ChinaFile

ChinaFile is a digital magazine created by the Center on U.S.-China Relations at Asia Society. Its mission is to foster a well-informed and dynamic discussion about China, both in the United States and globally. The magazine features original articles, insightful analysis, photography, and videos covering a wide range of subjects. We focus on topics that often go unnoticed, present stories in innovative ways, and invite experts to connect with a broader audience. We also encourage Chinese analysts to share their perspectives with international readers, addressing questions that may not have been thoroughly covered by other outlets. Our contributors include journalists, academics, and various specialists from within and outside of China.

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Articles

What Even Is Trump’s China Strategy?

2 weeks ago | chinafile.com | Wendy Cutler |Michael Hirson |Lizzi C. Lee |Isabel Hilton

When it comes to China, there are several different factions pushing the Trump Administration in different directions: MAGA nationalists who favor economic, cultural, and possibly military warfare against China; more old-fashioned Republicans who simply distrust the Chinese Communist Party; and the tech elite, especially Trump advisor Elon Musk, who has huge investments in China and doesn’t seem to want cross-Pacific tensions.
Can the U.S. Find a Balance between Scientific Openness and Security?

Jan 22, 2025 | chinafile.com | Yaqiu Wang

In online spaces where Chinese students and researchers congregate, complaints about the state of scientific research in China abound.
ChinaFile Presents: ‘Her Lotus Year,’ a Conversation with Paul French

Nov 26, 2024 | chinafile.com | Paul French |Jeremy Goldkorn

Paul French is a prolific author of books on pre-revolutionary 20th Century China and the stories of foreigners who lived and worked there, including the bestselling true-crime history, Midnight in Peking. His work is based on traditional historical research, his own experiences living in Shanghai for around two decades, and correspondence and conversations with people who lived in China, and their family members.
‘What Happened, Mama? In 1989, Were You Just Like Me?’

Nov 18, 2024 | chinafile.com | Yangyang Cheng

“Are you going to stay in the United States or go back to China after graduation?”When my classmates, my professors, and my colleagues in the newsroom during my summer internship learned that I was originally from China, they always asked me this same question. I told them I didn’t know.
Where the Malan Blooms

Oct 16, 2024 | chinafile.com | Yangyang Cheng

Like many children in 1990s China, every day when the bell rang for recess, my friends and I would rush out of the classroom and onto the playground. Our favorite activity was tiao pijin, a form of jump rope using elastic. It was a team sport. Two of us secured the elastic on either end so it formed a long loop, and the rest hopped in and out of it. To keep up the pace and count our steps, we recited a song: “The malan blooms.
Tick Tock for TikTok

Oct 4, 2024 | chinafile.com | Kevin Xu |Donald Clarke |Rui Ma

TikTok was in federal court last month arguing against a law that U.S. President Biden signed in April giving TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, 90 days to sell the app to a non-Chinese company or be banned nationwide. The deadline is January 19, 2025, a Sunday. “After several hours of questioning, however,” NPR reported, “it was difficult to gauge which way the court is leaning in the high-stakes legal saga that is the most dire-yet challenge TikTok has faced.”What’s next?
China’s Iconoclast

Oct 3, 2024 | chinafile.com | Ian Johnson

I Have No Enemies: The Life and Legacy of Liu Xiaobo by Perry Link, the leading Western chronicler of dissent in China, and a Chinese colleague who writes anonymously as Wu Dazhi is the definitive biography of the most famous dissident in the nearly seventy-five-year history of the People’s Republic of China. The book, long and necessarily ambitious, is also a tour de force survey of Chinese political thought, activism, and dissent over the past half-century.
Is China’s Cultural Outreach to Muslims in Indonesia Working?

Sep 27, 2024 | chinafile.com | Randy Mulyanto

Mandarin lessons sponsored by the Chinese government are held every Tuesday and Thursday inside Southeast Asia’s largest mosque, Masjid Istiqlal, in Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia. The teachers and course materials for the Mandarin lessons are provided free of charge by the Confucius Institute at Universitas Al Azhar Indonesia, a university that seeks to “apply universal Islamic values in character building” as part of its mission.
Can China’s Scholarships and Cultural Diplomacy Efforts Succeed in Pakistan?

Sep 26, 2024 | chinafile.com | Akbar Notezai

In Washington, D.C., China has a bad reputation for the way it treats its Muslim minorities. But views differ greatly in many majority-Muslim countries in Asia. Educational programs and exchanges are a key part of this. Pakistan is an exemplar: Estimates suggest that more than 28,000 students studied in China in 2019, making it the top destination for outward-bound students.
How a Crackdown Transformed LGBTQ Activism in China

Sep 26, 2024 | chinafile.com | Darius Longarino

With high-profile campaigns and organizing no longer possible, China’s LGBTQ advocates look to subtler channels for change In mid-2020, despite the COVID pandemic and years of tightening space for civil society, China’s LGBTQ movement was still making strides.