#China

Xi Jinping at the Steamed Bun Shop by Tutou Jueren (“Stubborn Baldy”) The Chinese Communist Party has a long tradition of using its state media as a tool to maintain its legitimacy and control its masses through party propaganda.  While ancient China also used propaganda, Chairman Mao Zedong was the first Chinese leader to successfully […]

Prominent Uighur economics professor and dissident Ilham Tohti (Uighur: ئىلھام توختى‎, Chinese: 伊力哈木土赫提) was detained by police in Beijing on January 15, according to multiple reports. Also detained were at least six of Tohti’s students. Tohti’s family has not been informed of his whereabouts or the nature of the charges against him. The U.S. State […]

Western “cultural threats” will be among several types of “unconventional security threats” targeted by China’s new National Security Committee, according to an article by People’s Liberation Army (PLA) senior colonel Gong Fangbin (公方彬). Additional “threats” the committee will target include extremist groups, cybersecurity threats, and online dissent. The article follows a familiar recent pattern of […]

2014 began in Hong Kong with a New Year’s Day march for democracy that drew thousands into the streets in protest against Beijing’s efforts to limit democratic rights in the former British colony. Unless demands are met for universal suffrage and open nomination rights in Hong Kong elections, July 2014 is likely to see the […]

Who owns the ocean? In reference to the water south of China, it depends on who you ask. Newer claims by China would extend its sovereignty well south to the island of Borneo, passing by Vietnam, Malaysia, and Philippines in the process. Let’s a take a look at what’s gone on and what it says […]

At first glance, Chinese tycoon Chen Guangbiao’s appearance in New York this week looked like little more than a Chinese soft-power effort gone terribly wrong. First came Chen’s ill-fated effort to buy the New York Times. Then came Chen’s bizarre press conference in New York featuring a patriotic singing performance by Chen, a brief foreign […]

Chinese recycling tycoon Chen Guangbiao recently made headlines when he announced his “plans” to buy the New York Times. I put “plans” in quotation marks because the newspaper’s owners had expressed neither knowledge of any such deals in the works nor interest in selling it to anyone, least of all to a nationalistic Chinese businessman […]

  After Beijing unilaterally declared an Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) in the East China Sea last month, to include the disputed Tokyo-controlled islands called Senkaku in Japanese and Diaoyu in Chinese, the reaction by regional neighbors and the U.S. was swift. But with each action, a subsequent and escalating reaction has been triggered. China’s […]

Since my previous post on this incident was submitted, a suspect has been arrested in the New Year’s Day arson attack on the Chinese consulate in San Francisco. The suspect, who turned himself in to authorities and made a full confession of guilt, is a Chinese national who claims to have set the fire because […]

The Chinese icebreaker Xue Long‘s rescue of the passengers aboard the stranded Russian research vessel MV Akademik Shokalskiy has made headlines around the world. Since December 24, the Russian ship has been stuck in pack ice near Antarctica’s Cape de la Motte, approximately 1,700 miles south of Tasmania. MV Akademik Shokalskiy was about midway through the month-long Australasian Antarctic Expedition, run by the University of New […]

An arson attack on the Chinese consulate-general in San Francisco has exacerbated tensions between China and the United States. The attack occurred the night of Jan. 1, when someone  poured gasoline onto the front door of the consulate and set it ablaze. While the building sustained significant fire and smoke damage, there were no injuries, […]

Andrew Peacock/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Following its spectacular success as host of the 2008 Olympic Games, Beijing’s successive attempts at increasing its “soft power” have often fallen short. Soft power is a concept developed by Joseph Nye of Harvard University to describe the ability to attract and co-opt rather than coerce, use force or […]