China Change » Government

Xi Jinping’s Abolition of the Term Limit Ruptures Assumptions of Party’s Adaptability and Stability

Mo Zhixu, February 27, 2018 On February 26, China’s official news agency Xinhua published the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee’s Proposed Amendments to China’s constitution (Chinese). The Party proposed revising the clause “The term of office of the Chairman (国家主席) and Vice-Chairman of the People’s Republic [...] Keep reading »

Under Neo-Totalitarianism, There Is No ‘Civil Society’ in China

Mo Zhixu, February 4, 2018 “Rather, reform has been used as a kind of calibrating tool for the system to retain complete control in the political, economic, social, and cultural spheres.” In 1981, Polish president Wojciech Jaruzelski ordered a crackdown on the growing Solidarity movement. Eight years later, under pressure [...] Keep reading »

The Thinking of the System vs. The Thinking of Individuals Within the System

Sun Liping, January 21, 2018 This essay was published when I first launched a public WeChat column. Now, I’ve made some revisions, and am publishing it again as follows. I’m doing this because people have a hard time comprehending a few recent events because they were incredibly unreasonable. It’s hard to understand why people, who are [...] Keep reading »

Do ‘We,’ the World’s Political Parties, Know That ‘We’ Have Issued an Initiative Extolling the CCP’s Global Leadership for a Better World?

Hu Ping, December 5, 2017 The World’s Political Parties Dialogue held by the Communist Party of China in Beijing closed on December 3, 2017. According to the Global Times, representatives who attended the meeting include Burmese leader and State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi, President of the Cambodian People’s Party and Prime Minist [...] Keep reading »

Beijing Refugees and the New Displaced Class

Wu Qiang, December 3, 2017 On November 18, a fire killed 19 people in Jiugong township, in the Daxing District of Beijing. A few days later, the city government launched a mass clearance operation of “low-end people” around the city’s suburban belt. Within a week, probably more than 200,000 of the “migrant low-end population l [...] Keep reading »

Twenty-Eight Years After – An Interview With Wang Dan

October 25, 2017 Yaxue Cao sat down with Wang Dan (王丹) on September 27 and talked about his past 28 years since 1989: the 1990s, Harvard, teaching in Taiwan, China’s younger generation, his idea for a think tank, his books, assessment of current China, Liu Xiaobo, and the New School for Democracy. –– The Editors Wang Dan. Photo: China [...] Keep reading »

Notes From Prison (Part Two of Two)

Meng Han, October 11, 2017 Continued from Part One Governmental Dysfunction and NGO Work In our time of great changes, the term “NGO”—when applied to our Service Center—inevitably has some political connotation. NGO workers have nothing to do with any criminal activities, but have everything to do with governmental dysf [...] Keep reading »

Notes From Prison (Part One of Two)

Meng Han, October 10, 2017 On December 3, 2015, Guangdong police raided a series of labor NGOs in the Pearl River Delta area, detaining several NGO leaders and activists. Among them was Meng Han (孟晗), a then 50-year-old experienced labor activist and an intern at Panyu Migrant Worker Service Center in Guangzhou. Meng Han had served nine [...] Keep reading »

China Pushes ‘Human Rights With Chinese Characteristics’ at the UN

Andrea Worden, October 9, 2017 In January 2017, after his success at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Xi Jinping traveled to Geneva to deliver a rare, invitation-only speech at the UN’s Palais des Nations. Most of the top UN officials were present, and Secretary- General António Guterres gave opening remarks that fai [...] Keep reading »