Tamara is a member of SACU who has already contributed a number of articles for China Eye on a variety of subjects. She has lived in Germany and the U.S. but is currently living in Beijing and working in the media industry there. Photographs accompanying this article are also by Tamara, taken recently in Beijing.  When news broke of a mysterious virus causing respiratory illness said to have originated in Wuhan, I was about to enjoy several days off due to the Spring Festival holiday at home in Beijing. I vaguely remember Beijing having only two cases at the time. I […]

Steve Bale lives in central Beijing and on the north Norfolk coast. He first travelled to China in 1988 and has been helping his clients build brands there since 1997. Many of Steve’s photographs and stories are on his website www.ChineseCurrents.com   Mention ‘China’ and ‘science and technology’ in the same breath to someone, and what kind of response are you likely to get?  These days, ‘innovative’, and ‘advanced’ are two of the words that might trip off the tongue. Quite a difference from, say, 20 years ago, when ‘copycat’, ‘laggard’, and perhaps lots of head-scratching may well have been […]

Climate Change and China by Walter Fung This short article summarises the current policy of China on climate change and the environment and the steps being taken. It draws substantially on Barbara Finamore’s recent book, Will China Save the Planet? (Polity Press, 2018). In 1996, she founded the Natural Resources Defense Council’s China Program, the first clean energy programme to be launched in China by an international non-government organisation. I can recommend this book, packed with positive information together with extensive references and suggestions for further reading. Contrary to popular Western public belief, China has always had a policy to […]

A book review by Dirk Nimmegeers.  Dirk is a member the Belgium-China Friendship Association and also of SACU. He edits the website ChinaSquare.be a Dutch language website which covers news and comments on developments in China.  Peter Nolan realizes the danger of a lengthy and fierce battle between the West and China, which may cause enormous material and human damage. One way to avoid that disaster is to ensure that China and the West get to know and understand each other better. According to the authoritative Cambridge professor, many Chinese, and certainly the prominent persons among them, know more about […]

Tom Harper is a SACU member and joined SACU Council in September 2019. He is a doctoral researcher at Neijiang Normal University. He specialises in China’s foreign relations and has written on this subject for several publications. This is his first for China Eye, published in Issue 63, Autumn 2019.    Over the course of the 20th and 21st centuries, few nations have had as great a reversal in status as China has had, going from an isolated quasi-feudal empire seemingly frozen in time to one of the Great Powers of the modern day complete with cities that are as […]