society

China’s welfare system originates from the early years of the Mao era, based on the Soviet socialist model designed to provide care and social security from cradle to grave. Today, the welfare system is contending with issues like rural-urban migration and the three child policy, writes Charlotte Middlehurst In recent years, Beijing has made the eradication of poverty one of its primary goals, giving rise to significant reforms to support …

Improved state capacity, deeper commercial and financial links with the outside world, and online activism will have an important impact on Chinese politics in the coming years, while many trends point towards more, not less cooperation between China and western countries On 1 July 2021, China’s ruling Communist Party celebrated the 100th anniversary of its founding in 1921 in Shanghai’s French Concession. The official festivities included a massive show titled …

The new decision marks a significant shift in China’s family planning policy, but it remains to be seen whether young couples will take advantage of it At a meeting of the Politburo of the CPC Central Committee on Monday, 31 May 2020, it was announced that China will now allow couples to have a third child. This follows an earlier move in 2016 that allowed couples to have two children. …

TikTok’s parent company, Bytedance, has a female CEO, and the country is home to two thirds of the world’s female billionaires. But social pressures and media representation still hold back many women in China, explains Emily Riddell, as she introduces a new mini-documentary on the topic. China’s rapid economic development and digitalisation have brought huge changes to the lives of the country’s women. From new work and study prospects to …

Paul French interviews Te-Ping Chen, author of ‘Land of Big Numbers’, about how a combination of journalism and story writing can deepen our understanding of China’s fascinating but often voiceless characters This column usually looks at business books, case studies, histories, or economic treatises, but this time we’re focused on fiction. Te-Ping Chen is a Chinese-American writer and journalist who has been based in both Hong Kong and Beijing with …

Beijing aims to eradicate rural poverty this year – but challenges lie ahead, writes Charlotte Middlehurst  When four siblings, aged between six and fourteen years old, committed joint suicide by drinking fertiliser in the village of Cizhou, south China, in 2015, the nation was horrified.  In a note, the eldest boy wrote that he had “dreamed of death,” an end to the years of suffering and neglect they had endured. …

It’s a family affair The consequences of families being confined to their apartments for such long and intense periods might well lead to a spike in Summer divorces and November babies, but more seriously it is likely to have a long-term impact on the average person’s awareness of their work-life balance. People have, for the most part, enjoyed spending more time with their loved ones, and are recognising the importance …

Ideas of what it is to be a man are changing fast, Tom Pattinson draws attention to some of the specifically Chinese tensions within these shifts Last year, China’s authorities went some way to co-opting rap in a bid to channel China’s youth culture and explain Chinese culture abroad. By the start of this year, China had turned the volume down on rap, banning hip-hop culture and tattoos. Along with …