Issue #4 of the web-journal China Left Review is now online. The latest issue is tightly focused on the issue of workers, including general overviews and in-depth original pieces on recent large-scale labor struggles involving SOE workers and migrant workers. This marks the second fully bilingual edition of CLR. Producing an issue in two languages takes a great deal of effort, and if you’d like to help out with translating, revising or writing for future issues, please contact [email protected].

Issue #3 of China Study Group’s bi-lingual web-journal China Left Review is focused on new essays, by Chinese and overseas writers, revisiting several English-language books about rural China during the collective/ “people’s commune” era (ca. 1957-1982). The issue also includes an article on China’s ongoing land-tenure debate, and one on Sino-Korean relations. With the exception of the latter article, every text is presented in both Chinese and English versions - a first for this journal which we hope to continue. (If you’d like to help out with translating, revising or writing for future issues, please contact [email protected].) Also note the new design of the CLR website, including the painting “Iron Bones Giving Birth to Spring” (铁骨生春).

According to a Xinhua story, the Gaza office of the Xinhua News Agency was bombed during the air attack on Gaza. The story provided no commentary on the event, merely stressing that there were no injuries or fatalities. It was as if the strike was painless, and nothing compared to the hell-on-earth that the Palestinians were experiencing, and therefore not deserving of surprise. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs also made little fuss over the bombing of an overseas Chinese media outlet, and to this day has not lodged a protest. This event provides evidence both for the humiliating ‘twin’ defeat of China’s short-sighted and unstable Mideast policy.

The trade entente between the US and reform-era China was one of the most peculiar relationships in world economic history.

Much of recent news coverage and debate over the protests of Tibetans and their supporters, both inside and outside China, has tended to provide a very incomplete view of the underlying historical, global and social dimensions of the relationships involved. In an effort to open up a more multifaceted discussion of this complex issue, I offer the following set of questions.