China Archive

On Jan. 27, officials in Hong Kong disqualified Agnes Chow, a young pro-democracy activist, from running for office in a March by-election. The move sparked public outrage, coming less than two weeks after a Hong Kong court sentenced another activist, Joshua Wong, to jail for a second time for his role in the 2014 pro-democracy protests, known as the Umbrella Movement. In an email interview, Stephan Ortmann, an assistant professor of comparative politics at City University of Hong Kong, discusses the evolution of the pro-democracy movement and what steps the central government in Beijing and the government in Hong Kong […]

Continued attempts at developing a natural gas pipeline linking Central Asian exporters with markets in Europe have fallen apart, leaving the region dependent on exports to either Russia or China. While the United States has helped countries in Central Asia balance geopolitically, some now believe the U.S. will drift from its engagement in the region as part of the Trump administration’s “America First” foreign policy. Last week, Kazakhstan’s president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, became the first Central Asian head of state to visit President Donald Trump in the White House, in a likely effort to shore up ties. In an email interview, […]

Editor’s Note: This article is part of an ongoing series about the production and trade of arms around the world. China, which in recent years has become the world’s third-largest supplier of arms after the United States and Russia, continues to expand its arms exports thanks largely to its relatively cheap weapons and military equipment. But that has also raised questions about how arms sales fit into China’s geopolitical ambitions, especially in Asia. In an email interview, Sam Roggeveen, a senior fellow at the Lowy Institute in Australia and an expert on the Chinese military, discusses the growth of China’s […]

Editor’s Note: This article is part of an ongoing series about religious minorities in various countries around the world. Last week, authorities in China demolished a prominent Christian megachurch in Linfen, an industrial city in one of China’s poorest regions. State police used dynamite and excavators to raze the church, which had a congregation of more than 50,000. It was the latest sign of a growing state backlash against religion in China, where the Communist Party is officially atheist and the practice of organized religion is tightly controlled. In an email interview, Yang Fenggang, a professor of sociology and director […]

When U.S President Donald Trump announced that he was canceling his trip to the United Kingdom, the public explanation was his disinterest in presiding over the opening of the mammoth new American Embassy, one of the ceremonial events planned for the visit. But it could also be seen as an unexpected gesture of consideration for British Prime Minister Theresa May, who had extended the official invitation from the queen to visit before a series of awkward incidents in the bilateral relationship. Ever since the two leaders held hands outside the Oval Office barely a week after Trump’s inauguration a year […]

In this week’s Trend Lines podcast, WPR’s editor-in-chief, Judah Grunstein, managing editor, Frederick Deknatel, and associate editor, Omar H. Rahman, discuss the sharpening debate over immigration in the United States and around the world and the Trump administration’s immigration policies. For the Report, Zach Montague talks with Peter Dörrie about the challenges facing foreign tech companies trying to operate in China, without compromising their ethics—or their trade secrets. If you like what you hear on Trend Lines and what you’ve read on WPR, you can sign up for our free newsletter to get a taste of our uncompromising analysis before […]

On Jan. 1, China implemented a ban on the domestic sale and processing of ivory, following through on a plan it had announced more than a year ago. The move should effectively cut off one of the major centers of demand that has incentivized the poaching of African elephants. In an email interview, Grace Gabriel, the regional Asia director for the International Fund for Animal Welfare, explains why China decided to execute the ban, the likely impact on poaching and the remaining obstacles and risks to ending the ivory trade. WPR: Why has the Chinese government decided to implement a […]

Editor's Note: This article was updated in December 2018. Foreign tech companies have been forced into difficult compromises and today find themselves asking whether the financial rewards and access to a massive market justify the work required to stay in Beijing’s good graces—especially given that the risk of failure is rising, illustrated by the recent blocking of WhatsApp in China. When users of WhatsApp in China started noticing technical problems with the mobile messaging application in September 2017, nothing seemed unusual at first. The slow sending speeds and inability to deliver video and audio files could have easily been due […]

Over the past six months, debates have grown in Australia and New Zealand about whether China is wielding more political influence within their borders than at any time in recent memory. In September, a New Zealand academic, Anne-Marie Brady, released an exhaustive report detailing Beijing’s efforts to influence the country’s politics. Tactics included trying to control organizations representing the ethnic Chinese community in New Zealand and channeling money to politicians and educational institutions. In late 2017, New Zealand’s deputy prime minister called for an investigation into the vetting process for national security clearances, after Brady and several reporters revealed that […]

HONG KONG—There are few winners from the crisis in Myanmar’s western state of Rakhine, where thousands of ethnic Rohingyas have lost their lives in an ongoing military crackdown and hundreds of thousands more have been displaced. But one exception is China, whose diplomats have skillfully exploited the turmoil to advance Beijing’s interests. In August, the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, an insurgent group claiming to represent Myanmar’s Rohingya minority, attacked a series of security installations, provoking a murderous reaction from the military. Doctors Without Borders reported that at least 6,700 Rohingyas were killed in the first month of violence, while over […]