Tea Leaf Nation

iSunAffairs, an iPad-based magazine, put together this democracy map of East and South Asia based on data from The Democracy Index 2011 by the Economist Intelligence Unit.  It is worth noting that China ranks ahead of Vietnam, albeit by a very slim margin. It is also worth noting that iSunAffairs is led by Mr. Chang [...]

Sometimes, the numbers tell the whole story. Leung Chun-ying was elected Hong Kong’s new chief executive with 689 votes on Sunday. In January, Ma Ying-jeou was re-elected in Taiwan’s presidential election with 6.89 million votes. With S-election 2012 looming on the horizon, netizens in China can’t help drawing some comparisons.  @佐拉 wonders “Doesn’t Hu Jintao’s successor only need [...]

Public opinion polls about political issues in China are harder to find than wild pandas. To find one in Global Times, a Party-loving tabloid, is kind of like spotting a wild panda on the beach in balmy Hainan. But there it is.  The very fact that this opinion poll [Chinese] was published by a conservative [...]

Could a village in mainland China be more democratic than Hong Kong? With Wukan’s village elections recently complete and Hong Kong’s controversial election for Chief Executive on the way, iSun Affairs (阳光时务) has created a compelling pictorial suggesting the answer is “yes.” iSunAffairs.com [Chinese] describes itself as a magazine that covers economy, politics and culture in [...]

As if there were ever any doubt. Surprising no one, Vladimir Putin was re-elected to a third term as Russia’s president. The news hit the wire at 5:00 a.m., Beijing time. As @翠婷1990 described, “I woke up around 6 o’clock or so, as soon as I opened Weibo Putin was all over my screen.” As [...]

If only Guinness kept a record. Ms. Shen Jilan, a 82-year old grandmother from Shanxi province, has served as a representative to the National People’s Congress (NPC) for 55 years. She will soon rival even the late Robert Byrd, the longest-serving member in the history of the U.S. Congress, for political longevity. Considering all the [...]

Do you know your left from your right? A visual key to the meaning of leftist versus rightist politics in China, an answer to this hugely popular pictorial on U.S. politics, was created by CNPolitics.org (政见). With CNPolitics’ permission, we reprint sections of the picture here with English translations and original commentary from Tea Leaf Nation. You can [...]

Break out your decoders, dear readers; a politician is talking. At a Tuesday luncheon with U.S. Vice-President Joe Biden, Chinese Vice President and heir apparent Xi Jinping defended China’s human rights record by saying, “There’s no best, only better.” China’s netizens, who are seemingly as unsure as Western observers as to what Xi’s ascendance means for [...]

Perhaps Wukan may be what many netizens are calling “the spark that sets the prairie ablaze.” As Tea Leaf Nation recently reported, China’s blogosphere is abuzz with rumors of a citizen uprising in Panhe Village in Zhejiang province. As with last year’s Wukan uprising, citizens there allegedly grew infuriated over the local government’s sale of [...]

[Readers can see an update to this post in Wukan 2.0? Evidence Mounts Panhe Uprising Is Real in these pages.] Could it be the “Wukan effect?” That’s what @城道 has used to describe recent rumors of another uprising in Panhe’s East and West Village in Wenzhou, Zhejiang province that have recently circulated on Sina Weibo, China’s Twitter. Stop [...]