On 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...

On 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

Inside M Lin’s ‘Memory Museum’

Inside M Lin’s ‘Memory Museum’

“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 ...

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...

“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...

China’s Odyssey podcast hit, hip hop, cooking, comedy, and more on the Chinese zeitgeist from Chen Caiwei

The 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…

“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...

“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

The 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:

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.

As 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

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…

How China Lives in the World

Xi 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

Global China stories, global Chinese voices, and the latest community events around the world.

Japan-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

Global China stories, global Chinese voices, and the latest community events around the world.

Last 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

Last 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 ...

Global China stories, global Chinese voices, and the latest community events around the world.

Global China stories, global Chinese voices, and the latest community events around the world.

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 ...

Global China stories, global Chinese voices, and the latest community events around the world.

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 is a lightly edited, abridged transcript of a conversation between Zha Jianying and ChinaFile Editor-in-Chief Susie Jakes and

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 is a lightly edited, abridged transcript of a conversation between Zha Jianying and ChinaFile Editor-in-Chief Susie Jakes and

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 ...

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 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

The 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

The 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...

As Gao Zhen awaits trial in China, his wife and child live in limbo, unable to return to America, sustained by the portraits he fashions from scraps of paper.

Violet 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…

This article was originally published in  ChinaFile  and is republished here with the permission of the author. On the popular Chinese social media platform Xia

Violet 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 film follows a group of desperate bachelors participating in a dating “boot camp.”In this Q&A, Feng talks about how a film about women inspired her to make a film about men, the

On November 6, the IndieChina Film Festival announced its cancellation because of pressure from authorities on China-based filmmakers and participants.This November, two unrelated festivals of independent Chinese-language films are taking place outside of China. The CiLENS Berlin Indie Chinese Cinema Week, which runs from November 1 to 9, is now in its fourth year. In New

Despite dominating global production, China has a polysilicon problem. Having subsidized and encouraged production of this critical ingredient in solar cells and panels, the country now faces massive ...