The Economist Launches New China Section

(HONG KONG) - The Economist launches a new section on China today, offering greater insight into the fast-rising superpower, in the magazine's first new section devoted to a single country for 70 years.

The inaugural China section will cover all aspects of the nation’s rising power - political, economic and social, in an attempt to give an even deeper understanding of the vast country.

It will join existing sections on the United States and Britain, as well as the regions of The Americas; Asia; Middle East & Africa; and Europe.

The last new country section to be added to The Economist was the US, after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour in 1942 (the Britain section has been included since The Economist was first published in 1843).

"We have always covered China in depth” said Economist editor John Micklethwait. “However, I decided that China's emergence as a global power justified giving it a section of its own. It also allows us to devote more space each week to covering the deeper social, political and economic issues in the country, especially the China beyond Beijing and Shanghai. That is how we built up the reputation of the American Survey. We hope the China section becomes the starting point for anyone who wants to know more about this absorbing, complicated country."

In addition, the new China section will explore some of the larger questions surrounding China's rise, both domestically and internationally: Can China hold together? Can it retain its fast rate of growth?  What reforms must it make in order to do so? How much of a threat might China's growing military be within Asia?  What are the social changes that will affect how Chinese people live in the 21st century? What are the new trends in China that we should be watching?

From micro-blogging to the real estate market; from online gaming to student nationalism; from the booming shopping malls of the coastal cities to the despair of poor farmers in the western provinces, the new China section will touch on all areas of Chinese life in the early 21st century.

“But above all, our readers can expect the same depth of coverage, the same clarity of writing and the same sometimes witty, sometimes irreverent take on the news that they have come to expect from The Economist” said Rob Gifford, The Economist’s newly-appointed China editor.

To read the first-ever China section in this week’s Economist, see www.economist.com and click on ‘full contents’, then the China section, or read the lead story, headed “The paradox of prosperity”,  at: http://www.economist.com/node/21543537.