This is a collection of interesting articles about modern China.
We used to climb over the great wall to know more about the West, but now, we do that to understand China better.
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I'm really impressed by how fast some journalists catch up with the latest trend on China's social media. I often get amused by their translation of new trends and slang pop up among the young generation. Tbh, that's what motivates me to read and share these articles.
I hope you enjoy reading these articles as much as I do.
Note: The articles are arranged according to their publishing date. Newly added stories will be marked with a special tag 🚀️ at the beginning of their titles.
Here we go~
- 🚀️ ‘Whichever Is Cheaper’: Inside China’s New Thrift Economy By Claire Fu and Daisuke Wakabayashi [2023/10/11]
Beijing hopes spending can spur growth, which has been dragged down by slowing real estate sales and exports. But shoppers are gravitating to discounts.
- Paul Krugman’s Economic Advice to China: ‘Live a Little’ By Paul Krugman [2023/09/06]
China has the problem that it has a regime that is, at a deep level, hypocritical. It preaches Marxism and equality and the coming Communist utopia and practices rapacious, highly unequal capitalism.
- Why Is China in So Much Trouble? By Paul Krugman [2023/08/31]
My sense is that much writing about China puts too much weight on recent events and policy. Yes, Xi Jinping is an erratic leader. But China’s economic problems have been building for a long time. And while Xi’s failure to address these problems adequately no doubt reflects his personal limitations, it also reflects some deep ideological biases within China’s ruling party.
- China’s Japanification By Robin Wigglesworth [2023/08/18]
Earlier this month, JPMorgan analysts Haibin Zhu, Grace Ng, Tingting Ge and Ji Yan published a fascinating deep-dive into the subject, which we have finally digested. The tl;dr is that JPMorgan’s economists see some spooky similarities between China today and Japan in the 1990s, but “enough differences to suggest the ‘balance sheet recession’ diagnosis, and policy recommendations that flow from it, is/are not correct”.
- Is China’s Data Manipulated, or Flawed? Maybe Both By Josh Zumbrun [2023/08/18]
Much of China’s economic data is unnaturally smooth, that is showing less of the period-to-period variation that the economy typically experiences. In the case of GDP, that smoothness sometimes came from reporting lower actual growth and higher inflation than truly occurred—not the outcome you would expect if manipulation were the only explanation.
- China Is Hiding More and More Data From the Rest of the World By Bloomberg News [2023/08/16]
As China’s economy battles a slew of threats to its economic expansion target for 2023, a wider range of data is being deemed unsuitable for public consumption. President Xi Jinping’s ideological battle with the US has also motivated Beijing to ringfence data it believes could advantage the Biden administration.
- China’s Top Brands Turn Cautious Over Economic Recovery By Bloomberg News with Jinshan Hong, Daniela Wei, Charlotte Yang, Irene Huang, Shirley Zhao, and Yujing Liu [2023/08/16]
“Spending behavior has changed, especially for the country’s younger population,” said Dickie Wong, director of research at Kingston Securities Ltd. “The country’s economic outlook is gloomy, many couldn’t find dream jobs after graduation, so why bother planning and saving to buy a house or a car? We see the trend of people more willing to spend on travel, go to hotpot, drink with friends and buy clothes — the sense that you only live once.”
- China’s Economic—and Social—Contract Is Fraying By Nathaniel Taplin [2023/08/15]
But perhaps the most compelling explanation is this: Households have suffered an enormous, and possibly permanent, loss of confidence in both their future income prospects and the safety and value of their main financial asset, housing. And in both cases, Beijing’s recent policies deserve much of the blame, which may be one reason economic data has suddenly become so sensitive.
- China Is Acting More Like a Scrooge Than a Champion of Socialism By Minxin Pei [2023/08/15]
The ruling Chinese Communist Party wants everyone to know that it is building “socialism with Chinese characteristics.” But based on its proven reluctance to spend on the Chinese people, even in circumstances that warrant short-term direct cash subsidies to consumers, the party looks more like a scrooge than a champion of socialism.
- Why Is China’s Economy Stumbling? By PAUL KRUGMAN [2023/08/10]
But you don’t have to study much history to be aware that autocratic regimes sometimes respond to domestic difficulties by trying to distract the population with foreign adventurism. I’m not saying that will happen. But realistically, China’s domestic problems make it more, not less, of a danger to global security.
