Amid Taiwanese aspiration, Chinese rage, and regional concern over whether the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, would visit Taiwan, she arrived on 2 August. The most senior US official to travel to Taiwan in a decade and the first sitting speaker to do so in twenty-five years, her itinerary was … more
Louisa Lim, who was raised in Hong Kong, has covered China and Hong Kong many years as a journalist. A senior lecturer at the University of Melbourne, she is also the co-host of The Little Red Podcast. Her previous book, The People’s Republic of Amnesia: Tiananmen Revisited was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize. China Story … more
This autumn sees the return of every China watcher’s favorite ‘parlor game’. The Communist Party of China (CPC) will convene its 20th Party Congress, a quinquennial gathering of around 3000 Party representatives in Beijing for a week of meetings that will approve a report by General Secretary Xi Jinping 习近平, amend the Party’s constitution, and … more
The furore surrounding the chilling internet video of ‘Xiaohuamei’ 小花梅 or ‘Little Plum Blossom’, the chained woman of Jiangsu, had barely died down when a restaurant surveillance camera captured another disturbing vision of violent and misogynist behaviour that stunned the world and once again put China’s gender relations under the spotlight. It is 2:40 am … more
It is over fourteen years since I suggested to Kevin Rudd that he use the expression zhengyou 諍友 in a speech he was to give at Peking University (PKU) in April 2008. Zhengyou means a friend or an adviser who dares give voice to unpleasant truths, one who offers discomforting opinions and counsels caution. The … more
An interview with Paul Bevan, Anne Witchard, and Da Zheng on Chiang Yee and His Circle: Chinese Artistic and Intellectual Life in Britain, 1930–1950, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2022. Questions prepared by Ke Ren Q1. Chiang Yee and His Circle was inspired by a pair of events in Oxford in the summer of 2019: … more
Xi Jinping, the paramount leader of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), toured eastern Xinjiang on a four-day ‘investigative tour’ 考察调研 in mid-July — his first visit to the Uyghur Region since 2014. On the surface, the trip and its public messaging do not appear to differ much from visits by previous general secretaries of … more
In June 2022, the Chinese Ministry of Ecology and Environment and sixteen other government departments jointly released their ‘National Climate Change Adaptation Strategy’. The document outlined plans for the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to become a ‘climate-resilient society’ by 2035. It emphasised the need for adaptation and mitigation, namely, reducing emissions through new technologies … more
The People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) is increasingly making its presence felt regionally and globally. The China-Solomon Islands security pact signed in April 2022 opens the possibility for Chinese maritime security vessels to operate deep in the Pacific. In May, a Chinese surveillance ship was spotted in the Indian Ocean near the West Australian coast, … more
In September 2021, the Minister for Water Resources announced in a press release that under the Thirteenth Five-Year Plan (2016-2020), centralised water supply and tap water coverage in rural areas had risen from 82 percent and 76 percent respectively, to 88 percent and 83 percent in 2020. The long-standing predicament faced by rural residents in … more
