china
Development’s Debris: China’s Secret Battlefields
China’s cities are strewn with hidden rubble fields, vast apocalyptic landscapes that terminate abruptly at the thresholds of bustling neighborhoods. The skeletons of houses show what once existed there. Onlookers say it resembles the aftermath of a...
Corpse Brides, Forced Abortions, Infanticide, and Child Trafficking: The Modern-Day Consequences of China's One-Child Policy
China's one-child policy has created a long list of horrors that, besides child trafficking, includes infanticide, infant abandonment, and forced abortions, all used by families desperate to meet the set child quotas. Some sources estimate that 1...
Explaining China's National People's Congress
When it comes to political theater, nobody does it better than the Communist Party of China. Sure, they lack the production values of the United States and the method acting of North Korea, but the CPC more than makes up for it in scale and grandiosity.
China Is Engineering Genius Babies
It’s not exactly news that China is setting itself up as a new global superpower. While Western civilization chokes on its own gluttony like a latter-day Marlon Brando, China continues to buy up American debt and lock away the world’s natural resources...
The Strange Beauty of the Chinese Politician Who Threw a Tantrum at the Airport
In essence, this is just a video of a man having a nightmarish experience at an airport boarding desk. (He'd had a long breakfast and missed his first flight, then had not heard the call for the second flight, apparently.) But watched through the lens...
Face Shapes and Blood Types: Wading into the World of Online Dating in China
It was flattering but not altogether too surprising that within minutes of activating my profile, my inbox was flooded with messages. The first came from a 26-year-old, O-type, triangle-faced man named “Poisonsc…” But as I browsed through his profile...
In China, Tigers Are Being Farmed Like Chickens
Tigers are some of the biggest victims of the wildlife trade, with the rare cats' bones coveted for traditional medicine and their coats prized as rugs. In Vietnam, tiger parts are so valuable that they make better bribes than cash. And in China, they...
China's Self-Sustaining Man Is Cyberpunk in Real Life
He runs a custom electronics-manufacturing outfit from his living room, grows organic vegetables in his garden, and even raises chickens and pigeons on his roof. It’s the kind of self-sufficiency that would make an eco-freak blush and the...
Beijing’s Pollution Problem Is Becoming Hard to Ignore
It’s hard to describe the feeling of looking out the window and not being able to see buildings that you know are there through the smoke, or looking down a subway platform and seeing the other end obscured by a scrim of gray dust. It’s even harder to...
'Southern Weekly' and the Limits of Censorship in China
How a New Year's editorial in China's most liberal newspaper set off the Department of Propaganda, provoked many of the nation's journalists to strike, and laid bare the limits of China's control of the press.
'Breaking Bad' May As Well Be Set in China
The more I watch the show, the more I realize that it could easily be transplanted to the People's Republic and largely be the same thing. And possibly, even better.
Chinese Officials at It Again: More Scandal from the People's Republic
This December has been like an advent calendar of folly in China. Hardly a day has gone by without the details of some misguided impropriety coming to light. In its own way, this is good news.