ChinaFile

ChinaFile

@chinafile.bsky.social

Online magazine from Asia Society Reporting, Analysis, Photography, Video and Conversation on China

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ChinaFile
@chinafile.bsky.social

"Looking away from the Uyghur crisis…carries a cost for everyone" argue Zubayra Shamseden and Peter Irwin:

chinafile.comThe Global Cost of Ignoring Xinjiang | ChinaFileIn the years following 2017, when evidence of mass arbitrary detention in China’s Uyghur region began reaching the outside world, a broad coalition responded. Civil society mobilized, governments passed genocide resolutions, the UN launched an investigation, and corporations faced legal exposure over tainted supply chains. In 2026, that energy has largely dissipated.
ChinaFile
@chinafile.bsky.social

China exporting "engineered catharsis"—the microdramas taking over the internet, by Shirley Xinyi Cai:

chinafile.comExporting the Micro-Drama Machine | ChinaFileThe form is built to leave you no exit. An episode runs sixty to ninety seconds and ends on a reversal: the woman everyone underestimated is revealed to be an heiress, the janitor is secretly the richest man in the country, the slap lands, and the camera holds on the face of the person who will, four episodes from now, be made to pay for it. To learn what happens, you need to
ChinaFile
@chinafile.bsky.social

"Was the Trump-Xi summit a success? Despite all the pomp and circumstance, the deliverables announced by the two sides were partial and circumscribed. How much that matters depends on what you think is the point of meetings between the two presidents." writes @neilthomas123.bsky.social

chinafile.comWhat Actually Happened at the Xi-Trump SummitOn September 24, U.S. President Donald Trump hosted Chinese leader Xi Jinping at the White House for their second summit of the year. The meeting advanced new mechanisms on trade and investment, and l...
ChinaFile
@chinafile.bsky.social

What can we expect from the Xi-Trump meeting next week? ChinaFile presents a Conversation, in partnership with Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis:

chinafile.comWhat to Watch at the Xi-Trump Summit | ChinaFileOn September 24, Chinese President Xi Jinping will meet U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House, four months after Trump’s state visit to Beijing in May. Several consequential elements of the relationship remain unsettled ahead of the September summit. The export-control truce reached in Busan on October 30, 2025—which holds both Washington’s Affiliates Rule and China’s

ChinaFile reposted

Asia Society New York
@newyork.asiasociety.org

In a new @chinafile.bsky.social piece, Editorial Fellow @goldkorn.bsky.social shares his impressions of China from his first visit back since the pandemic. Read his piece "App Life in China": https://www.chinafile.com/reporting-opinion/postcard/app-life-china

chinafile.comApp 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. China was my ...

ChinaFile reposted

Jeremy Goldkorn
@goldkorn.bsky.social

Many Chinese journalists joined Western newsrooms hoping to report with more freedom. But some have become disillusioned, as more than a dozen journalists shared anonymously with Mang Mang 莽莽, explained here by Anna Kook for @chinafile.bsky.social's Hai:

substack.comHǎi 海 (@alltimehai)What happens when Chinese journalists leave Chinese media hoping to report with more freedom, only to find themselves repeatedly covering trade wars, spies, and military tensions? More than a dozen Ch...

ChinaFile reposted

Maura Elizabeth Cunningham
@mauracunningham.bsky.social

"The rise, demise, and rebirth of the legendary bookstore embody decades of political and economic developments in China, and its transpacific journey lays bare the unruly contours of language and identity." @yangyangcheng.bsky.social writes for @chinafile.bsky.social about JF (Jifeng) Books.

chinafile.comA World out of WordsThe 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…

ChinaFile reposted

Susan Jakes
@susanjakes.bsky.social

This great travelogue from @goldkorn.bsky.social began when he got back from China and could not get off the phone with the rest of us because we had so many questions for him and he had such witty, hilarious and profound things to say. Finally we said, "Please. Just write this!" So happy he did.

