Dr. Li Yan, one of the 40,000 Chinese doctors who went to help during the lockdown in Wuhan gave an interview to former VRT (Belgian public radio and tv) journalist Ng Sauw Tjhoi, who has been studying and covering China for years. (13 May 2020) Introduction During the lockdown in Wuhan there was no applause at 8pm, but “people hung banners out of their windows, ‘Go Wuhan, go China!’, That’s the way we were encouraged and shown appreciation”, Dr. Li Yan tells me in a Zoom interview that she has granted me. I had thought her testimony very moving, earlier […]

Did China make up the numbers? Did it waste precious time before getting information out to the world? Belgian writers Ng Sauw Tjhoi and Dirk Nimmegeers answer these questions and opine that instead of knuckling down and fighting the pandemic together, everyone, from countries to regional blocs to international organisations, seems to have been shell-shocked into “safe-distancing” from each other. This means that the virus is not only attacking our health, economies and mental resilience, but the very international institutions that have been built up since the end of WWII. If a lot of that debilitation has to do with […]

Belgian writers Ng Sauw Tjhoi and Dirk Nimmegeers point out that the only thing much worse than possibly holding racist views, is to be aware of likely controversy yet politicise race issues anyway to deflect blame for the tardiness of the government. They believe that the Trump administration needs to stop playing the blame game and start on a sincere path of health cooperation with China, to tackle the pandemic today and any other global challenges tomorrow. This article was first published on thinkchina.sg  and sent to us by Belgian SACU member Dirk Nimmegeers, Editor, chinasquare.be Trump’s America needs to ditch […]

This book review by Paul Morris was first published in the Spring 2020 issue of US-China Review, the journal of the US China People’s Friendship Association (USCPFA) and we are grateful to Paul for his permission to reproduce it here. Paul is Production Co-ordinator of US-China Review; he is also a SACU member. A foreign father given up for dead, an unwed mother struggling to make ends meet, a reunion with a long-lost daughter from abroad. Add a handful of prominent China hands who show up at key junctures and you have the plot for an international, intergenerational family drama. This story […]

Covering up: Covid-19 and the face, by Elizabeth Gasson, 10th April 2020 Having spent seven years in China, our SACU member, Elizabeth left China with her soon-to-be fiancé, and headed to the UK to take a research degree and convert her career area into Psychology (so as to better support her students). She is now residing in Sydney where her now-husband is working towards the opening of a Chinese bank branch there and she is pursuing her PhD in Cognitive Science (focused on Chinese reading difficulties) while expanding her online Education Centre for Chinese individuals around the world. Here she […]

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 […]