George Ding
Sympathy for the Beijing Airport Bomber
Years after Dongguan police beat Ji Zhongxing and left him paralyzed, he went to the Beijing Capital International Airport to hand out out leaflets regarding his grievances. When airport security officers approached him and asked him to stop, Ji held...
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.
Beijing's Pollution Problem Is Everyone's Problem
As smog unravels the Faustian bargain of Chinese society.
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.
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.
China Gets Its First Political Sex Tape Scandal
Unlike America, where a mistweeted cock shot can end a political career, for senior officials in China, sexual imprudence is almost always a coda to allegations of corruption. Only after an official’s political indiscretions are revealed do his...
Women Are 'Pretty Scenery' at the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China
The most interesting story to come out of this week’s 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China isn’t the seven bland men who claimed the reins of power for the next ten years. It's the intensely demeaning portrayal of women in state-run...
Understanding China's Leadership Transition
While the US licks its psychic wounds after an ugly 2012 election and settles back into its usual partisan squabbling (Oh, Hi John Boehner), the real most important country in the world has begun a governmental transition of its own. It’s called the...