In the past year, with a slowing Chinese economy coming under increased scrutiny, local government financing vehicles have become a source of concern. However, Joe Zhang dismisses these alarmist predictions and forecasts an “inevitable wave of privatization” for local Chinese government projects.

Scholars have compared the American Dream and Chinese Dream, even encouraging China to avoid following in the footsteps of the American Dream. However, with all the nuances to the American Dream, China can learn from it and apply it to realize its own Chinese Dream.

Chen Xiangyang analyzes the growing pains of emerging nations, and suggests that China must learn from other countries' "mistakes" and make sure not to repeat them by doing everything necessary to ensure its own lasting political stability and social harmony.

Eric Li challenges Western assumptions about competing political systems. He writes that China's political model will never supplant electoral democracy, because unlike the latter, it doesn't pretend to be universal and cannot be exported. The significance of China's example is not that it provides an alternative, but the demonstration that alternatives exist.

In the fall, China will initiate a massive urbanization plan, which could fuel the mainland’s growth prospects in the next two decades. The United States can only provide limited guidance to Chinese policymakers who are tackling challenges of an unprecedented magnitude.

After a year of delay, the trial of Bo Xilai, the former Communist Party secretary of Chongqing municipality, is finally about to begin. Ma Jian describes his real offense is that he challenged the Chinese Communist Party’s way of doing things.

Deepening political reform and promoting democracy and rule of law in real earnest is precisely what China needs right now if we want our country to enjoy lasting social stability and our people to reap the benefit of democracy, writes Yu Keping.

Commenting on China’s recently revised law on the Protection of the Rights and Interests of Elderly People, Yu Hua examines this controversial law while reflecting on personal accounts of caring for the elderly and its importance in Chinese culture.

The Chinese term shashoujian, “assassin’s mace”, has become increasingly common in the context of US-Sino policy over the past two decades. An idiom commonly used in China, often with little or no military connection, the term has been over-interpreted by US officials as a profound insight into Chinese military strategy. This has come despite efforts from scholars who understand and publish on its actual context.

The recently concluded (non)case of the government vs. Dr. Bo Jiang bore a striking resemblance to the scandalous Wen Ho Lee case that occurred in 1999 and strongly suggests that racial profiling and bigotry is still alive and well, at least in Virginia.