China veteran Ian Johnson tells how he got expelled from China and what he found when he returned in 2023 to Foreign Affairs—and discovered what had changed over the past three years with COVID-19 hitting the country. He found a country is in stagnation, he tells in a gloomy diagnosis, although he also discovered dissent was not wholly stifled.Read More →
Leading economist Arthur Kroeber discusses China’s economic state and looks at the gloomy predictions from other economists. We do not have enough post-COVID-19 data to draw firm conclusions, he argues, and goes on to take down three schools of gloom in current economic thinking about China’s future, at the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies. Read More →
China veteran Ian Johnson published earlier this month China’s Underground Historians and their Battle for the Future, “Based on years of first-hand research in Xi Jinping’s China, Sparks challenges stereotypes of a China where the state has quashed all free thought, revealing instead a country engaged in one of humanity’s great struggles of memory against forgetting―a battle that will shape the China that emerges in the mid-21st century.” Read More →
The draft law banning clothes deemed offensive to national feelings in China has triggered much debate. Author and journalist Zhang Lijia dives and looks back at the campaigns from her youth at the Nanjing rocket factory, and more recent incidents, for the South China Morning Post.Read More →
China’s rules are building a divide with the rest of the world, similar to the Berlin wall Russia started to build last century, says China veteran Ian Johnson in news.com.au. “Speech is more restricted than ever. Community activities and social groups are strictly regulated and monitored by the authorities,” he explained.Read More →
Former China correspondent and author Ian Johnson was forced to leave the country in 2020 and revisited China earlier in 2023 for Foreign Affairs. He found a country in stagnation, that was used to double-digit growth, but lost its economic glamor, the former power base of the Communist Party. Strict government regulations changed China he knew. Also, information on his latest book Sparks: China’s Underground Historians and their Battle for the Future. Read More →
Confidence among consumers and investors in China’s economy is at a low and even getting lower in the coming weeks, says business analyst Shaun Rein to CNBC. Even a firm financial stimulus from the government like in the past is not going to work, as shortage of liquidity is not the real problem.Read More →
Former China bull Shaun Rein explains to Ian Bremmer how he changed into a bear during the corona crisis last year. In a wide-ranging exchange of thoughts, he points to the lack of trust and communication between China and the US. And is China moving in the direction of socialism?Read More →
The disappearance of former foreign minister Qin Gang has triggered off a spate of rumors. China veteran Ian Johnson looks into what this means for the position of China’s top leader Xi Jin Ping.Read More →
Chinese companies and emerging government regulations have marked the rise of AI tools in China. Marketing expert Ashley Dudarenok most certainly keeps an open mind to using those tools when they become available, she tells at Campaign Asia. “Their availability could offer us access to innovative solutions and capabilities to enhance our operations and drive further efficiency.”Read More →
Economist Arthur Kroeber is not expecting a significant stimulus of China’s economy as the central government has done in the past. The government is instead hoping the economy will outgrow the current post-Covid-19 dip without massive intervention, he says at CNBC.Read More →
Public opinion in both China and the US about the other country is at a low, and political analyst Zhang Lijia fears those opinions might push both advisories into a new cold war, she argues in the South China Morning Post.Read More →