The widely-publicized Party expulsion of Bo Xilai has not just made China’s netizens angry; it’s made them tired. Commenters have called for a final reckoning with the awful legacy of Chairman Mao’s Cultural Revolution in hopes of ending China’s ongoing legacy of sensational political strife. One post by liberal columnist Zhao Chu @赵楚 on Sina [...]
The purge is on. Bo Xilai, a former Chinese power-broker whose family’s rise was torpedoed by a weakness for bribery, backstabbing, and killing people, is now out—or as the Chinese might say, “ao te” (奥特)–of China’s Communist Party. On China’s Weibo platforms, the country’s major online gathering places for speech and debate, the Bo-related comments [...]
We often refer to Sina Weibo as “China’s Twitter” here on Tea Leaf Nation, but the analogy is not a perfect one. Weibo has many innovative features that Twitter lacks, and offers even more premium services for paying users. What most distinguishes the online culture of Twitter’s Chinese counterpart, however, is the scope, scale, and [...]
Two days ago, a photograph of a girl wearing a white vest and ballet slippers and doing a 45-degree split in her dorm room went viral on the Chinese Internet. It led to what Sina entertainment called an online “battle between beauties.” {{Chn}}[[Chn]]美女争相挑战[[Chn]] Some of the photos feature young women eating lunch or talking on their [...]
The protestors may have gone home for the time being, but the dispute between China and Japan over the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands are far from over. TLN author Helen Gao and editor David Wertime were joined by NYU professor David Denoon and University of Pennsylvania professor Avery Goldstein on Huff Post Live to discuss the historical underpinnings of the [...]
Q: The chairman of the CSRC (China’s equivalent of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission) and the chairman of a public company in China both fall into a river. You only have one rock, who would you kill? A: Whoever tries to save them. The Shanghai Composite Index hit a 43 month-low on September 26 [...]
It’s a digital disaster. With a Chinese travel crunch looming, China’s online ticketing system is quickly turning into a boondoggle of historic proportions. It all started with a holiday. Lunar New Year in China marks a time of jubilance, but also stress and chaos, as hundreds of millions of Chinese travel home to see their [...]
“No film is safe, no film investment is safe, no director’s creation is safe [under China's film censorship framework],” said director Lou Ye (@导演娄烨) in a recent interview with Sina, a Chinese Internet portal, that explored his experience with the ironfisted gatekeepers of China’s arts and explained his decision to post details of the film [...]
I have hundreds of memories of the ceremony, the earliest of which took place in the playground of my elementary school: A dirt opening ringed with cypresses and gingko trees, a small brick-and-concrete platform, and a shining flag pole. Every Monday morning, the school gathered on the playground after second period, belting out the national [...]
China has just taken another step in the direction of becoming a military power. On Tuesday, it put into service its first aircraft carrier, named the “Liaoning” after China’s northeastern Liaoning Province. According to the Ministry of National Defense, the carrier’s entry into service “has important meaning for raising the level of the modernization of [...]
It’s already entered the annals of China’s brief but rich Internet history: On Sina Weibo, China’s Twitter, posts showing massive anti-Japan protests in China went viral on September 15th and 16th. Out in the real world, protestors across dozens of Chinese cities marched in the thousands. In addition to objecting to Japan’s purchase of the [...]
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