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 →

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 →

China business veteran Shaun Rein discusses with Cyrus Janssen how China has faced challenges since it opened up post-Corona. Outbound travel has not resumed, expected revenge spending did not happen and consumer confidence is at the lowest rate ever. No, he says, China is not yet back to normal, because consumers sit on their corona savings, unwilling to spend. And foreign investors, while CEOs are going to China, are hesitant to resume investing in China, at least till the end of 2023. But support for Xi Jinping is still there, he sees. Though, expect a tough 10-20 years.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 →