Julian Baird Gewirtz

It's a strange day when a man who has been called "one of the faces of China's soft power push" calls Westerners in China "foreign trash" on his microblog, railing:

Cut off the foreign snake heads. People who can't find jobs in the U.S. and Europe...

Last week, the jury for the Pritzker Prize -- the highest honor in architecture -- announced that it had awarded the prize to Chinese architect Wang Shu. "Wang who?" would have been a reasonable reaction: Wang certainly doesn't command the international stature of recent Pritzker winners like Jean...

The coming year will see China's leadership transition from a decade under President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao to a new cadre of younger leaders. Xi Jinping, currently Vice President, is widely expected to take Hu's place in the top spot. This planned transition is already in progress; as...

In the days following the strange coincidence of December 18 -- the deaths of both Kim Jong Il, North Korea's totalitarian "Dear Leader," and Václav Havel, the Czech dissident turned president who oversaw his country's move to capitalism -- many articles on Kim's death noted that the Chinese...

The United States isn't alone in its current debates and worries about illegal immigration -- and in China today, another form of "illegal immigration" is fast becoming one of most important issues confronting the Chinese government. This debate centers on the status of the country's 200 million migrant workers, Chinese...

China's failure to provide adequate education for the marginalized children of migrant workers in urban centers is widely recognized as a major civil rights problem. These children have been largely excluded from their legal entitlement to "compulsory education" as a result of China's outdated household registration (hukou) system. So migrant...

Much time is spent trying to figure out what will be the consequences of China's rapid movement towards becoming a great economic and world power. Much less time, though, has gone to explaining how this change happened and how it will be sustained, if it is sustained.

China watchers recently...

The year 2009 could have been a decisive one for U.S.-China relations. A new, internationally popular American president brought with him a sense of optimism and possibility; the People's Republic of China celebrated its sixtieth anniversary, reminding the world of how far it has come since 1949. The two countries...

Media coverage of President Obama's Shanghai Town Hall meeting with Chinese students has focused on the policy issues the President discussed: the need for U.S.-China cooperation on clean energy, climate change, human rights, and American's changed approach to foreign policy. But the media is missing the deeper message of the...

Former President Bill Clinton's recent trip to North Korea prompted Wall Street Journal Arts and Leisure features editor Eric Gibson to write an interesting article on "totalitarian kitsch," which he defines as "where art's sole raison d'etre is to bolster a dictatorial regime and glorify its leader." In North...

On Tuesday, the United States and China marked the end of the first round of the U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue (S&ED) with a communique discussing progress made in the crucial areas of diplomatic, military, economic, and environmental cooperation. Importantly, the two sides did not overlook "cultural and people-to-people exchanges...

In January, Premier Wen Jiabao proudly noted that more than 300 million Chinese are studying English. This staggering number, roughly the population of the United States, reveals the Chinese government's enormous educational efforts to prepare China's students for international involvement and engagement.

Living in China as an American...

Beijing, CHINA -- In the past few weeks, I have talked with a range of Chinese young people about the global economic crisis. What I've heard suggests that the economic developments of the past year have moderated, but certainly not destroyed, the enthusiasm for freer markets among the future economic...

Beijing, CHINA -- "I'd never, ever seen anything like that!" exclaimed a Chinese college student after the official Chinese premiere of Eve Ensler's Vagina Monologues in downtown Beijing last week.

The pioneering production presented a bold challenge to traditional Chinese culture's public expectations for women -- including the play's extensive...

Beijing, CHINA--Living in Beijing this year before starting college, I observed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's China visit alongside Chinese young people. From that vantage point, I saw a trip that succeeded in improving U.S.-China government-to-government engagement. But Secretary Clinton's visit also made clear that if the Obama administration wants...