Miles Yu
Columns by Miles Yu
Inside China: Military reform is not a song-and-dance party
The People's Liberation Army's powerful and controversial "entertainment corps," collectively known as "the PLA Culture Work Units," is finally being dismantled after decades of public outrage and repeated official efforts to rein in its excesses and influence. Published January 7, 2016
Inside China: Xi Jinping takes a page from Mao Zedong’s quotations playbook
A man in power wants all things his way. And in China, a man with absolute power wants one particular thing above all else: immortality for his words. Published December 31, 2015
Inside China: Seoul seeks a border with Beijing
China and South Korea ended another round of high-level maritime border demarcation talks in Seoul earlier this week. And just like the previous 14 rounds of talks on the same issue held between 1996 and 2008, the revived talks failed to produce a final agreement. Published December 24, 2015
Inside China: Russia, China still fierce competitors despite recent arms deals
The public celebration over recent arms deals belies the fundamental rifts, distrust and suspicion that still divide the two neighbors. In a larger sense, China and Russia hold fundamentally different strategic visions and are fierce competitors for regional and global dominance in key areas. Published December 10, 2015
Inside China: Xi Jinping’s military overhaul tightens Communist Party grip
Every 15 years or so, the Chinese Communist Party makes a major structural or doctrinal change to the People's Liberation Army, the world's largest. It's that time of the cycle again as Chinese President Xi Jinping announced last week that a massive defense restructuring was underway. Published December 3, 2015
Inside China: China clarifies Natuna Islands sovereignty to Indonesia
In a rare move to avoid further isolation in a region where it has territorial disputes with nearly all of its maritime neighbors, China made a major concession last week by publicly clarifying and acknowledging Indonesia's sovereign right to the Natuna Islands in the South China Sea. Published November 19, 2015
Inside China: Storm over Russia border rages
Last week, a seemingly innocuous news item in China's state media sparked an unexpected firestorm in China and Russia, exposing the shaky foundation upon which the much-hyped Beijing-Moscow united front challenging the West and the existing geopolitical order has been built. Published November 12, 2015
Inside China: Luo Yuan: A profile in chutzpah
He is arguably China's most jingoistic senior military voice, heralded by some as a national hero while hated by many more for his unvarnished battle cries for military actions when tensions soar between Beijing and its many adversaries and rivals, including Taiwan, Japan, the Philippines and most prominently, the United States. Published November 5, 2015
Inside China: Toxic voice of history
One of China's most outrageously cool superstars is a high school history teacher, wildly popular among the nation's young, who follow him online and offline in the tens of millions. Ironically, he is also one of the nation's most censored public intellectuals. Published October 22, 2015
Inside China: Marxism: The opium of the Chinese masses
Last week, Beijing hosted the inaugural "World Congress on Marxism," accompanied by much celebratory fanfare in the capital city. Over 400 luminaries, government officials and scholars from the United States, Egypt, Cuba, North Korea and more than a dozen other countries were flown in for the proletarian extravaganza. The event lasted for two days and it will be held every other year in Beijing, the newly self-anointed center of global Marxism studies. Published October 15, 2015
Inside China: The Nobel conundrum
Like all communist governments obsessed with finding every piece of tangible evidence to prove their all-around greatness, China has yearned to have genuine homegrown Nobel Prize winners to showcase the achievements of the vanguards of the Chinese proletariat. Yet, several Chinese laureates later, Beijing is finding out that Nobel glory can also be a double-edged sword. Published October 8, 2015
Inside China: The knifing of the People’s Liberation Army
At the massive Sept. 3 military parade in Beijing, Chinese President Xi Jinping -- who meets President Obama in Washington as part of his state visit Friday -- made a surprising announcement that the PLA would cut its troop strength by 300,000, or 13 percent, to about 2 million troops. Published September 24, 2015
Inside China: Li Kai-shing, Asia’s Donald Trump, targeted as ingrate to China
With a net worth of about $30 billion, much of it in real estate investments in China and Hong Kong, Li Kai-shing is the richest man in Asia, known for his shrewd business acumen and extraordinary ability to cultivate cozy relationships with communist officials in China to strike great deals in the world's fastest growing real estate market. Published September 17, 2015
Inside China: The Party commands the gun — and writes the history
"Comrade President, the troops are ready for your inspection!" shouted the People's Liberation Army general in charge of the extravaganza. Published September 3, 2015
Inside China: Chinese parade, Russian games
As China gears up for a communist-style extravaganza with a military parade and ceremonial grandiosity next week to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the defeat of Japan in World War II, Beijing is determined and eager to show off its military might to the world. It's also making a clear attempt to isolate Japan from the international community and send a special message of China's military might to its most distinguished guest, Russia's equally bombast-loving President Vladimir Putin. Published August 27, 2015
Inside China: Tianjin explosions cover-up exposes Beijing’s own toxic fault lines
The blasts that rocked the northern Chinese port city of Tianjin on Aug. 12 are said to have released a destructive power equivalent to an earthquake of 2.3 magnitude on the Richter scale. But the political aftershocks have been even more devastating to the Chinese government, revealing design flaws in the communist system's ability to control information and some glaringly negligent safety regulations. Published August 20, 2015
Inside China: Lee Teng-hui, Taiwan’s former president, says Senkaku islands belong to Japan
Key political figures in the island democracy of Taiwan are embroiled in a war of words over an explosive issue: Who owns a tiny, uninhabitable island chain in the East China Sea? Published August 6, 2015
Inside China: Liang Zhu warns of U.S. ‘historical nihilism’ plot
To denounce one's past is to doom one's present; and when one's present is doomed, one's future is ruined. That is not something from Confucius or from a Chinese fortune cookie. It is the battle cry of a fierce war on "historical nihilism" being waged by the Chinese Communist Party under President Xi Jinping, who has a doctorate degree in "scientific socialism" from China's prestigious Tsinghua University, the intramural rival of its next-door neighbor, Peking University. Published July 30, 2015
Inside China: Official: China stock crash is U.S. economic warfare
Last month's stock market crash in China was without any doubt an economic war against China covertly waged by the United States, with the direct objective of subverting the ruling Communist Party, according to the most powerful leader of China's massive state-owned corporate enterprises. Published July 23, 2015
Inside China: Stock market crash blamed on U.S. conspiracy
China's spectacular stock market crash over the past several weeks has led the world to wonder: What caused such a panic sell-off? Published July 16, 2015