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 →
“When the Chinese get good at something, all of the sudden, the United States says, ‘This is a national security risk’”, says Shanghai-based business analyst Shaun Rein on the tech arms race between China and the US, where Huawei, TikTok, and others got into trouble in the US, in his interview with Ian Bremmer.Read More →
China’s economic growth might have been lackluster post-Covid, but social commerce is the exception, even compared to traditional e-commerce, says e-commerce experts Ashley Dudarenok in Dao Insights. “New sales channels are changing the way businesses approach e-commerce, and they’re adapting their strategies to stay competitive,” she writes.Read More →
China veteran and scholar Ian Johnson will publish in September 2023 his next book Sparks: China’s Underground Historians and their Battle for the Future. “It describes how some of China’s best-known writers, filmmakers, and artists have overcome crackdowns and censorship to forge a nationwide movement that challenges the Communist Party on its most hallowed ground: its control of history,” writes Ian Johnson at his weblog.Read More →
Author Zhang Lijia is shocked by the fake news in China’s media on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, she reports while traveling in Northern Africa. “The first casualty of war is truth.” How true!”, she writes on her weblog.Read More →
China veteran Shaun Rein explains why the West does so poorly in understanding China, and why China’s government is doing such a bad job in explaining China to the rest of the world, in an interview with Cyrus Janssen.Read More →
H&M tries to retain market share in China after a consumer boycott of a range of Western fashion brands – including also Nike and Burberry – on its Xinjiang stance by launching two new brands. The results with the consumers in China have been mixed, says marketing expert Arnold Ma in Jing Daily.Read More →
How will people remember the Wuhan lockdown, two years ago at the start of the global coronavirus crisis, asks CFR-scholar Ian Johnson in a debate at the NYU’s Institute for Public Knowledge on the book “The Wuhan Lockdown”, by Yang Guobin. How successful has the state been in suppressing the knowledge of this hiccup in communist rule in Wuhan, Ian Johnson asks the author.Read More →
China under President Xi Jinping is profoundly changing its attitude to the outside world, much more than a pandemic-driven closure of the borders, says political analyst Victor Shih to CNN.Read More →
Not authoritarian rule but solid support from China’s citizens allowed its government to beat the Covid-19 and effectively deal with the coronavirus crisis, argues Singapore-based journalist Ian Johnson, in the New York Review of Books. He uses the Wuhan Diary: Dispatches from a Quarantined City by Fang Fang, to show the government did not silence critics but did win majority support by its people, helped by indeed heavily manipulated media in China.Read More →
COVID-19 has changed life for sales professionals, says marketing guru Ashley Dudarenok. The early coronavirus crisis in China has accelerated online retail with live streaming at its core and will do so also as the rest of the world comes out of the corona crisis.Read More →