China has escalated its war on international news media with stepped-up harassment of foreign journalists and blocking of foreign news websites. This has sparked renewed discord between the United States and China on issues of press freedom and media access but no concrete action as yet from the United States. China’s record on press freedom […]
Over the weekend of January 25-26, the Chinese government sentenced human rights activist Xu Zhiyong (许志永) to four years in prison and announced its charges against detained Uighur scholar Ilham Tohti (Uighur: ئىلھام توختى, Chinese: 伊力哈木土赫提). Xu was sentenced following a one-day show trial in which in which he wasn’t allowed to call defense witnesses […]
China has been on its very worst behavior this week. As prominent human rights activist Xu Zhiyong (许志永) went on trial January 22, Chinese police dragged protestors away from the scene and harassed foreign journalists attempting to report on the trial. Xu’s trial is the first in a series of trials for activists associated with […]
China is engaged in a soft-power war with America and the West. America may not have noticed this, but China has. While America takes its soft power around the world for granted, China struggles to win even the “hearts and minds” of its own citizens. “Soft power” is defined by Harvard political scientist Joseph Nye […]
Prominent Chinese legal scholar and human rights activist Xu Zhiyong (许志永) will go on trial January 22 on charges of disrupting public order. A founder of the pro-democracy New Citizens’ Movement (中国新公民运动) and an outspoken advocate of greater transparency in Chinese government, Xu has been detained since July 2013. Xu and his lawyers believe that […]
Prominent Uighur economics professor and dissident Ilham Tohti (Uighur: ئىلھام توختى, Chinese: 伊力哈木土赫提) was detained by police in Beijing on January 15, according to multiple reports. Also detained were at least six of Tohti’s students. Tohti’s family has not been informed of his whereabouts or the nature of the charges against him. The U.S. State […]
Western “cultural threats” will be among several types of “unconventional security threats” targeted by China’s new National Security Committee, according to an article by People’s Liberation Army (PLA) senior colonel Gong Fangbin (公方彬). Additional “threats” the committee will target include extremist groups, cybersecurity threats, and online dissent. The article follows a familiar recent pattern of […]
2014 began in Hong Kong with a New Year’s Day march for democracy that drew thousands into the streets in protest against Beijing’s efforts to limit democratic rights in the former British colony. Unless demands are met for universal suffrage and open nomination rights in Hong Kong elections, July 2014 is likely to see the […]
At first glance, Chinese tycoon Chen Guangbiao’s appearance in New York this week looked like little more than a Chinese soft-power effort gone terribly wrong. First came Chen’s ill-fated effort to buy the New York Times. Then came Chen’s bizarre press conference in New York featuring a patriotic singing performance by Chen, a brief foreign […]
Chinese recycling tycoon Chen Guangbiao recently made headlines when he announced his “plans” to buy the New York Times. I put “plans” in quotation marks because the newspaper’s owners had expressed neither knowledge of any such deals in the works nor interest in selling it to anyone, least of all to a nationalistic Chinese businessman […]
Since my previous post on this incident was submitted, a suspect has been arrested in the New Year’s Day arson attack on the Chinese consulate in San Francisco. The suspect, who turned himself in to authorities and made a full confession of guilt, is a Chinese national who claims to have set the fire because […]
An arson attack on the Chinese consulate-general in San Francisco has exacerbated tensions between China and the United States. The attack occurred the night of Jan. 1, when someone poured gasoline onto the front door of the consulate and set it ablaze. While the building sustained significant fire and smoke damage, there were no injuries, […]
Criticizing the conventional wisdom about the inevitability of China’s global ascendancy and American strategic decline is a regular preoccupation for this page. Indeed, a recent post took aim at the prevailing notion, subscribed to by a wide-ranging group that includes Barack Obama and Sarah Palin, that Beijing can translate its vast holdings of dollar-denominated assets into policy […]
The conventional wisdom about America’s global standing wants to have it both ways. The narrative about last month’s fiscal melodrama in Washington emphasizes how wildly dysfunctional domestic politics are quickening the country’s strategic decline and how China is emerging as the beneficiary. Yet at the same time the outrage over U.S. global surveillance efforts has […]
The unclassified version of the 2013 Annual Report to Congress on the Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China provides a glimpse of the military build-up and capabilities of China in the second decade of the 21st century: “The U.S. Department of Defense seeks to build a military-to-military relationship with China that is sustained and substantive, while encouraging China to cooperate […]