New this time around:

​A follow-up text by Wang Huning, Politiburo member and arguably China’s most powerful intellectual, “The Structure of China’s Changing Political Culture.” The translation is once again a collaboration between me and Matthew D. Johnson, Founder and Principal of AltaSilva LLC. We will post at least one more Wang Huning text in October.

Selena Orly and I also translated an interview with the well-known non-fiction writer Liang Hong.  Liang’s third book on the Henan village where she grew up , Liang Village Ten Years On 梁庄十年​, was published earlier this year in China.  The English translation of her first book, China in One Village 中国在梁庄 was published this year, and I highly recommend it.

A third text, Zhou An’an, “The Supreme Court Finally Overturned the Idea that ‘996 is a Blessing,’ but Did not Address the Larger Problems of the Platform Economy,” is one example among many of establishment intellectuals reflecting on inequality and other economic problems in China as Xi Jinping and the Party center strike out at China’s rich and famous.

Finally, an addition to our Spanish-language transations:  'Filosofía e Historia: Interpretando la "Era Xi Jinping" a través del Informe de Xi Jinping al Decimonoveno Congreso Nacional del PCCh'.  Gracias to Nicolás Cornejo Castellanos for helping to make this important text available in Spanish.

Those interested in Shi Zhan, whom I have mentioned before on this blog, might want to read my review of his most recent book, Breaking out of the Cocoon, on the blog of the European Research Centre for Chinese Studies, a very interesting publication.  

I am also delighted to share the news that my friend and colleague, David Kelly of China Policy, is launching his own translation blog, Beijing Baselines.  Check it out!

New on the site this time:

A text by Wang Huning, Politiburo member and arguably China’s most powerful intellectual, “Reflections on the Cultural Revolution and the Reform of China's Political System.”  In fact, this is a 2012 revision of a text Wang originally wrote in 1986.  The translation is a collaboration between me and Matthew D. Johnson, Founder and Principal of AltaSilva LLC.  Matt and I will be offering more translations of Wang’s work in the coming weeks and months.  Two texts are basically finished, and I discovered yesterday that several quite recent talks, interviews, and essays by Wang have been added to Aisixiang.

In addition, for our Youth Concerns project, Freya Ge and I offer the translation of an interesting essay by Xiong Wenchun, “Polarization: The Structure of the Education System Behind the Culture of Migrant Workers’ Children”.

​And finally, an addition to our Spanish-language translations:  Xie Tao, "2020:  Las relaciones sino-estadounidenses y la política americana en tiempos de pandemia."  Thanks to Ugo Armanini for his help in polishing the translation.

Something slightly different this time, a translation of a chapter from an upcoming work by the Taiwanese scholar Yang Rubin, entitled Thinking the Republic of China 思考中華民國. 

Throughout most of his career, Yang’s academic focus has been on pre-Qin Chinese thought, as well as on Neo-Confucianism, but in the past few years he has begun to write as a public intellectual.

Notably, in 2015, he published In Praise of 1949 (1949礼赞), in which he sought to rewrite the history of the Republic of China and the history of Taiwan, suggesting that despite the “shotgun marriage” aspect of their initial encounter in 1949 (the reference is not to the founding of the People’s Republic), the two had ultimately become one. 

I’m not quite sure where to situate Yang’s arguments in the complex politics of contemporary Taiwan, but his goal seems to be to transcend the narratives created by KMT historiography—with its knee-jerk condemnation of the Chinese Communists—and arrive at a more serene embrace of what the Republic of China has accomplished:  the establishment of a functional, successful, Chinese constitutional democracy.

The text translated here is a chapter from Yang’s new book, in which he dives more deeply into the themes explored in In Praise of 1949, providing a more complex history for what was originally something of a polemic.  Yang revisits the history of the 1911 revolution, suggesting that while traditional narratives celebrate the revolution (and the revolutionaries) and mourn (or condemn) the rapid failure of the Republic, this rush to judgement in fact obscures yet again the fundamental importance of the establishment of a constitutional democracy on Chinese soil.
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Yang’s new book will be the focus of a week-long online symposium, organized by Mark McConaghy, who was part of the Reading the China Dream project when it was an Insight grant supported by a grant from Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, and is now Assistant Professor of Chinese Literature at the National Sun Yat-sen University in Kao-hsiung, Taiwan.  The symposium is open to the virtual public; see the program here, the schedule here, and the Facebook page for the event here.  Spoiler alert:  I am one of the speakers, which is why I translated the chapter.

Back in the saddle again after ten days in the land of the (mask-) free and the home of the brave (vaccine-resisters).  God bless boring, civilized Canada.
 
New on the site this time, two texts by Yao Yang, whose apparent evolution from New Left to New Confucian I find interesting.  The first text, “The Challenges Facing the Chinese Communist Party and the Reconstruction of Political Philosophy” is particularly fascinating because it was published on July 2, the day after the CCP’s 100-year birthday bash, and offers Yao’s vision for China’s future, a vision which makes no mention of Xi Jinping or Xi Jinping Thought.  Yes, I suppose that everyone had heard  quite enough about Xi by then, but still, the omission is striking.

