China Change » Analyses and Opinions

The Death and Life of Middle Class Politics in China

– Observing Recent Events, Especially the Death of Lei Yang By Wu Qiang, June 13, 2016 As public contention surrounding the death of Lei Yang’s continues to grow, something new is developing in China’s political scene: the middle class is speaking out and asserting its own demands, even as the rights defense movement continues to s [...] Keep reading »

Making the Case for Nominating Ilham Tohti for the Sakharov Prize – My Remarks at the European Parliament

Yaxue Cao, May 31, 2016 On May 25, a conference titled “Does China Want Real Ethnic Harmony? Professor Ilham Tohti in Perspective” was held in the European Parliament in Brussels. It was sponsored by MEP Ilhan Kyuchyuk of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe; MEP Barbara Lochbihler, with the Greens/European Free Alliance and the vi [...] Keep reading »

A Young Political Prisoner in the Grand Picture of US-China Diplomacy in the Wake of June 4th Massacre

By Yaxue Cao, May 11, 2016 Former Chinese Foreign Minister Qian Qichen (钱其琛) wrote a memoir titled Ten Episodes in China’s Diplomacy soon after retiring in 2003. With sweeping promotion by the Party’s propaganda apparatus that directs much of the state media, it became a bestseller. One of the ten episode deals with the Chin [...] Keep reading »

The Southern Street Movement: China’s Lonely Warriors

By Mo Zhixu, April 13, 2016 “When the Southern activists stood amidst heavy traffic and photographed themselves holding placards of protest, the feeling it gives is a little surreal….” On April 8, 2016, after a year and half in detention, two activists arrested in 2014 for holding banners on the streets of Guangzhou in supp [...] Keep reading »

China’s Future: Unstable and Unsettled

By Mo Zhixu, published: April 6, 2016 Authoritarian resilience has always been an illusion. On March 6, 2015, the Wall Street Journal published a piece by George Washington University Professor David L. Shambaugh entitled “The Coming Chinese Crackup.” In it, he pointed to five indications that China’s political system is [...] Keep reading »

#LoveTwitter, a Special Place Like No Other for Mainland Chinese Netizens

China Change, March 24, 2016. In no particular order and with a couple of exceptions, we sample Chinese netizens’ thoughts on March 21, 2016, Twitter’s 10th anniversary. We don’t know who else will be touched by this, but we certainly are. – The Editors 乌鸦哥哥 ‏@wuyagege : Twitter is like a small cafe that never closes. Peo [...] Keep reading »

Miner Protests in the Northeast and the End of China’s Economic Boom

By Wu Qiang, March 17, 2015 As photos of the protests by Shuangyashan miners make the rounds on social media, we are witnessing a crucial turning point in China’s history: the beginning of a long depression, of the type predicted to take place in cycles by Russian economist Nikolai Kondratiev. After 25 years of continual growth beginning i [...] Keep reading »

Six Months On, An Assessment of the July 9 Arrest of Lawyers in China

By Ji Dunhuang, published: January 28, 2016 A summary of the situation After six months of “residential surveillance at a designated place” (in reality forced disappearance), the vast majority of the human rights lawyers and other activists who lost their freedom in the “July 9 incident” [16 in all] have been formally arrested by the [...] Keep reading »

The ‘1992 Consensus’: Rather Than Asking Tsai Ing-wen, Ask Xi Jinping Instead

By Hu Ping, published: January 24, 2016 The “1992 consensus,” the outcome of a meeting between representatives of the Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), refers to the putative agreement that there is only “one China,” but that each side is able to interpret the meaning of that one China differently. For the KMT, [...] Keep reading »