Daniel A. Bell, a Canadian political theorist specialising in Confucianism and China’s political meritocracy, is chair of political theory at the University of Hong Kong’s law faculty. He was the first foreigner to be appointed as dean of Shandong University’s school of political science and public administration, and also taught at Beijing’s Tsinghua University. In…
In the streets of a subtropical city like Hong Kong, the start of sweater weather is not announced by flashes of red foliage, but by the smoky scent of chestnuts being raked in roadside woks by hawkers. Around the corner from where I live, sweaty weather ends officially, if not actually, when the public outdoor…
In 2017, Chinese President Xi Jinping told the faithful at the five-yearly Communist Party congress that belief in people’s hearts would give strength to China as a nation. “When people have faith, the country has strength and the Chinese nationality has hope,” he said at the time. The phrase has been cited again and again…
For most of the 103-year history of the Communist Party of China, the teachings of the philosopher Confucius were deemed relics of a backwards past, with its leaders looking to Marxism and socialism to modernise China. But under President Xi Jinping’s leadership, Confucianism has made a dramatic comeback as the bedrock of imperial Chinese ethics…
China urgently needs to develop elite talent in the field of quantum computing, according to a leading academic, who has warned that the hi-tech sector must avoid internal trends that strangle innovation. Yu Dapeng, of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said a lack of ingenuity was hindering China’s quantum computing development, despite the significant public…
It was a bright spot in the history of Sino-US relations, when more than 250,000 Americans joined Chinese soldiers to fight against Japanese forces in what was then known as the “China-Burma-India” theatre during the second world war. But that episode of wartime alliance – with its stories of heroism and sacrifice – has largely…
* China wants academic exchange but historians say increased censorship makes research hard Now too dangerous for historians to trawl flea markets for material * Censorship has only intensified under Xi * Some foreign-based historians denied visas to China By Laurie Chen BEIJING, Sept 13 – At Beijing’s largest antiques market, Panjiayuan, among the Mao…