JANE GOLLEY considers the arguments over whether China can sustain high economic growth. In early 2015, China’s Premier Li Keqiang lowered the official growth rate to around 7 per cent—its lowest target in 11 years, and one that is being touted as the new normal rate of growth, in contrast with the heady double-digit levels […]
China’s growth prospects: ‘Sinophoria’ or imminent collapse? Read More »
JANE GOLLEY examines the implications of China’s gender imbalance for the Chinese and global economies—and comes up with some reassuring findings. In 2013, China recorded an official sex ratio at birth (SRB) of 117.6 boys for every 100 girls, making it the most gender imbalanced country in the world, a rank it has held since
Questions of balance Read More »
The veil has emerged as a key battleground in the Chinese government’s struggle to regain stability in the far-western region of Xinjiang, write TIMOTHY GROSE and JAMES LEIBOLD. In February, regional authorities outlawed Islamic veils from all public spaces in the regional capital of China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR). The Urumqi ban, which went
Why China is banning Islamic veils—and why it won’t work Read More »
With his appeals to China’s sense of national greatness, Xi Jinping seems to be following in the footsteps of Mao. KERRY BROWN reports. Meeting Chinese leaders, either at provincial or national level, is always a dramatic occasion for visitors. Governors or Party secretaries of provinces, or members of the Politburo or ministries in Beijing, receive
Xi stakes out the moral high ground Read More »
Members of the privileged families of the party–state are escaping China’s current anti-corruption campaign, writes GEREMIE R. BARME. Tyger! Tyger! burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry? —William Blake By September 2014, some 48 high-level Chinese Communist Party cadres, military officials and party–state bureaucrats—that
A fearful symmetry Read More »
The diaries of people who lived through the Cultural Revolution may show the ‘10-year catastrophe’ in a new light, writes SHAN WINDSCRIPT. When I first told my mother about my research project she looked somewhat bemused and then asked, ‘But what good are those diaries?’ Like millions of other Chinese people, she had been an
An unofficial history of China’s Cultural Revolution Read More »
