What's Going On?.
当下
Commentary on what is happening now.
What's Going On?
Commentary on what is happening now.
Lead essays & audio editions · 2
essay · Episode 1The Quiet Migration: Why People RunThe modern exodus from China is neither an accident nor an economic cycle. It is a calculated vote of no confidence delivered on foot, across jungles, and in empty classrooms.▶ Listenessay · Episode 8The Bill Comes Due: The Twilight of China Land FinanceA Hong Kong liquidation gavel, eighty trillion yuan in municipal off-balance-sheet debt, and concrete forests of unfinished apartments. How thirty years of selling the earth beneath citizens' feet reached its mathematical end.▶ ListenThe Fifteenth Five-Year PlanIn March 2026, the National People's Congress approved the Fifteenth Five-Year Plan, anchoring China's national strategy for 2026 to 2030 around state-led technological self-reliance, artificial intelligence, and strategic decoupling.Read →Jimmy Lai sentenced to twenty yearsOn 9 February 2026, Hong Kong's High Court sentenced seventy-eight-year-old publisher Jimmy Lai to twenty years in prison, marking the symbolic end of the city's once-vibrant independent press.Read →Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli under investigationOn 24 January 2026, China announced corruption investigations into Central Military Commission Vice Chairman Zhang Youxia and Joint Staff Chief Liu Zhenli, marking the most dramatic purge of the armed forces high command in half a century.Read →Justice Mission 2025 exercise around TaiwanOn 27 December 2025, the Chinese military executed the Justice Mission 2025 joint exercise around Taiwan, deploying carrier strike groups and missile units to rehearse a full blockade of the island.Read →The tariff war with the United StatesIn April 2025, the United States raised tariffs on Chinese imports to an unprecedented 125%, triggering immediate retaliatory duties from Beijing and cementing the structural economic decoupling of the world's two largest powers.Read →He Weidong disappears from public viewIn March 2025, General He Weidong, Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission and the key operational planner for Taiwan contingencies, abruptly ceased appearing in public, signaling that Xi Jinping's cascading military purges had consumed his own handpicked inner circle.Read →
The retirement age raisedOn 13 September 2024, China's legislature passed the first increase in the statutory retirement age in seventy years, raising male retirement to 63 and female retirement to 55 or 58, as the regime confronted an accelerating demographic deficit and depleting pension reserves.Read →The Hong Kong Article 23 security lawOn 19 March 2024, Hong Kong's legislature unanimously passed the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance under Article 23 in an expedited eleven-day session, fulfilling a 27-year Beijing mandate and completing the legal assimilation of the territory into the mainland security apparatus.Read →Evergrande ordered to liquidateOn 29 January 2024, a Hong Kong court ordered the liquidation of China Evergrande Group, the world's most indebted developer with over $300 billion in liabilities, puncturing the debt-fueled real estate boom that had driven Chinese growth for two decades.Read →The revised Counter-espionage Law takes effectOn 1 July 2023, China's revised Counter-Espionage Law took effect, dramatically broadening the definition of spying to cover any vaguely defined national interests and granting state security organs unchecked powers over citizens and foreign businesses alike.Read →Qin Gang removed as foreign ministerOn 25 July 2023, China's legislature abruptly removed Foreign Minister Qin Gang after a month-long disappearance without official explanation, replacing him with predecessor Wang Yi and making Qin the shortest-serving foreign minister in PRC history.Read →A third term as PresidentOn 10 March 2023, China's National People's Congress unanimously elected Xi Jinping to a precedent-breaking third five-year term as state president by a vote of 2,952 to 0, formalizing the abolition of constitutional term limits enacted five years earlier.Read →The white paper protests and the end of zero-COVIDIn late November 2022, nationwide street protests erupted across Chinese cities and university campuses following a deadly apartment fire in locked-down Urumqi, with citizens holding blank sheets of white paper in an unprecedented wave of public defiance that forced Beijing to abruptly abandon its Zero-COVID policy.Read →Twentieth Congress, a third termIn October 2022, the Chinese Communist Party's 20th National Congress broke four decades of leadership succession norms to grant Xi Jinping a third term as General Secretary, while sweeping aside rival factions to install an inner circle comprised exclusively of loyalists.Read →