New on the site this time:

Two short propaganda pieces that perhaps convey something of the mood in some intellectual circles as the opening of the 20th Congress looms:

Zhang Weiwei, “Creating Chaos and Turmoil, the Myth of American Democracy is shattered—The United States Incites "Color Revolutions" and Endangers World Peace and Stability”, and

Chen Ping, “What’s Wrong with America’s Global Strategy?”

Also, a brief document by the sociologist and public intellectual Lü Dewen on the Tangshan beating incident that occurred in June,  sparking a huge Internet debate on sexual harassment and gendered violence in China:

Lü Dewen, “Why an ‘Ordinary’ Case Touched the Nerve of Society as a Whole: A Sociological Approach to Analysis—The Case of the Tangshan Beating Incident”.

I might mention that I am currently writing a book, based largely on materials on my site, on how Chinese establishment intellectuals view the United States, as a geopolitical competitor, as as model of democratic government (sometimes positive, sometimes negative), and consequently as a mirror for Chinese thinkers trying to understand China’s recent past and future trajectory as a rising superpower. Because of time constraints, contributions to my blog over the next few months may be shorter and fewer than in the past, as well as focused on plugging perceived holes in my data base or narrative.

New on the site this time:

​​Xie Maosong, “The Chinese Communist Party is a New Civilization.”  This is propaganda, of course, and pretty dismal propaganda at that, but it seems appropriate to see what the standard-bearers are saying as Xi Jinping approaches his third mandate.
 
Sun Liping, “If Sheep Do Not Want to Be Tied Up, it is Not Necessarily because They Want to do Something Bad,” a somewhat whimsical reflection on Sun’s having been forbidden to publish online for three months over the Spring and Summer.
 
Chen Jian, “How Should We Evaluate Gorbachev?” a short and surprisingly positive evaluation of the life and achievements of Mikhail Gorbachev on the occasion of his passing.
 
Enjoy!

New on the site this time:

Bai Tongdong, the New Confucian philosopher on “The Margins of Civilization—Reflections on the Historical Position of Chinese Civilization and the Progress of Human Civilization,” in which the author pushes back against the oft-repeated notion that Chinese civilization is “unique” or “uniquely continuous.”
 
Jiang Shigong, the prominent New Left thinker on “The Rise of a Great Power and the Revival of Civilization: The Taiwan Issue and the ‘Enduring War of Civilization.’”  Spoiler alert:  I worked on this text for several days, thinking it was recent, only to discover that it was originally published in 2005 (the editors noted that the text had been recycled, but did not supply the date of original publication).  The text is not without interest, but it is interesting for different reasons than had it been published after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Enjoy!
 

New on the site this time:

​More on Yao Yang, this time his “Confucian pragmatism.”
 
Yao Yang and Qin Zizhong, "An Analysis of Confucian Liberalism," which is a long, scholarly text, designed to show other intellectuals they know what they are talking about.
 
Yao Yang, “"Rebuilding China's Political Philosophy," a shorter text which covers some of the same themes, but which is more political and cast toward a more general audience.
 
Yao Yang, "The End of Ideology?", an earlier text, which precedes Yang’s Confucian turn, illustrating some of the thoughts that led him in that direction.

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”
​
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:
​
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.
​
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!