Many of those who watch U.S.-China relations have long hoped the two countries could have “a breakthrough”—or some kind of dramatic new agreement that signaled a recognition that our bilateral relations require bold action to make the ways we have…
Category: Articles
Think the US Is in Decline? Meet MTT’s Musical Magic [$] The San Francisco Chronicle
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Too Big to Quail [$] TIME
In two of the world’s most opaque states, new leaders have just taken office: Pope Francis in the Vatican and President Xi Jinping in China. While the Pope was a surprise choice, Xi’s ascension was expected: he had already been…
Waiting for the Next Act The Cairo Review of Global Affairs
There is hardly any American who knows China as well as Orville Schell. He has been studying the country, visiting it, writing about it, and been fascinated by it, for more than fifty years. He first arrived in Hong Kong,…
China’s Sakharov and Havel [$] Common Knowledge
This essay, written in memory of the Chinese astrophysicist and dissident Fang Lizhi, reexamines the period in Fang’s life when he was vice president of the University of Science and Technology of China and, because of his activities as an…
Sharing Paradise With the Barracuda The New York Times
When, after two days of flying, one reaches the island of Bali only to realize that more days of travel lie ahead — from Denpasar to Makassar, then to Sorong in West Papua on one dodgy Indonesian airline after another,…
Fang Lizhi: China’s Andrei Sakharov The Atlantic
WHEN I returned to Beijing in the fall of 1986, after an absence of six months, it was hard not to feel disoriented by the sudden change in political climate. During the previous spring and summer, political and intellectual life…
When a Rising China and a Humbled West Meet, Who Bows Deeper? The Atlantic
The image of actress Meryl “The Iron Lady” Streep prostrating herself upon the stage of Beijing’s National Performance Hall before cellist Yo-Yo Ma, as if she were a legate from some minor-tribute-bearing principality performing thesanbai jiukou (three bows and nine prostrations)…
How Walmart Is Changing China The Atlantic
The world’s biggest corporation and the world’s most populous nation have launched a bold experiment in consumer behavior and environmental stewardship: to set green standards for 20,000 suppliers making several hundred thousand items sold to billions of shoppers worldwide. Will…
Obama, Hu Jintao Have Clean Energy Opportunity San Francisco Chronicle
Among the many difficult issues Presidents Obama and Hu Jintao will confront when they meet this week stands one possible bright spot: collaboration on clean energy technology. It represents a critical, urgent need, an enormous market opportunity for both nations…