Jennifer Chou is a journalist and analyst specializing in Asian affairs, with particular expertise in Chinese politics and regional geopolitics. She was a prolific contributor to The Weekly Standard from 2003 to 2008, covering a wide range of topics including Chinese domestic politics, censorship, U.S.-Asia relations, and broader developments across East and Southeast Asia.
Last Thursday the free world plunged into an uproar as it learned that the 20,000 journalists covering the Olympics in Beijing were not getting the full Internet access that China and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) had promised. Kevan Gosper, the IOC's press chief, expressed surprise…
During his recent visit to Qatar, Chinese vice president Xi Jinping told a group of Hong Kong reporters traveling with him that the chaotic series of incidents leading up to the Beijing Games, including the Lhasa riot and the frequently interrupted torch relay, should be treated with this mindset:…
The Hong Kong-based newspaper Wen Wei Pao reported last week that in the wake of the recent labor unrest in Vietnam, dozens of Taiwanese businesses are considering pulling out of the Southeast Asian country. The report cited a Taiwanese trade representative in Ho Chi Minh City as saying that a wave…
For a long time in China the word "princelings" denoted the pampered, privileged, and frequently unscrupulous children of the country's senior leaders. Over the years, the best, the brightest, and the most trustworthy of these blue-blooded Reds have been fast-tracked to positions of power. A few…
Chinese media have been enthusiastically quoting Russian press reports attributing last week's post-election violence in Ulan Bator to a U.S.-engineered "color revolution" aimed at countering Russian and Chinese influence in resource-rich Mongolia. A commentary widely circulated in Chinese…
Last week Chinese authorities released Zha Jianguo, vice chairman of the Beijing-Tianjin branch of the outlawed China Democracy Party (CDP). Zha had served out a nine-year prison sentence for "subverting state power." Last week also marked the 10th anniversary of the founding of Zha's party. During…
For my day job, I live and breathe China. When it comes to my annual vacation, however, I need to get away. Last year, I thought Ireland would be a good escape--only to discover after getting there that Mandarin is the second most spoken language in Dublin. Buying a Chinese-made stuffed leprechaun…
This Wednesday marks the 19th anniversary of the military crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square. One of those gunned down in the mayhem was a young man by the name of Jiang Jielian. On the night of June 3, 1989, as the Chinese People's Liberation Army began clearing the…
Russian president Dmitry Medvedev was the first foreign head-of-state to visit China since the May 12 earthquake. Although the May 23-24 trip had been planned before the quake struck, Chinese media nonetheless characterized it as "earthquake diplomacy" that provided the Chinese people with "mental…
Since the devastating earthquake a week ago today, Beijing has loosened its grip on the press and the Internet. Last Friday, in an effort to provide greater transparency and accountability, officials from the education and housing ministries appeared on People's Daily Online and addressed, in real…
With less than 100 days to go before the Beijing Olympics, China has stepped up its crackdown on the country's underground Christian church. Since the beginning of May, the authorities have conducted at least eight raids on house churches. The latest such incident took place yesterday in Beijing.…
With the Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist (CPN-M) poised to take the helm in Kathmandu, Sino-Nepalese relations are expected to improve greatly. On April 25, a high-level Chinese delegation visiting the country announced that Beijing plans to link Tibet with Nepal by extending a railway line from…
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In 2001, shortly after Beijing won the bid to host this year's Olympics, People's Daily proudly declared that China will "host the best ever Games in the history of the Olympiad." With the country's recent PR setback, culminating in the fracas over the torch relay last week, the catchphrase…
The Ishigaki city council, in the Okinawa prefecture of Japan, has passed a resolution allowing the capture of goats on the Uotsuri Island. Satellite images show that overgrazing by the goats is endangering the island's delicate ecosystem. Ishigaki city councilmen plan to seek the National Diet's…
China seems determined to ascribe the unrest in Tibet to a concerted effort aimed at sabotaging the Beijing Olympics. The world community, meanwhile, has demonstrated that it has little appetite for a boycott. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) clearly prefers "silent diplomacy." None of the…
In the aftermath of the crackdown in Tibet, Chinese internet bulletin boards have become virtual hate sites. In hundreds of thousands of postings, Han Chinese hurl obscenities against Tibetans, condemn foreign governments for "interfering in China's internal affairs," and accuse the Western media…
Tomorrow Beijing will put on trial one of its most ardent human rights campaigners. Hu Jia, 34, faces charges of "inciting subversion of state power." Evidence to be used against him includes articles he posted on an overseas Chinese-language website and statements he made during interviews with…
In the run-up to Taiwan's first-ever direct presidential election in 1996, China fired three ballistic missiles into the island's territorial waters in an attempt to dissuade its electorate from voting for the independence-minded Lee Teng-hui. Lee won by a landslide. Four years later, then-Chinese…
Affirmation of Vladimir Putin's accomplishments as president was a constant theme of recent Chinese press coverage of Russia. Yesterday, as Russians went to the polls to elect a new president, Xinhua celebrated with a lengthy piece titled "Putin's report card." It credits the Russian leader not…
