China Note Archive

Beijing is in a frenzy to conclude its final preparations for the upcoming 2022 Winter Olympics, as the countdown begins toward the Games scheduled to begin Feb. 4. With fewer than 10 days to go until the opening ceremony in Beijing, operations in steel mills and high-emission businesses across the capital, as well as in the neighboring province of Hebei, have been brought to a halt, in order to clear smog from the atmosphere and deliver clear blue skies for the gala affair. As the first host to rely completely on artificial snow for the Games, China has deployed machines to pump out […]

Amid the looming threat of a Russian invasion of Ukraine, Western nations continue to use a wide-ranging toolkit of policy options, including diplomacy and security assistance, to avert the risk of a full-blown war in Eastern Europe. The U.K. is supplying short-range anti-tank missiles to Ukraine. Canada is deploying a unit of special operations forces. And a delegation of U.S. senators met Monday with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, followed by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken today.  But while Western countries have reacted vocally to the buildup of 100,000 Russian troops on the border with Ukraine, China has mostly kept silent. Speaking in […]

Around the world, strict restrictions in response to the coronavirus pandemic—including lockdowns, curfews, lengthy isolation periods and quarantine—are giving way to community mitigation measures and, more broadly, a relaxed, more pragmatic approach. But in Hong Kong and China, where authorities continue to favor a more ironclad response, there remains no end in sight to a “zero-COVID” strategy, two years on from the onset of the pandemic. China is now on high alert after detecting the first local outbreak of the omicron variant, weeks before the country is set to host the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. The northern coastal city of Tianjin, […]

Two of Hong Kong’s independent media outlets were forced to close, decisively narrowing what little space remains for independent journalism in the city.