Brent Crane - The Wire China

Articles

Alex Wang on What China Gets Right — and Wrong — on the Environment

The academic talks about whether China’s experience shows there can be such a thing as ‘good environmental authoritarianism’, and what the U.S. could learn from its approach to green policy.

Geremie Barmé on the ‘Other China’

The historian and sinologist talks about his life studying China and what he calls Xi Jinping’s ‘Empire of Tedium’.

Jeffrey Wasserstrom on Tackling Misconceptions about China

The author and historian discusses the multitude of facets and the contrasts between Mao Zedong and Xi Jinping.

Jonathan Cheng on the Religion behind the Kim Family’s Rule Over North Korea

The Wall Street Journal’s China bureau chief discusses the role of Christianity in shaping Kim Il Sung’s personality cult, and talks about life now as a foreign reporter in Beijing.

Michael Luo on the Story of Chinese Immigrants in the U.S.

The writer and editor talks about the first arrivals from China and the long history of prejudice the community has faced.

China in Latin America: Speak Softly and Spend Freely

Can Donald Trump’s corollary to James Monroe and Teddy Roosevelt’s Latin American policies counter China’s more patient and better-funded approach across the region?

J. Michael Cole on the Best and Worse Cases for Taiwan’s Future

The policy analyst discusses why it's so important for the world to stand by Taiwan, and what outsiders often get wrong about its situation.

Fight of the Century

If Xi Jinping orders the People’s Liberation Army to take Taiwan by force, can the island turn itself into a porcupine and muster wholesale “societal resistance” from its 23 million people? Brent Crane reports from Taipei.

A Bitter Harvest

Agriculture has traditionally been a fruitful area for China-U.S. cooperation, dating back to the two countries’ resumption of diplomatic relations in the 1970s. Now it is just another area marked by Sino-American distrust, as Washington hunts Chinese agriscience “spies” and Beijing races to reduce reliance...

Dan Wang on China’s ‘Engineering State’ versus America’s ‘Lawyerly Society’

The writer and academic discusses the core differences between the world's two largest economies, the brutality of China's former one-child policy and whether it's right call it a Marxist country.

The Realist

No one understands the Chinese Communist Party better than someone who was almost killed by it. Brent Crane talks to Chenggang Xu about his life and intellectual journey, from regime prisoner to regime expert.

The China Hawks’ China Hawk

Elbridge Colby, under secretary for defense policy at the Pentagon, is arguably Taiwan’s most powerful friend in Washington. But if China does make good on its threats to “re-unify” the island by force, will he be able to ensure that Donald Trump stands up to...