ChinaFile
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ChinaFile is an online magazine published by the Center on U.S.-China Relations at Asia Society, dedicated to promoting an informed, nuanced, and vibrant public conversation about China, in the U.S. and around the world.
ChinaFile publishes original reporting and analysis across a wide spectrum of topics in writing, photography, and video. We devote our energy to underreported subjects, innovative and elegant storytelling, experts interested in engaging non-experts, Chinese analysts who want to write for international audiences, and questions we feel haven’t been adequately explained by other publications. Our contributors are journalists, scholars, and other experts working both inside and outside of China.
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| Scope | National |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Country | United States of America |
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Recent Articles
Search ArticlesAre There Any Good Ideas for AI Governance?
Chris Li is a Technology and Geopolitics Fellow at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, where his research and teaching cover U.S.-China relations, the... Lizzi C. Lee is an economist turned journalist. She graduated from MIT’s Ph.D. program in Economics before joining the New York-based independent Chinese media outlet Wall St TV. She is currently the... Emmie Hine is a researcher at the Safe AI Forum (SAIF) focusing on the Chinese AI governance ecosystem.
My Grandmother’s Hens
On a spring day in 1996, my aunt brought her city friends to our village for an outing. We lived deep in the mountains, dozens of miles from Hangzhou, where my aunt worked. I was five and had lived in the village my entire life. I fantasized about living in the city. Not long before, I had learned the Chinese words gongren 工人(workers) and nongmin 农民 (farmers) from a children’s magazine. I asked my mother which we were. My mother said we were farmers.
ASEAN’s U.S.-China Balancing Act Is Getting Much Harder
When Southeast Asian leaders convened in Cebu in May for the first summit of the Philippines’ year as ASEAN chair, the meeting was overshadowed by war in the Middle East and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. For a region whose economies are, with few exceptions, heavy energy importers, the shock was severe, raising energy and food prices, increasing shipping and insurance costs, and disrupting supply chains for fertilizer, medical goods, and other critical products.
Leaked Documents Show the Success of China’s VPN Crackdown
As long as Beijing has been censoring content online, people in China have been finding ways around that censorship. Such “wall-jumpers” used to have a relatively easy time getting their hands on the necessary digital tools. Often, this was in the form of a VPN, or virtual private network, which disguises a user’s ultimate online destination to any censor who might be snooping in.
We Can Live with China (But Drop ‘Constructive Strategic Stability’)
Xi Jinping won the agenda for his summit with Donald Trump before Airforce One touched down in Beijing. America would do it his way. Trump would not ask China to improve its human rights record, strengthen its currency, cease its cyberattacks, curtail support for Russia, or lighten up on Taiwan. Instead, Trump’s purpose would be to celebrate his relationship with Xi and sell stuff.
‘What Do You Need This Face to Do for You?’
In her new graphic memoir Names and Faces, comic artist Leise Hook illustrates a story of identity, exploring “the in-betweenness of being mixed-race.” Hook relates memories from her childhood, growing up in Michigan, Virginia, and for one year in Japan, with a Chinese mother and a white father, and then on her own as an adult in Beijing and New York. She weaves together her artistic journey with her search for self-understanding.
‘Mapping Myself onto a Vine or a Fish’
Leise Hook is a cartoonist and illustrator who lives in Stockholm, Sweden. She grew up in Virginia and Michigan, and previously worked in art museums in New York and Beijing. Her cartoons appear in The New Yorker and elsewhere, and she has just published a graphic memoir, Names and Faces, “examining the in-betweenness of being mixed-race.” She spoke to ChinaFile’s Jeremy Goldkorn in April. This is an abridged, lightly edited transcript of their conversation.
How to Be Chinese and Progressive in 2026
What does it mean to be a Chinese human rights advocate in 2026? Yaqiu Wang has worked at Freedom House, Human Rights Watch, and the Committee to Protect Journalists, and is currently a fellow at the University of Chicago. She watched DOGE cuts gut reporting on political prisoners, refugee assistance networks, and labor rights work abroad, and argued in ChinaFile that the human rights community must urgently diversify away from U.S. government money.
Censorship Is Not Deterring Global Adoption of Chinese AI
In 2023, Chinese tech giant Baidu debuted a large language model called Ernie Bot. It was a flop. Baidu began as a search engine company. It now provides a long list of services and is a leader in self-driving technology. It has also “aggressively” invested in AI since 2012, making it an early player, one which also boasts decades of data from its many online services it can use to train its models.
Is There An Off-Ramp for China and Japan?
Daniel Russel joined the Asia Society Policy Institute as Diplomat in Residence and Senior Fellow in April 2017. A career member of the Senior Foreign Service at the U.S. Department of State, he most... Ryan Hass is a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, where he is Director of the John L. Thornton China Center and the Chen-Fu and Cecilia Yen Koo Chair in Taiwan Studies. He served as Director...