Last week China's ministry of education announced a pilot program that makes Peking opera a component of the music curriculum for grades one through nine. Scheduled to begin in March this year and to last until July 2009, each of the three cities and seven provinces selected for the program will…
Chinese media have given minimal coverage to president Bush‘s week-long visit to Africa. While Xinhua ascribes the motivation for the five-nation trip to "strategic interests" that include military and energy security, it also acknowledges that the U.S. troop presence in Africa has been "tiny."…
Last week World Bank president Robert Zoellick announced the appointment of Peking University professor Justin Yifu Lin as the organization's chief economist and senior vice president for development economics. Lin is the first person from a developing country to hold the Bank's top economist…
Last week Beijing pledged $1.39 billion in economic and technical aid to East Timor. The agreement was signed in Dili by visiting Chinese deputy foreign minister Wu Dawei and East Timorese prime minister Xanana Gusmao. China was the first country to establish diplomatic ties with East Timor after…
Beijing's reaction to reports that Taiwan president Chen Shuibian may be visiting the Spratlys, known in Chinese as the Nansha Islands, has been restrained. Asked to articulate China's position at a press briefing in Beijing last week, foreign ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu gave a stock response:…
Chinese defense minister Cao Gangchuan wrapped up a five-day visit to Indonesia yesterday. While in Jakarta, Cao and his Indonesian counterpart, Juwono Sudarsono, agreed to expand military ties between the two countries. Chinese press reports on the development carried the heading "Cao Gangchuan…
ARKROYAL.jpg From Shipping Times: Royal Navy's Flag Ship HMS Ark Royal in
Chinese media kept a close watch on the violence in Kenya following the December 27 elections that resulted in the deaths of more than 300 people and the displacement of at least 250,000. China has substantial investments in the east African nation, including telecommunications projects,…
r185847_692129.jpg Japanese prime minister Yasuo Fukuda.
Dmitry Medvedev is being officially nominated today by the congress of United Russia as the ruling party's candidate for the March 2008 Russian presidential election. His candidacy, first announced a week ago, has been well received in Beijing, and he was referred to by a spokesman for the Chinese…
The Chinese have not taken kindly to Washington's call for a probe into alleged voting irregularities in the December 2 Russian parliamentary elections, which the Putin-led United Russia party won by a landslide. The Chinese press attributed United Russia's victory to the potent combination of…
As Kevin Rudd and his new cabinet are being sworn into office today, Chinese media have given unprecedented coverage to the Australian Labor Party's victory in the November 24 elections, and to the newly designated prime minister in particular. Names of Western leaders are typically transliterated…
Last Friday's vote by Russia's upper house of parliament to suspend compliance with the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty was characterized by official Chinese media as bringing "the Russo-American wrestle over strategic security to a critical phase." Chinese media have followed the…
U.S. Ambassador to Cambodia Joseph A. Mussomeli and
mr_103107_01.jpg Sri Lanka President Mahinda Rajapaksa meets with Chinese workers at
Last Wednesday, the foreign ministers of China, Russia and India held a meeting in the northeastern Chinese city of Harbin. This was the first time that the trilateral forum had taken place in China. In the joint communiqué issued afterwards, it was emphasized that trilateral cooperation among the…
In recent weeks, official Chinese media have devoted much space to the life and exploits of Che Guevara, as well as events in Cuba marking the 40th anniversary of his death, which fell on October 9. In recounting Guevara's credentials as a revolutionary, emphasis was placed on the inspirational…
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) opens its 17th congress today. Expected to last approximately one week, the conclave will set Beijing's policy agenda for the next five years. In the run-up to the congress, People's Daily last week ran eight articles drawing on an online discussion with Chen…
Last week I reported that Chinese cyber-police were keeping a watchful eye on bloggers who were cutting and pasting foreign press reports on developments in Burma to fill the information gap left by the official media. The cat-and-mouse game continues. Using the keywords "miandian minzhu" (Burma…
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chang_e_1.jpg From NASA, an artist's rendering of China's
This past week saw a spate of reports in the Chinese media on the exemplary life of Gao Ming, an honor student at Peking University (PKU) who took a leave of absence to enlist in the People's Liberation Army (PLA). Completing his two-year stint with flying colors, Gao is to resume his studies at…
Last Thursday, Beijing announced the appointment of five new cabinet ministers. The personnel reshuffle came just ahead of the 17th party congress, scheduled to convene on October 15. The all-important gathering will set China's policy agenda for the next five years. One of the five appointments is…
Chinese media do not typically devote much effort to covering developments in India. In recent weeks, however, they have produced numerous reports on the U.S.-India civilian nuclear deal known as the "123 Agreement." The August 13th issue of Study Times, the official journal of the Chinese…
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Official Chinese media have given extensive coverage to the August 2nd planting of a Russian flag on the ocean floor beneath the ice at the North Pole. russia_sub_3807_wideweb__470x329,0.jpg Russia plants the flag, or a scene from Titanic?
