In October Xi Jinping cleared the inner circle of the ruling Communist Party of all but lackeys. In November his lifetime rule became much more precarious as protests broke out across the country over his draconian zero-COVID policies.
Uyghur
Beijing sham Olympic opening ceremony
March 19, 2022Critical view of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics opening ceremony, with its rhetorical message echoing the pre-Cultural Revolution campaign to “let 100 flowers bloom, a hundred schools of thought contend.”
World in View: Iron fist at Olympics
March 16, 2022It is no accident that Olympic gold medal winner Nils van der Poel felt compelled to wait until he was out of the grasp of China before he gave away his Olympic gold medal to the daughter of a political prisoner jailed in China: Gui Minhai.
Worldwide attacks on freedom of thought
March 11, 2021Governments across the world are conducting a war against the freedom of thought, from France’s assault on critical race theory to U.S. criminalizing of Indigenous water protectors to Poland’s legal enshrinement of Holocaust denial.
Rebellion in Hong Kong spreads
January 21, 2020New Year’s Day, a million people took to the streets in Hong Kong despite police repression. Marchers called for Hong Kong to “resist tyranny, join a union.”
Widening labor and peasant revolts threaten Chinese rulers
January 30, 2012Lead article in the new January-February 2012 issue of News & Letters:
Widening labor and peasant revolts threaten Chinese rulers
by Bob McGuire
Open rebellion in the village of Wukan in December revealed the forced land seizures that have underpinned China’s industrial expansion as it has risen to serve as the world’s workshop. What rulers in [=>]