In some ways, “vigilantes” are the opposite of what their name suggests: rather than rogue agents meting out street justice, they are individuals deemed trustworthy by authorities, working under the guidance of local police forces, deputized to surveil their fellow citizens. In recent years, as Beijing has encouraged the “masses” to take a greater role in public safety, vigilante groups—and their close cousins, “safety promotion associations”—have sprung up across the country, working with the police to conduct traffic stops, mediate disputes, or even “catch [suspects] on the spot.” Indeed, Ch ..read more

The U.S. Congress’ special China committee has a packed agenda for the few months left this term. But its most consequential work may be done: a more confrontational U.S. policy towards China. The Select Committee on the Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party has racked up notable successes in its brief existence. Its scrutiny put Wall Street and Silicon Valley on notice to police their investments into China. Its investigations showed that Chinese tax programs support the export of ingredients for fentanyl, and got the Department of Homeland Security t ..read more

This year is the 35th anniversary of the 1989 mass demonstrations in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, and elsewhere around China, and their brutal suppression on June 4. The memories of these events are receding into the past, a process greatly aided in China by censorship. And even when remembered, the crackdown that ended the optimistic 1980s in China is viewed by some Chinese government supporters as justified ..read more

Instruction began early on a November 2018 morning. This lesson was not taught in a classroom, but in a makeshift kitchen as part of Xinjiang’s “household school” program. There, a teacher stood before her class of adult women and asked: “What do you like to eat for breakfast?” The students responded in unison, “nan and milk” or “nan and tea.” “You don’t eat a bowl of hot congee?” the teacher interjected. This question sparked additional discussion and “even more curiosity” among the women in attendance ..read more

The African Union’s unprecedented decision to ban the trade of donkey skin ended a hitherto fast-evolving China-Africa business. It also is the result of an unusual agreement between the 55 African Union member countries on a matter that affects rural development, women’s rights, and poverty alleviation. Perhaps most unusually, the ban arose from an implicit unified pushback against a profitable business with China, Africa’s largest trade partner and one of its major investors and financiers ..read more

The Xiao River rushes deep and clear out of the mountains of southern China into a narrow plain of paddies and villages. For several weeks in August 1967, more than nine thousand people were murdered in this region of Hunan province. Its epicenter was Dao county, which the Xiao River bisects on its way north toward the Xiang and then the Yangtze ..read more

Thirty-five years ago, in April 1989, Chinese students from Beijing’s elite universities began their occupation of Tiananmen Square. Their issues were different from those of American students today. Chinese demonstrators voiced concerns about corruption, inflation, the effects of on-going market reforms, and lack of free press and participatory governance. Today’s students at Columbia, NYU, Harvard, Yale, University of Minnesota, University of Texas, Brown, USC, and other campuses are mounting an antiwar movement, calling on their institutions to divest from Israel in light of the unprecedent ..read more

On March 13, in a rare moment of bipartisanship, the House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a bill that could result in TikTok’s being unable to do business in the U.S. What does the rapid passage of the bill in the House say about the state of Washington’s attitude to China? How would a potential sale work? How is Beijing likely to react? Is TikTok really a threat to the U.S.? What does the Act tell us about the state of the world and the global Internet in 2024 ..read more

Like other authors of recent Western histories of this period, Dikötter attributes most of the early initiative in the reestablishment of diplomatic ties between Washington and Beijing to the Chinese, not to Nixon. Beijing’s preoccupation with Moscow did not fade quickly, either. Dikötter quotes one senior Chinese foreign policy official who said of the Soviets in 1977, “They are more imperialist than the worst imperialists.” As this view helps illustrate, the story of China in the post-Mao period—which came to be known as the era of reform and opening after long stretches of autarky and viole ..read more

Sholpan Amirkhan and her aunt gasped when the guards carried her brother-in-law Nurlan Pioner into the Jimunai County People’s Court, on the border with Kazakhstan in China’s western region of Xinjiang. He was gaunt, and a fetid smell followed him. When she shouted his name, she did not see any recognition on his face. He trembled, barely able to maintain a sitting posture as the guards settled him into the seat in the defendant’s cage. Here was a man that everyone in Amirkhan’s community adored and admired, a vital and eloquent religious leader wrecked by 14 months in detention ..read more