Day: May 26, 2022

China’s intergenerational divide

Chin@Strategy

In recent days, scholars of culture in China have been locked in serious argument about a silly claim: namely, that young people are killing the Chinese language. Their wrangling has filled social-media sites followed by liberal intellectuals, a lively but embattled online world where blog posts may be censored after an hour, but still earn hundreds of thousands of views in that time. Listen to this story.Enjoy more audio and podcasts on iOS or Android. Your browser does not support the <audio> element. Listen to this story Save time by…

Trouble at the top and bottom of China’s financial sector

Chin@Strategy

The protesters gathered outside the office of the banking regulator in Henan province have a simple demand: “Return our deposits.” Thousands of customers of three rural banks in the region recently discovered that they were unable to withdraw their funds. They have been cut off from at least $178m, according to Reuters, a news agency. Met with silence from local officials, many aggrieved customers descended on Zhengzhou, the provincial capital, carrying signs and chanting slogans. Videos that have circulated on Chinese social media show dozens of people kneeling in the…

Many young Chinese choose graduate school over a grim job market

Chin@Strategy

Marriage, according to a French proverb, is like a fortress besieged. Those outside want to get in; those inside want to get out. That thought, immortalised in the title of a novel by Qian Zhongshu from 1947, has more recently been applied to China’s graduate schools. At the end of last year, a record 4.6m people tried to storm these fortresses by taking the postgraduate admissions exam, an increase of over 21% from the previous year. Listen to this story.Enjoy more audio and podcasts on iOS or Android. Your browser…

There’s a Narrow Window to Improve Australia-China Relations

Chin@Strategy

Advertisement Labor Party leader Anthony Albanese has been sworn in as the new prime minister of Australia. Some Chinese media and netizens think this is a hopeful sign for Australia-China relations: Albanese has a nice chosen Chinese name and speaks Chinese well, like his Labor colleague and former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. Knowing Chinese well is an asset for foreign politicians to deal with China, but it is not always a good thing for China. The more someone understands you, the more troublesome it may be; your weaknesses, as…

Rumours emerge of disharmony within China’s leadership

Chin@Strategy

Amid their frantic efforts to halt the spread of covid-19 and revive a sputtering economy, officials around China have also had to attend some routine meetings. They involve lectures on the need for absolute loyalty to the country’s leader, Xi Jinping. “Turn your hearts to the general secretary”, rural bureaucrats were instructed at one such gathering this month in south-western China. Later this year Mr Xi is expected to be anointed for another five years as Communist Party chief. The strong unspoken message of these meetings is that no one…