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 ArticlesReading My Own Life
A few months ago, a book with a slightly torn ticket on its lilac cover began emerging on my Instagram feed. A small, faint Chinese translation of the title and the author’s last name, Lin, hinted it had something to do with China. I was intrigued because the cover had no trace of red, no stars or dragons, cranes or bamboo that scream CHINA! The Memory Museum, 记忆博物馆, is a collection of nine short stories by New York-based writer M Lin. Some stories felt so real they read like nonfiction.
App Life in China
“It’s really tough doing anything in China right now,” my friend told me. He’s a serial entrepreneur in Shanghai with a locked-in grin. We were waiting for our food in a Taiwanese restaurant in a lovingly-renovated toy factory in Shanghai. The place was really nice but it was about half full. I heard the same complaint nearly the whole month of June, which I spent with my family in Beijing, Shanghai, and cities and villages in Jiangsu, Hebei, and Yunnan provinces.
A World out of Words
The opening of a bookstore rarely makes international headlines. But when JF Books, known in Chinese as “Jifeng” (seasonal winds), opened its doors in Washington, D.C. on September 1, 2024, the news was covered around the world, from The Washington Post and The Economist, to Der Spiegel in Germany and The Straits Times in Singapore.
In Mexico City, Young Chinese Women Are Becoming Their Own Bosses
Mexico City, Mexico — At around noon, as she wraps up a meeting over the phone, Jiale Zhao steps out of an Uber onto Avenida Presidente Masaryk, sometimes called Mexico City’s Fifth Avenue, a high-end shopping area located in the Polanco district with numerous fine dining restaurants and flagships of luxury brands such as Hermès and Cartier.
Picking up the Threads
On a hot, humid day in mid-May, I joined a group of elderly Chinese immigrant women for a textile workshop at a senior center in my Brooklyn neighborhood, Sunset Park. After I greeted my classmates—a dozen or so gray-haired women from different parts of China and Hong Kong—I settled into a corner of the classroom next to a heap of cloth scraps, strands of thread, and balls of yarn all jumbled together. The workshop’s teacher, my friend Lin Qiqing, handed me a set of embroidery tools.
Are 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.