Jessica Batke

Oct 3, 2023 | foreignpolicy.com | Jessica Batke

Swirling around in brightly colored inflatables the shape of flying saucers, riders grin as they skid across the ice, bouncing off one another in a winter version of bumper cars. Nearby, more people pedal ice bikes and row sleds that look like dragon boats. Others steer snowmobiles along a go-kart-style track. Children glide along in “princess horse-drawn carts” pulled by diminutive steeds.

Sep 28, 2023 | chinafile.com | Jessica Batke

China’s United Front Work Department, Known for Its Influence Operations Abroad, Is Even Busier at Home Swirling around in brightly-colored inflatables the shape of flying saucers, riders grin as they skid across the ice, bouncing off one another in a winter version of bumper cars. Nearby, more people pedal “ice bikes” and row sleds that look like dragon boats. Others steer snowmobiles along a go-cart-style track.

Aug 17, 2023 | chinafile.com | Jessica Batke |Eli Friedman

This week, China’s National Bureau of Statistics announced it would cease collecting data on youth unemployment. The news came after nearly a decade of poor job prospects for Chinese people ages 16-24, often reported on by international media as mainly a problem affecting recent college graduates. Earlier this summer, ChinaFile’s Jessica Batke spoke with sociologist Eli Friedman, who studies international labor, about the reasons for joblessness among China’s young people and how it is covered.

Mar 17, 2023 | chinafile.com | Jessica Batke |Gulchehra Hoja

Gulchehra Hoja is a longtime broadcaster with Radio Free Asia’s (RFA) Uyghur Service. She grew up in Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, and was a successful TV personality and journalist with Chinese state media there. She later left China to join RFA and provide uncensored news coverage from the United States. ChinaFile’s Jessica Batke spoke recently with Hoja about her new memoir, A Stone Is Most Precious Where It Belongs.

Mar 6, 2023 | chinafile.com | Jessica Batke

Ten years ago, in April 2013, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) promulgated a critical directive: its “Communiqué on the Current State of the Ideological Sphere.” The document, issued by the CCP’s General Office and not intended for public distribution, enumerated seven “false ideological trends, positions, and activities” that posed a “severe challenge” and that the Party worried could lead to “major disorder.” “Document 9,” as it would come to be called, heralded the tone of the new Xi...