China Note Archive

The U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade, which had guaranteed a woman’s right to choose to have an abortion since 1973, has brought the question of state involvement in reproductive rights issues on both sides of the Pacific into sharp focus. Abortion is not overtly central to debates about China’s One Child policy, a mass-scale reproductive control infrastructure introduced in 1980 that is now being gradually rolled back. But as in the post-Roe U.S., the Chinese state’s encroachment on individual autonomy and family planning choices nonetheless looms large when it comes to reproductive rights. Forced intrauterine devices, or […]

For millions of Chinese citizens, delivery drivers have been key to surviving Beijing’s “zero COVID” coronavirus strategy. Amid rolling lockdowns and travel restrictions, e-commerce couriers have served as lifelines to communities under confinement, from massive cities like Shanghai and Chengdu to smaller provinces like Shenyang, all of which have implemented the strict isolation measures mandated under Beijing’s strict pandemic response. Under these conditions, in which leaving one’s residence for reasons unrelated to getting tested is impossible, access to food and other daily essentials has been scarce. Enter the gig worker. Delivery drivers, by and large, work under contract with courier […]

When Zhou Xiaoxuan, a former intern at China’s state broadcaster, was groped by Zhu Jun, a prominent news anchor, in 2014, she was told by police to keep quiet about her ordeal and consider his status as a national “positive energy” icon. Simply put, Zhu’s value as a newscaster was deemed by law enforcement to be more important than justice for Zhou. Zhou, who also goes by the nickname of Xianzi, later filed a civil suit in 2021 to seek damages, a move that turned out to be unsuccessful. Though her civil suit was dismissed a year prior to the Johnny Depp-Amber […]

The events of June 4, 1989, in Tiananmen Square were part of a distinct moment in time. At the heart of what took place there that day was a question of succession hovering over Deng Xiaoping, the then-paramount leader whose stewardship of the Chinese Communist Party stood at a crossroads following the death of Hu Yaobang, the CCP’s former general secretary. June 4 was an opportunity for the protesters in Tiananmen Square to communicate not only to their political leaders, but also to Mikhail Gorbachev, the then-leader of the Soviet Union who was visiting China at the time. The square […]

China’s official name is the People’s Republic of China, but the degree to which that description fulfills its promise is a wildly varying, fluid story that remains open to debate. Chinese politics and culture, in all their ramifications, nonetheless begin with the Chinese people, who bear the full weight both of their government’s policies and the xenophobia of assumptions that because they are Chinese citizens, they are by default agents of the Chinese state. Chinese citizens are varied and complex, just like people in any country or corner of the globe. They can be prone to displays of nationalism, but […]