New on the site this time:

Two articles that deal, in different ways, with China’s ongoing mental health crisis, and in particular its relationship to China’s high pressure educational system.
 
Lei Wanghong, “Tiger Mothers’ are Multiplying in Urban China because of the Epidemic of Success Education”
 
Zhang Han and Huang Siyun, “After a Child is Diagnosed with Depression, an ‘Experiment’ that Seeks to Cure a Family”
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Other news:  On October 3, I officially start my new life as an itinerant scholar/tourist with a two-week visit to Colombia, after which I will join my wife in Lausanne, Switzerland.  Lausanne will be my European base, but I plan to travel frequently, and will be in Germany and France before returning to Canada in early December.  In my travels, I would be delighted to meet with readers individually, or give a talk if they are at institutions where such things are possible.  So I’ll be in Bogotá and Medellín between October 4 and 16.  I’m not holding my breath about finding many readers there, but will be meeting with China scholars at one of Bogotá’s universities.  Then Lausanne from October 17.  Updates to follow.
 
I’m also thinking of writing a travel blog, but will see if it is interesting before inflicting it on you.

Only one new text this time, but it’s a doozy:  Xiang Shuai’s 2023 Wealth Forecast.  This is the translation of a talk given by Xiang Shuai in late July 2023. 

Xiang Shuai is a former Peking University Business School professor who left Beida behind in 2018 to become an intellectual entrepreneur – an author and commentator on China’s economy.  She has published several books and is an important voice in China, where she speaks as a liberal who believes fervently in the power of free markets and in the ability of the Chinese people to make money.  This address is a once-a-year event in which Xiang tries to sum up where China’s economy is and where it is going.  It is particularly interesting this time, because she admits that the forces pushing China forward since reform and opening – industrialization, globalization, urbanization, and the Internet – are running out of steam. 

The task she sets for herself is to discover a “new narrative” that will put the wind back in China’s sails.  You’ll have to click on the link to see what it is, but it is quite different from the gloom and doom we read about the Chinese economy in the Western press, and it has nothing to do with Xi Jinping Thought.

Enjoy!  To contribute to the site, click here.