- Investors Visiting China Find Officials Fearful of Upsetting Xi By Lucille Liu, Rebecca Choong Wilkins, Richard Henderson, Jing Li, Yujing Liu, and Colum Murphy [2023/08/09]
Accounts from more than a dozen people, some who asked not to be identified to speak freely, describe dinner invitations that were seen as potential ethics breaches and politely declined, silence around taboo topics such as deflation and bland party speak replacing the honest exchange of ideas. Once-familiar officials, they said, are now fearful of breaching newly broadened anti-espionage laws as President Xi Jinping grows more wary of the US and its allies.
- How America is failing to break up with China By the Economist [2023/08/08]
Ironically, then, the process driving America and China apart in trade and investment may actually be forging stronger financial and commercial connections between China and America’s allies.
- Bankers Forced to Study Xi’s Thoughts as Party Tightens Grip By John Liu [2023/08/08]
Even employees at global firms including BlackRock Inc., the world’s biggest fund manager, have been called in to attend lectures on the topic by regulators.The study sessions — viewed by some as time-consuming chores — underscore the growing role of ideology in China as Xi tries to increase the party’s influence over many aspects of local life, including a corporate sector that’s been chastened in recent years by a series of government crackdowns.
- Bankers Chasing Deals in China Turn to ‘Throwing Eggs’ Card Game By Alfred Cang and Chongjing Li [2023/08/07]
The game is the latest way to tap into or improve one’s guanxi, a term that describes the sometimes exclusionary social circles, influence connections and relationships that help grease the wheels of commerce everywhere. As in other countries, guanxi can pave the way for business deals in China — as well as serve as a source of corruption.
- The End of China’s Economic Miracle By Adam S. Posen [2023/08/02]
Economic development in authoritarian regimes tends to follow a predictable pattern: a period of growth as the regime allows politically compliant businesses to thrive, fed by public largess. But once the regime has secured support, it begins to intervene in the economy in increasingly arbitrary ways. Eventually, in the face of uncertainty and fear, households and small businesses start to prefer holding cash to illiquid investment; as a result, growth persistently declines.
- The Hunt for Best Bank Savings Rate in China May Require Trekking Hundreds of Miles By Bloomberg News With Allen K Wan, Amanda Wang, Zheng Li, and Qi Ding [2023/07/06]
Meticulous planning, in-depth research and long-distance travel — welcome to the “special forces-style” hunt for the best bank deposit rates in China.
- 🚀️ China’s Economic Stake in the Middle East: Its Thirst for Oil By Keith Bradsher [2023/10/11]
Beijing has tried hard to stay on friendly terms with the Islamic world even as China has cracked down on predominantly Muslim minorities in its far western region, Xinjiang. China has also tried to maintain relations with both Israel and Palestinians. “The only way China has been able to achieve that goal is to avoid getting deeply involved,” Ms. Glaser said. But whether China can maintain its distance from the Mideast’s troubles is less clear.
- 🚀️ China expert Matt Pottinger: ‘Even with a weak economy, Xi is feeling emboldened’ By Henry Mance [2023/10/09]
Pottinger’s best guess is that upheaval is a feature, not a bug, of Xi’s rule. In 11 years in power, the Chinese president has removed “six politburo members, 35 central committee members, 60 generals and the best estimate I’ve seen is that he’s purged around 3.5mn people in the party”. The latest turnover may be “a proactive set of moves designed to keep the party off balance in a way that deepens his primacy”.
- Xi's G20 snub marks shift from statesman to China 'emperor' By Bloomberg News [2023/09/04]
Back then, Xi stressed the importance of dialogue, telling US President Joe Biden it was a statesman’s responsibility to “get along with other countries.”
- How Xi Returned China to One-Man Rule By Weiyi Cai, Aaron Byrd, Chris Buckley and Pablo Robles [2023/09/02]
For decades, China built guardrails to prevent another Mao. Here’s how Xi Jinping has dismantled them and created his own machinery of power.
- When Tragedy Strikes in China, the Government Cracks Down on Grief By Li Yuan [2023/08/14]
In the view of the Chinese Communist Party, its rule should be celebrated no matter the circumstances. Victims of public tragedies are inconvenient facts highlighting that not everything under the party’s watch is glorious. Their deaths are testimony of its failure.
