President Xi Jinping entered his tenure with a clear commitment to reform. But slacking economic growth might jeopardize that promise, writes analyst Sara Hsu in the Diplomat. One main reason: central and local governments have very different interests.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 →

Books need a book number to get published and sold in China, although every store would have a little counter of banned or not approved books. But censorship rules have become stricter enforced over the years and when an autobiography of Li Rui, a retired party official, got confiscated at an airport, his daughter decided to take the case to court, writes journalist Ian Johnson in the New York Times.Read More →

Author Paul French of North Korea: State of Paranoia reviews for the Washington Post. Blaine Harden´s latest book on North Korea The Great Leader and the Fighter Pilot: The True Story of the Tyrant Who Created North Korea and The Young Lieutenant Who Stole His Way to Freedom.Read More →

Five feminists are still in jail. While the position of women has deteriorated over the past decades, author Zhang Lijia sees a rising number of activists, trying to improve the position of women, despite opposition, she write in a contribution to the debate in ChinaFile.Read More →

China´s lack of direction or ideology, makes it very hard to make sense out of its future, writes author Howard French in ChinaFile, in a contribution to the David Shambaugh debate on the demise of the communist part. “Such is the degree of uncertainty we must all live with.”Read More →

An opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal by David Shambaugh on March 7 claims the Communist Party is falling apart. Economist Arthur Kroeber explains in ChinaFile why he is wrong. The next episode in a longstanding “China-is-collapsing” tradition.Read More →