A Xictionary?

Taiwan is in the final days of its presidential election contest, and its big campaign rallies are boisterous, flashy spectacles — as if a variety show and a disco crashed into a candidate’s town hall meeting. nyti.ms/3vxpEok

An incipient deal for a joint presidential ticket between Taiwan’s long-established Nationalist Party and the upstart Taiwan People’s Party unraveled with the speed, melodrama and lingering vitriol of a celebrity wedding gone wrong. nytimes.com/2023/11/24/wor…

NEW from ChinaPower: We just published a page tracking China’s military exercises around Taiwan and other key activities over the past week.

This is just a first cut. In the coming days, we’ll update the timeline and add in-depth analysis. bit.ly/pla_exercises

Xi Jinping in Fujian in 1997. Looking tough toward Taiwan at tense moments, he learned long before he became China’s top leader, is essential for political survival in the ruling Communist Party. nytimes.com/2022/08/01/wor… archive.ph/NyqvY

Thousands of miles from the cities that Russia is bombing in Ukraine, China has been studying the war. Beijing sees a source of invaluable lessons on weapons, troop power, intelligence and deterrence that can help it prepare for potential wars of its own. nyti.ms/3zlfBRY

News Analysis: Xi Jinping’s Moscow trip was cast as a mission for peace in Ukraine, but his priority was bolstering Russia as a partner in countering the U.S., Chris Buckley 儲百亮, our chief China correspondent, writes.
nyti.ms/3FJpe0p

More fascinating details from Katrina Northrop on the Chinese balloon scientist Wu Zhe's businesses invested in high-altitude airships. thewirechina.com/2023/02/13/the…

China’s Top Airship Scientist Said He Sent One Over North America in 2019 nytimes.com/2023/02/13/wor…

In 2019, he proudly announced that his team had sailed an airship around most of the globe, including across North America. Now, companies he founded are among those that have been penalized by Washington. nytimes.com/2023/02/13/wor…

“The whipsaw speed of this shift is partially the extent to which this is the decision of one man. But also it’s officials trying to please that one man, and trying to run where you think he’s headed — sprint, in fact.' nytimes.com/2022/12/19/wor… Jeremy Wallace

He turned China’s intense top-to-bottom Covid mobilization into a showcase of the party’s strength. But eventually the effort exhausted staff, strained local finances, and appeared to drown out attempts to discuss, let alone devise, a measured transition. nytimes.com/2022/12/19/wor…

In late November, China was still committed to a “zero Covid” strategy. Then it abandoned almost overnight the world’s strictest pandemic prevention measures. nyti.ms/3FCyFOo

People's Daily guide to staying healthy post Zero Covid explains the benefits of regularly pushing up against a wall. static.people-health.cn/pdfjs/web/view…

Front page of the People's Daily on Thursday: Politburo meeting, Xi's visit to Saudi Arabia...No report about the big shift in Covid policy. (Look inside on page 8 for that). paper.people.com.cn/rmrb/html/2022…

The end of Zero COVID may finally be in sight. But what do three years of the basic inability to plan for tomorrow do to people’s ambition and optimism?

I spent two weeks in Guangdong — one of the most dynamic parts of China — trying to find out: nytimes.com/2022/12/04/wor…

“You can’t go to bed every night having to look for work in the morning. It’s too tiring.” A compelling story about the hardships of workers behind the protests and mass actions against Covid lockdowns in southern China. nytimes.com/2022/12/04/wor… Vivian Wang

People's Daily on Deng Xiaoping's (1997) and Jiang Zemin's (2022) passings. A quarter century apart.