The current president of China is Xi Jinping. “Uncle Xi” is most-known for his nationwide crackdown on corruption. Who was president before that? If you said Hu Jintao, you’d be right. Hu is remembered mostly for how unremarkable he was – he oversaw a ten-year period of consistent, if unexciting, growth for China, making little... Read more »
Ever the Quiet Burier of Ledes, Global Times published a news item Monday that surely qualifies for Hideous China Story of the Year (Relationships Edition)... although GT went for the more casual "Mom jailed for covert contraceptive." It's a Turducken of a tale...
The Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) was founded 90 years ago on August 1, and to commemorate this round-number anniversary, there was a massive military parade at the Zhurihe Combined Tactics Training Base in Inner Mongolia on Sunday, featuring 12,000 troops and a special message from president Xi Jinping about readiness and party loyalty and winning battles.
You don't care about any of that, though. You want to know about this:
The full English translation of a controversial, widely read, now-deleted July 23 essay from writer Zhang Wumao about the struggle of living in Beijing.
Liu Xiaobo, Nobel Prize laureate and one of China's finest, died tonight in a hospital in Shenyang, Liaoning province, having never been officially released from his 11-year sentence for state subversion. He served more than seven of those years behind bars.
Up a rickety staircase, above a neglected sex shop, there they were: some of the laziest and most disinterested barkeeps in Beijing. But now they’ve disappeared, along with the rest of 3 Rock, a hole of a rock bar that encapsulated the punk spirit of Sanlitun’s “dirty bar street” – something best loved when it’s... Read more »
240 years, American friends! Longer than the Yuan. Longer than the Sui. Not as long as any of the good dynasties, but still a good run! — The Relevant Organs (@relevantorgans) November 9, 2016
A good while ago the anthropologist Stevan Harrell asked me to consider the unique position of Uyghurs as heirs to an urbanism that predates the rise of Chinese cities in the region. He asked me to think through the ways in which this urban tradition has affected Uyghur social organization. I’m still thinking about this.