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24 Aug 09
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A New Website The China Beat is moving! Please update your bookmarks for our new website: http://www.thechinabeat.org/.Our new feed can be found at http://www.thechinabeat.org/?feed=rss2. This website will remain online, but new content will only be posted at our new... |
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23 Aug 09
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Readings: Expo Preparation, Food, Music, and Fashion A variety of readings that piqued our interest this week:1. In a New York Times story, Howard French takes a look at the ongoing preparations in Shanghai as next year’s World Expo grows closer. In addition to Expo-related construction in the city cente... |
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20 Aug 09
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Siaolin Stands Up Bouncing over ruined roads washed out by Typhoon Morakot (some roadbeds have been transformed into river beds), a group of scholars (including myself) drove to the township of Chia-hsien 甲仙 (Kaohsiung County) on August 18 to attend a press confer... |
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19 Aug 09
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Readings on Liu Xiaobo and Xu Zhiyong News came today that legal scholar Xu Zhiyong was formally arrested last week, though he has not yet been charged, according to his lawyer (see recent China Beat posts on Xu Zhiyong here and here). Xu is one of several detainees whom netizens are seeking... |
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17 Aug 09
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Readings There are several recent pieces on China's internet controls that are worth reading if you haven't already looked at them. First, "How China Polices the Internet" at Financial Times, gives an interesting account of what David Bandurski has called China's... |
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12 Aug 09
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China’s Migrant Workers in the Wake of the Economic Crisis: Unemployed, Undeterred By Robert D. O’BrienAfter growing at double-digit rates for most of the last three decades, the Chinese economy is now in jeopardy of failing to achieve the eight percent GDP expansion benchmark widely considered necessary for the government to stave o... |
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12 Aug 09
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Fell Rains The people of southern Taiwan are suffering the ravages of the worst flooding to hit the island in 50 years. This tragedy was brought about by Typhoon Morakot, which combined with a tropical depression near the Philippines to produce a blob of tropical... |
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11 Aug 09
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Rolling the Dice in Macau It has been almost a decade now since China regained control of Macau, but the city’s present and future crops up in news coverage much less than Hong Kong, another reclaimed colony. We’re delighted, then, to be able to run this piece about Macau ... |
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09 Aug 09
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On the Web: Images of China China Beat readers looking for cool “new” desktop pictures for their computers might want to think old. More and more archives are digitalizing their collections of photographs and making them available online, so now finding that perfect snapshot of... |
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06 Aug 09
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China Behind the Headlines: Xu Zhiyong A few days ago we suggested readings about the disappearance of legal scholar and activist Xu Zhiyong in Beijing. There has been more news on the subject here and here. China Beat contributor Susan Jakes, who has known Xu since 2004, contributed the... |
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05 Aug 09
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Filthy Fiction: The Writings of Zhu Wen By Julia LovellChinese fiction of the 1990s was not short on shock value. If we think of the decade’s cultural tone being set by Deng Xiaoping’s 1992 command to unleash commercial forces, then the years that followed proved rich in works that would ... |
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04 Aug 09
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In Case You Missed It: Cambridge Companion to Modern Chinese Culture By Miri Kim For scholars of China who are interested in modernity, the looming question seems to be, is 'modernity' a valid and useful analytical category for describing, explaining, and understanding China? And if so, how should modernity and its... |
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04 Aug 09
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Readings for August 3 1. An important story emerged this weekend in the blogosphere: Chinese legal scholar Xu Zhiyong was taken from his home by police last Wednesday and has not been seen since. From Evan Osnos at The New Yorker:Xu might not have reached Marshall status yet,... |
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31 Jul 09
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A Few Reading Recommendations 1. The new Journal of Current Chinese Affairs is out—and all its articles are available for free in PDF at its website. Those of possible interest to CB readers include:“Beijing Bubble, Beijing Bust: Inequality, Trade, and Capital Inflow into China... |
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29 Jul 09
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The Urumchi Unrest Revisited The violence in Xinjiang took place almost a month ago, but it continues to generate interesting commentary (see, for example, this thoughtful essay by Pallavi Aiyar). The early July events have also recently had two reverberations in Australia, as Jia... |
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29 Jul 09
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Race and Espionage By Sam GoffmanThe fact that China and the US spy on each other should come as no surprise to anybody. Each country is nervous about the other, and espionage, though it is surely not conducted with the same vigor as during the Cold War, is still an... |
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27 Jul 09
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Brought to You by the People’s Republic of The Onion By Haiyan LeeAmerica's finest news source The Onion has a new owner! Since last week, readers have been bombarded with the good tiding, from the modified masthead, logo, and tagline, to news headlines, editorials, audio and video clips, and ads, lots of... |
