New on the site this time:

Four quite personal essays by the prominent Peking University economist Yao Yang, based on Yao’s experiences in his father’s home village in Jiangxi, where Yao spent the first eight years of his life.  I am writing a paper on Yao for a conference in Switzerland in late August, and read these pieces in the course of my research.  Yao addresses two basic themes:  the effects of reform and opening on village community life, and the ultimate meaning of China’s revolution (Yao’s grandfather was a revolutionary martyr who was executed after participating in the Nanchang Uprising in 1927).  The texts are well-written and worth reading on their own terms.

Yao Yang, “Three Days Back in the Village”

Yao Yang, “Before My Grandfather’s Portrait”

Yao Yang, “The Vanishing Town”
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Yao Yang, “My View of Revolutionary History”

​New on the site this time:
 
A snide commentary on people complaining about the Shanghai lockdown by China cheerleader Zhang Weiwei:  “Say No to ‘Spiritual Americans.’”
 
An interesting piece on “absentee farmers”—i.e., the millions of villagers who have moved to China’s cities during reform and opening:  Huang Zhihui, “From Absentee Landlords to Absentee Farmers:  The Transformation of Farmers’ Living Patterns and Rural Revitalization in the Context of Reciprocal Relations between Towns and Villages.”
 
Another piece on online youth culture, meant to complement the last update’s texts on the Industrial Party (see here and here):  Pan Nini, “How the ‘Little Pinks’ were Born:  Analyzing ‘Fan Patriotism’ in the Internet Era.”
 
Enjoy!

Back home after a wonderful stay in Paris.  Thanks again to Anne Cheng for giving me the opportunity to lecture at the Collège de France.  For French-speaking followers of the blog, the lectures are available online here.  Please forgive the slight delay in updating the site this time, but I tested positive for covid the day after getting home.  Not the best home-coming gift, but surely better than getting sick while in Paris.  In any event, it is a mild case, but covid + jetlag did knock me out for a day or two.

New on the site this time :

Two texts that talk about the Industrial Party 工业党 in China, an online community that preaches the supremacy of industrialsm and technocracy.  The Industrial Party, like the Little Pinks, is part of the online nationalist noise that is omnipresent on China’s Internet, affording us a glimpse into the interaction of nationalism, ideology and online life in contemporary China.

Lu Nanfeng and Wu Jing, “Historical Transformation and Grand Narrative: A Political Analysis of the ‘Industrial Party,’ an Online Intellectual Trend”

Zhou An'an and Wu Jing, "The whole country is working hard, and I'm just one of those workers" 

In addition, Freya Ge and I translated a text on mental health problems among China’s high school and university students, which is troubling to say the least.

Xu Kaiwen, “How Hard it is to Become a Mentally Healthy Student, Given ‘Hollow-Heart Disease’ and the Anxieties of Our Age?" 

New on the site this time:
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Three texts by Zhao Yanjing, a professor of urban planning at Xiamen University and a frequent commenter on national and international affairs.  I first noticed Zhao right after the beginning of the pandemic in 2020 when he published an interesting piece warning China to “get its narrative right” on the virus.  This month I noticed a piece by Zhao on China’s current real estate crisis, and in the process of working on that text, stumbled on two other interesting essays by him on China’s fertility crisis and the war in Ukraine.  So we have “China’s Real Estate at a Crossroads,” “Fertility, Elder Care, Employment, and Urban Planning,” and “China’s Choice in the Russia-Ukraine War.”  Enjoy.   

Thanks to the kind invitation of Professor Anne Cheng, Chair of Chinese Intellectual History at the Collège de France, I will be spending most of June in Paris, giving a series of public lectures at her institution. The lectures are free and open to the public, and I would be delighted to see any of you who might happen to be in Paris.  Because of this commitment, I may well put aside my translating chores aside for a bit, so if there is no mid-June update, you will know why.

New on the site this time:

An anonymous blog post by a young Shanghai woman that went viral in China (at least 1.7 million views) recounting, with bemused exasperation, her experiences in a quarantine center, in a hotel where “close contacts” were forced to isolate, and many misadventures in between.  It is well worth a read, and if you want to know what “Schrödinger's lung” refers to, you’ll need to click through.
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In addition, three more entries from Qin Hui’s chronicles of the Russian war in Ukraine, in which he continues to warn of the dangers of appeasement:

Number Five:  “Will the Bucha Massacre Put an End to Appeasement?”

Number Six:  “Appeasement and Collective Security”

Number Seven:  “Appeasement after World War II:  Solzhenitsyn's Question”

New on the site this time:

​Yuan Peng, “Fundamental Principles Maintaining and Shaping National Security in the New Era—Studying the Outline of the Comprehensive National Security Concept”.  Yuan is both an establishment intellectual and a part of the Party-State national security apparatus.  Here he writes as the latter, in the People’s Daily.
 
