China's Next Act
Susan Jakes & Scott Moore
While discussions of U.S.-China relations tend to revolve around trade and national security, more focus ought to be given to issues of environmental sustainability, including health, and to emerging technology, argues the University of Pennsylvania...
Could China's Very Hot Summer Revive Action on Climate Change?
Ilaria Mazzocco, Lauri Myllyvirta & more
For more than two months, China—along with the rest of the globe—has been struggling with extreme heat and severe droughts. Hundreds of cities are facing temperatures in the 90s and higher, and Beijing last month issued its first nationwide drought...
For Your Weekend, August 5, 2022
Thanks to our colleagues at Asia Society's Center on U.S.-China Relations, we are reading this excellent investigation into the effects Chinese iron mining in Guinea, by Bloomberg's Sheridan Prasso and featuring the work of our old friend,...
When Will China Get off Coal?
Lauri Myllyvirta, Alex Wang & more
As China looks to meet its energy demands, there has been a rush for coal, with prices hitting record highs in October. Despite pledges by Beijing to pull back from fossil fuels, the power crisis has exposed shortfalls in the country's ability to...
How Should the U.S. Approach Climate Diplomacy with China?
Isabel Hilton, Scott Moore & more
As China continues to emerge as a superpower and move forward with its colossal Belt and Road Initiative amid the climate crisis, American climate engagement with China is more critical than ever. What would an effective climate diplomacy for the U...
Europe and China's 'Virtual Summit'
Noah Barkin, Dan Baer & more
Meeting via video conference on Monday, China's leader, Xi Jinping, held a summit with European Council President Charles Michel, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Slimmed down in format thanks to the...
What Are the Right and the Wrong Ways for the U.S. to Support Taiwan?
Daniel R. Russel, Yu-Jie Chen & more
What are the right and wrong ways for the U.S. to support Taiwan? Traditionally, America's goals have been to deter the mainland from aggression and coercion, support Taiwan's democratic system, strengthen economic ties, and help it maintain...
China's New Deserts
Ian Teh
From Madoi county, a settlement near the headwaters of the Yellow River, our two-car convoy headed out to visit a desert Yang Yong had first viewed through binoculars in 1997. From the roadside, the geologist had seen a small, wind-blown patch of...
'Nowhere to Dock'
Ye Ming, Yan Cong & more from Yuanjin Photo
In 2019, Depth of Field showcased stories covering a range of topics: Shi Yangkun's nostaglic exploration of China's last collective villages, Zhu Lingyu's careful and artisitic portrayal of survivors of sexual violence, and cities seen through the...
Living by the Rivers
If the stories in this edition of Depth of Field share a common thread—apart from their distinguished photographic storytelling—it's their interest in the flux and churn of life in China in 2019, where nothing seems fixed and pressure of constant...
China is Upping Its Aid and Development Game. How Should the U.S. Respond?
Deborah Bräutigam, Mark Akpaninyie & more
During his September 2018 U.N. address, President Donald Trump threatened that the United States may decide to only give foreign aid to "those who respect us and, frankly, are our friends." In August, the White House attempted to cut foreign aid...
Cut Chives
Muyi Xiao
2018 gave us many opportunities to look back at China's past—the tenth anniversary of Sichuan earthquake and of the Beijing Olympics, the 40th year since the country began its policy of Reform and Opening. This year also brought changes that thrust...
Reform or Ruin: Chinese Cities on the Edge
Li Junhui & Stephen Garrett
China's rapid industrialization has both led to, and been driven by, resource cultivation and extraction of breathtaking scope. But what happens when the resources run out?For many Chinese cities, local natural resources are a wellspring of jobs,...
The Anti-Corruption Campaign Takes on the War on Pollution
Julia Bowie
At last year's 19th Party Congress, Xi Jinping vowed to confront the "principal contradiction" facing Chinese society: "the contradiction between unbalanced and inadequate development and the people's ever-growing needs for a better life." While the...
Visualizing China's Anti-Corruption Campaign
"Catching Tigers and Flies" is ChinaFile's interactive tool for tracking and, we hope, better understanding the massive campaign against corruption that Xi Jinping launched shortly after he came to power in late 2012. It is designed to give users a sense of the scope and character of the anti-corruption campaign by graphically rendering information about more than 2,000 of its targets whose cases have been publicly announced in official Chinese sources.
