New on the site this time, two texts:
 
Xiao Sanza, “Trumpism and the Future of China.”  This is a chapter from a book entitled American Order:  Trumpism as Understood by Chinese Conservatives, an edited volume whose authors are all mainland Chinese intellectuals, published in Taiwan in the summer of 2021.  It is a book of advocacy, as all authors are full-throated supporters of Trump, despite the events of January 6, seeing him as the savior of Western civilization and thus the world.  The book interests me because of research I am currently doing on how Chinese intellectuals view Black Lives Matter and Donald Trump.  I don’t know if Trump fever has faded in China.  I guess we’ll see as the 2024 American presidential campaign approaches.
 
Xu Jilin, “A Discussion:  Does ChatGPT Signal the Birth of a New World, on the Beginning of the End?”  This roundtable is an example of the kind of discussions underway in China on ChatGPT, which strike me as quite similar to the discussions we read in Western media.

​Enjoy!

New on the site this time:

Translations of two texts by Zhao Yanjing, the feisty urban planner from Xiamen University in Fujian:

“Should We Bail Out Local Government Debt?  If So, How?”

“What We Should Do in Response to American’s Technological Decoupling?”  

​Enjoy!

New on the site this time:

​Zheng Yongnian on Sino-American relations in the wake of the “balloon incident.”  Zheng wants China to take action to return stability to the relationship, but understandably has a hard time coming up with concrete suggestions.
 
Zhang Tianqi offers a nice piece of critical journalism on the “Hengshui model” in the Chinese educational system—super high schools that game the system to monopolize the best students and the best teachers and send more of their students to the best universities—at the expense of everyone else.  This piece is more interesting than Zheng Yongnian’s essay, but memories of the spy balloon are still fresh.
 
Finally, an interview with Liang Hong, the non-fiction writer best known for her Liang Village Trilogy.  The interview comes from a new volume on female scholars in academia that caught my eye.

Enjoy!

​Happy Year of the Rabbit!
 
New on the site this time:
 
Youthology reflects on the youth experience of 2022 in “The Year in Review:  Growing up on the Margins.”
 
Also, two texts on the economy, surely the major theme in China now that zero-covid is a thing of the past.
 
Sun Liping casts doubt on China’s capacity to grow internal demand in his “Three Views of the Domestic Demand Question”
 
Jia Jun, Wen Juan, and Shi Dong offer their thoughts on China’s high-tech strategy in the post- globalization age in “Two Charter Planes, one from Jiangsu-Zhejiang, the other from Taiwan, Paint the Grimmest Metaphor of the Next Thirty Years”  
 
Enjoy!

Happy 2023!
​
New on the site this time, three snapshots of life in China since the end of covid-zero:

Tian Xuan and Xue Zhaofeng on price gouging;

V Shanshan (a screen name) on covid, grieving, and forced solidarity;

Sun Liping on where China’s experts went wrong.

For readers in the Washington D.C. area, I will be speaking at an event this coming Wednesday, January 18, together with Jude Blanchette and Nadège Rolland.  The event is organized by Tanner Greer of the Center for Strategic Translation, and is entitled:  "Politics Through Chinese Eyes: Reading China’s Establishment Intellectuals to Understand Chinese Politics.”

Details:  Holeman Lounge, National Press Club, 529 14th St NW, Washington D.C. 2:00-4:30.  You can register to attend here.
 

New on the site this time, two texts dealing with post-zero covid China, neither of which really acknowledges the change in policy.

Rao Yi, a neurobiologist and the president of Capital Medical University in Beijing, offers a surprisingly frank criticism of China’s public health and epidemic prevention and control systems, comparing these systems unfavorably to those of the United States, and suggesting that China has much work to do to prepare for the future epidemics coming down the pike.

Sun Liping writes about the post-pandemic economy, suggesting that lifting controls will not be enough, and reminding everyone that China is part of a dog-eat-dog capitalist world and must learn to be “resilient” in the face of crises.

In the next few weeks, various deadlines are colliding with holidays, so I may not update the site again until mid-January.  May you all have a safe, restful, and enjoyable holiday season!
​
Enjoy!

What do you do if you are a Chinese establishment intellectual, journalist, or editor, and you CANNOT WRITE ABOUT the biggest protests in China since Tiananmen?  I read the tea leaves in today’s update :

Jin Guantao, “The Mentality of Many People Today Marks a Return to the 19th Century”; and

Luo Minmin, “The Epidemic Will Eventually End, But How Should We Deal with the Trauma of Social Depression?”
​
Enjoy!|

​New on the site this time:
 
Deng Yuwen, “Xi Jinping’s Regime is the Twilight of Totalitarianism.”
 
Only one text this time, because I’ve been busy with other things, but the piece is well worth reading in the gloomy context of the recently concluded 20th Party Congress.
 
Also, I mentioned last time that Xiao Biao’s Self as Method, translated by yours truly, has just come out on Palgrave.  I don’t think I mentioned that it is Open Access, and hence free as a digital document.  Some 118,000 people have downloaded it so far.  Click here if you are interested.
 
Enjoy!

New on the site this time:

Wen Tiejun’s “The Modernization of the Chinese People,” a rousing essay originally published in 2000 and reprinted by two Chinese media outlets during the 20th Party Congress.  Wen’s message?  “China needs jobs!”

Also, a recent talk by Peking University economist Yao Yang on the resilience of China’s economy, with interesting things to say about semiconductors and covid policy.

​Enjoy!

New on the site this time:

Three texts that deal with American politics:  Immigration, the “perils of pluralism,” Samuel Huntington, Trump and Trumpism, why the Western right-wing sympathizes with Putin…

​Bao Gangsheng, Zhou Lian, Shi Zhan, and Liu Suli, "The Pitfalls of Pluralism—Challenges and Crises of Contemporary Politics” 

​Zhou Lian, “Who are America’s Children:  A Critique of Huntington’s Who Are We” 

Sun Liping, “A Subplot in the Overall World Context” 

I am also delighted to report that my translation of Xiang Biao and Wu Qi’s book, Self as Method:  Thinking through China and the World, has just been published by Palgrave MacMillan, with an introduction by yours truly.  Excerpts of the book are available here.

I might also mention that the Center for Advanced China Research asked for my thoughts about important side-issues in China we might be missing as the world focuses on the 20th Party Congress.  You can read my thoughts and those of other specialists here.