Chinese People

When I was born in 1989, my parents named me Ti-Anna in commemoration of the Tiananmen Square massacre. Most of my friends started their first year of college last fall, but, instead of beginning my studies, I have taken a year off from school and moved to Washington. My father is a political prisoner serving a life sentence in China for opposing communism, and I am spending this year advocating for his freedom. My father, Wang Bingzhang, founded the Chinese overseas democracy movement.

The Chinese people would like President Obama to stop an oil refinery from being built in southern China, endorse sweet-flavored tofu and reopen an 18-year-old criminal probe of a poisoning case. And while he's at it, if he wouldn't mind mobilizing U.S. troops to liberate Hong Kong, as well as China as a whole, that'd be great, too. In a strange and diplomatically awkward turn of events, Chinese citizens have flocked to the White House's Web site over the past week to lodge formal petitions, many of them directed against their government.

BEIJING — Ai Weiwei, one of China's most prominent artists and an outspoken critic of the communist regime, was taken from Beijing's airport by security agents Sunday as he was about to board a flight to Hong Kong. Police later raided his studio. Ai is the most high-profile activist to have been detained in a government crackdown in which dozens of bloggers, human rights lawyers and writers have been swept up. The arrests seem related to the government's concern that activists in China want to launch a...

BEIJING — The legislature of the world's last major communist country is almost certainly the wealthiest in the world, according to a popular rich list that names 83 dollar billionaires among the delegates to China's parliament this year. Meanwhile, in the United States, there is not a single billionaire in the House of Representatives or the Senate. Among the delegates gathered in Beijing this week to attend the National People's Congress, the China-based Hurun Global Rich List identified 31...

The Chinese people would like President Obama to stop an oil refinery from being built in southern China, endorse sweet-flavored tofu and reopen an 18-year-old criminal probe of a poisoning case. And while he's at it, if he wouldn't mind mobilizing U.S. troops to liberate Hong Kong, as well as China as a whole, that'd be great, too. In a strange and diplomatically awkward turn of events, Chinese citizens have flocked to the White House's Web site over the past week to lodge formal petitions, many of them directed against their government.

BEIJING -- The blockbuster success of an American animated movie that's set in ancient China , highlights Chinese culture, mythology and architecture and stars a kung fu fighting panda has filmmakers and ordinary Chinese wondering: Why wasn't this hit made . . . in China? "Kung Fu Panda" follows a slacker panda named Po, who works in his father's noodle shop and eventually fulfills his dream of becoming a kung fu fighter, and features the voices of Hollywood stars Jack Black and Angelina Jolie.

BEIJING -- Shen Baohou, 72, who once worked for a hydropower station in Sichuan province, has a serious heart problem, and he -- and his children -- are paying for it dearly. Doctors have operated twice on Shen to implant stents at a cost of more than $15,000, about five times China's per capita income. Under China's health-care system, the government pays 60 percent of his hospital expenses and virtually nothing for the medications and oxygen he has needed since. "I am retired and have little pension...

IN THE DEBATE over Tibet and the Olympic torch, a great deal has been said and written about what the Chinese people believe. Pundits inform us that the Chinese people want their government to crack down harder on Tibetan protesters. The delicate -- and, apparently, fairly uniform -- views of the Chinese people are cited as arguments against boycotts or other actions that might hurt the Chinese people's feelings. "It's also an issue of the Chinese people, who are very invested in the Olympics, who see it as a coming of age for China," national...

I was born in Shanghai in 1961 and grew up during the Cultural Revolution. During my childhood, I saw my family lose our house. My grandfather, who studied medicine in England, committed suicide after he was wrongly accused of being a counterrevolutionary and a foreign spy. Those were the worst of times. Since the Cultural Revolution ended in the late 1970s, however, I have witnessed unimaginable progress in China. Changes that few ever thought possible have occurred in a single generation.

BEIJING -- On his trip to China last week, President Obama negotiated with our government on climate change and other issues such as economic recovery, currency regulation and denuclearization. He noted at his town hall meeting in Shanghai that China and the United States lead the world in carbon emissions and that, unless these two countries can agree on what to do, the rest of the world is unlikely to do much, either. Obama also spoke eloquently of American respect for free expression, rule of law and other...