Poisonous Pandas
Matthew Kohrman, Gan Quan, Liu Wennan, Robert N. Proctor
Stanford University Press: A favorite icon for cigarette manufacturers across China since the mid-20th century has been the panda, with factories from Shanghai to Sichuan using cuddly cliché to market tobacco products. The proliferation of panda-branded cigarettes coincides with profound, yet poorly appreciated, shifts in the worldwide tobacco trade. Over the last 50 years, transnational tobacco companies and their allies have fueled a tripling of the world's annual consumption of cigarettes. At the forefront is the China National Tobacco Corporation, now producing 40 percent of cigarettes sold globally. What's enabled the manufacturing of cigarettes in China to flourish since the time of Mao and to prosper even amidst public health condemnation of smoking?In Poisonous Pandas, an interdisciplinary group of scholars comes together to tell that story. They offer novel portraits of people within the Chinese polity―government leaders, scientists, tax officials, artists, museum curators, and soldiers―who have experimentally revamped the country's pre-Communist cigarette supply chain and fitfully expanded its political, economic, and cultural influence. These portraits cut against the grain of what contemporary tobacco-control experts typically study, opening a vital new window on tobacco―the single largest cause of preventable death worldwide today.{chop}Related Reading:"In China, Industry Push-Back Stubs out Anti-Smoking Gains," Christian Shepherd, Reuters, May 31, 2018"China's Ministry in Charge of Tobacco Control Had Ties to the Tobacco Industry. Not Anymore," Sidney Leng, South China Morning Post, March 15, 2018"The End of China's 'Ashtray Diplomacy'," Heather Timmons and Quartz, The Atlantic, December 30, 2013"The Political Mapping of China's Tobacco Industry and Anti-Smoking Campaign," Cheng Li, Brookings, May 30, 2012Author's Recommendations:Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor, Rob Nixon (Harvard University Press, 2013)Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable?, Judith Butler (Verso; Reprint edition 2010)Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, Giorgio Agamben, Translated by Daniel Heller-Roazen (Stanford University Press, 1998)
We're a Long Way from 2008
Kate Merkel-Hess, Maura Cunningham & more
On August 8, 2008, China's then Chairman Hu Jintao told a group of world leaders visiting Beijing to attend the Olympics that "the historic moment we have long awaited is arriving." Indeed, awarding the Games to China in 2001 sparked a fierce debate...
How Taming the Mekong Could Give China Unprecedented Power
Jason Koutsoukis
The deadly collapse of one of the dozen or so dams dotted along the Mekong River and its tributaries has highlighted the rapid development of a waterway that is increasingly important strategically for China and its neighbors.
China's Gas Tariffs Are a Permian-Size Problem for Oil
Liam Denning
The latest bit of America's energy sector to feel the over-the-shoulder lash is the liquefied natural gas-export business. On Friday, LNG joined the list of goods that China will hit with tariffs in retaliation for U.S. ones. This...
Staying on Point in Rural China
In this edition of Depth of Field: aspiring ballerinas, what's beneath the gilt in a rich Zhejiang town, worn out doctors, disappearing schools, melting snow, data farms, and the powerful appeal of dancing outdoors.
The Third Revolution
Elizabeth C. Economy
Oxford University Press: In The Third Revolution, eminent China scholar Elizabeth C. Economy provides an incisive look at the transformative changes underway in China today. Chinese leader Xi Jinping has unleashed a powerful set of political and economic reforms: the centralization of power under Xi, himself; the expansion of the Communist Party's role in Chinese political, social, and economic life; and the construction of a virtual wall of regulations to control more closely the exchange of ideas and capital between China and the outside world. Beyond its borders, Beijing has recast itself as a great power, seeking to reclaim its past glory and to create a system of international norms that better serves its more ambitious geostrategic objectives. In so doing, the Chinese leadership is reversing the trends toward greater political and economic opening, as well as the low-profile foreign policy, that had been put in motion by Deng Xiaoping's "Second Revolution" 30 years earlier.Through a wide-ranging exploration of Xi Jinping's top political, economic, and foreign policy priorities—fighting corruption, managing the Internet, reforming the state-owned enterprise sector, improving the country's innovation capacity, enhancing air quality, and elevating China's presence on the global stage—Economy identifies the tensions, shortcomings, and successes of Xi's reform efforts over the course of his first five years in office. She also assesses their implications for the rest of the world, and provides recommendations for how the United States and others should navigate their relationship with this vast nation in the coming years.{chop}
China Gave Trump a List of Crazy Demands, and He Caved to One of Them
Josh Rogin
China's list of economic and trade demands that suggest its negotiating position.
