On September 2, the Wall Street Journal’s China Real Time Report blog posted an article about a Jamaican-Chinese woman’s search for her roots. Growing up in New York’s Harlem, Paula Williams Madison knew she had a Chinese grandfather, even though she had never met him. When people found out, she says, most of them would make […]
What China Wants
Recently, The Economist published an excellent 4-part essay exploring China’s future. The first part, titled “What China Wants” looked at some of the major drivers of China’s economic and diplomatic policies. “China,” the author says, “is a nation that wants some things very much:” “At home its people want continued growth, its leaders the stability […]
How Many USA’s Can You Fit Inside China?
I ran across this interesting map on the inter webs the other day. It divides the population of China into four different regions, each with a population roughly equal to that of the United States. As you can see, the issue in China is not simply that the population of China is so large (1.35 billion); […]
Ten Documentaries on China
I’m a documentary lover; given a choice between watching a movie, a TV program (drama or comedy) or a documentary, I will almost always choose the documentary. There are numerous documentaries about China floating around out there so I thought I’d highlight some of my favorites, some of which I use in training/orientation courses for […]
Dueling Aircraft Carrier (Videos)
To celebrate the 65th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Liberation Army Navy, the Aviation Industry Corporation (a state-owned company) released this video of China’s J-15 carrier plane and the country’s only aircraft carrier, the Liaoning. Round about the same time, the US Navy released their own video of the USS George Washington-based “Royal […]
Hong Kong, China. Really?
Way back in 1997 I was the director of a Chinese language program at a major university in Changchun. As the semester was coming to an end, one of the students (they were all Americans) let me know that he needed to go to Hong Kong at the end of June. This was back in […]