Jiang Shigong, “Commerce and Human Rights (Part Two)—Sino-American Competition in the Context of World Empire”.  This is part two of Jiang’s commentary on the history of commerce and human rights in the liberal world order, in which he extends his analysis to the postwar and contemporary periods.
 
I am also continuing to translate Qin Hui’s chronicles of the war in Ukraine (7 have been published so far on FT-Chinese, which is pay walled) because his denunciations of Russian aggression and Western appeasement recall similar warnings in the period leading up to WWII:  "’Nazify’ or ‘Denazify?’ Ukraine Commentary No. 3”, and “The Russia-Ukraine War and the Soviet-Finnish ‘Winter War’—Ukraine Commentary No. 4”.

Enjoy!

New on the site this time, four texts on the pandemic and lockdown in Shanghai :

Zheng Ge, “’Do We Really Have No Other Choice This Time?’ Frank Words from a Shanghai Father”.  Five thousand convincing words from a non-expert, in a major publication, on why “dynamic covid” is still right for China.

Wu Jun, “Being Infected Does Not Mean Getting Sick; We Need to Calm the Covid Panic”.  A shorter piece from a Chinese medical doctor working in the US on why it’s time to move on from “dynamic covid.”

Lü Dewen, “If the ‘Grassroots’ are not Solid, Everything Starts to Waver”.  Maoist nostalgia inspired by the Shanghai lockdown.
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Youthology, “Let Shanghai Be Seen, Let the Cry for Help Continue”.  Reflections from Shanghai youths living the lockdown.

New on the site this time, four new pieces on the war in Ukraine:

​Gao Cheng, “Is the Conflict Turning Around?  How Russia and Ukraine Think Will Determine How Things Develop Moving Forward” introduced and translated by Selena Orly.

Cui Zhiyuan, “The ‘Security Dilemma,’ Constructivism, and the Ukraine Crisis”​.

Jin Yan, "Regilding the Empire, Russia's 'New Empire Syndrome'".

Shi Zhan, "The First Metaverse War".

The texts are in descending order of conventionality, Gao Cheng’s being a fairly predictable defense of Russia that gives academic cover to the views of China’s authorities, and Shi Zhan’s being a very innovative discussion of the “networked mediatization” of the war.

In addition, Freya Ge has translated a piece by Beida law professor Luo Xiang related to the case of the mother of eight discovered in January chained to the wall of an outbuilding in the suburbs of Xuzhou, who later was found to have been abducted and purchased.  Luo gives popular online lectures about legal issues and cases and has some 13 million followers—mostly young people—on the video platform Bilibili, which makes his an important voice.

Enjoy!

New on the site this time, four texts on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine:

Zheng Yongnian, “The War in Ukraine Blurs the Two Main Lines, But Many People Misunderstand China's Role.”  Zheng’s text is close to some of what we read in official propaganda, suggesting that China might be able to take advantage of the conflict, but he still counsels extreme caution.

Sun Liping, “The Small Chess Board and the Big Picture:  Russia in the Big Picture May Be Ukraine on the Small Chess Board.”  Sun’s text was taken down by authorities (and reposted elsewhere), presumably for arguing that China should absolutely not get in bed with Russia, which is not only in the wrong morally, but which will soon be the object of a world-wide anti-Russia alliance. This alliance might well be turned against China, since Russia is a minor power in decline.

Finally, two texts by Qin Hui, “The West's ‘Double Standard’ and Putin's ‘Single Standard’—From the Crimean Crisis to Putin's February 21 Declaration,” and “Ukraine Series No. 2:  Aggression and Appeasement—Crimea and the Sudetenland Compared.”  In the Chinese intellectual context, Qin’s texts are unrepresentative, because his goal is to completely demolish any justification for the Russian invasion and to call the world’s attention to the similarities between Putin and Hitler.

More soon.

New on the site this time:
​
Two texts inspired by the highly mediatized case of the “woman with eight children:”  one, a brief blog post by the sociologist Sun Liping, attacking utilitarianism and reminding us of the importance of basic humanity; and another, longer text, by Zhang Yinghong, a specialist in rural issues in China, that delves into the broader problems with rural governance that made the case possible.

In addition, Mark Czeller, a Ph.D. candidate at Oxford, translates a fiery piece on land reform during the Chinese revolution by the historian Li Fangchun.  Li calls out an older generation of Chinese scholars who, in his eyes, have sullied the heritage of China’s revolution by calling into question the competence of the Party and their over-reliance on Soviet models.  As a companion text, Mark also translates part of a lecture by Qin Hui, a popular figure on this site, as representative of the viewpoint Li Fangchun wants to criticize.

For the next update, I will focus on how Chinese establishment intellectuals are responding to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.  I have no doubt that many Chinese intellectuals are as shocked as many of us are about this horrifying turn of events.  It will interesting to see what they actually say—or what they are allowed to say.  See you mid-March.