Another Problem with China's Coal: Mercury in Rice
Noelle Eckley Selin and Sae Yun Kwon
Mercury enters rice through local industrial activities and through burning coal.
China Is Fueling a New 'Resource Curse' — and Riots around the World
Renard Sexton
During the past 15 years, China's demand for primary commodities has triggered a dramatic increase in natural resource extraction in the developing world.
China Refuses to Recycle More of the World's Trash
For decades, other countries shipped containers full of scrap and waste to China for recycling. 
How Clean Indoor Air Is Becoming China's Latest Luxury Must-Have
Helen Roxburgh
One luxury hotel in Shanghai is attracting guests with clean filtered air.
China Needs More Water. So It's Building a Rain-Making Network Three Times the Size of Spain
China tests weather modification system to bring more rain to Tibet.
How China's Government Has Changed after the NPC
A stronger military and more power to fight corruption are among the major changes revealed at China's National People's Congress (NPC) this year.
China and the Philippines Will Work Together to Tap the South China Sea's Vast Oil Deposits
Ralph Jennings
China needs fuel to grow the world's second-largest economy by 6.5% this year as established this week at annual legislative sessions.
China Tests Giant Air Cleaner to Combat Smog
David Cyranoski
A 60-metre-high chimney stands among a sea of high-rise buildings in one of China's most polluted cities.
China's Caves Are Hiding Plants That Exist Nowhere Else in the World
At first glance, a cave doesn't seem the likeliest home for exotically lush flora. It's dark, damp and dingy, more likely to host sparkly stalagmites than bristly bushes.
When You Give a Kid a Camera
This dispatch of photojournalism from China cuts across a broad spectrum of society, from film screenings in Beijing for the visually impaired to an acrobatics school 200 miles south, in Puyang, Henan province, and from children in rural Sichuan to...
Small Earthquake Rattles China's Capital, Beijing
A 4.3 magnitude quake centered just south of Beijing in the neighboring province of Hebei.
Carbon Monoxide Poisoning Kills More Than 100 in China This Year
Gas poisonings in southern China have left at least 104 people dead and hundreds hospitalized.
Chinese Civil Society in 2018: What's Ahead?
Wang Yongmei, Anthony Saich & more
The impetus for this event is it's about a year since the new Foreign NGO Law was implemented in China. There was also another law implemented in 2016, the Charity Law, that governs how domestic NGOs function in China. But there's a lot more going...
Should Pacific Island Nations Be Wary of Chinese Influence?
Jenny Hayward-Jones, Graeme Smith & more
British Prime Minister Theresa May's three-day visit to China, from January 31 to February 2, has amplified ongoing debates in Europe about the costs and benefits of engagement with China and of Chinese investment. Attention to China's role in...
China Moves to Protect Coastal Wetlands Used by Migratory Birds
Erik Stokstad
China has armored its coastline over the past several decades, building sea walls and turning more than half of its marine wetlands into solid ground for development.
Hong Kong Drowning in Waste as China Rubbish Ban Takes Toll
Farah Master
Hong Kong boasts glittering skyscrapers, seamless transportation and billion dollar infrastructure projects, but it is struggling with a much more mundane problem: disposing of its trash.
China to Develop Arctic Shipping Routes Opened by Global Warming
China has announced plans to develop shipping lanes through the Arctic to become a "Polar Silk Route".
Did Trump Just Start a Trade War with China?
President Trump's decision Monday to slap tariffs on imports of solar panels and washing machines risks inflaming tensions with China and other big U.S. trade partners.
Are China's Blue Skies Here to Stay?
Li Shuo, Angel Hsu & more
In mid-January, the environmental group Greenpeace announced dramatic improvements in air quality across China. In 74 Chinese cities, measurements of PM2.5, the fine particles that have been a major contributor to the country's choked skies,...
Oil Spill off China Coast Now the Size of Paris
An oil spill from an Iranian oil tanker that sank in the East China Sea is now the size of Paris.
