08
May
China is moving backwards. In fifteen years of studying and writing about this place, I’ve rarely had reason to reach that conclusion without one qualifier or another dangling off the end of the sentence—qualifiers that leave room, for instance, for ‘halting progress’ or ‘mixed signals.’ But this week the evidence is unambiguous: for the first time in thirteen years, China has kicked out a foreign correspondent. In doing so, it revives a Soviet-era strategy that will undermine its own efforts to project soft power and shows a spirit of self-delusion that does not bode well for China’s ability to address the problems that imperil its future.
Chinese Characters contributor Evan Osnos, in a New Yorker blog post on China’s expulsion of Al Jazeera correspondent Melissa Chan.
