The 23-year-old monk hid his glasses in his coat, which would have given him away. To keep his disguise, he shouldered a rifle. This is how the Dalai Lama remembers escaping from his summer residence Norbulinka 65 years ago after 10 pm: “It was a truly eerie experience. I was afraid. I was even more […]
Shortly before the Olympic Games in Paris started, the People’s Republic received a symbolic gold medal in advance. UNESCO unexpectedly honored Beijing’s imperial north-south axis 北京中轴线 with the title of “World Heritage Site.”The news made big waves. Beijing’s authorities had campaigned for 13 years, while courageous critics protested online. UNESCO decided in Beijing’s favor: Due […]
For over a decade, sole ruler Xi Jinping has been shaping the fate of the People’s Republic. His four-volume magnum opus is simply called “The Governance of China.” While the rule of his great predecessors Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping is today dressed up as a “time of revolution” or “time of reforms,” Xi uses […]
How was the life of a high-ranking party functionary and revolutionary, who many Chinese observers claim became a market reformer after years of persecution by Mao while remaining an upstanding communist? The man in question is not Deng Xiaoping but Xi Zhongxun, who is even better known as the father of China’s now sole ruling […]
After the end of the Cultural Revolution, China’s reforms also introduced personal freedoms, fashion, cosmetics, polite manners and long-lost toys to its ideologically and sartorially uniformed women. European fashion designers such as Pierre Cardin were the first to explore the new market. In the early 1980s, they were followed by Yue-Sai Kan, a Chinese expat […]
Beijing’s Politburo convened the Third Plenum nine months overdue. The long-awaited Third Plenum is a special working conference where the Central Committee convened within the first year after each major party congress. Its task was to adopt programmatic guidelines, primarily for China’s economic development, or, put more simply, to set China’s reform course for five […]
Beijing’s battalions of officially mandated internet watchdogs have sophisticated censorship methods at their disposal to ensure that online criticism and problematic revelations quickly disappear from the web. However, tech-savvy bloggers constantly find new ways to bypass the tight controls. Since 2021, an activist who calls himself “Teacher Li” 李老师 has been helping them from overseas […]
Tintin, the famous young comic strip hero by Belgian illustrator Georges Remi (Hergé), is called Dingding (丁丁) in the People’s Republic. Two of his adventures are set in China: the “Blue Lotus” and the 1960 story “Tintin in Tibet.” With his dog Snowy and Captain Haddock, reporter Tintin sets out to find his Chinese friend […]
The Standing Committee of the People’s Congress will convene at the end of February to prepare for the annual session of the socialist parliament on March 5. On the agenda is a review of the latest draft for a revision of the State Secrets Protection Law, which is to be passed by the People’s Congress. […]
When the United States was still the sole nuclear power in 1947, guerrilla leader Mao Zedong referred to the US disrespectfully as a paper tiger in an interview with correspondent Anna Louise Strong: frightening on the outside, but weak and defeatable on the inside. Mao’s comparison became popular among revolutionaries all over the world.The Chinese […]
