In September of 2020, Xi Jinping announced China’s commitment to achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2060, with an intermediate target of peaking carbon emissions by 2030. This is a considerable challenge given that that country is today still the biggest user of coal globally, by some margin. In 2019, China was responsible for about 55 … more
Earlier this year, thousands of angry depositors stormed the Henan office of China’s central bank. The cause was a classic bank-run trigger: people were unable to retrieve their deposits. Two things about this protest were particularly noteworthy. First, it was directed at some of the less known Village and Township Banks 村镇银行 that rarely enter … more
‘🌈,’ I message my friend, who is an LGBTQI+ activist in China, on WeChat. ‘I’ll be there in a minute!’, she answers to let me know that she is online and available to connect to a VPN and talk to me via an encrypted platform. A clever code of rainbows and secret words that … more
China and traditional regional powers, such as the United States, Australia, New Zealand and Japan, are jockeying for influence in the Pacific. There are signs that China is now recalibrating its strategy in response to the newly energised competition, which itself was largely triggered by China’s growing activities in the region. In the past, China’s … more
In a rare survey of Chinese public opinion on the Russia-Ukraine War conducted by the Carter Center in March-April 2022, we can identify two highly significant findings: first, the majority (around 75 percent) of respondents believed that supporting Russia was beneficial to China’s national interest; second, the consumption of national state media and the use … more
Amid Taiwanese aspiration, Chinese rage, and regional concern over whether the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, would visit Taiwan, she arrived on 2 August. The most senior US official to travel to Taiwan in a decade and the first sitting speaker to do so in twenty-five years, her itinerary was … more
Louisa Lim, who was raised in Hong Kong, has covered China and Hong Kong many years as a journalist. A senior lecturer at the University of Melbourne, she is also the co-host of The Little Red Podcast. Her previous book, The People’s Republic of Amnesia: Tiananmen Revisited was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize. China Story … more
This autumn sees the return of every China watcher’s favorite ‘parlor game’. The Communist Party of China (CPC) will convene its 20th Party Congress, a quinquennial gathering of around 3000 Party representatives in Beijing for a week of meetings that will approve a report by General Secretary Xi Jinping 习近平, amend the Party’s constitution, and … more
The furore surrounding the chilling internet video of ‘Xiaohuamei’ 小花梅 or ‘Little Plum Blossom’, the chained woman of Jiangsu, had barely died down when a restaurant surveillance camera captured another disturbing vision of violent and misogynist behaviour that stunned the world and once again put China’s gender relations under the spotlight. It is 2:40 am … more
It is over fourteen years since I suggested to Kevin Rudd that he use the expression zhengyou 諍友 in a speech he was to give at Peking University (PKU) in April 2008. Zhengyou means a friend or an adviser who dares give voice to unpleasant truths, one who offers discomforting opinions and counsels caution. The … more
