Stories written by Mitch Moxley
Mitch Moxley is a freelance journalist based in Beijing writing for the Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, The Globe and Mail and others. He writes widely about culture, travel and current affairs from across Asia and is currently writing a book about his China adventures.
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Although Li Xiaoxue and her husband, Dai Chunlin, are already happy parents to a young boy, they plan to skirt China’s one-child policy by having another baby. And like a growing number of affluent, urban Chinese, their fingers are crossed for a baby girl.
In 2005, the ‘National Geographic China’ magazine named this ethnic Tibetan village in western Sichuan province, sprawled over a valley wall amid snow-capped mountains, China’s most beautiful. Depending on how you look at it, that distinction was either a blessing or a curse.
Despite successful campaigns to promote gender equality, China continues to struggle with high rates of domestic violence, which experts say impacts not only families but society as a whole.
As recently as the mid-1980s, China relied on steam-powered relics to transport citizens and goods around its vast territory. Today, the country is home to 6,900 kilometres of high-speed passenger train routes in what is the largest rail network in the world – and growing.
Dubbed "The Great Green Wall," a human-made ecological barrier designed to stop rapidly encroaching deserts and combat climate change is coming up across China. By 2050, the artificial forest is to stretch 400 million hectares – covering more than 42 percent of China’s landmass.
Campaigns featuring some of China’s biggest celebrities, including basketball star Yao Ming and actor Jackie Chan, have persuaded some Chinese to think twice about eating shark fin soup. But changing attitudes about the centuries-old delicacy, a large contributor to decimated shark populations, continues to be a challenge.
While Hollywood blockbusters and state-funded historical epics continue to dominate China’s box office, a vibrant independent film scene is quietly growing.
China, now the world’s second largest economy with a ferocious appetite for resources, is aggressively strengthening relations with Latin American countries, but this has not been without roadblocks.
Yu Daihai, a 23-year-old college graduate from Dandong city in northern Liaoning province, uses his computer and mobile phone everyday to communicate with his friends. But technology is having an unwanted side effect: Yu, like a growing number of young Chinese, is starting to forget how to write his native language.
Fourteen years ago, Fang Xin declared war on her parents. Whatever they wanted of her, Fang, now 28, did the opposite. She refused to watch news broadcasts by the state’s China Central Television, or the annual Spring Festival Gala, with her father and mother. She would not eat meals with her family. When it came time for university, she ignored her parents’ wishes and attended a school far from her hometown. The latest battle was fought last year, when her parents wanted Fang to become a mother.
China is stepping up its 10-year-long effort to develop its vast western regions, home to energy and mineral resources crucial to its future growth. So far, the campaign’s results have been mixed.
When Britain announced it would stop giving public money to China as part of a plan to direct financial aid to countries in greater need, it was symbolic of China’s shift from aid receiver to aid giver.
When a distraught landlord wielding a kitchen cleaver stormed into a kindergarten classroom in south-east China’s Fujian province in May and killed several people, including children, it was the bloodiest of five recent attacks at schools across the country.
U.S. President Barack Obama may have squeezed in the last word as the G20 summit wrapped up recently in Toronto, but it was China that came away looking like the summit’s winner.
As thousands of people from around the world prepare to converge in Detroit, where expectations are high for the Jun. 22-26 U.S. Social Forum, activists and auto workers hope the meet will be an opportunity to chart a sustainable future for an industry that provides 1.7 million U.S. jobs.
Ma Xiangqian, a 19-year-old migrant from the eastern Chinese province of Henan, worked the 11-hour night shift, seven days a week, putting together electronic parts for Foxconn Technology, the world’s biggest contract maker of information technology goods.
Relations between China and Burma have been shaky of late – due in large part to border skirmishes in Burma that have frustrated Beijing. But one would not know it from Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao’s two-day state visit, which ended Friday.
When the military regime in Burma launched a campaign last August to disarm the ethnic rebels in the Kokang region, made up mostly of ethnic Chinese and where a two-decade-long ceasefire had been in place, the push triggered an exodus of more than 37,000 refugees into China’s Yunnan province.
Ten years ago, Ai Weiwei, one of China’s best known artists, designers and activists, moved into a dusty village in the city’s far north-east corner, where he designed a compound for himself and friends, along with a gallery called China Art Archives and Warehouse.