The official website of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) has been featuring a "hot topic of concern" on cultural diplomacy. Running concurrently on the website of People's Daily under the title Cultural Diplomacy Propagates China's True Image," it is a collection of…
Official Chinese media have been conspicuously silent about a July 9th clash between the Chinese navy and Vietnamese fishing boats near the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea. The Singapore newspaper the Straits Times reported on July 19th. _300886_sprat300.gif From the BBC.
On July 15th, after nine days of captivity, Zhang Guohua, an executive with the China Nuclear International Uranium Corporation (Sino-U), was released by the Niger Movement for Justice (MNJ). Within days of the abduction, heeding MNJ's call for foreign companies to withdraw, the China Nuclear…
For about two weeks now, the Chinese-language website Chinamil.com, which is operated under the auspices of PLA Daily, has been promoting with banner headlines a special feature titled "In the Middle East, There Is a Chinese Peacekeeping Engineering Brigade." Included are previously published…
On July 2nd, the Guizhou Metropolis News reported the results of a survey conducted in a "bachelors' village" located in the southwestern Chinese province of Guizhou. In this village of just over 2,100 people there are more than 290 bachelors and, of the 60 single women over the age of 20, all had…
Former Taiwan president Lee Teng-hui has long rankled Beijing with his assertions that the self-ruling island is an independent country. xinsrc_0220604151357859158849.jpg Xue Yi is arrested at Narita Airport.
Less than a month ago, People's Daily, the organ paper of the Chinese Communist Party, announced that Sino-Japan relations had gone from "ice to nice" since the two countries' premiers exchanged visits. This was followed by news reports that China and Japan are to step up military exchanges,…
Last week, Defense Secretary Robert Gates succeeded in securing guarantees from Kyrgyz president Kurmanbek Bakiev for continued U.S. use of the Manas air base. During a June 5th press conference in Bishkek--the Kyrgyz capital--Secretary Gates reiterated the importance of Coalition operations at…
Official Chinese media have given considerable coverage to the growing tension between Washington and Moscow. A headline in Friday's People's Daily asks "At What Direction is the Russian Missile Test Targeted?" After noting that "Russia has expressed strong opposition to U.S. plans to extend its…
Last Friday, the Pentagon released its "Annual Report to Congress, Military Power of the People's Republic of China 2007." The English-language media have widely reported how a Sunday editorial in People's Daily by staff writer Xi Laiwang blasted the Pentagon report as "exaggerating, misleading,…
raulchino.jpg Raul Castro meets with Chinese defense
On May 9th, citing sources at the 301 military hospital in Beijing, the Times (London) reported that Chinese vice premier Huang Ju had died of pancreatic cancer. A short while later, Hong Kong's Phoenix TV, which has close ties to Beijing, also reported that Huang Ju had passed away. Within the…
Study Times, a journal run by the Party School of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, published in its May 1, issue an article titled "National Security in the Information Age." The author, Gen. Xiong Guangkai (Ret.), is president of the China Institute for International Strategic…
An April 24th piece in the PLA Daily cautioning against the "corrosive effect" of foreign culture has been republished by several Chinese-language newspapers and websites, including People's Daily, the immensely popular infotainment website sina.com, and china.com.cn, which operates under the…
This past Friday, the Chinese-language website eastday.com, operating under the direct supervision of the propaganda department of the Chinese Communist party's Shanghai branch, carried a commentary titled "An Absurd Logic: the Beijing Olympics and Darfur." The author, Wang Weinan, is a researcher…
Splashed across the cover of the April 6th edition of the Chinese-language weekly Yazhou Zhoukan (published in Hong Kong under the auspices of the Ming Pao Group) is the provocative caption "Another Kind of Color Revolution." The reference is not to a political movement along the lines of Rose…
Xi.jpgBetween March 24th and 26th, Beijing announced new party secretaries for four provinces (Zhejiang, Shaanxi, Shandong, Qinghai) and two cities (Shanghai and Tianjin). Of the six appointments, that of political rising star Xi Jinping, 53, to be secretary of the Shanghai branch of the Communist…
