WorldcrunchCaixin is a hub for financial and economic news in China. Serving high-quality and original content, Caixin.cn focuses on key financial and economic information.
-OpEd- BEIJING – On June 6, the Guardian newspaper in Britain and the Washington Post in the United States revealed the American government’s ongoing efforts to monitor the activities of people all around the world. They did so only after verifying the authenticity of the confidential documents they had obtained. The top-secret documents showed that […]
Last week, the city government of Wuhan, in central China, published a draft law on population and family planning management that quickly became national news. The bill charges “social maintenance fees” against unmarried woman who have given birth to a child but could not provide valid identification of the child’s father, or those who have […]
Ever since 2002, when the first batch of students graduated after national expansion of university enrollment, the difficulty for educated young people to find employment has become a hot topic each summer. The total number of graduates has grown every year. With 6.99 million fresh graduates this year, the number is hitting another record high. […]
For the past six months, the Chinese media has been reporting that rice grown in the south-central Hunan Province contains unacceptable levels of cadmium, a carcinogenic heavy metal. Last month, an inspection of samples in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, revealed that more than half the batches of cadmium-tainted rice came from three rice mills in the […]
BEIJING – Last month, this city’s Human Resources and Social Security Bureau introduced an administrative circular that stipulates “in principle” municipal government departments should impose age restrictions when hiring graduates settling in Beijing who are not officially residents holding local household registrations. Those with undergraduate degrees who have moved to Beijing shouldn’t be hired if […]
In spite of the economic growth and rising living standards in many Asian countries, the status of women has strangely stagnated, and even regressed. If women’s status is only measured by remuneration, Asia surely wouldn’t be the only place where there is a marked disparity between the sexes. For instance, according to the United States […]
Excessive feasting by public officials has a long and wide history in China. The fundamental source of its prevalence is actually not even the hearty appetites of the officials in question. These people are sacrificing a lot themselves in this banquet culture. On the lighter side, people may just lose a previously slim figure. In […]
-Blog- BEIJING – The world is big, and has all kinds of people. Given their various historical, cultural and environmental backgrounds, people from each country are naturally very different. Each nation is proud of its national character. And indeed, some people have a lot to be proud of, like those who pioneered science and democracy. […]
BEIJING – Last month, more than 16,000 dead pigs were found in tributaries of the Huangpu River, not far from Shanghai, in eastern China. At the same time, scores of diseased pig carcasses were also found miles away in Liuyang River, in the south-central Hunan Province. The massive number of dead pigs discovered nationwide caused […]
BEIJING – Last month, President Xi Jinping told the mayor of Suzhou, who had outlined a plan to make improvements on the water quality of the city’s lakes, that for China’s netizens, the best measure of acceptable water quality would be to see whether the mayor dared to jump in and swim. In February, a […]
After several high-profile miscarriages of justice, could a Chinese movement take root to abolish capital punishment? But public outrage cuts both ways.
Food shortages are almost always a problem of supply, not demand, but don’t tell that to some top Chinese officials maintaining a tight grip on national family planning policy.
The two world powers and BRICS nations enjoy friendly relations, and both have an interest in expanding economic and political links. Still, there is another big player always looming.
BEIJING – Less than six months ago, U.S. Under Secretary of State Robert D. Hormats gave an exclusive interview to Caixin, in which he said that one of the most important tasks in US-China relations was to define differences on intellectual property rights protection and find common solutions within the next six months. On Feb. […]
BEIJING – The 18th century British scholar Thomas Malthus predicted that when population growth exceeded agriculture’s capacity to support new population numbers, it would lead to starvation and misery. His prediction was wrong, because he did not take into account the impact of scientific and technological progress. His name has since become an adjective for […]
BEIJING – It has been several weeks since North Korea conducted its third nuclear test on February 12. The international community has condemned it, and the worry expressed is unprecedented. China, in a very unusual move, summoned the North Korean Ambassador to Beijing the same day. The UN Security Council immediately made a declaration condemning […]
A landslide last month in Zhenxiong County in southwestern China killed 46 villagers. Once the bodies were recovered, the local authority — without any prior agreement from family members — cremated them. This set off a storm of protest from relatives of the deceased, and widespread criticism from the public. Zhenxiong authorities sparked further outrage […]
The dispute over the Diaoyu islands, which Japan calls the Senkaku islands, is prompting some Japanese firms to consider closing Chinese operations. They quickly run into roadblocks.
Chinese GDP is growing — but it is ever more at odds with the better life Chinese people aspire to. Despite new leaders’ best intentions, China’s ambitions could all come undone.
“Behind the closet are those wives imprisoned in an unhappy marriage…” A Chinese woman used her personal blog to describe life as the wife of a gay man, before her husband decided finally to come out. According to a report conducted in 2005 by Liu Dalin, a prominent sexologist, 90% of Chinese homosexual and bisexual […]
Japan has just crossed perhaps the most vivid line in the demographic divide. Still, there are other surprises about what may ensure future economic growth across Asia.