Jeremy Goldkorn@goldkorn.bsky.social

I went back to China after a decade away—I'd previously lived there for 20 years. Some notes:

chinafile.comApp 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 lovi...
ChinaFile
@chinafile.bsky.social

"It may be hard to make money in China in 2026, but it is very pleasant to spend it." Jeremy Goldkorn returns to China after a decade away:

chinafile.comApp Life in China | ChinaFile“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. China was my home for 20 years, before moving to the U.S. in 2015. This was my first visit since the pandemic. Almost a decade away from
ChinaFile
@chinafile.bsky.social

A Shanghai bookstore was shut down by the Chinese state in 2018. Six years later, it reopened in Washington, D.C. Yangyang Cheng spent months reporting the full, complicated story of Jifeng —

chinafile.comA World out of Words | ChinaFileThe 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. The stories spoke of repression and rebirth:
ChinaFile
@chinafile.bsky.social

China's specialty coffee scene just landed in NYC. Hǎi's Muyi Xiao sipped Yunnan-grown coffee for the first time — at a café in Long Island City:

substack.comHǎi 海 (@alltimehai)China's booming high-end coffee scene is starting to go global. Hǎi 海's editor @Muyi Xiao tried specialty coffee grown in China's Yunnan province for the first time, in NYC. An Wang of SeedFuture took her to Coffee Project’s Long Island City location, one of the few NYC cafés serving Yunnan coffee, and introduced her to Yunnan's coffee farming scene. Coffee Project's Chi Sum Ngai brewed them a tasty cup.
ChinaFile
@chinafile.bsky.social

Hot pot and dumpling bistros, Pilates studios, viral massage videos: In Mexico City, young Chinese women are building businesses—and lives—on their own terms. New from Hǎi 海, ChinaFile's project on global Chinese lives:

chinafile.comIn Mexico City, Young Chinese Women Are Becoming Their Own Bosses | ChinaFileAs China’s global footprint expands, Zhao is part of a growing cohort of young Chinese women building overseas careers and leadership experience at Chinese corporations in emerging markets such as Mexico. It’s a crisp day. Zhao’s mission in Mexico City is to launch the first and flagship restaurant in the country for a global Chinese chain of hot pot restaurants. Two

ChinaFile reposted

Asia Society New York
@newyork.asiasociety.org

Cartoonist and illustrator Leise Hook’s debut graphic memoir “Names and Faces” examines the in-betweenness of being mixed-race. Read the conversation between Leise and @goldkorn.bsky.social in @chinafile.bsky.social:

chinafile.com‘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…
ChinaFile
@chinafile.bsky.social

"Xi Jinping won the agenda for his summit with Donald Trump before Airforce One touched down in Beijing," writes Robert Daly, director of the Program on China and the United States at the University of Maryland. But what did the U.S. get?

chinafile.comWe Can Live with China (But Drop ‘Constructive Strategic Stability’) | ChinaFileXi Jinping won the agenda for his summit with Donald Trump before Airforce One touched down in Beijing. America would do it his way. Trump’s cheerfulness and limited ambitions in Beijing must have surprised many Americans. For a decade, Washington had heralded a fierce, protracted competition with China. Trump rang the alarm bells himself in the early weeks of his first
ChinaFile
@chinafile.bsky.social

China banned seafood imports, restricted dual-use exports, and sent joint bomber patrols with Russia near Japan. Is this a familiar pressure playbook—or something more ominous? ChinaFile's latest Conversation:

chinafile.comIs There An Off-Ramp for China and Japan? | ChinaFileJapan-China relations are in a deep freeze that began in November when Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi suggested that Japan could intervene militarily in the event of a Taiwan crisis. Beijing responded furiously, invoking World War II, banning exports of dual-use items to a list of Japanese companies, advising citizens against traveling there, and reimposing a seafood import
ChinaFile
@chinafile.bsky.social

"We wouldn't take Chinese or Saudi government money. At what point should we stop taking U.S. government money?" Amid funding cuts, the China human rights community some tough questions.

chinafile.comTo Ensure a More Sustainable Future, Human Rights Work on China Should Move Away from U.S. Government Funding | ChinaFileLast month, the U.S. government-funded Radio Free Asia announced that it had resumed broadcasts to audiences in China, after cuts under the Trump administration last year largely forced the outlet to halt operation. For many who care about independent journalism and human rights in China, the news brought a brief sigh of relief. However, last year’s dramatic cuts, some of them

ChinaFile reposted

Susan Jakes
@susanjakes.bsky.social

Lots of tough but important questions in @yaqiu.bsky.social exploration of the way dependence on USG funding shapes China human rights advocacy. Haven't seen anything before that attempts this kind of blunt cost/benefit analysis. www.chinafile.com/reporting-op...

chinafile.comTo Ensure a More Sustainable Future, Human Rights Work on China Should Move Away from U.S. Government FundingLast month, the U.S. government-funded Radio Free Asia announced that it had resumed broadcasts to audiences in China, after cuts under the Trump administration last year largely forced the outlet to ...

