Tea Leaf Nation

Even China was listening when U.S. President Barack Obama held a press conference yesterday to discuss his administration’s counterterrorism policy. The state-run Central China Television (CCTV) picked up and broadcast part of the speech – specifically, the portion in which heckler Medea Benjamin of antiwar NGO Code Pink interrupted Obama four times to demand answers [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

China’s state-run media reported on April 8 that Huang Sheng, former deputy provincial governor of Shandong, was being tried in the city of Nanjing for accepting bribes. What drew the most attention, however, were not the bribes – which allegedly amounted to 12.23 million RMB, or almost US$2 million – but the news that the [...]

On March 25, China’s Ministry of Finance publicly released the central government’s budget for the 2013 fiscal year, which was approved by the National People’s Congress (NPC) during the closing ceremony of the annual Two Sessions meeting. Though one of the most significant legislative motions the NPC processes each year, information about the budget has [...]

This article also appears on ChinaFile, a Tea Leaf Nation partner site. Xi Jinping, the newly appointed Chinese President, unfolded his presidency with a grand foreign tour to Russia, Tanzania, South Africa and the Republic of the Congo. While this series of state visits unequivocally underscored China’s diplomatic emphasis on its neighboring power and traditional [...]

This article also appears on The Atlantic, a Tea Leaf Nation partner site. When the state-commissioned film The Beginning of a Great Revival was listed on social network site Douban in 2010, many people rushed to rate the film with one star out of five even though it had not even premiered. An alternative and [...]