BEIJING – After a five-year hiatus, Shinzo Abe is back as Japan’s Prime Minister. What will this mean for China-Japan relations, which are at a historic 40-year low because of the Senkaku Islands dispute? According to observers, Chinese officials had been expecting the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) to step down from power, so they […]
BEIJING – At least 8,572 premature deaths occurred in four major Chinese cities in 2012 due to the high levels of fine particle pollution. This was the conclusion of a joint study called PM2.5: Measuring The Human Health And Economic Impacts On China’s Largest Cities carried out by Greenpeace and Peking University. Apart from the […]
In 2011, Sony accumulated losses of $5.6 billion, Sharp lost $4.7 billion, and Panasonic $9.6 billion. The momentum of similar huge losses at these firms has continued through 2012. All these enterprises that used to be so much admired by the Chinese are plunging, one by one, into historic lows. Of course the ups and […]
Chinese firms setting up shop on the African continent must do their homework on more than just strictly business conditions.
In Aesop’s Fables, the story about the race between the hare and the tortoise tells people that the rabbit’s complacency and the turtle’s perseverance resulted in an unexpected ending to a seemingly predictable contest. In the 21st century, will the economic race between China and India also offer similar twists and turns, notably because of […]
In November, both the U.S. presidential election and China’s change of leadership took place. They were the two most watched events of the year. China’s transfer of power within the party has become increasingly institutionalized. Meanwhile, America’s history of democratic election is deep-rooted and continues to play a fundamental role in its national and social […]
-Essay- After Mo Yan won this year’s Nobel Prize for Literature, many Chinese people predicted that this would contribute greatly to the expansion of Chinese culture in the world. I sincerely hope so. However, in peaceful times the transmission and penetration of a culture are extremely slow. The Italian Jesuit priest, Matteo Ricci (1552-1610), was […]
China’s Ministry of Health recently drafted a new organ transplant directive called “Management for the Acquisition and Allocation of Organs.” The directive should be implemented soon in the hope of setting up a fairer and more transparent organ distribution system as well as a national database. A national organ database is an institution specifically set […]
Last week at an unlicensed Montessori kindergarten in Taiyuan, in the western province of Shanxi, a teacher slapped a five-year-old girl in the face more than 70 times and kicked her twice because she didn’t manage to do her arithmetic. While an online video of the abuse was setting off a huge public outcry, another […]
On October 18, water started flowing along a 20 kilometer (12.4 mile) aqueduct from the Yellow River into a gigantic pit in Zhengzhou City. In two months this pit will turn into an artificial lake with a surface of 5.6 square kilometers (3.5 square miles). It has taken two years of digging and has cost […]
-Essay- Chinese-Americans account for 1.5-2% of the population in the United States, while Asian-Americans taken altogether account for 6%. In comparison, Jews account for only about 2%, but the positions that the two ethnic groups occupy in the eyes of American politicians are not comparable. Rudolph Giuliani, the New York mayor, once rushed to the […]
-Analysis- In September, China’s National Development and Reform Commission announced that China’s highways would be toll-free during the Golden Week national holiday. To boost domestic tourism, certain local governments, such as in Jiangsu Province, also passed a decree banning price hikes on tourist attractions during the eight-day holiday break, which this year combined the Mid-Autumn […]
We often hear about the rise of the middle class in Asia, and in particular in the fast developing countries such as China and India. However, what exactly is the “middle class”? The term is widely cited around the world, applied without hesitation by all sorts of people. Nevertheless, it means different things to different […]
Putting the right spin on your words is a science. Obviously, the civil servants who owe a fiduciary duty to the public have an urgent need to master this subject. And it helps to shift the blame on someone else, a child, a spouse, or a convenient foreigner will do. Two weeks ago Yang Dacai, […]
-OP-ED- In China, anti-Japanese sentiment is running very high. The call for a military occupation of the Diaoyu Islands is popular among the public. Managing Sino-Japanese relations and maintaining peace in the East China Sea has become a matter of urgency. China and Japan’s conflicting claims over the sovereignty of the Diaoyu Islands have always […]
-Essay- The car drove slowly into the early spring night of Hangzhou. The person who had come to fetch me is a new acquaintance named Wang Qixian. As a member of the post-1980s generation he has worked as a white collar worker in the private sector, in Chinese state-owned enterprises, as well as in Taiwanese […]
BEIJING – Every time that German Chancellor Angela Merkel makes a trip to China, she always goes home with a large chunk of investment. Her just concluded visit was no exception. In addition to more than 10 cooperation agreements in areas such as aerospace and the automotive industries, Merkel has also obtained a commitment from […]
BEIJING – From the Huangyan Island, known also as the Scarborough Shoal, to the Diaoyu Islands, the Chinese territorial waters have been anything but calm. And inevitably, the shadow of the United States has been present behind all this. These so-called island disputes are actually a game between two great powers. After a period of […]
Recently several authors of a BL fiction website were arrested. The injustice is so glaringly obvious that I can’t stop myself from saying something about this. The so-called BL (Boy’s Love) fiction is a particular interest of a minority of people. The concept comes from Japan: it refers to female-oriented fiction featuring idealized romantic relationships […]