New on the site this fortnight, three translations of recent essays discussing China’s views of America, both in the context of the coronavirus pandemic, and the anti-racism protests provoked by the death of George Floyd.

Xu Jinlin, "Looking at American Political Correctness and Identity Politics through the Lens of the Anti-Racist Movement"

​Yuan Peng, "Political Gamesmanship and American Chaos"

Yuan Peng, "The Coronavirus Pandemic and a Hundred-Year Change"

I am also delighted to make available an essay by my Sino-French friend and scholar Ji Zhe, “The  ‘China Virus’ and its Mutation”

​Enjoy!  Next time, Chinese Trump supporters.

We are taking a break from the coronavirus this month (would that it would return the courtesy) to cover the Wang Hui-Rong Jian debate, an important event in China’s thought world in recent weeks.  Wang Hui, China’s most prominent New Left intellectual, used the occasion of the 150th anniversary of Lenin’s birth to offer his musings on the possibilities of revolutionary renewal in his “The Revolutionary Personality and the Philosophy of Victory:  Commemorating Lenin’s 150th Birthday.”  Rong Jian, the Liberal independent scholar, fired back with two hard-hitting pieces:  “What Does the ‘Philosophy of Victory’ of the Revolutionary Mean?  Criticizing Wang Hui’s ‘Revolutionary Personality’ and ‘Philosophy of Victory,’” and “Wang Hui’s ‘Heidegger Moment?’” 

Also new this month, Guo Yuhua’s "Farewell Sina Weibo"

​Readers might also enjoy the China Digital Times translation of retired Party School Professor Cai Xia, who condemned the CCP as a “zombie party.”

New this month:
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Liu Shao-hua, “Disease Names and Stigma in the Context of the Pandemic” (March 4, 2020)

Jie Dalei, “Ideology and Sino-American Strategic Competition” (May 9, 2020)

Xiang Biao, “The Theory of ‘Concentrated Mobility’ and the ‘Gyro-Economy:’ Understanding Social Change in China through SARS and the Coronavirus” (May 21, 2020)

Liu Shao-hua’s is the first piece from Taiwan on the site treating COVID-19.
Readers who appreciated Yao Yang’s text on the new Cold War will probably enjoy Jie Dalei’s as well.

​Xiang Biao’s piece is a highly original essay connecting the coronovirus and its control with the general phenomenon of movement in China.

 

Three new additions to the site since last time, all related to the coronavirus pandemic:

"Post-Epidemic Recommendations from Confucian Scholars on How to Govern the Country," published on the website “Confucian Network”  (March 20, 2020)

Yao Yang, “Is a New Cold War Coming?” (April 28, 2020)

​Xiang Lanxin, "On Wolf Warrior Diplomacy" (April 30, 2020)

Three new additions to the site since last time, all related to the coronavirus pandemic:

Zhao Yanjing, “The Claims are Flooding in, and it is Urgent to Rebuild the Core Narrative of ‘China’s Fight against the Virus’” (April 10, 2020)

​Xu Jilin,“Cultural Factors in Different Models of Fighting the Coronavirus” (April 13, 2020)

Les pieds sur terre (podcast),
"The Coronavirus Seen from Elsewhere" (April 17, 2020)

I am posting these texts as soon as the translations are finished, rather than at two-week intervals, but update messages will remain unchanged.  We all get too much email as it is.
 

Three new on the site this month, all part of a new focus on China and the Post-Pandemic World:

Byung-Chul Han, “Asian Countries are Managing this Crisis better than the West" (March 22, 2020)

Huang Qifan, "Three Thoughts on the Reconstruction of World Supply Chains in the wake of the Spread of the Coronavirus" (March 29, 2020)

​Sun Liping, "Fighting the Virus in China and the West" (April 9, 2020)

New on the site today, Yan Yilong, "Socialism Riding Herd on Capitalism," the concluding chapter of the 2015 volume The Working of the Great Way:  The Chinese Communist Party and Chinese Socialism.  This multi-authored volume is an example of the New Left thought of a new generation of China's establishment intellectuals. 

New on the site, Lao Dongyan, Professor of Law at Tsinghua University, on “The Hidden Dangers of Facial Recognition Technology.”  This is not a scholarly article, but rather a post on Professor Lao’s WeChat platform offering her personal and professional opinion of the expanding use of facial recognition technology, but it is interesting both for what she says and for the fact that she said it in China.
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Enjoy and STAY SAFE!!

New on the site this month, Ge Zhaoguang on “Imagining 'All Under Heaven:' the Political, Intellectual and Academic Background of a New Utopia,” a follow-up to the longer piece on tianxia by Liang Zhiping that we published in February.  Liang in fact cites Ge as a prominent critic of tianxia thought and theorists, and Ge’s article is of a piece with his scathing takedown of Mainland New Confucians published somewhat later. Both texts argue that neither tianxia nor the New Confucian program has any genuine grounding in history.  Both are instead political projects masquerading as cultural conservatism.
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I was wondering whether to translate Ge’s piece on tianxia when I discovered that it had already been translated by Michael and Josephine Chiu-Duke of the University of British Columbia.  Our warm thanks to them for letting us publish it here.  

​New on the site this month, the final and complete version of Liang Zhiping’s “Imagining ‘Tianxia’:  Building Ideology in Contemporary China.”  Unlike those who preach the virtue of tianxia, Liang’s goal is to examine the role of the concept in the ideological reconstruction underway in China, the merging of Xi Jinping’s Socialism with Chinese Characteristics with the glories of traditional Chinese civilization.  Because his essay was published on Taiwan (another shout out to Sixiang and its wonderful editor, Qian Yongxiang), Liang was free(r) to discuss the role of Xi and the CCP in the process.  Among the authors discussed:  Zhao Tingyang, Jiang Qing, Sheng Hong, Yao Zhongqiu, Chen Yun, Wang Hui, Zhang Weiwei, Daniel A. Bell, Jiang Shigong, Gan Yang, Ge Zhaoguang, Xu Jilin, Chan Koonchung, Salvadore Babones, Shi Jian, Wu Jiaxiang, Wang Mingming...The piece is long but definitely worth reading, as it is up to date, objective, and fairly comprehensive, and provides a very useful framework for understanding tianxia discussions.