Marine General Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has wrapped up a four-day visit to China that included jaunts to the Nanjing Military Region and the Shenyang Military Region, where he examined an Su-27 fighter bomber and observed Chinese land-combat exercises. During a press…
This past Friday, on the last day of the annual convocation of the National People's Congress, Premier Wen Jiabao fielded questions from Chinese and foreign journalists in a press conference at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. Broadcast live on state television, Wen's meeting with the 1,200…
Later this week, China's legislature, the National People's Congress (NPC), is expected to pass a law concerning property rights. It will mark the first time in the history of the People's Republic that legal protection will formally be provided for private property. The bill, initial drafts of…
On March 2nd, it was reported by both People's Daily and the semi-official Hong Kong China News Agency (HKCNA) that the J-10 jet fighter is to be showcased in the "Peace Mission 2007" joint military exercises between China and Russia. The weeklong drill, scheduled to begin on July 18th in the…
On February 21st, sina.com, the largest Chinese-language infotainment web portal, carried a story titled "U.S. Air Force General Says China, Iran and Venezuela Should Be Regarded as Threats." It discusses an article--"China, Iran Top USAF's Threat List"--recently published in Defense News that…
On January 1, 2007, the Chinese government loosened restrictions on the media, including those that limited the freedom of foreign journalists to travel and conduct interviews in the country. Shortly after, the Paris-based press watchdog Reporters Without Borders announced an end to its boycott of…
IN A DECISION that surprised even the most hopeful China watchers, on October 30 an appeals court in the eastern province of Shandong overturned a guilty verdict against human rights activist Chen Guangcheng, and remanded the case to the county court for a retrial.
SUPPORTERS OF HUMAN RIGHTS in China were heartened when, during her recent visit to Beijing, Assistant Secretary of State Ellen R. Sauerbrey urged the Chinese government to release Chen Guangcheng. Chen, a 35-year-old blind legal advocate from the eastern province of Shandong, had incurred the…
ON APRIL 18, Chinese president Hu Jintao will begin his first official visit to the United States as head of state of the world's most populous nation. In the weeks preceding his visit, much media attention has focused on trade, including a six-month delay in voting on the Schumer-Graham bill,…
ON THE NIGHT OF DECEMBER 6, 2005, Radio Free Asia (RFA) received a frantic call for help from a resident of Dongzhou village, near the port city of Shanwei, in the prosperous southern Chinese province of Guangdong. The caller told RFA that hundreds of paramilitary police had moved into the area and…
ON OCTOBER 10, A lawyer and three assistants traveled from Beijing to Linyi, a city of 10 million roughly 400 miles southeast of the Chinese capital, to participate in a historic class-action lawsuit. Organized by the charismatic blind activist Chen Guangcheng, 34, the lawsuit targets local…
FOR TWELVE DAYS FOLLOWING THE death of former Chinese leader Zhao Ziyang, China's television and radio remained silent about his passing. A handful of newspapers mentioned it, in a government-approved two-sentence statement buried on inside pages. On the day of the cremation, January 29, China…
OVER THE PAST YEAR, increasing numbers of the displaced and disaffected from across China have been descending on Beijing to seek redress of grievances. Reviving the ancient custom of shangfang--the practice of petitioning the central authority to right wrongs perpetrated by local…
CHINA CENTRAL TELEVISION's "Economic Person of the Year" for 2003 is Xiong Deming, a 42-year-old pig farmer from Sichuan Province. But Ms. Xiong wasn't singled out for any entrepreneurial or agricultural undertaking of her own. Rather, her 15 minutes of fame are the result of a chance encounter…
BEIJING'S CRITICS and supporters agree that something is wrong with the moral fabric of China. Visiting journalists and resident foreign businessmen comment on falling ethical standards. When an orgy involving 380 Japanese tourists and 500 Chinese prostitutes in a luxury hotel in Zhuhai came to…