Amid Calls For Reform, China Waits For New Leaders
The slogan "Long Live the Great Communist Party of China" is emblazoned on the wall outside the Beijing compound where the country's leaders live and work. But now that party is under pressure to...
View ArticleAt 79, Ex-Party Official Lambastes Chinese Leaders
The frail 79-year-old in a pale brown shirt with close-cropped hair sitting at a fast-food restaurant table looks absolutely unremarkable. But Bao Tong has a lightness in his eyes, a confidence that...
View ArticleChina's New Leaders Inherit Country At A Crossroads
China is about to get new leaders for the first time in a decade, and it comes at a sensitive moment for the world's most populous nation. Economic growth, which surged for decades, has slowed. Demands...
View ArticleIn China, A Ceaseless Quest To Silence Dissent
China is about to get new leaders for the first time in a decade, and it comes at a crucial moment for the world's most populous nation. Economic growth, which surged for decades, has slowed. Demands...
View ArticleChina's Assertive Behavior Makes Neighbors Wary
As China's global stature grows, Beijing appears to be flexing its muscles more frequently on the international stage. As part of NPR's series on China this week, correspondents Louisa Lim and Frank...
View ArticleChina Greets Obama's Re-Election With Muted Relief
Among Chinese citizens, there is a sense of frustration and fascination that Americans have the right to vote for their own leaders.
View ArticleHighly Scripted, China Moves Toward New Leaders
Two days after the U.S. election, another major political development is unfolding on the other side of the world. China began its once-in-a-decade transition of power on Thursday with the opening of...
View ArticleFor China's Rising Leader, A Cave Was Once Home
Far from the political theater of China's Communist Party Congress in Beijing this week is a cave that the country's next leader once called home. Just 15 at the time, Xi Jinping was sent by his family...
View ArticleRecording The Untold Stories Of China's Great Famine
Second of a two-part series. Find the first part here.A young man trudges doggedly around his village, notebook in hand, fringe flopping over his glasses. He goes from door to door, calling on the...
View ArticleChina's Communists Declare War ... On Boring Meetings
Suffer from insomnia? The droning rhythm of a Chinese Communist official reading a work report out loud will likely do the trick. It certainly does for many party members: Just 10 minutes into any...
View ArticleA Tumultuous Year, Seen Through North Korean Eyes
North Korea is preparing to launch a long-range rocket as it rounds off a tumultuous year marked by the sudden death of leader Kim Jong Il last December, the ascension of his 20-something son, and the...
View ArticleHunger Still Haunts North Korea, Citizens Say
While North Korea has long struggled with dire food shortages, the United Nations now assesses its food situation as being the best in many years. But NPR has had unusual access to five North Koreans...
View ArticleChina Pledges Reforms To Labor Camps, But Offers Few Details
China has indicated that it will stop handing down sentences to its controversial labor camps, which allow detention without trial for up to four years. According to Chinese media, some 160,000...
View ArticleBecome A Successful Chinese Bureaucrat, In 5 Easy Steps
Forget Fifty Shades of Grey. In China, "bureaucracy lit" is flying off bookstore shelves. With the books' stories of Machiavellian office politics, they're read avidly, both as entertainment and as...
View ArticleHow Will China's New Leadership Handle Censorship Issue?
In China, one struggle over censorship has been defused — for the moment, at least.Journalists at one of the country's boldest newspapers have published a new issue after a weeklong standoff that...
View ArticleBeijing's Air Quality Reaches Hazardous Levels
In China's capital, they're calling it the "airpocalypse," with air pollution that's literally off the charts. The air has been classified as hazardous to human health for a fifth consecutive day, at...
View Article'Friends' Will Be There For You At Beijing's Central Perk
Almost a decade since the end of the hit American TV series Friends, the show — and, in particular, the fictitious Central Perk cafe, where much of the action took place — is enjoying an afterlife in...
View ArticleAmerican Woman Gives Domestic Abuse A Face, And Voice, In China
The faces of American Kim Lee and her Chinese husband, Li Yang, both in their 40s, once graced the covers of books that sold in the millions.
View Article'China's Leonard Cohen' Calls Out Political Corruption
Zuoxiao Zuzhou is a Chinese singer whose accented, croaky voice is hardly ever in tune. But for his fans he's the voice of a generation — one of the very few voices who dare to speak out.
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