Fifty years ago this week, China embarked on what would turn out to be 10 years of turmoil known as the Cultural Revolution. It was not a revolution in the usual sense, in that it was initiated from a ...More
EJ Insight2016-05-17
Chinese political dictionaries define an overseas Chinese as a Chinese national who resides overseas. That is a narrow, legal definition. But many people, including the mainland government, use it loo ...More
EJ Insight2016-05-09
After the disappearance last December of Hong Kong bookseller Lee Bo, Britain’s foreign secretary, Philip Hammond, asked Beijing for information on his whereabouts, pointing out that the 65-year-old w ...More
EJ Insight2016-05-03
In mid-April, the Foreign Correspondents Club of Hong Kong sponsored a lunch talk on the rule of law in China. What set this talk apart was the speaker: Wang Zhenmin, head of the law department of the ...More
EJ Insight2016-04-25
China failed last week to pressure Japan and other G7 countries into not discussing the South China Sea when the group met in Hiroshima. Instead, foreign ministers from the seven countries issued a jo ...More
EJ Insight2016-04-18
For a country that believes strongly in non-interference in other countries’ internal affairs, China, oddly, is constantly telling other countries what they can and cannot talk about. Last week, China ...More
EJ Insight2016-04-11
The Hong Kong National Party, whose ideas of Hong Kong independence were weighed and dismissed by older and, presumably, wiser heads in previous years, nonetheless has succeeded in getting the attenti ...More
EJ Insight2016-04-05
The impact of the latest healthcare scandal in China, this time involving the sale of illegal vaccines, is spreading as officials acknowledge that more than two-thirds of the country's provinces are a ...More
EJ Insight2016-03-29
The visit of Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi to the United States illustrates the seemingly schizophrenic relationship between the two countries. On one hand, clear progress was made on joint action ...More
EJ Insight2016-03-01
China has reacted mildly – to some extent, even positively – to the US-Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit hosted last week by US President Barack Obama at the Sunnylands estate in Californi ...More
EJ Insight2016-02-23
Four months after Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to the United Kingdom was hailed by both countries as heralding a new "golden era", the British government unexpectedly accused Beijing of commit ...More
EJ Insight2016-02-16
During the campaign leading up to Taiwan’s Jan. 16 elections, Tsai Ing-wen, leader of the Democratic Progressive Party, took part in singing the national anthem at public events, but her lips visibly ...More
EJ Insight2016-01-25
The consternation in Hong Kong over the case of five missing booksellers – especially the most recent incident involving Lee Bo, who is feared to have been kidnapped and smuggled into the Chinese main ...More
EJ Insight2016-01-18
At a time when Chinese capital and Chinese tourists are flooding into every corner of the world, the Chinese government is seeking the return of hundreds, possibly thousands, of former officials who h ...More
EJ Insight2016-01-12
China responded with a knee-jerk reaction to the Obama Administration's announcement of a US$1.83 billion arms sales package for Taiwan, summoning the charge d’affaires at the American embassy for a d ...More
EJ Insight2015-12-22
The two-day China-Africa summit meeting in Johannesburg last week marked another step in the decades-long process of tightening relations between the world’s soon-to-be-biggest economic power and the ...More
EJ Insight2015-12-08
After decades of priding itself on not having a single Chinese soldier on foreign soil (except for those serving with UN peacekeeping forces) and having no overseas military bases, China is somewhat a ...More
EJ Insight2015-12-01
Barack Obama, who has dubbed himself “America’s first Pacific president”, made his sixth trip to the region last week to attend meetings in Manila and Kuala Lumpur. But now that there is little more t ...More
EJ Insight2015-11-24
A single swallow, we are told, doesn’t make a summer. That certainly applies to the trilateral meeting in Seoul on Nov. 1 at which Japanese Premier Shinzo Abe met his counterparts, President Park Geun ...More
EJ Insight2015-11-17
A strong, vigorous handshake that lasted more than a minute marked the historic first meeting between the leader of the People’s Republic of China and the leader of Taiwan, which has been the home of ...More
EJ Insight2015-11-10
