In the near future I’m hoping to expand the number of guest posts and book review/suggestions on this blog to try to help you find more China related content. My reason for this is that China is a huge country, and so we need more voices to get all of the stories. This weekend I received a short story called “Six-Peace Restaurant” [...] Keep reading »

For my non-American readers please excuse this burst of patriotism, as it is Independence day Today I wanted to share a few of the aspects of American life I enjoy more after living in China for four years. Freedom to Report In China there is a special vocabulary that has evolved out of the need to define events that have never happened before. Wor [...] Keep reading »

As many of you probably noticed, in the run up to the Party’s 90th anniversary China went a little Red Culture crazy (like in these photos). A lot has been made of the Red Song “phenomenon” (Red Songs were written for propaganda purposes in the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s and include such hits as “Without the Chine [...] Keep reading »

Yesterday we looked at some of the key changes Mao made in China during his rule that can be linked to China’s current success. Today we’ll be looking at some of his devastating policies, and how they are explained away in China. At one point in my life, when I thought communism was a sensible model, I thought Mao had simply been unawar [...] Keep reading »

For the past few days we’ve been exploring a few of the myths the Party sees as central to their rule (here and here). Today and tomorrow we’ll be taking on the the most controversial one, that Chairman Mao was 70% right and 30% wrong. If you haven’t lived in China, you are probably wondering how anyone ever came up with such a pr [...] Keep reading »

Yesterday we looked at two of the Party’s central myths concerning China’s role in the world, today I want to look at two more myths that might not be working in the way the Party meant. The important thing to note here with the word “myth” is that I don’t mean to judge these definitively as lies (that’s up to yo [...] Keep reading »

This is a question I have been struggling with these past few months. I don’t mean to say that China’s economy is headed for a bust (although many are afraid it is), but will the rest of the world ever like China as much as it did during the Beijing Olympics? It was a moment when China’s human rights issues seemed to be improving, [...] Keep reading »

It’s very tempting at this moment to celebrate the release of Ai Weiwei, but the current situation is a painful reminder of just how far China has left to go before it actually respects Human Rights. The lead story today is that Ai Weiwei was released from prison on bail after confessing to his economic crimes (tax evasion). He has agreed to [...] Keep reading »

Yesterday I noted that things seem to be improving for China’s physically disabled, unfortunately I’m not so optimistic about the situation for China’s mentally disabled. Generally speaking there are few opportunities for such people, both in terms of education and employment. Children who are severely disabled are often kept in t [...] Keep reading »