- Why You Should Worry About China’s Missing Minister By Michael Schuman [2023/08/09]
If the world’s best China experts can’t figure out what happened to one of the country’s most internationally recognizable officials, then imagine what else remains hidden behind the regime’s closed doors.
- China Emphasizes Absent Xi Has Been ‘Strong’ in Flood Response By John Liu [2023/08/08]
On Sunday, the state-owned tabloid Global Times criticized the coverage of the flooding by Western media outlets, describing reporting on grievances held by people in Hebei as “hype” that is “trying to sow discord between Chinese people and the government.”
- Xi Jinping’s revealing response to floods and heatwaves By The Economist [2023/08/04]
Alas, the party seems allergic to freewheeling grassroots debate about whether the climate is changing. To date, most public discussion about China’s year of extreme weather has been strikingly inward-looking. State-media outlets have dwelled on heroics by soldiers, officials and rescue teams. Netizens have complained about instances of official incompetence. Social-media users have asked whether storm warnings were given in time, or whether floodwaters were diverted away from Beijing towards less privileged places.
A provincial leader set off an outcry by urging cities to serve as a “moat” for the capital, as diverted floodwaters sent scores of residents fleeing.
- Xi’s Spent Two Days Outside China in 2023 as Problems Mount By John Liu and Jill Elaine Disis [2023/08/04]
Two days is all President Xi Jinping has spent outside his country this year, as mounting domestic problems from a faltering economy to rare political scandals demand the Chinese leader’s attention at home.
- China Official’s Call to Save Xi’s City. Angers Flood Victims. By John Liu, Jing Li, Colum Murphy, Zheng Wu, Jenni Marsh, and Charlie Zhu [2023/08/03]
Chinese flood victims in hard hit areas of northern China have taken aim at a key Communist Party official, saying he sacrificed their safety to protect President Xi Jinping’s flagship projects.
- Beijing can’t make North Korea ‘denuclearise’, Mr Blinken By Alex Lo [2023/07/24]
Muammar Gaddafi died with a bayonet stuck out of his rear end. Saddam Hussein was almost completely decapitated when he was hanged because his executioners didn’t do, or didn’t know how to do, the basic but essential maths that works out the ratio between the length of the rope and the weight of the condemned. It’s true what your old teacher told you about maths being useful in all kinds of situations and professions. Besides the commonality of their gruesome deaths, they also had something else in common: both gave up their nuclear weapons programme.
- A New Cold War Could Be Much Worse Than the One We Remember By Charles A. Kupchan [2023/06/03]
In contrast, today’s world is becoming more multipolar than bipolar; even if the globe is again afflicted by a new bout of East-West rivalry, many countries, including emerging heavyweights, will likely refuse to take sides.
- China to Its People: Spies Are Everywhere, Help Us Catch Them By Vivian Wang [2023/09/02]
As Beijing tries to enlist the “whole of society” to guard against foreign enemies, the line between vigilance and paranoia fades.
- How an amateur football league in China took off By the Economist [2023/08/24]
There are many reasons behind the popularity of the Rongjiang league, which is men only. Start with the state of professional football. Despite decades of investment by China’s leader and chief fan, Xi Jinping, the country’s players are not very good.
- A talking monkey is one of China’s most successful cultural exports By the Economist [2023/08/18]
With geopolitical tensions between China and America rising, even this beloved cultural icon is raising hackles. Netizens in China who watched the trailer complained that the cartoon creature looked too “Western” and criticised the film as yet another attempt to stereotype the “mysterious power of the East”. As a seventh-century monk must once have observed, there are always obstacles on a journey to the West.
- For Single Women in China, Owning a Home Is a New Form of Resistance By Joy Dong [2023/08/18]
“I want to prove to everyone that women are not limited to the only option of marriage. I could have many other choices,” Ms. Guo said.
- China tries to figure out whom a hit song is mocking By the Economist [2023/08/17]
“Luocha Haishi” is his comeback anthem, and many listeners interpret it as an attack on his critics (Dao Lang had more than a few). Some read his reference to a brothel as an allusion to the entertainment business. Other theories are more convoluted, such as that Dao Lang is attacking America. One version of this idea assumes the lyrics refer to Joe Biden, transgender officials and the Five Eyes intelligence alliance comprising America, Australia, Britain, Canada and New Zealand. It seems a little far-fetched.
