In late March 2024, I accompanied Yifan to Golden Phoenix, a matchmaking agency specialising in arranging uxorilocal marriages in Xiaoshan District, Hangzhou, a place where life still moves at a leisurely pace. Yifan was in his early thirties, short, and slightly balding. As we were on our way, he constantly made self-deprecating jokes about his […]
When Beijing Normal University economist Professor Hu Biliang, a dear friend who sadly passed away earlier this year, remarked during an interview that African students in China received an annual stipend of RMB100,000 (about US$13,000) and that this amount was ‘not too high’, it sparked an uproar online (The Initium 2020). Many Chinese netizens suggested […]
This year marks 30 years since China launched its ambitious Tibet-Aid Project (援藏计划), a vast and ongoing party-state effort to reshape the region. Unveiled at the 1994 Tibet Work Forum, the scheme pairs Tibet’s administrative units with inland provinces, cities, and state-owned enterprises, injecting Han Chinese expertise, resources, and capital into the Tibetan Autonomous Region […]
From the turn of the twentieth century, Marxist socialist thinkers internationally grappled with what was known as the ‘agrarian question’. Initially, this referred to the problem of whether their respective national peasantries were disappearing, transforming into industrial workers as Marx predicted and as was deemed necessary for their revolutionary projects. In the many cases where […]
While the Chinese Government bans most popular foreign social media services, it does not underestimate the strategic role of these networked technologies, particularly their potential to strengthen China’s communication with the world. In recent years, leveraging foreign social media platforms has become a common practice in the foreign-aimed reporting sector in China. This essay explores how Chinese foreign-aimed journalists—individuals who are expected to use and normalise foreign platforms at work—navigate a changing work environment as their journalistic practices and traditional routines are increasingly platform-based and digitally oriented.
As China’s economy struggles in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, young people have been leaving cities and returning to the countryside. In Southeast Guizhou Miao and Dong Autonomous Prefecture, the CunBA (村BA), or Village Basketball Association, has offered some respite from the economic gloom. Teams compete in front of raucous crowds for prizes such […]
China is experiencing climate whiplash: extreme fluctuations between drought and flooding that threaten the health and autonomy of millions of people. Set against mounting anxiety over the future of global water supplies, Andrea E. Pia’s Cutting the Mass Line: Water, Politics, and Climate in Southwest China (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2024) investigates the enduring political, […]
To many, a can of Coke is a refreshing treat or an unhealthy indulgence. For years, companies like Coca-Cola have shaped not just our diet and waistlines, but also science and society. Their influence is not limited to the United States. Alongside their products, Big Soda has exported their ideas of fitness and nutritional science […]
With the lifting of pandemic-related travel restrictions, international researchers are now returning to China. While the end of ‘Zero-Covid’ opens new possibilities for mobility and access, China remains a challenging environment for fieldwork; given current geopolitical tensions, mounting anti-foreign (and anti-Chinese) rhetoric, and an ever-growing list of ‘sensitive’ research topics, it seems unlikely that conditions […]
On 1 July 2021, General Secretary Xi Jinping stood atop Tiananmen Gate and thrust his fist in the air while saying: ‘Long live the great, glorious, and correct Chinese Communist Party.’ It was the dramatic conclusion to his speech commemorating the one-hundredth anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Descriptions of the […]
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