Taiwan court rules against surgery requirement for legal gender change
LGBTQ+ advocates are celebrating the ruling, but want legislation to secure rights.
Domestic News
More than ever, what happens in China affects everyone, everywhere. Far from the monolith that China is often perceived as in the West — it is a vast country of 34 provinces & autonomous regions comprising 1.4 billion people. Politically, China may have a one-party system, but its domestic politics are more complicated than meet the eye. You can’t understand the world without understanding China.
Latest Posts
More Posts
Red New Deal or Raw New Deal? Unraveling China’s astonishing barrage of regulatory action
Is it a “profound revolution,” or just bureaucratic competition? Does Xi Jinping have a master plan, or is the regulatory pile-on a coincidence of the political calendar? Lizzi Lee and Jude Blanchette offered their (sometimes surprising) views of China's sweeping changes on the Sinica Podcast.
‘Nannies’ who happen to teach: China cracks down on loopholes in private tutoring ban
After China banned companies from making a profit by selling after school tutoring services, well-off parents and tutors quickly found ways to get around the regulations. But the Ministry of Education is on the case.
Xi Jinping promises new Beijing stock market
The Chinese government is cracking down on large companies and taxing wealthy individuals, but it’s also trying to encourage the growth of an entrepreneurial middle class. Today China’s leader highlighted small companies and ordinary people of limited means, and promised a new Beijing stock market.
How China beat malaria
In June 2021, China was declared malaria-free by the World Health Organization. Here’s how the country rid itself of the mosquito borne disease.
Xi Jinping’s graft busters are probing Jack Ma’s home city, and a rising star of Xi’s Zhejiang clan
Zhejiang is the economic powerhouse that set the groundwork for the rise of Chinese leader Xi Jinping. Now the purge of the Party chief of Hangzhou, a business center of the province and home to Alibaba, has sent a chill across the country’s political and business elites. Lizzi Lee explains why.
Misleading headlines about China’s education sector miss the real story
Contrary to media reports, Sino-foreign higher education partnerships are doing just fine.
Can betting on Chinese politicians predict their futures?
Much of the political maneuvering within the Communist Party of China occurs behind closed doors, off-limits even to state media and most Party cadres. But new technologies like prediction markets and crowd forecasting may improve our understanding of politics in the world’s second-largest economy. Political analyst Neil Thomas explains a new experiment.
What happens at Beidaihe? An explainer
A secretive annual gathering of China’s top leaders in a coastal resort is one of the most anticipated events in Beijing's political calendar every year. How might this year’s meeting go?
The anaconda in the chandeliers: The Hong Kong National Security Law and its implications for middle powers
In May 2021, an Israeli company became the first documented case of China imposing free expression limitations on a foreign business under the 2020 Hong Kong National Security Law. Tuvia Gering argues that democracies must research the law and its implications to ensure that their citizens are not prosecuted for exercising their basic rights.