Xi Jinping, the paramount leader of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), toured eastern Xinjiang on a four-day ‘investigative tour’ 考察调研 in mid-July — his first visit to the Uyghur Region since 2014. On the surface, the trip and its public messaging do not appear to differ much from visits by previous general secretaries of the Communist Party of China (CPC) to Xinjiang. Flanked by Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region party secretary Ma Xingrui 马兴瑞, Xinjiang governor Erkin Tuniyaz and other officials, Xi took in cultural, economic and touristic sights, stopped off at a village, reviewed the mili ..read more

In June 2022, the Chinese Ministry of Ecology and Environment and sixteen other government departments jointly released their ‘National Climate Change Adaptation Strategy’. The document outlined plans for the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to become a ‘climate-resilient society’ by 2035. It emphasised the need for adaptation and mitigation, namely, reducing emissions through new technologies and renewable energy. Coming out less than two years after President Xi Jinping announced the PRC’s 2030-2060 targets, the Strategy reaffirms China’s determination to achieve its decarbonisation goals, s ..read more

The People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) is increasingly making its presence felt regionally and globally. The China-Solomon Islands security pact signed in April 2022 opens the possibility for Chinese maritime security vessels to operate deep in the Pacific. In May, a Chinese surveillance ship was spotted in the Indian Ocean near the West Australian coast, which then Defence Minister Peter Dutton described as ‘an act of aggression’. On 17 June 2022, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) launched its third aircraft carrier, the Fujian 福建舰, named after the coastal province directly opposite Taiw ..read more

In September 2021, the Minister for Water Resources announced in a press release that under the Thirteenth Five-Year Plan (2016-2020), centralised water supply and tap water coverage in rural areas had risen from 82 percent and 76 percent respectively, to 88 percent and 83 percent in 2020. The long-standing predicament faced by rural residents in accessing safe and stable water supply became a thing of the past. Three years prior to the Minister’s announcement, Zhejiang province had reported that 99 percent of all its villages had access to tap water, thus placing itself as a national leader i ..read more

Many of us are familiar with the concept of cancel culture in the west. Merriam-Webster defines it as ‘the practice or tendency of engaging in mass cancelling as a way of expressing disapproval and exerting social pressure’. Though not without controversy, at the core of western cancel culture is the desire of the general public to hold public figures accountable for their actions. It is driven by widespread public sentiment and implemented by individual entities (including companies which may, of their own accord, choose to terminate engagement with the person involved). However, there is a g ..read more

Revelations during the Australian federal election that the Solomon Islands Government was in the process of concluding a secret security agreement with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) sounded alarm bells in security circles. It generated dire predictions of a future Chinese naval base and permanent deployment of Chinese troops in the Solomons, seriously affecting Australia’s national security. Alarmist voices predicted the Solomon Islands was becoming another ‘Cuba’ off our coast, and the then Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, gave ominous warnings about ‘red lines’ that must not be crosse ..read more

In the chilly days before the Lunar New Year of 2022, a video began circulating on Chinese social media of a woman standing alone in an outdoor shed wearing a thin pink sweater. She is shackled to the wall by a chain around her neck. The man behind the camera asks if she is cold, but it is unclear whether she can understand. The woman, whom authorities referred to first as Ms. Yang, and later as Xiao Huamei 小花梅, ‘Little Plum Blossom,’ was revealed to be the wife of a Mr. Dong from Feng County, Jiangsu Province. Despite China’s birth control policies having only recently been relaxed to allow t ..read more

The Australia-China relationship, which turns fifty in 2022, has in recent years become a seemingly endless narrative of contradiction and acrimony. On 26 January 2022, an opportunity for a reset came with the arrival of a new Chinese ambassador to Canberra, Xiao Qian 肖千. Speaking on 24 February, Xiao said that Chinese government wanted to open communication channels with the Australian government. He said that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was ready to work together with Australian diplomats to move the relationship back onto the right track and that China was willing ‘to go halfway’ i ..read more

Ngan Shun-kau 顏純鈎 (Yan Chun-gou, born 1948) is a writer, literary editor, and a seasoned observer of Chinese politics. Born in Hong Kong, Ngan grew up in the coastal province of Fujian. Like many of the youth in his generation, Ngan threw himself wholeheartedly into the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) and rose to become a leader of a Red Guard group. His latest novel Blood Rain in My Youth 血雨華年 (2019) is based on his experiences during this unforgettable decade, a chapter in Chinese history which he described as ‘painted with blood’. In 1978, Ngan moved to Hong Kong where he worked his way up ..read more

‘Contradiction’ 矛盾 was a hallmark of gender and social relations in 2021. Along with a rising wave of feminism in fields ranging from comedy to podcasting, gender wars erupted in cyberspace between feminists and anti-feminists, with both sides fighting with greater anger and intensity than before. Not coincidentally, 2021 also saw renewed attempts by the Communist Party of China (CPC) to revive and promote traditional ideals of femininity and promote a more rugged masculine ideal. Party and state policies interacted with increasingly diverse views in Chinese society itself about gender, women ..read more