Neican: 20 September 2020

China Neican is a weekly column on the China Story blog edited by Yun Jiang and Adam Ni from the China Policy Centre in Canberra. You can find past issues of Neican here. 1. Party leadership A revealing document On Tuesday, the CCP issued a document titled Opinion on strengthening the united front work of … more

COVID-19 prompts China to plug gap in its Africa health policy

Experts have long warned that bilateral and national-level healthcare approaches to addressing global health pandemics may be ineffective, due to weaknesses in disease detection and prevention systems, and poor coordination in effective disease control and prevention strategies. The COVID-19 outbreak has exposed these weaknesses in developed and developing countries alike. China’s announcement in August of … more

No one wins in a race to the bottom on national security: Let the Chinese academics back in

Secret raids on four Chinese journalists and the effective exiling of two Chinese academics from Australia mark a new low in the state of Australia-China relations. They also take us across a dangerous threshold in the use of national security provisions to exclude non-citizens from this country. Far from upholding liberal values, heightened sensitivity towards … more

Neican: 13 September 2020

China Neican is a weekly column on the China Story blog written by Yun Jiang and Adam Ni from the China Policy Centre in Canberra. Neican 内参 or “internal reference” are limited circulation reports only for the eyes of high-ranking officials in China, dealing with topics deemed too sensitive for public consumption. But rest assured, … more

Neican: 6 September 2020

China Neican is a weekly column on the China Story blog written by Yun Jiang and Adam Ni from the China Policy Centre in Canberra. Neican 内参 or “internal reference” are limited circulation reports only for the eyes of high-ranking officials in China, dealing with topics deemed too sensitive for public consumption. But rest assured, … more

China sours on Australia’s wine

Why might Beijing have chosen to use anti-dumping and anti-subsidy investigations as informal economic sanctions? On Monday this week, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce announced it has commenced an investigation into whether Australia has been subsidising winemakers. This follows a parallel investigation launched two weeks ago to examine allegations that Australian winemakers have also been “dumping” their … more

The everyday ethnic politics of Han-Hui relations in the Xi Jinping era

The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) legitimating narrative emphasises the party’s role as the guardian of China’s social stability. During the Xi Jinping era, the party’s successful management of harmonious ethnic politics comprises an increasingly large and crucial element of this narrative. The CCP’s rhetoric on ethnic politics stresses the unity and equality of all of … more

Neican: 30 August 2020

China Neican is a weekly column on the China Story blog written by Yun Jiang and Adam Ni from the China Policy Centre in Canberra. Neican 内参 or “internal reference” are limited circulation reports only for the eyes of high-ranking officials in China, dealing with topics deemed too sensitive for public consumption. But rest assured, … more

Cracking Open the ‘Party-State’

For a long time in China studies we’ve talked about the ‘Party-state.’ There’s a good reason for that: China has one ruling party, which is so influential that to speak of a ‘state’ but not of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) seems like an omission of the glaringly obvious. The problem is that conflating the … more

Hong Kong’s Free Press and the CCP’s Rise to Power

Ever since Beijing’s imposition of a new national security law in Hong Kong earlier this summer, the city’s freedom of press has come under threat. On August 10, Jimmy Lai, founder of the popular newspaper Apple Daily and a prominent critic of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), was arrested on suspicion of “colluding with foreign … more