ThinkChina's 5th Anniversary

[Video] Presenting: The ThinkChina Culture book

The ThinkChina Culture book, a curated collection of our culture articles, was launched at the inaugural ThinkChina Forum in March 2025. Born first as individual articles on our website then as a specially designed book in print, it is the stories that have stayed constant. ThinkChina’s Lu Lingming gives us a glimpse of the pages. 

Lu Lingming

11 Jul 2025

[Comic] Eat the fruit of your actions in northeast China [Eye on Dongbei series]

The television drama The Long Season has brought renewed attention to northeast China, or Dongbei. This surge isn’t by chance but the result of persistent efforts. While Dongbei is often associated with cotton-padded jackets, heavy industry and bleak winters, its rich cultural diversity and historical significance are frequently overlooked. As the birthplace of the Qing dynasty, Dongbei holds Manchu culture and a complex colonial past. The industrialisation and modernisation of “new China” have also given it a unique identity and mission. Dongbei differs from the perceived “traditional Chinese heritage”. Each space reveals a profound interplay between human emotions and the environment, sparking deep reflections on realism and romanticism. Cultural confidence, it becomes clear, is not merely superficial scenes from short videos but a deep, enduring strength shaped by years and destiny. — Bai Yi, a Dongbei native

Bai Yi

20 Sep 2024

Art imitates life: The depressive soundscape of northeast China [Eye on Dongbei series]

Hong Kong academic Dino Ge Zhang explores the regional soundscape shaped by art forms like errenzhuan (二人转) and hanmai (喊麦) in northeast China. He discusses how a sense of ambiguous nostalgia emerged from the tension between declining folk culture and the perceived inertia of a population struggling to adapt to the rise of capitalism since the 1990s.

Dino Ge Zhang

19 Sep 2024

Ageing leaders: A common challenge for China and the US

While China and the US have different systems, the issue of ageing political leaders is common to both. The fact that the Chinese Communist Party’s way of implementing age limits does not apply at the very top makes the Chinese system much less stable than that in Western-style democracies, says academic Wen-Hsuan Tsai.

Wen-Hsuan Tsai

19 Sep 2024

A bridge too far: Thucydides Trap and the limits of middle powers

Lowy Institute research fellow Abdul Rahman Yaacob notes that while middle powers can play a role in defusing great power tensions in the Indo-Pacific, factors such as the Chinese military buildup, US-led minilateral defence arrangements and the lack of trust in multilateral security institutions could be powder kegs leading the region into a full-blown military conflict.

Abdul Rahman Yaacob

18 Sep 2024

ThinkChina editor: ‘What better time to cover China than today?’

As ThinkChina celebrates its fifth year, editor Chow Yian Ping shares her thoughts on the portal’s journey thus far. She remembers the people who have helped China’s stories come alive and looks forward to the next lap — just five years in, there is still so much road to travel.

Chow Yian Ping

15 Sep 2024

Francis Fukuyama: ‘Looked like Harris did well’

Lianhe Zaobao video producer Audrey Jiajia Li interviewed Francis Fukuyama, Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), for his views on the upcoming US election and its implications for global dynamics, particularly US-China relations. The following is an edited transcript of the interview.

Audrey Jiajia Li

13 Sep 2024

[Vox pop] The unspoken workplace challenges for women in China

The situation where married women without children stand less of a chance against single or even married women with children seems to be an unspoken rule in China’s workplace. What do the Chinese think about this matter? ThinkChina’s Yi Jina and Lu Lingming ask some Chinese individuals.

Yi Jina, Lu Lingming

13 Sep 2024

Northeast China in literature and film: Between suffering and salvation [Eye on Dongbei series]

US academic Weijie Song examines post-1980s Dongbei novelists and avant-garde post-Fifth Generation filmmakers from mainland China. Their works vividly portray the northeast China landscape, focusing on the “son generation” and their experiences, both of their parents and themselves, amid abandoned factories and industrial decay.

Weijie Song

13 Sep 2024

Bright spots amid northeast China’s economic gloom [Eye on Dongbei series]

Chinese academic Bo Chen explains why it has been especially hard for northeast China, also known as Dongbei, to transition from a planned economy to a market-oriented economy. While Dongbei’s economic growth still lags behind the faster-growing regions, all is not lost.

Bo Chen

12 Sep 2024

[Photos] Collapse of the Japanese empire’s ‘Manchu dream’ in northeast China [Eye on Dongbei series]

Northeast China, also known as Dongbei, has always been a crucial region for China’s development, with every move affecting the entire Northeast Asia. Historical photo collector Hsu Chung-mao shares the historical events that impact us even today. This article may contain some visually disturbing images.

Hsu Chung-mao

06 Sep 2024

Can youths transform struggling northeast China? [Eye on Dongbei series]

In China’s northeast, the “transition generation” (those born between 1950 and the 1960s) faced major challenges in the shift from a planned to a market economy, which disrupted their careers and fostered feelings of powerlessness and fatalism. As demographics shift and the needs of young people grow, how will the region adapt? Wen Xie, an academic and Dongbei native, explores this question.

Wen Xie

06 Sep 2024