Month: May 2022

China Spins U.N. Human Rights Chief’s Visit as Propaganda

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The news was given prime placement in Chinese state media: The United Nations’ human rights chief, on her long-awaited visit to the country, had spoken with China’s leader, Xi Jinping. An article plastered across the website of Xinhua, the state news agency, relayed Mr. Xi’s declaration that the Chinese people were enjoying “unprecedented” rights. Then the article quoted the U.N. official, Michelle Bachelet. “I admire China’s efforts and achievements in eradicating poverty, protecting human rights and realizing economic and social development,” she said, according to Xinhua. But within hours, Ms.…

Chinese Tennis Star, Zheng Qinwen, Emerges During French Open

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PARIS — To keep things simpler for her Mandarin-challenged Western friends, the rising Chinese tennis star Zheng Qinwen often goes by the nickname Ana. But if you watch the teenage Zheng hit a forehand, a serve or just about any shot on a tennis court, her first English-language nickname seems more appropriate. “At the real beginning at IMG, they called me Fire,” she said in an interview at the French Open on Friday, referring to her management company, IMG. There is indeed plenty of power and passion in Zheng’s game,…

Despite High Ambition, China’s Media Influence Operation Is Far From Successful

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Advertisement CGTN, China’s English-language news media, has nearly 5 million more followers than CBS News on Twitter, yet it receives less than a quarter of CBS’s average retweets and likes per post. Despite being directed to “tell China’s story well,” Chinese state media is clearly failing to gain an authentic following outside the Great Firewall. Its struggle to influence stems from the organization’s incentive structure, which reflects shortcomings in China’s bureaucracy. In recent years, China’s overseas influence operations have received scrutiny from the U.S. national security community. Many Washington officials…

What Dominated the World Economic Forum

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Davos’s talking points The annual World Economic Forum, delayed from its normal winter date by Covid, has wrapped up. The high-profile conference, which draws leaders from government, business and nonprofits, has returned for the first time since coronavirus shut down the world — but in the midst of a war in Europe. DealBook was on hand, and here are our big takeaways: Executives are worried about a slowdown. Nearly every conversation with chief executives was dominated by how to handle rising interest rates, inflation and supply chain shocks, with the…

China’s intergenerational divide

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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…