- China’s defeated youth By the Economist [2023/08/17]
Disillusioned youngsters commonly express feelings of exhaustion and resignation. Some talk of “lying flat”, or dropping out of the rat race and abandoning material ambitions that do not seem attainable. The notion of “letting it rot” is even more nihilistic: it describes an attitude of self-indulgence.
- Why are China’s young people so disillusioned? By the Economist [2023/08/17]
The real question the party faces is more prosaic: not the threat of revolution, but a quiet rejection of its ambitions. In order to accomplish his goal of restoring China’s greatness, Mr Xi needs the young to get married, have children and reverse the country’s demographic decline. In order to refocus the economy on manufacturing and away from consumer-internet technology, he’d like them to study hard sciences, not dream of designing video games. And he wants more youngsters to work in factories, including the type that might produce weapons for China’s growing armed forces. “Endure hardships” and “eat bitterness”, Mr Xi tells the young. Many cannot see why they should.
- China: Combat Anti-Black Racism on Social Media By Human Rights Watch [2023/08/16]
The Chinese government should acknowledge and condemn anti-Black racism prevalent on the Chinese internet and adopt measures to promote tolerance and fight prejudice, Human Rights Watch said today. Chinese social media platforms, which are quick to delete content critical of the Chinese government, should remove racist content that violates their community standards on hate speech, or might incite racial discrimination or violence.
- Rock ’n’ Roll According to the Chinese Communist Party By Vivian Wang and Weiyi Cai [2023/08/13]
China’s government has long used censorship to control expression. But sometimes, instead of outright erasing a form or message it doesn’t like, it co-opts it instead, transforming it to spread what the government calls “positive energy.” (Beijing has also promoted patriotic hip-hop.)
- China has fallen into a psycho-political funk By James Kynge [2023/08/12]
As the revival in Soviet-style jokes hints at, China’s malaise is only partly economic. The deep context behind several of the impediments to growth is a strange hybrid of psychological and political factors — a sort of psycho-political funk.
- Why Chinese women are denied legal land rights By the Economist [2023/08/10]
The National People’s Congress is pondering changes to the law to improve the definition of village land rights and membership of rural collectives. Reformers see a chance to advance gender equality. Alas, appeasing majority opinion weighs heavily on officials whose greatest duty, arguably, is weiwen, or stability maintenance. The Communist Party came to power promising to emancipate women from feudalism. Now it co-opts ancestral clans and their patriarchal values. China’s rulers are obsessed with order, as an adjunct to power. And power is in the party’s blood.
- The End of Optimism in China By Michael Schuman [2023/06/29]
An online post by the Communist Party Youth League and state broadcaster CCTV used the fate of Kong Yiji to scold the young and jobless as arrogant and lazy. Kong failed “because he couldn’t let go of the airs of a scholar and was unwilling to change his situation through labor,” the post lectured. Xi—who has said he opposes the “idleness-breeding trap of welfarism”—has told his nation’s struggling youth to learn to “eat bitterness.”
- The Double Education of My Twins’ Chinese School By Peter Hessler [2023/06/26]
The President of China compared moral education to buttons on clothes. The girls’ buttons were wrong from the start, but they learned the more valuable lessons that two systems can impart.
- People in China are so worried about the economy they’re asking for divine intervention By Laura He [2023/06/09]
“No school-going, no hard-working, only incense-burning” has been a popular hashtag on social media since March, referring to a growing trend among young people in China who escape a pressure-cooker society by going to temples to pray for luck.
- Inside the Barbecue City That Is China’s Hottest Tourist Destination By Vivian Wang [2023/05/21]
Inside this Coachella for barbecue, visitors could pose with a mascot dressed like a meat skewer. They could watch a concert against an LED backdrop of radiating flames. They could eat from one of the hundreds of grills scattered across the grounds the size of 12 football fields — if they waited hours for a table, and if their chosen meat purveyor hadn’t run out of food.
- Hollywood is losing the battle for China By The Economist [2023/04/26]
To Western viewers, such pro-government stories may seem crude (although the makers of “Born to Fly” could point out that “Top Gun” was produced with the blessing of America’s navy). But their popularity suggests that the Communist Party’s propaganda organs are making an impact. Increasingly, home-grown cinema is shaping how a generation of Chinese people view their country and its place in the world.
