Minxin Pei: China’s Surveillance State
China's surveillance capabilities are often presented as feats of futuristic technology. But its true advantage lies in human networks of informers and state workers.
All We Have to Fear
The Western world has held an outsized fear of Chinese power for centuries. But why? A new book argues that alarmism began in the late...
What is Xi Jinping Thinking?
China’s first paramount leader since Mao is, for all the ink spilled on him, a black box. But behind the speculation over his intent, Xi...
Ep. 4: How ‘Leftover Women’ Reshape China
Educated, unmarried Chinese women have been dubbed “leftovers” by the state, who want them to focus on having children. Their independence is transforming China’s demographics...
Ep. 3: How China’s Future Looked in the Past
A 20th century Chinese public intellectual fell for the socialist dream, only to become disillusioned. His biographer tells us the full story.
The Bones Remember
Three new books grapple with the suppressed histories of modern China, from the Cultural Revolution to the Covid pandemic. But for every state effort to...
Professor Pangloss Goes to Shandong
Daniel A. Bell has been proposing a Confucian, meritocratic alternative to liberal democracy for decades. In a new memoir, his optimism for the China model...
Yasheng Huang: Autocracy vs. Creativity
From its earliest imperial history, China's bureaucratic system and civil service exams have ensured homogeneity and control. But at what price?
Expulsion!
In early 2020, at the height of China’s early Covid epidemic, over a dozen American journalists were expelled from the nation. Where does that leave...
‘I’ve Been Liberated From a Cage’
Murong Xuecun, formerly one of the last dissident writers left in China, is now living in exile. How does a novelist get to the point...
A Spark Extinguished
At the height of the Great Famine in 1960, a group of students exiled to the countryside launched a magazine that dared to tell the...
Mao to Now
Communist China, once all but impenetrable, opened up only to tighten politically again. Has Xi circled back to the Mao era? And what can we...