It's basically been accepted, since this Economist cover story, that Chinese president Xi Jinping got the idea for his "Chinese Dream" from a Thomas Friedman New York Times column. But where did Tom Friedman get the idea? Isaac Stone Fish of Foreign Policy decided to find out. ...

A politician, his wife, and a tennis star  join the likes of Jay-Z, Bryan Cranston and Kim Jong-un as the only Chinese citizens on Time's annual list of 100 most influential people in the world. (Ahem, "world.") You probably can guess, but the three are Xi Jinping, Peng Liyuan, and Li Na. Here are snippets of their profiles: ...

We'll never know whence or whither Xi Jinping took a taxi on the evening of March 1, 2013, or any of these lengthening twilit evenings of summer-cometh, because who cares? It turns out, everyone. As Offbeat China relays, "旁观者马勇, professor at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, pointed out: 'The news is fake, and it’s unforgivable. But people’s expectations are real.'” Indeed, if there's a Chinese politi ...

The village is called Liangjiahe. Via Vimeo: This film was made to go in a special edition of ABC's Newsline to accompany the 18th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in November 2012. Xi Jingping took over as leader of this huge institution at this congress so we made a profile of him for this special episode. All the footage is mine except the American academic interview towards the end as well as som ...

Peng Liyuan, who's warming up to her role as China's "First Lady" -- a term that, lest you forget, has basically never been applied to the wives of Chinese leaders -- is currently traveling with her husband in Africa as part of Xi Jinping's first overseas trip as Chinese head of state, and it'd be an understatement to say she's kind of stealing the show. The New York Times called her "glamorous, fashionable ...

Xi Jinping sat down with foreign media yesterday for the first time since becoming CPC chairman, speaking with reporters from BRICS countries -- Brazil, Russia, India and South Africa -- ahead of the BRICS summit later this month. This historic occassion drew almost no English-language media coverage, leading Foreign Policy's Isaac Stone Fish to ask, "What if Xi Jinping gave an interview and no one cared?" ...

It's been said before by many commentators -- e.g., Eric Fish of Sinostand ("The Catholic church and CCP: estranged brothers?") and Adam of Visions of Paradise ("Several times in the past I've read quotes stating that Communist governments learned how to manipulate their citizens by imitating the Catholic Church") -- that the Chinese Communist Party bears uncanny resemblances to the Catholic Church. So what ...

Few will accuse Hu Jintao of being photogenic (note: some have tried), but the above picture takes the cake. By Jason Lee of Reuters, captioned via Yahoo: "An attendant serves tea to China's President Hu Jintao (L) next to China's Communist Party Chief Xi Jinping (R) during the opening ceremony of the National People's Congress (NPC) at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, March 5, 2013." Poor Xi Jinpin ...

Less than a week after outing himself as the microblogger behind the super popular "Study Xi Fan Club," migrant worker and college dropout Zhang Hongming may be calling it quits. According to SCMP: Zhang, who has more than 800,000 followers, wrote: "Goodbye. I was happy when I came here, but I'm leaving today with deep feelings … Thanks to all the fans [of Xi], perhaps there is no room for us due to limited ...

Who's the person behind the most popular Xi Jinping microblog in the world, Xuexifensituan (Study Xi Fan Club [the image icon reads "Hao Hao Xue Xi," Thoroughly Study Xi]), with its 737,000 followers? Just a really big Xi Jinping fan, it turns out, who happens to be a college dropout. As revealed by Associated Press: It turns out it's the brainchild of a male college dropout and migrant worker, Zhang Hongmi ...

Um, delivering a doe. I said doe in this post, not Komodo dragon. Xi Jinping has his work cut out for him to top this. We suggest, for his next act, helping deliver a doe in the fields. The hoi polloi will lap it up! This picture comes Xi Jinping's unofficially endorsed Sina Weibo account, Hao Hao Xue Xi ("Thoroughly Learn From Xi," with a pun on "xuexi" [to study]). (Ed's note: The better, more literal tra ...

Chinese Vice Premier Li Keqiang made an unexpected visit to a farmer's family in Baotou, Inner Mongolia earlier this week. How unexpected? According to Sina Weibo, the farmer's son was still sleeping (half-)naked in the room, so the father told him to go hide in the cupboard. With CCTV cameras rolling, the kid ran out of oxygen, jumped out of the cupboard, and crawled under the blankets, exposing his bare a ...

Japan's highly respected daily The Asahi Shimbun suggested in an article on Monday that Xi Jinping was unhappy with the way the "media control division" handled last week's Southern Weekly ordeal. Specifically, Xi was unhappy with the way Liu Yunshan, chief of the propaganda department and a longtime Hu Jintao guy, forced newspapers around the country to carry a hardline Global Times editorial. ...

Fresh off his meth high and shooting spree (note: not really), Nicholas Kristof is really, really optimistic about China. Considering the type of China stories we usually encounter, let's call this a breath of fresh air. ...

From the start, I've been optimistic about Xi Jinping and his administration. Melinda Liu of the Daily Beast has just outlined many of the reasons why: ...

People's Daily has just published 23 photos of China's Party Secretary, Xi Jinping (via Xinhua), from various stages of his life. In most of them -- keeping with a theme -- he looks ordinary. We're sampling eight more after this top one -- eight is auspicious, after all -- but you should also check out the other 14, starting here, because one can never get too much of Xi Jinping. ...

Just yesterday, Michele Travierso tweeted, "I sense a Tumblr in the making" in response to pictures of Xi Jinping doing ordinary things on his Southern Tour. The Internet works fast. Presenting: Xi Jinping looking at things. The Tumblr has a bunch of backdated pictures going all the way to February 2. We think they're backdated, anyway. I cannot for the life of me imagine how a Tumblr called "Xi Jinping loo ...

Look who's making friends from both sides of the aisle. Explains Tea Leaf Nation's David Weritime in the Atlantic: Xi Jinping, China's new leader, has recently embarked on a low-key barnstorming of China's entrepreneurial south. The mere fact of Xi's visit is exciting to Chinese liberals, echoing as it does the "Southern Tour" of reformist leader Deng Xiaoping in 1992, an early prelude to China's market lib ...

CPC top dog Xi Jinping wants to lead by example. "The style of officials, particularly top officials, has an important impact upon the style of the Party and the style of the government and even on the whole of society," according to a recently released statement. "Such a way of doing things must first start with the Standing Committee." Xi specifically targeted two areas in which the Party's excesses can b ...

We -- you, me, the world -- might see outgoing president Hu Jintao as a wan robot less charismatic than a cardboard box, but there was a time during this man's life when he was sprightly, good-humored, and jovial. Let this video -- of a speech he gave in 1984, in front of colorful balloons -- be proof. It was uploaded two months ago to Youku (embedded after the jump for those in China), uncovered on Twitter ...