The stage play "The Stage," a collaboration between Chen Peisi and playwright Yu Yue, premiered in Beijing and later toured hundreds of venues across China, using the story of a theatrical troupe as a metaphor for the relationship between power and art.
In 2015, Chinese agents infiltrated the U.S. Office of Personnel Management and stole security clearance background check files of more than 21 million current and former federal employees, including fingerprints, financial records, foreign contacts, psychological evaluations, marital issues, medical records and other sensitive background investigation materials.
In 2015, Shi Zhengli of the Wuhan Institute of Virology took part in a study that synthesized a chimeric SARS-like coronavirus to understand its ability to infect humans; the hybrid virus described in the paper carried the spike protein of a Chinese horseshoe bat coronavirus.
From late 2015 to 2016, the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League faced reforms, its organizational staffing was streamlined, and its budget was significantly cut, weakening the Youth League faction's ability to cultivate young cadres.
In 2015, about 80 million medical records were stolen from the second-largest health insurance company in the United States, cited as one of the cases linked to a China-backed information theft campaign.
China's auto production capacity soared after 2015, with the government offering subsidies of up to 90% for building electric vehicle plants, giving rise to overcapacity.
Zhai Zhenwu, a demographer at Renmin University of China, published an article opposing the lifting of the two-child policy, claiming that if it were fully lifted immediately, the annual peak of births would reach 49.95 million; in 2017, actual births fell instead of rising, his prediction failed, yet he still serves as president of the China Population Association.