ChinaFile reposted

Susan Jakes
@susanjakes.bsky.social

I have revered Zha Jianying since I first read China Pop in the late 90s and it was was the greatest to work with her + @goldkorn.bsky.social on her part-memoir, part polemical lament, "Trains." Here's a short interview we did about the project.

ChinaFile@chinafile.bsky.social

"my grandfather told her in great detail about that train station farewell, how they parted and his French wife was holding this baby girl and waving this white scarf until they disappeared and none of them knew this was going to be forever…"

chinafile.comA Family Derailed: On Writing “Trains” | ChinaFileChinaFile recently published “Trains: A Chinese Family History of Railway Journeys, Exile, and Survival,” by Zha Jianying, the journalist and author of some of the most memorable recent books on contemporary China and particularly Chinese culture. This is a lightly edited, abridged transcript of a conversation between Zha Jianying and ChinaFile Editor-in-Chief Susie Jakes and

ChinaFile reposted

Asia Society
@asiasociety.org

Journalist and author Zha Jianying joined @chinafile.bsky.social to discuss her piece "Trains: A Chinese Family History of Railway Journeys, Exile, and Survival." https://www.chinafile.com/reporting-opinion/notes-chinafile/family-derailed-writing-trains

chinafile.comA Family Derailed: On Writing ‘Trains'ChinaFile recently published “Trains: A Chinese Family History of Railway Journeys, Exile, and Survival,” by Zha Jianying, the journalist and author of some of the most memorable recent books on contemporary China and particularly Chinese culture. This ...

ChinaFile reposted

ChinaFile
@chinafile.bsky.social

"my grandfather told her in great detail about that train station farewell, how they parted and his French wife was holding this baby girl and waving this white scarf until they disappeared and none of them knew this was going to be forever…"

chinafile.comA Family Derailed: On Writing “Trains” | ChinaFileChinaFile recently published “Trains: A Chinese Family History of Railway Journeys, Exile, and Survival,” by Zha Jianying, the journalist and author of some of the most memorable recent books on contemporary China and particularly Chinese culture. This is a lightly edited, abridged transcript of a conversation between Zha Jianying and ChinaFile Editor-in-Chief Susie Jakes and
ChinaFile
@chinafile.bsky.social

"my grandfather told her in great detail about that train station farewell, how they parted and his French wife was holding this baby girl and waving this white scarf until they disappeared and none of them knew this was going to be forever…"

chinafile.comA Family Derailed: On Writing “Trains” | ChinaFileChinaFile recently published “Trains: A Chinese Family History of Railway Journeys, Exile, and Survival,” by Zha Jianying, the journalist and author of some of the most memorable recent books on contemporary China and particularly Chinese culture. This is a lightly edited, abridged transcript of a conversation between Zha Jianying and ChinaFile Editor-in-Chief Susie Jakes and

ChinaFile reposted

Todd Stein
@toddstein.bsky.social

"We know from public opinion data that perceptions of the U.S. and faith that the U.S. is a trustworthy ally have declined since Trump returned to office." (Lev Nachman)

ChinaFile@chinafile.bsky.social

We asked a panel of experts: How will Trump's moves and threats against Venezuela, Greenland and other countries affect Beijing’s investments in Venezuelan oil industry, its calculus on Taiwan, and its relations with the rest of the world?

chinafile.comHow Will China Respond to Maduro’s Capture? | ChinaFileOn January 3, the U.S. military captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife in a nighttime raid on Caracas and flew him to New York to face drug trafficking charges. Trump announced the U.S. would temporarily “run” Venezuela until a transition of power occurs. Beijing immediately released a statement condemning the U.S.’s “blatant use of force against a sovereign

