"While many authors have turned away from a contemporary China that often seems too implausible and even outrageous to fit within the familiar worlds of socialist realism or magical realism, others have adapted, and out of these a loosely defined genre has evolved, sometimes referred to as ‘ultra-unreal.’”
Farmers can’t sell or easily transfer usage rights to their land, so they are stuck in the countryside, while large farming concerns — private or state-owned — struggle to amass enough land to enjoy efficiencies of scale. Is this about to change?
Yu Xu is being widely mourned following her death in a training accident on Saturday, as military analysts noted the number of crashes involving the J-10 fighter jets in recent years and a relatively lower number of flying hours required for Chinese pilots.
Every five years, millions of Chinese citizens vote in local elections for “People’s Congresses,” the government’s experiment with grassroots democracy. But the elections are not free and fair, as candidates not registered as Communist Party members often face police harassment or forcible blocking from authorities. “Some people think I am a troublemaker… But I am not afraid. I have the right to participate in this election. I didn’t do anything illegal,” said a woman who tried — unsuccessfully — to put her name forward as an independent candidate for one of the 2.5 million seats available.
A new species of winged dinosaur was found after workers at a construction site in Ganzhou set off dynamite that revealed the fossilized remains. Its name, Tongtianlong limosus, is a Chinese translation of “muddy dragon on the road to heaven,” which references the animal’s death by entrapment in mud.
"Singles’ Day poses something of a quandary for China’s government, which welcomes the shot in the arm to the economy but looks askance at rampant materialism,” The Wall Street Journal reports. Last year’s sales of $14.3 billion in goods far surpassed “the numbers seen on the Black Friday and Cyber Monday shopping sprees that follow Thanksgiving in the U.S.,” and this year, the sales are expected to be even higher.
The next American president has called climate change a Chinese deception and a “hoax,” and global leaders are wondering if he will pull the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement made last year. China’s top climate negotiator, warning Trump days before his election victory, said that “a wise political leader should take policy stances that conform with global trends.”
The head of the chemical factory that was the site of an explosion that killed 173 people last year received a suspended death sentence and was fined roughly $100,000.
The National People’s Congress has approved regulations first announced last week banning private school for grades one through nine. The move, affecting as many as 12 million students, comes amid efforts by the government to combat inequality and the spread of “Western values” in education.