Tag: Nineteen Hundred Eighties

China Cancels a News Conference, Shutting a Window for Its People

Media Library

For more than 30 years, the Chinese premier’s annual news conference was the only time that a top leader took questions from journalists about the state of the country. It was the only occasion for members of the public to size up for themselves China’s No. 2 official. It was the only moment when some Chinese might feel a faint sense of political participation in a country without elections. On Monday, China announced that the premier’s news conference, marking the end of the country’s annual rubber-stamp legislature, will no longer…

China May Ban Clothes That Hurt People’s Feelings. People Are Outraged.

Media Library

In the 1980s, people in China could land themselves in trouble with the government for their fashion choices. Flared pants and bluejeans were considered “weird attire.” Some government buildings barred men with long hair and women wearing makeup and jewelry. Patrols organized by factories and schools cut flared pants and long hair with scissors. It was the early days of China’s era of reform and opening up. The Communist Party was loosening its tight control over society little by little, and the public was pushing the limits of self-expression and…

How Republicans Can Replay the Reagan Era

Chin@Strategy

For a long time, longer than I’ve held this job, my advice to Republican politicians and policymakers has been consistent: It isn’t the 1970s or 1980s anymore. The ideas associated with Ronald Reagan’s ascent to power, forged in an era of Cold War and high crime rates, stagflation and sexual revolution, were responses to crises and challenges decades in the past, and the G.O.P. was doomed to cycles of failure until it devised an agenda more fitted to the times. The year 2021, though, is the first time a reasonable…