Hidden levies are becoming visible

   So why do they complain about them so much?

   Officials see Jane Eyre as promoting the right kind of love

   The choices it faces will have global repercussions

   Keeping silent about the awful decade may not bury it

   They see faults in China’s system as well as in democracies, surveys show

   It sees the skills Olympics as a chance to boost its power

   The Americans want a hotline but the Chinese have been cool in the past

   But ancient traditions may not always bend to his will

   What if all of China’s provinces took part, not just rich areas?

   It doesn’t want free speech, but it does want to know what’s going on

   Will rising officials be freer thinkers than older ones?

   An insurgent power has fought the incumbent to a stalemate

   Some are pretending to work to keep up appearances

   Each side now understands its vulnerability to the other

   Big progress at a summit of Donald Trump and Xi Jinping is unlikely

   Officials say they want to monitor overseas travel, not stop it

   The academic system has become more unfair but just as pressure-filled

   He had an impossible job, and did it badly

   The hard-working society wants to kick back more, but faces constraints

   And yes, they do have a choice

   A natural disaster and a comedy mishap testify to the party’s power

   Some cities say they’ve been eating kebabs since the Han dynasty

   Tainted vegetables are the focus of the latest scandal

   Why Chinese jets are staging mock combat over Egypt

   It is full of contradictions but welcomed by many as an alternative to Western power

   Why Niu Lai has become a box-office hit

   Like America, China wants its laws to apply everywhere

   The pressure to have children collides with a fierce work culture

   The Northern Sea Route is a pricey and risky alternative to the Suez Canal

   Local chocolatiers are raising the bar

   Back then, leaders delivered and opportunity beckoned-or so the story goes

   The government wants to improve a patchy and uneven system

   A titan of pragmatic reform is gone, aged 97

   The public likes all the controls until they get in the way

   Supernatural beliefs lead to lower economic growth

   Young netizens mine the Cultural Revolution for tropes

   Those who do are more likely to return home afterwards

   Its industrial policy rests on a simple principle: might makes right

   A case of national-security theatre

   A gory film tests prudish government censors

   CXMT’s monster initial public offering is a money-maker for the state. Its success may not be repeated

   But eco-authoritarianism is not all roses

   Shantou was once at the forefront of reforms. Now it is a backwater

   Big new formations north of Taiwan suggest officials are testing out its capabilities

   It risks inflaming ethnic tensions and undermining territorial claims

   They are having too much impact on young people’s lives

   He has set a record for booting out members of the Politburo

   Its latest campaign won’t solve its debt woes, but inches in the right direction

   But online misogyny is only one corner of a much bigger problem