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25 Jul 09
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A Reader: The 2010 Asian Games The PR folks for the 2010 Asian Games in Guangzhou have added China Beat to their mailing list, so we got their note this week about organizers' plans to seed clouds to prevent rain during the Games. Our interest was piqued--we hadn't heard much yet about... |
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24 Jul 09
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A Cultural Symbol Passes from the Scene: Ji Xianlin, Not Michael Jackson By Timothy B. WestonIt’s been moving to watch the response in China to the July 11 death of renowned scholar, Ji Xianlin (1911-2009). While Ji’s unsurprising departure at the ripe old age of 98 has not brought quite the same flood tide of emotion... |
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24 Jul 09
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Confucianism in the Chinese Academia By Daniel A. BellOver the last decade or so, there has been a revival of Confucianism. Popular books on Confucianism are best sellers, and official discourse from the government often expresses traditional Confucian values like harmony. What is less well... |
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22 Jul 09
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China at the World’s Fairs Five Things to Know about China's Links to World's Fairs and International ExpositionsBy Susan FernsebnerThe city of Shanghai will be the official host to Expo 2010, an international event celebrating the theme “A Better City, A Better Life,” wit... |
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22 Jul 09
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China Beatniks Around the Web After a few weeks of vacation, China Beat is back to posting (though we considered making an 8 percent reduction in our future posts in honor of the UC furlough, we’ll just be back to business as usual). Even so, it is still summer and a few contributo... |
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20 Jul 09
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Shanghai Expo: The US Pavilion is On Last November, we ran a little preview of the 2010 Shanghai Expo, pointing you to a few readings about this big “coming distraction.” Last week the US finally committed to attend the Expo, prompting a new round of Expo stories around the web.1. ... |
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15 Jul 09
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The Xinjiang Riots: Tried Paradigms, Fresh Tensions By James LeiboldThe mainstream media, both Western and Chinese, seem to be struggling to make sense of the deadly riots that broke out in the Xinjiang capital of Urumqi last week. Well-worn explanations on both sides have largely failed to grasp the... |
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09 Jul 09
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Reading Round-Up Little bits and pieces from around the web…1. In case you missed it, David Brooks wrote a column about China in The New York Times last week. In it, he details two perspectives on China’s future presented at the Aspen Ideas Festival. On the one hand... |
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07 Jul 09
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Though the Candles Flicker Red Jonathan Tel's collection of stories, The Beijing of Possibilities, was released last month. China Beat ran an earlier selection, "Year of the Gorilla," in March 2009. Tel's previous publications include Arafat's Elephant and Freud's Alphabet. You can... |
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06 Jul 09
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Reports from the West Details are still emerging about the unrest in western China, but there are already some fabulous round-ups of media coverage of the events, such as this one at Shanghaiist and this one at EastSouthWestNorth. Here is a short video report from Al... |
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02 Jul 09
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History, Generations, and China Stories In early May, a conference was held at Yale for retiring Chinese historian Jonathan Spence, with several China Beatniks in attendance. Here, Robert Kapp, one of Jonathan Spence's first graduate students, reflects on the shifts in the stories we've told... |
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21 Jun 09
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Tehran Events and Tiananmen Analogies With so many references to Tiananmen showing up in the news, we wanted to take a quick break from our time away to recommend a couple of the best uses of 1989 analogies (if we weren't on hiatus, we'd also look at some of the worst, and there have been... |
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17 Jun 09
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China Beat on Vacation China Beat will be taking a break for the next few weeks as we do a little site maintenance, traveling, and, now that the school year has finally finished at UCI, try to get some breathing in as well. Though we may post little bits of things if the mood... |
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12 Jun 09
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June 4th Around the World: Notes from One Week After the Anniversary A week (or so) after the anniversary of the "May 35th" events (as some Chinese netizens put it to circumvent automatic blocks on mention of a highly charged date), we got several more responses to our request to Friends of the Blog for word on how June... |
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11 Jun 09
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Berkshire Encyclopedia on New Media Berkshire Publishing has recently published its Encyclopedia of China with contributions by China scholars like Sherman Cochran, Kerry Brown, Judy Polumbaum and many others and featuring one thousand entries on a diverse range of historical, social and... |
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09 Jun 09
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June 4 Around the World: California We wrote to the peripatetic Pico Iyer, a Friend of the Blog, to see how June 4th was marked wherever he happened to be this year on the anniversary date. He sent us the following ruminations, in which he alludes to the mid-1980s when he first went to... |
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08 Jun 09
