1. 6th Plenum: outcomes The 6th Plenum concluded on Thursday with a communiqué [Chinese | English] that held little surprises: Xi was lionised and history whitewashed. We put together a bilingual side-by-side version of the communiqué for those of you preferring to work with both languages: Click here to download the PDF The most significant … more
1. Sixth Plenum preview The Sixth Plenum is currently underway in Beijing and will run until Thursday. For background on plenums and how they fit into China’s political system, see our explainers (written | video) from last year. The outcome of this Plenum is important to both policies in China as well as Xi’s prospects … more
1. Hostage exchange Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor were finally released this week, after being arrested and detained in China for almost three years. The release of these two Canadians occurred at the same time as the release by Canada of Meng Wanzhou 孟晚舟, the CFO of Huawei and the daughter of Huawei’s founder. This … more
Beijing adopted a functionalist approach to the integration of Hong Kong and Macau with Mainland China, hoping that practical cooperation will foster trust and patriotism, and facilitate institutional integration. Our research, however, finds that Macau and its neighboring mainland city of Zhuhai did not make substantive progress towards integration under this approach. Beijing’s approach has, … more
1. Queer China The Chinese leadership is deeply conservative on certain social issues. When it comes to gender norms or “family values”, their stance resembles the Christian right in the West. In the past year, the government has tried to constrain gender expressions and eliminate gender diversity. I have noted previously the renewed push for … more
1. Regulating algorithms The Cyberspace Administration of China has been busy lately. After its recent work on Data Security Law and Personal Information Protection Law, it has released a draft regulation for consultation on “algorithm recommendations” 互联网信息服务算法推荐管理规定 [China Law Translate]. The draft includes the following provisions: Algorithms that make users addicted or spend large amount … more
In June 2015, the news of four siblings who committed suicide in Guizhou Province shocked China. The suicides exposed the hardship of the “left-behind” children — children who stayed behind in rural villages while their parents moved to the cities for work. My recent article in the journal Current Sociology argues that the problem is … more
Since the 1990s, the Chinese party-state has waged a “patriotic education” campaign to teach youth how to think and speak about the nation. In a recent article in The China Quarterly, I explored how young people across different social backgrounds have received these messages by conducting interviews and surveys among Han Chinese high school students … more
1. Celebrity and Nationalism Every now and then I turn my attention to celebrity news/gossip — sometimes they can be illuminating about popular trends, government attention, and the interaction between the two. After the Kris Wu sexual assault allegations, the next celebrity to experience huge controversy is Zhang Zhehan 张哲瀚. Zhang became popular after starring … more
The promotion of workplace trade union elections in Guangzhou in response to strike waves of 2010 was aimed at absorbing workers’ grievances and stabilizing industrial relations. However, it has generated new forms of worker militancy. Autoworkers have increased the representativeness of workplace trade unions by taking advantage of the elections. They have used the elected … more
