to be tough, writes analyst Sara Hsu in the Diplomat. “Some reforms, however, will take longer than others, particularly improving the quality of health care and changing patient views regarding local and private hospitals.”Read More →
Journalist Ian Johnson will be in Berlin from half June to half September, and is available to share his insights on civil society, culture and religion. He is a Beijing-based writer for the New York Review of Books, and his stories also appear in the New York Times and ChinaFile.Read More →
Author Zhang Lijia attended in March the Bookworm International Literary Festival, and talked about the changing role of women in China´s society. Here is the report of Al Jazeera. Zhang Lijia is currently writing a novel on prostitutes in China.Read More →
Slowly, very slowly, some good news about China´s environment is coming in. Journalist Ian Johnson talked for the New York Times with Mark Clifford, author of The Greening of Asia, about the changes in the world´s largest coal consuming country.Read More →
Baidu, China´s largest search engine, has launched an initiative to rebuild Nepal virtually, in 360 degrees using the many existing pictures of destroyed sites. Communication director Kaiser Kuo explains on his Facebook page how it works, and how tourists´pictures will be used.Read More →
Journalist Ian Johnson describes his friend and colleague Peter Hessler for The New York Review of Books, and analyses his often controversial take on China. For example his take on dissidents in China. ” Hessler’s four books have sold 385,000 copies in the US, a figure that easily makes him the most influential popular writer on China in decades.”Read More →
Paul French, author of the Fat China: How Expanding Waistlines are Changing a Nation (China in the 21st Century) summarizes for The Guardian what the government has done over the past decade to fight obesity. He is underwhelmed.Read More →
The environmental documentary “Under the Dome” by Chai Jing has become more influential, even after Chna´s censors banned it from the internet. Not only because between 100 and 200 million already watched the documentary, says author Zhang Lijia to Bloomberg. The government can no longer brainwash the people.Read More →
A reasonable price and still a premium, those are the assets of the iPhone 6 as a key gift for Chinese New Year business analyst Shaun Rein notes at CNBC. “The anti-corruption drive is more serious than most analysts realize,” said Rein.Read More →
Religion is making a comeback in China. But the position of Daoism, the fifth of the larger religions in China, is rather unclear, as it is hard to trace than other religious, explains journalist Ian Johnson to PRI. What is the place of Daoism in today´s China? From a transcribed phone interview.
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