When I read that the Chinese government had hacked into the New York Times computer system, I was frankly amused. Then, a few days later, I read that they'd also done it to The Washington Post, which made the whole thing a criminal outrage and a crisis of epic proportions about which Something Must Be Done. It isn't yet clear what use the Chinese have made of their cultural espionage cleverness. We can only guess. Mere information-gathering is bad enough, but I worry that any day now the Chinese might start to actually alter...

Xiao Qiang is founder and chief editor of China Digital Times , a bilingual news Web site, and an adjunct professor at the University of California, Berkeley's School of Information. Perry Link, who was a co-editor of " The Tiananmen Papers ," teaches Chinese literature at the University of California, Riverside. Chinese New Year, which began Feb. 10, marks the season when Chinese everywhere give voice to their wishes for the future. A controversy last month in the offices of Southern Weekly, one...

HUANGSHAN, China — China is grinding towards its slowest growth in a decade , corporate profits are in free fall and the stock market is in the dumps. But take a random sample of its people, from white-collar workers to migrant laborers, and a large number will express satisfaction with the current state of the economy. Perhaps this should not be so surprising. Average incomes have more than tripled over the past decade, putting a far better quality of life within the grasp of most Chinese.

BEIJING — China may lead the Olympic gold medal tally in London, but some Chinese still apparently believe the rest of the world is ganging up on their country. Several Chinese state-run media outlets alleged Wednesday that a conspiracy may be afoot in London following a string of controversies involving Chinese athletes. The latest incident to infuriate the Chinese occurred this week when judges awarded a Brazilian gymnast gold over the largely favored Chinese competitor Chen...

Regarding the May 3 front-page article " Deal on activist seems to unravel ": So Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton tells 1.3 billion Chinese people that "all governments have to answer to their citizens' aspirations for dignity and the rule of law, and that no nation can or should deny those rights. "If only she would pass that message on to two people closer to home — President Obama and Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. — maybe we could begin to aspire to dignity and the rule of law for those who have been...

Fang Lizhi, one of China's best-known dissidents whose speeches inspired student protesters in that country throughout the 1980s, died April 6 in Tucson. His wife, Li Shuxian, confirmed his death to the Associated Press, but the cause was not disclosed. He was 76. Once China's leading astrophysicist, Mr. Fang and his wife hid in the U.S. Embassy in Beijing for 13 months after the crackdown following the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989. In exile, he was a physics professor at the University of Arizona.

Regarding the May 3 front-page article " Deal on activist seems to unravel ": So Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton tells 1.3 billion Chinese people that "all governments have to answer to their citizens' aspirations for dignity and the rule of law, and that no nation can or should deny those rights. "If only she would pass that message on to two people closer to home — President Obama and Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. — maybe we could begin to aspire to dignity and the rule of law for those who have been tortured in the...

Martial arts actor Jet Li called upon people around the world to use the Internet to support the causes that are important to them, he said Saturday in a presentation in China. Appearing on stage with Alibaba.com CEO Jack Ma, Li discussed his charity, the One Foundation , which he established in partnership with the Red Cross Society of China. One Foundation asks people to donate one yuan (US$0.15) or one dollar per month. Li said that Chinese users abroad could continue to use Alibaba's payment system to support the...

IN EVERY GENERATION, it seems, some Americans find a foreign alternative to this country's brand of democratic capitalism. During economic downturns, the grass on the other side of the fence looks especially green. In the Great Depression, many in the United States thought that Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union had cured unemployment. Today, some say we must learn the lessons of China's state-run capitalism. Just four months ago, Andrew Stern, former president of the Service Employees International Union, published an op-ed in the...

BEIJING — Chinese writer and activist Li Tie was sentenced to 10 years in prison for "inciting subversion," his family members said Thursday. Li is the third high- profile dissident handed a lengthy term in the past few weeks, part of a Communist Party crackdown ahead of a scheduled leadership change this year. Like two activists sentenced last month, Li was prosecuted for essays he posted on the Internet demanding greater democracy. The convictions indicate that the government in Beijing...