Tea Leaf Nation

On Thursday Oct 26 The New York Times published a 4,700 word article on corruption among the members of Wen Jiabao’s family, alleging that they amassed a fortune of $2.7 billion through shadowy business dealings.  Appearing on the front page of both New York Times’ English and Chinese websites, both sites were completely blocked in China [...]

You want to know about politics in Beijing? Four words: Watch your back, Jinping.  At Tea Leaf Nation, we often try to distinguish facts from the many rumors circulating on Chinese social media. When we heard rumors that Mr. Xi Jinping, the Heir Apparent set to take over as China’s next paramount leader, was the target of [...]

Ever wonder what it is like to “drink tea” in a police station in China? No, it is not your average Oolong-sipping occasion — “drinking tea” has become an euphemism in the Chinese social media for police interrogation, particularly for tripping over some invisible line or another in one’s speech on the Internet. On September [...]

[Update: On August 30, 2012, official media reported Zhang Guangning's appearance at official functions, likely to dispel rumors of his political demise.]  This S-election year may be a dangerous one for local party bosses in China, when the country’s ruling Communist Party does its once-in-a-decade house cleaning. After rumors of Chongqing party boss Bo Xilai’s downfall turned [...]

Season 2 of China’s hottest political drama in more than a decade formally began with the announcement of the murder indictment of Gu Kailai and an assistant for poisoning a Brit, Neil Heywood.  If you missed the sensational Season 1, you can catch Tea Leaf Nation’s coverage here and here, and our profiles of Gu’s [...]

Season 2 of China’s hottest political drama in more than a decade formally began with the announcement of the murder indictment of Gu Kailai and an assistant for poisoning a Brit, Neil Heywood.  If you missed the sensational Season 1, you can catch Tea Leaf Nation’s coverage here and here, and our profiles of Gu’s [...]

With all the furor over Bo Xilai, his family and the suspicious death of Neil Heywood, Tea Leaf Nation brings you a look back at the political calculations that lay behind Bo’s controversial reign in Chongqing and his daring gambit in the form of the “Smash Black – Sing Red” campaign that was to pave [...]

On a high-speed train in the Orient, a murder has taken place under cover of night. On April 11, the public awoke to find that the political career of Bo Xilai, China’s “only celebrity politician,” had finally died. The news did not come as a surprise; Bo’s career suffered a brutal stabbing a month ago and [...]

Bo Xilai, the most controversial politician in China, has been sacked. Or as @唱反调 wrote on Sina Weibo, China’s Twitter: “Bo Xilai has been ‘harmonized.’” Indeed, on March 15, the Ides of March, Xinhua News Agency announced that Bo Xilai was removed as the party boss of Chongqing. China’s microblogs have exploded at news of [...]

Christmas for journalists in China comes in early March. The “Two Sessions” – an annual powwow of representatives of the National People’s Congress, or NPC, and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (try to say that five times fast), or CPPCC – is a bonanza for Chinese news outlets starved for a government-sanctioned opportunity to [...]

Do you know your left from your right? A visual key to the meaning of leftist versus rightist politics in China, an answer to this hugely popular pictorial on U.S. politics, was created by CNPolitics.org (政见). With CNPolitics’ permission, we reprint sections of the picture here with English translations and original commentary from Tea Leaf Nation. You can [...]

@中国草根大学 posted a photo of  Mr. Ma Zhaoxu, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, with the caption, “Dissidents with different political views don’t exist in China.” {{Chinese}}[[Chinese]]中国不存在dissident（持不同政见者或异见人士），我们只有依法办事，只有罪犯，非罪犯的区别。[[Chinese]] Apparently, Mr. Ma made this statement in February 2010 in response to questions about the conviction of Liu Xiaobo. [See this report from Singapore's Zaobao in Chinese.] Even though the [...]