Tea Leaf Nation

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 [...]

Coming in the wake of an increasingly petulant North Korea threatening to rain fire and brimstone over East Asia and beyond, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s first official visit to China was only ever going to be about one issue: getting North Korea’s closest thing to an ally to take a tougher stance against [...]

This article also appears on The Atlantic, a Tea Leaf Nation partner site. Historical narratives lie at the core of national identity.  As a result, competing interpretations of the past can come to define international relationships.  Nowhere is this more evident than in Northeast Asia, where so-called “history wars,” combined with the destabilizing growth of [...]

In a parallel universe, that could have been him keeping the world on edge with his outrageous antics and retro hairstyle. Indeed, what does North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un have has that he doesn’t? The bloodline, the last name, the girth? But in this world, it’s not to be. Mao Xinyu, Mao Zedong’s only [...]

“Wanted: Evildoer, drug lord, arms trafficker, may be wearing ladies’ makeup to avoid detection. If you spot him, you should immediately report it to the American FBI.” Criminal lawyer Gan Yuanchun’s February 12 announcement on Sina Weibo, China’s Twitter, accompanied by photoshopped images showing North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un with eyeshadow, lipstick, and various colored [...]

News of an earthquake in North Korea spread quickly in China, with parts of the country actually experiencing the effects of the quake itself. Shortly after news of the quake was reported, it became apparent that it was man-made – a nuclear test. Chatter on Chinese social media quickly took off, many speculating about the [...]

This article also appears in The Atlantic, a Tea Leaf Nation partner site. Last week, Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt urged North Korean leaders to embrace the Internet. Only a small proportion of that country’s 24 million people can access the World Wide Web, and the majority of the 1.5 million mobile phones there belong [...]

We’ll start with the (very) good news. Twenty nine innocent Chinese fisherman, by all accounts essentially kidnapped for ransom by North Koreans while working in Chinese territorial waters approximately two weeks ago, have been released, arriving safely in a port in the city of Dalian. And China didn’t pay anything to get the fishermen back–at [...]

Writing on Sina Weibo, China’s Twitter, in response to recent discussion of the mainland’s brewing conflict with the Philippines over the Huangyan Islands, user @有子如虎 recently tweeted his summary of military history this way: “I was thinking about recent history: U.S.: We strike whoever we want! England: We strike whoever the U.S. strikes! Russia: We [...]

Ah, memories. Chen Guangcheng’s daring escape from house arrest in Shandong province to U.S. protection in Beijing is by no means the first instance of a dissident crashing a foreign diplomatic outpost for protection. In fact, it’s been happening in China, and elsewhere, for over one hundred years. In 1898, two reformists pursued by the [...]

With one policy shift, China’s government could save thousands of lives. On April 18, Japanese newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun quoted a Chinese provincial official who said China was ceasing its policy of repatriating North Koreans who have escaped life in their home’s brutal regime.  As reported in Tea Leaf Nation, China’s netizens had reacted to the earlier [...]

The recent trend of North Korea bashing continues in China’s blogosphere. @张洲演义, a young film director, has brought netizens his latest masterpiece: What Tea Leaf Nation chooses to call “Kim Jung Un Re-Imagined.”  Director Zhang poured oil on the proverbial flames with his accompanying tweet: “Looking at this late at night, actually got a biological reaction.” [...]