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Looking Backwards: From 1989 to Han Times and from 2008 to 1964 There have been many efforts during the last month, on this site and elsewhere, to bring history into discussions of the twentieth anniversary of June 4th (particularly via allusions the May 4th Movement of 1919), just as a year ago there were many... |
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07 Jun 09
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June 4 Around the World: A Letter from Lima In this third offering in our series, we limit ourselves to one short post, from a Friend of the Blog who recently moved from Shanghai to Peru. For additional reading on June 4 from a perspective that takes you into a different part of the world, chec... |
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06 Jun 09
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6/4 Around the World: The First Sequel In our second installment of the series (for part one click here), we return to Japan (via a follow-up post by James Farrer on coverage in Tokyo) and offer a view from Hanoi (where long-time Reuters China correspondent John Ruwitch is now based and... |
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06 Jun 09
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Historical Bafflement of the Chinese People David Kelly, researcher at the University of Technology Sydney, translated the following opinion piece by overseas political commentator Liang Jing. He has published several previous pieces at China Digital Times, including, “Trigger for an Earthquake ... |
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05 Jun 09
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A 6/4 Reader 1. Su Yang has never written anything for China Beat, but a few of us get to have lunch with him occasionally as he is a professor (of sociology) at UCI. The Orange County Register profiled Su, discussing his experiences in 1989 and after. 2. Jeff... |
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04 Jun 09
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6/4/89: The Night of No Moon This piece is excerpted from the manuscript of Philip J. Cunningham’s forthcoming book, Tiananmen Moon, part of an on-going China Beat feature of excerpts from Cunningham's book. Interested readers can see more at Cunningham’s website. (June 4, ... |
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04 Jun 09
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Notes from a Non-anniversary By Jeremiah JenneI woke up this morning and took a short walk to a big square. As expected, it was pretty calm in the kind of jittery, strained, composed way one usually associates with a dinner party where one of the hosts is having an extramarital... |
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04 Jun 09
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6/4 Around the World Last August, we called on contributors and friends of the blog around the world to send in short reports on how the Olympics were being covered and received in their neck of the woods. Recently, we sent out a similar call regarding today’s anniversar... |
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04 Jun 09
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China’s Growing Cage: The Legacy of Tiananmen A much shorter version of this piece originally appeared in the New York Times, part of a series there on "Tiananmen Square, 20 Years Later," which also features pieces by Ha Jin, Yu Hua and others. By Zhang LijiaWhenever “1989” is mentioned, peopl... |
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04 Jun 09
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Another Anniversary In Taiwan, June 4 marks another anniversary, namely the 185th day of Chen Shuibian's detention without having been convicted of a crime. Chen was first ordered to be held in custody on the night of November 11, 2008, with actual detention beginning on... |
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03 Jun 09
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Tsingtao Beer: A Complex Brew By Robert Bickers‘What are we to drink?’ asked a British doctor in Shanghai in 1867, reflecting on the precautions needed to maintain health in the sweltering city. His answer, as Shanghai water was too filthy a solution, was simple: beer. For ‘... |
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02 Jun 09
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It's so French When we first saw the Shanghai Daily's headline on "Covering the China Beat," we thought it might be a piece about us, instead it was a review of (lively and acerbic Access Asia's) Paul French's new book, Through the Looking Glass: China's Foreign... |
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02 Jun 09
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Do I Still Love China? In Sunday’s New York Times, Ha Jin reflected on his decision to remain in the West after graduate school and to write primarily in English:That was when I started to think about staying in America and writing exclusively in English, even if China was ... |
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01 Jun 09
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6/4 Reader A set of links to readings about 6/4 from various sources:1. A short and straightforward documentary from Al Jazeera (in English), posted at YouTube in two parts: Part I and Part II. This documentary has notably less emphasis on the influence of... |
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01 Jun 09
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Shanghai Girls A few months ago, we ran an interview with Lisa See about her new novel, Shanghai Girls. The book was released last week and See is in the middle of a series of talks and readings, including one that China Beat is co-sponsoring on June 6 in Corona del... |
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01 Jun 09
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5/28/09: Chai Ling's Last Will and Testament This piece is excerpted from the manuscript of Philip J. Cunningham’s forthcoming book, Tiananmen Moon, part of an on-going China Beat feature of excerpts from Cunningham's book, and describes the set-up for one of the most famous interviews of the fin... |
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31 May 09
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Geithner in Beijing--What to Read (or Perhaps Re-Read) With press reports circulating about Timothy Geithner's plan to speak at Peking University/Beida tomorrow, this might be the perfect time to dip into China in 2008: A Year of Great Significance and read Geremie Barmé's "Facing Up to Friendship" (pag... |
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