ChinaFile reposted

Brian Hioe
@brianhioe.bsky.social

In @chinafile.bsky.social's conversation on whether the capture of Maduro affects Beijing's calculus for Taiwan with a number of distinguished experts www.chinafile.com/conversation...

chinafile.comHow Will China Respond to Maduro’s Capture?On January 3, the U.S. military captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife in a nighttime raid on Caracas and flew him to New York to face drug trafficking charges. Trump announced the ...
ChinaFile
@chinafile.bsky.social

We asked a panel of experts: How will Trump's moves and threats against Venezuela, Greenland and other countries affect Beijing’s investments in Venezuelan oil industry, its calculus on Taiwan, and its relations with the rest of the world?

chinafile.comHow Will China Respond to Maduro’s Capture? | ChinaFileOn January 3, the U.S. military captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife in a nighttime raid on Caracas and flew him to New York to face drug trafficking charges. Trump announced the U.S. would temporarily “run” Venezuela until a transition of power occurs. Beijing immediately released a statement condemning the U.S.’s “blatant use of force against a sovereign
ChinaFile
@chinafile.bsky.social

'Mistress Dispeller' has been shortlisted for the Oscars. Here is a recent interview with director Elizabeth Lo by ChinaFile Editor-in-Chief Susan Jakes:

chinafile.com‘Mistress Dispeller’ | ChinaFileThe new documentary feature film Mistress Dispeller probes the unraveling and redemption of a marriage at breathtakingly close range. Director Elizbeth Lo follows Teacher Wang, a professional “mistress dispeller,” as she counsels a middle-aged wife undone by her husband’s infidelity and unspools a covert plan to rid them of his lover. The film is currently playing at the IFC

ChinaFile reposted

Hong Kong Free Press HKFP
@hongkongfp.com

The verdict in the national security trial of Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai is set to be delivered next Monday, according to the judiciary. In full: buff.ly/mahJGVX

buff.lyBREAKING: Jimmy Lai nat. security case verdict to be handed down Monday | Hong Kong Free Press HKFPThe verdict in the national security trial of Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai, 78, is set to be handed down next Monday, according to the judiciary. The founder of Hong Kong’s defunct Apple Daily...

ChinaFile reposted

Jeremy Goldkorn
@goldkorn.bsky.social

I did a Q&A with Violet Feng on her new film:

ChinaFile@chinafile.bsky.social

Violet Feng's "The Dating Game" follows a romance coach in Chongqing and three of his students. In this Q&A, Feng talks about: • China's gender imbalance • 'Left behind' children • AI boyfriends in China • Pick up artist culture & global crises of masculinity

ChinaFile reposted

Jane Hayward
@drjanehayward.bsky.social

This is fascinating

ChinaFile@chinafile.bsky.social

Violet Feng's "The Dating Game" follows a romance coach in Chongqing and three of his students. In this Q&A, Feng talks about: • China's gender imbalance • 'Left behind' children • AI boyfriends in China • Pick up artist culture & global crises of masculinity

ChinaFile reposted

Asia Society New York
@newyork.asiasociety.org

Filmmaker Violet Du Feng's latest work is ‘The Dating Game,’ which premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Filmed in Chongqing, the film follows a group of desperate bachelors participating in a dating “boot camp.” Read her @ChinaFile.bsky.social Q&A:

chinafile.com“The Dating Game” in ChinaViolet Du Feng has produced and directed more than a dozen documentary films about China. Her latest is The Dating Game, which premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Filmed in Chongqing, the…

ChinaFile reposted

ChinaObservers
@chinaobservers.eu

Replying to @chinaobservers.eu

👉What does this trend reveal about China’s fertility pressures, shifting social norms, and the global surrogacy economy? chinaobservers.eu/a-surrogacy-... Originally published in @chinafile.bsky.social

chinaobservers.euA Surrogacy Silk Road: Chinese Parents Head West for Babies – chinaobserversThis article was originally published in  ChinaFile  and is republished here with the permission of the author. On the popular Chinese social media platform Xia
ChinaFile
@chinafile.bsky.social

Violet Feng's "The Dating Game" follows a romance coach in Chongqing and three of his students. In this Q&A, Feng talks about: • China's gender imbalance • 'Left behind' children • AI boyfriends in China • Pick up artist culture & global crises of masculinity