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Inside the Great Hall of the People during a closing session of the National People’s Congress, March 2007 in Beijing.
Document 9: A ChinaFile Translation
How Much Is a Hardline Party Directive Shaping China’s Current Political Climate?
November 8, 2013
This weekend, China’s leaders gather in Beijing for meetings widely expected to determine the shape of China’s economy, as well as the nation’s progress, over the next decade. What exactly the outcome of this Third Plenum of the Eighteenth Party Congress of the Chinese Communist Party will be remains shrouded in no small measure of secrecy, like most matters of high politics in China. President Xi Jinping has signaled that a significant new wave of economic liberalization may be in the works. But in the realm of political reform, Xi also has signaled a deep reluctance. In fact, many of the actions taken and techniques used under his year of leadership suggest a return to ideas and tactics that h
Mere months after China’s handling of the Eighteenth Party Congress suggested the country would undergo a peaceful leadership transition, the issue of freedom of the press surged to attention this week after a censored editorial in
Southern Weekly (
Nanfang Zhoumo) resulted in a vociferous protest from the newspaper’s editorial staff, and an unexpected ripple of agreement across the country. As this situation continues to play out, we look this week at what brought on these protests, what is at stake, and what the response suggests about the way China’s new government will handle media relations.
And who are our guests? Joining Kaiser Kuo and Jeremy Goldkorn to talk about this ongoing constitutional kerfuffle are two guests we are delighted to welcome back to our studio: Ian Johnson, the former Beijing Bureau Chief for
On April 1, 1969, delegates to the Ninth Congress of the Chinese Communist Party convened in the Great Hall of the People on the western flank of Tiananmen Square. The hall had been constructed as one of the Ten Grand Edifices 十大建築 hastily constructed to celebrate the first decade of the People’s Republic of China in 1959. It was used for major meetings of the socialist party-state ever since.
Enemies of the twenty-year-old Communist regime in Beijing were everywhere. In the atmosphere of extreme paranoia that marked the Cultural Revolution years (from its ideological inception in 1964 to its denouement in late 1978), unless something appeared in the pages of the