Yao’s second text,  “The Dilemma of China’s Democratization,” dates from 2009, and is interesting because Yao seems already to be moving away from his earlier New Left standpoint.

And finally, Freya Ge and I offer a text that speaks to both Youth Concerns and Women’s Voices:  a piece on the female stand-up comic Yang Li, and the online male backlash to her gentle ridicule of the foibles of (Chinese) men.
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Enjoy!

On the centenary celebration of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party,  four new texts:
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Zhang Weiwei on telling China’s political story well.  Zhang is a major cheerleader for the regime, and his text fits well with today’s celebration.
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In addition to Zhang, two texts by Party-loyal public intellectuals that could have joined in the birthday bash, but for obscure reasons did not:

Yao Yang and Qin Zizhong on how Confucianism can solve modern problems of inequality;

Fang Ning and Feng Jungong on how the achievement of a “moderately prosperous society” might lead to post-modern challenges to China’s socio-political order.

Finally, for our “Chinese Youth Concerns” project, Yang Xiong on “educational involution.”

There are signs that the US-Canadian border might reopen soon.  If it does, I might well take a week or two off and go visit my mother, whom I have not seen since the beginning of the pandemic.  In any event, I did the math and discovered that I have published, with the help of several colleagues, over 1,000 pages of material on my site since the beginning of this year, an (obsessive?) devotion to duty that surely earns me a brief holiday from text-hunting, translating, and proof-reading.  If you don’t hear from me until August 1, you’ll know why.  Stay cool and stay safe.

​New on the site this fortnight:

Two short texts from sociologist Sun Liping on recent issues in China—China’s aspirational “three child policy” and the phenomenon of “lying flat.”
 
Also, Qian Liqun on the relationship between Chinese intellectuals and China’s rural villages over the course of the 20th century.
 
Finally, New Confucian Kang Xiaoguang and New Left political scientist Wang Shaoguang discuss China’s Third Sector, a text from 2011 that makes us think about where China’s civil society is (or is not) headed.
 
Enjoy!

Click here for tips on getting the most out of the site. ​

New on the site:

​Philosopher Zhao Tingyang, famous for his “tianxia system,” seeks to use ancient Chinese wisdom to “reboot” democracy in his “A Feasible Smart Democracy.”

In addition, in the context to the run-up to the 100-year anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party next month, two texts illustrating the overlap between propaganda and the work of establishment intellectuals:

Zhang Cheng, “The Methodology of the Chinese Path:  China as Center and Method”

Zhang Xianming, “The Logic of the Politics of Responsibility in Full-Process Democracy”

Finally, a text for our “Women’s Voices” project:  Chang Yinting and Yang Xia, “Feminist Discourse:  Its Chinese Context and Contemporary Value”

Enjoy!

Click here for tips on getting the most out of the site.  

​New on the site :
 
Jiang Shigong continues his reflection on the theme of empire in “Imperial History without Empires,” a preface to the recent Chinese translation of John Darwin’s After Tamerlane:  The Global History of Empire.
 
Zhou Lian attempts to explain ongoing support for Donald Trump among Chinese intellectuals in his “Three Myths concerning Chinese Trumpists.”
 
Chen Yang and Guo Wan Ying write on “Young People Returning to Dongbei” for our Chinese Youth Concerns Project.
 
Finally I was pleased to discuss Reading the China Dream on yet another new podcast, Jared McKinney’s Indo-Pacific Affairs Podcast.

Click here for tips on getting the most out of the site. ​

New on the site, four rousing essays on the subject of education.

Gan Yang and Liu Xiaofeng offer a withering condemnation of Beida’s 2014 plans to launch the English-language only Yenching Academy, in “The Cultural Positioning and Self-Betrayal of Peking University”

Tsinghua Political Scientist Liu Yu denounces China’s “educational arms race” in “My Daughter is Inexorably Becoming an Ordinary Person”

Social Anthropologist Xiang Biao talks about his experiences as a student at Beida in the early 1990s in excerpts from his book Self as Method.

The Taiwanese Sociologist Zhao Gang discusses “radicalism and violence” among youth in Taiwan and Hong Kong in “Why is this Generation of Young People so Easily Tricked?”  N. B.  I did not choose this text because I agree with it.

I might mention that I was a recent guest on the Chinese Whispers Podcast, hosted by The Spectator in the U.K.  Even if you have heard enough of me, I highly recommend the podcast.  Cindy Yu, the journalist who runs it, asks excellent questions and gives her guests the chance to answer them.

New additions to the site this time :
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“Historical Nihilism,” a nasty little bit of propaganda aimed at establishment intellectuals, which we may be hearing more about in the run-up to the celebration of the CCP’s 100-year birthday in July.
 
For our Youth Concerns project, a nice journalistic essay on young people and…mutual funds.
 
For our Women’s Voices project, Zuo Fengrong, Professor at the Central Party School, on “The Thucydides Trap and a New Type of Great Power Relationship.”
 
And finally, Shi Zhan, historian and foreign relations expert on his new book, Breaking through the Cocoon, which I would really like to read if anyone could get their hands on a copy.

Click here for tips on getting the most out of the site. ​