December 15,
2014

ISSUE
No. 32

AMS Weekly Newsletter
Supporting the development of the future stewards of U.S.-China relations
我们回来了!
We are back after a couple-week hiatus while your editor was traveling in China and in a losing battle with the Great Firewall. Our weekly readings on the Central Foreign Affairs Work Conference and on Zhou Yongkang, as well as our other fantastic features from the last couple weeks, are still up on Facebook though, so if you want to catch up with them you can do so here.

Weekly Readings
 
Beijing has invested a great deal of money and energy into promoting innovation, especially trying to harness the power of informatization (信息化) to improve everything from governance to research to police work. Yet, the government also struggles to improve innovation because of the countervailing tendencies of the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) emphasis on control. The articles today assess China's approach to cyber policy and illustrate the dynamic tension between creativity and control. 




Weibo Watch

Awful haircuts. Confusing boyfriends. Visits from your parents. Chen Anni explores the little frustrations and small triumphs of a modern Chinese woman's life in her web comic "Great Anny" (伟大的安妮). Chen's eight-million-plus Weibo fans leave thousands of comments for her posts. Many wrote that they were moved to tears by her recent five-part post about her parents' visit to her in Beijing, filled with everything from the mundane details of booking a hotel for Mom and Dad, to the sublime mystery of her Dad's fascination with smart phones: http://weibo.com/1854627907/BzstNoFAb. This installment of Great Anny is the fourth hottest Weibo this week.

Chen has published a graphic novel based on her web comics, "Damn, This is College" (妮玛,这就是大学). A second book about her fictionalized self and her boyfriend is on its way. Check out more of Chen's comics at http://weibo.com/greatanny, and read a translation of her series on the hassles of women's hair from ChinaSMACK: http://bit.ly/1wwZv10.

俗语 in Xi Jinping's Speeches

茁壮成长
zhu�zhu�ng ch�ngzhǎng

Translation: grow healthily

On December 13 President Xi gave a speech memorializing the beginning of the Nanjing Massacre. He used this 成语 to liken the need of living things to have sun and water to the need of human development to have peace and stability.

Original: 新华网南京12月13日电 据新华社"新华视点"微博报道,在国家公祭仪式上,习近平发表重要讲话强调,有了阳光雨露,万物才能茁壮成长。有了和平稳定,人类才能更好实现自己的梦想。和平是需要争取的,和平是需要维护的。只有人人都珍爱和平、维护和平,只有人人都记取战争的惨痛教训,和平才是有希望的。
Video of the Week

After the Fourth Plenum, the Woodrow Wilson Center hosted a panel "Corruption, Constitutionalism & Control" with Andrew Wedeman and AMS member Donald Clarke, both experts on Chinese legal affairs and corruption. Clarke and Wedeman explored the extent to which the plenum's reforms can be implemented, whether they are principled or political in nature, and what the efforts mean for U.S.- China relations. Both panelists offer wide-ranging remarks about how China's legal system and Xi Jinping's anti-corruption campaign work and their consequences for how China functions. 

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