Huge Oil Spill Spreads in East China Sea, Stirring Environmental Fears
Gerry Mullany
Greenpeace said the disaster occurred in "an important spawning ground" for fish.
A Blue Sky in Beijing? It's Not a Fluke, Says Greenpeace
Winters in Beijing have long been choked by thick, dusty, toxic smog. But this winter, the sky has taken on a once seemingly unthinkable hue: blue.
China Is Winning Its War on Air Pollution, at Least in Beijing
China is seeing signs of success in its fight against smog as pollution levels slump dramatically in the capital region Beijing.
East China Sea Oil Tanker Burns for Third Day as Winds, High Waves Lash Rescuers
Josephine Mason, Yuna Park
The poor conditions, with rain and waves as high as 3 meters (10 feet), frustrated efforts to tame the fire and search for the 31 remaining tanker crew members, China's Ministry of Transport said in a statement on Tuesday.
A Picture of China in 2017
"When I look back at 2017 in China, I see faces," ChinaFile Visuals Editor Muyi Xiao says. "Some are ambitious, some are earnest, some are upset, some are lost, and some wear expressions I can't put in words; their fates are intertwined with that of...
China Unveils an Ambitious Plan to Curb Climate Change Emissions
Keith Bradsher and Lisa Friedman
China released plans on Tuesday to start a giant market to trade credits for the right to emit planet-warming greenhouse gases. The nationwide market would initially cover only China's vast, state-dominated power generation sector, which produced...
The China-India Row That Spells Disaster for Flood Victims
Navin Singh Khadka
Fear of flooding has been growing in the Indian state of Assam ever since upstream China stopped sharing river data crucial for issuing early warnings.
China Plans to Kill Local Subsidies for Electric Cars
The Ministry of Finance is working on a plan that would mandate authorities to phase out the incentives to discourage protectionism and help rein in state expenditure, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be identified discussing...
Can Environmental Lawsuits in China Succeed?
Stanley Lubman
Air and water pollution are rising in China, and so is the number of lawsuits against polluters. Access to the courts is growing: Chinese prosecutors and some NGOs have been empowered to sue polluters, and activist lawyers increasingly participate...
Need Stretchy Pants? China's Energy Squeeze May Mean Higher Prices
Keith Bradsher
Homes, businesses and even hospitals across northern China are running short of natural gas. Some schoolchildren are shivering. And in the chemical industry — well, the spandex supply is getting tight.
Rich Countries Are Reducing Their Emissions—by Exporting Them to China
Historical greenhouse-gas emissions data make clear that much of the burden of climate change lies with rich countries. The US, the UK, Germany, and others built their economies burning fossil fuels without thinking about the consequences.
Apple in China: WTF?
Samuel Wade, Shaun Rein & more
In November, the non-profit watchdog Freedom House called China "the worst abuser of Internet freedom" of the 65 countries it surveyed. And yet, on December 3, Apple CEO Tim Cook keynoted China's annual World Internet Conference. "The theme of this...
China Will Lead an Electric Car Future, Ford's Chairman Says
The world's automakers are just starting to bet on an electric car future — and already, one of the most powerful people in the industry says that future belongs to China.
China Province near North Korea Warns about the Dangers of Nuclear War
A provincial state newspaper on China's border with North Korea spooked a few people Wednesday by dedicating an entire page to advice for local residents on how they might survive a nuclear war.
China's Drive for Cleaner Energy Is Causing a Gas Shortage for Winter
Huileng Tan
China's push to clean up its environment may have had an unintended consequence: a shortage of heating fuel supply is hitting some regions in the dead of winter, sending prices of domestic liquefied natural gas (LNG) to a three-year high.
China on pace for Record Solar-Power Installations
China, the world's biggest carbon emitter, is poised to install a record amount of solar-power capacity this year, prompting researchers to boost forecasts as much as 80 percent.
Why China Wants to Lead on Climate, but Clings to Coal (for Now)
Somini Sengupta
Barely a month ago, in a landmark speech to the Communist Party Congress, President Xi Jinping of China promised that his country would take a "driving seat in international cooperation to respond to climate change."
China Recovery Pushes Greenhouse Emissions to Global Record
Tobias Buck and Lucy Hornby
Stronger Chinese economic growth will push global greenhouse gas emissions to a record high in 2017 after remaining flat for three years, dashing tentative hopes of a turning point in the world's efforts to curb climate change.