- China’s Last Generation By Jacob Dreyer [2023/01/26]
The pandemic woke China’s young people up to the reality that their society is oriented to the values and priorities of the elderly, whose truths are very different from their own.
- Beijing's record rainfall - How heavy was the rain that inundated China's cities? By Jackie Gu, Sudev Kiyada, Adolfo Arranz, Jitesh Chowdhury, Han Huang, Vijdan Mohammad Kawoosa, David Stanway and Simon Scarr [2023/08/18]
“When you have a bunch of cities all trying to grow as quickly as possible, in as short a time as possible, it’s going to affect everything. The climate, the topology and the amount of rainfall,” he said. “What makes Chinese cities especially vulnerable is an issue of speed and scale, developing so broadly in so short a period.”
- Can the World Make an Electric Car Battery Without China? By Agnes Chang [2023/05/16]
It is one of the defining competitions of our age: The countries that can make batteries for electric cars will reap decades of economic and geopolitical advantages. Despite billions in Western investment, China is so far ahead — mining rare minerals, training engineers and building huge factories — that the rest of the world may take decades to catch up.
- Isabel Crook, Maoist English teacher who spent her life in China supporting the regime By Telegraph Obituaries [2023/08/25]
But David Mulroney, a former Canadian ambassador to China, was withering: “Not only is the example of Isabel Crook unlikely to inspire much more than compassion for her suffering on behalf of such an unworthy cause, but... we are also reminded that the Communist Party of China has a long history of capriciously locking up foreigners.
- Li Ziqi’s Online Pastoral Poetics By Oscar Schwartz [2023/08/04]
This was in 2016, a time when short-form online videos were becoming popular in China, and the so-called Wanghong economy—the influencer-to-online-commerce pipeline—was emerging as a major economic possibility for millennials. Young rural migrant workers, hoping to get noticed, made videos that exaggerated the consumptive excesses of city life. Li’s concept went in entirely the opposite direction, speaking to a growing subculture of those embracing Han neo-traditionalism as a solution to ever-westernizing Chinese cosmopolitanism.
- The Art of Telling Forbidden Stories in China By Han Zhang [2023/08/03]
After Hao submitted the manuscript to Hardie Grant Books, his Australian publisher, in spring 2021, his editors urged him to leave China out of concern for his safety. He equivocated. A few years in prison was a price he was willing to pay for the book’s publication.
- ‘If I left, I’d have to go without a word’: how I escaped China’s mass arrests By Tahir Hamut Izgil [2023/08/01]
Slowing down, I peered through my car window at the yard. About 100, or perhaps 200 Uyghurs stood there in silent uncertainty, while armed special police, clad in black, loaded them on to two buses parked in the courtyard. A few of the people boarding the buses looked longingly out of the yard. I felt a chill come over me. The mass arrests had reached Urumqi.
- For North Koreans in China, Seeking Freedom Is More Perilous Than Ever By Choe Sang-Hun [2023/07/09]
“I have been aiding North Koreans for 23 years,” Mr. Chun said. “I have never felt this sad and helpless.”“I have been aiding North Koreans for 23 years,” Mr. Chun said. “I have never felt this sad and helpless.”
- ‘Anti-American’ Chinese pundit faces backlash for attending Independence Day party at US Embassy in Beijing By Nectar Gan [2023/07/07]
“Sima Nan is not alone. He is the epitome of millions of Chinese who, after the policy of reform and opening up, adapted to an environment where profit-seeking has replaced faith. They talk about ideological doctrines but only care about doing business at heart.”
- China Took Her Husband. She Was Left to Uncover His Secret Cause. By Vivian Wang [2023/07/05]
He was brilliant, quirky and intensely private — and also, she now suspects, an anonymous dissident blogger who had won fame for years of evading the surveillance state.
- Chinese Zoo Denies, in Voice of a Bear, That Sun Bear Is a Person in a Suit By Alan Yuhas and Chang Che [2023/08/01]
The statement insisted that the bear was truly a bear, as opposed to a person pretending to be a bear — or a person pretending to be a bear insisting they were not a person pretending to be a bear.