One year after a very similar incident occurred in the waters between China and North Korea, North Koreans once again allegedly hijacked a Chinese fishing boat, kidnapping 16 crew members and demanding a ransom of 600,000 yuan, according to the Southern Metropolis Daily and the boat’s owner, Yu Xuejun. Yu said on his Tencent microblog, another Twitter-like social media platform popular [...]
It’s commencement season in America again, and quite a few heavy hitters have already spoken. On Tuesday, the Guardian published its first speaker roundup, featuring Vice President Joe Biden, First Lady Michelle Obama, and former president Bill Clinton. Yet it was a speech by Vice President Joe Biden that seemed to draw the most attention [...]
Almost half of all Chinese report feeling “more anxiety,” now than they did five years ago. What, exactly, is driving these concerns, or increasing reports of these concerns? Avid followers of China-related news might immediately think of censorship and other restrictions on freedoms, yet reports show that the main sources of anxiety in China lie [...]
On April 29, 1968, a young Chinese dissident named Lin Zhao was secretly executed by firing squad. In 2013, on the 45th anniversary of her execution, her name resurfaced in the public sphere, as news broke that police had prevented people paying tribute to her at her grave. Lin Zhao was an ardent Communist in [...]
A news article published in early May suggests that reform may be in the works for China’s long-standing petitioning system, also known as the Letters and Visits system, which is often associated with scandals involving cruelty and inhumanity. On May 9, the Southern Metropolis Daily reported that in March, the State Bureau for Letters and [...]
On May 8, the Japanese government announced it would honor the 1995 war apology, a decision widely interpreted as a diplomatic gesture aimed at smoothing ties with China. Tensions between the two countries have recently escalated due to events such as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s suggesting a possible revision of the 1995 apology, key cabinet [...]
[Note: The following is a Tea Leaf Nation op-ed, and does not necessarily represent the opinions of the editors.] On November 29, 2012, at the end of his visit to “The Road to Revival” exhibition, which showcased China’s achievements in modern and contemporary history despite foreign invasions and exploitation, the newly appointed General Secretary of [...]
The island of Lanyu lies not far off the southeast coast of Taiwan — a small, bucolic island with a population barely exceeding 4,000. Aboriginal Tao people make up nearly 60% of the population, with the rest being mainly Han Chinese. Residents also share the island with a more unwelcome neighbor – the Lanyu Nuclear [...]
Last week, a speech by U.S. President Barack Obama on the value of engaged citizenship made waves in Chinese social media. “The core of Obama’s speech yesterday at the Ohio State University Commencement is ‘a sense of citizenship,’” posted influential Sina Weibo user @假装在纽约, or “pretending to be in New York,” a widely followed provocateur [...]
In Anxious Wealth: Money and Morality Among China’s New Rich, John Osburg, an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Rochester, takes his readers into a shady underworld, where entrepreneurs and state bureaucrats mingle and forge the networks underpinning China’s socialist market economy. Osburg’s informants include a cast of memorable characters, many of whom could just [...]
An audience of some 50,000 followers on Sina Weibo, a Chinese microblogging platform, has helped Zhang Jing, 37, to cope with a huge marital stress: for two years, her husband has sat on death row, having been convicted of murder despite acting in self-defense. Zhang told Tea Leaf Nation that her sympathizers wrote to her: [...]
Has the previously inscrutable leader of China, Xi Jinping, begun to show his true colors? A recent editorial on Guangming Daily, one of the Communist Party’s mouthpiece newspapers, revealed that in a January meeting, the new Chinese leader had pointed out: Had Deng Xiaoping completely repudiated Mao Zedong in 1981, would our Party have been [...]
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