This HBO documentary film was nominated for best documentary film in the 2010 Oscars. It is the story of a tragic (70,000 dead) earthquake in Sichuan province in 2008 and the reactions of the Chinese citizens. The film is, among other things, a statement about Chinese political culture.
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Conclusion from The Atlantic in 1899:
“Is it for the benefit of the United States to deal with China as a vast unit under her native flag, or as fragments under many flags? That is what we have to decide…It is to be hoped that our government is silently exercising the utmost vigilance in behalf of our commercial privileges on the continent of Asia. Failure to do so might not be politically disastrous to the present administration, but posterity will not forgive nor history condone faults of omission or indifference after such warning as have already been given. Surely, no American administration would seriously contemplate the establishment of a dependency or protectorate on the mainland of China, while our interests there may be safeguarded by international control and reciprocity; but it is difficult to see how these securities can be obtained without more definite engagements on the part of our State Department than our uninformed public opinion now demands. Nevertheless, the signs of a healthy and growing interest are numerous.”
The more things change…
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A note from Google:
Like many other well-known organizations, we face cyber attacks of varying degrees on a regular basis. In mid-December, we detected a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China that resulted in the theft of intellectual property from Google. However, it soon became clear that what at first appeared to be solely a security incident–albeit a significant one–was something quite different.
Farhad Manjoo from Slate weighs in
On the eve of Hillary Clinton’s speech in response to Google’s decision, Atlantic correspondent and New America board member James Fallows moderated a discussion involving Open Society Institute fellow Rebecca MacKinnon, Foreign Policy contributing editor Evgeny Morozov, Columbia Law School professor and Slate contributor Tim Wu, and Clinton’s senior adviser for innovation, Alec Ross. Watch this lively panel debate.
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Do state firms have too much power? A case in Hebei stirs debate
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Attempts to democratise the Communist Party have failed. Again
“INNER-PARTY democracy is the life of the party,” enthused China’s former president, Jiang Zemin, as he prepared to hand over to Hu Jintao seven years ago. It could, he said, promote democracy in the country as a whole. But Mr Hu’s cautious experiments with reform inside the party appear to have fizzled. So too, it seems, has his own commitment to the idea.
A 2 page summary of democracy in Communist China
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URUMQI, China – The Chinese state news agency reported Monday that 156 people were killed and more than 800 injured when rioters clashed with the police in a regional capital in western China after days of rising tensions between members of the Uighur ethnic group and Han Chinese.
The casualty toll, if confirmed, would make this the deadliest outbreak of violence in China in many years.
The rioting broke out Sunday afternoon in a large market area of Urumqi, the capital of the vast, restive desert region of Xinjiang, and lasted for several hours before riot police officers and paramilitary or military troops locked down the Uighur quarter of the city
Here’s Foreign Policy Magazine’s take on the protests (China’s Latest Tibet)
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The new Chinese train runs on the highest railroad in the world, traversing a region known for high-intensity earthquakes and low temperatures. It cost $3.2 billion to build and is an extraordinary feat of modern engineering. Beijing claims that the railroad, which began operation at the start of July, will help speed up the modernization of Tibet. Many critics, meanwhile, have denounced the railroad as a means for the Chinese authorities to strengthen their hold on Tibet, further settling the region with China’s ethnic majority, the Han Chinese. Tibet holds vast reserves of copper, iron, lead, zinc, and other minerals vital to China’s economic growth.
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A look at the six men who are vying to shape China’s future.
Enjoy this photoessay from Foreign Policy Magazine, 2009
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The book spawned a genre, selling more than two million copies in China on the premise that any child, with the proper upbringing, could be Ivy League material.
Now, eight years after the publication of “Harvard Girl,” bookstore shelves here are laden with copycat titles like “How We Got Our Child Into Yale,” “Harvard Family Instruction” and “The Door of the Elite.”
Their increasing popularity points to the preoccupation – some might say a single-minded national obsession – of a growing number of middle-class Chinese parents: getting their children into America’s premier universities.
Read Chinese aim for the Ivy League from The IHT
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Journalist James Fallows explores China’s recent rise to power and what it means for the US in his new book of essays, Postcards Tomorrow Square.
A National Correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly, Fallows has been reporting on the economic and political transformation taking place in China since 2006.
Listen to this interview with Fallows
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