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An extraordinary collaboration between U.S. and Chinese nuclear scientists is setting the stage for...
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Education Resource
Meet the Journalist: Rong Xiaoqing
Rong Xiaoqing reported in the U.S. and China on the twists and turns in the lives of a few dozen...
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Project
Asia in the Time of Trump
While the U.S. lives through the domestic storms of the Trump presidency, China is moving boldly in...
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Across Africa, the era of U.S. and European hegemony is ending. As China fills the gap, the...
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Pulitzer Center Update
An Update on China's Islamophobia for Sinica Podcast
For Sinica Podcast, grantee Alice Su compares Islamophobia in China to that in the U.S. and Europe...
July 17, 2017
![I was drawn to the Beichuan earthquake memorial because I knew it would be strange but I was not fully prepared for the level of mass tourism on the site. According to a local tourism official I spoke with, fully 3 million domestic tourists a year visit the site. Seeing so many middle-class vacationers in their trendy athleisure clothing with their cameras out walking through a destroyed city was jarring but it was fully intended. The local government hoped that disaster tourism would be a major economic…](/sites/default/files/styles/510x315/public/06-21-17/beichuan_tourists.jpg.webp?h=5d8d1d0b&itok=2QlN3bFD "I was drawn to the Beichuan earthquake memorial because I knew it would be strange but I was not fully prepared for the level of mass tourism on the site. According to a local tourism official I spoke with, fully 3 million domestic tourists a year visit the site. Seeing so many middle-class vacationers in their trendy athleisure clothing with their cameras out walking through a destroyed city was jarring but it was fully intended. The local government hoped that disaster tourism would be a major economic development tool in the region. Despite the grand plans, however, most tourists visit the ruins as a day trip and stay in larger cities farther away or continue on into the mountains to visit Laojunshan National Park (aka "China's Yellowstone"). Image by Daniel Brook. China, 2015.")
