New on the site this fortnight:  Qin Hui, "'Jing Ke Stabs Confucius' and 'Zilu Sings the Praises of Qinshihuang.'"  Drawing on arguments advanced in his Leaving the Imperial System Behind, banned in 2015, Qin offers ascerbic commentary on conservative attempts to rewrite modern Chinese history, as well as on China's contemporary intellectual scene in the summer of 2020.

New this fortnight: Deng Yuwen, “Chinese Statism, the Transitional Nature of Xi Jinping’s Regime, and America’s Response,” Chinese text published on July 15, 2020 on a new European site, “China:  History and Future 中国：历史与未来,” created by and for Chinese intellectuals living and working outside of China, hoping nonetheless to contribute to China's future development by providing critical commentary.  Deng, a member of the Chinese Guomindang who also served as the editor of the CCP Central Party School journal Study Times before being fired in 2013 (and who now is a Visiting Scholar at Nottingham University in England), offers a spirited essay discussing Sino-American relations and Xi Jinping as a "transitional" figure. 
Just one text this time around.  It's summer.

New this fortnight:  Chinese intellectuals who support Trump.  I had encountered such people in passing before, and dismissed them as strategic thinkers of the “the-enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend” variety, in other words, Liberals who hoped Trump would be a thorn in Xi Jinping’s side. But having read Lin Yao’s fascinating piece on “Beaconism and the Trumpian Metamorphosis of Chinese Liberal Intellectuals,” and having discussed the issue with the Wall Street Journal’s Sha Hua, who is writing her own piece on the question, I decided to take a closer look.  The three texts translated from Liberal authors offer variations on a theme:  the sociologist Sun Liping praises Trump for attacking political correctness, comparing this attack to the “liberate thought” movement in China in the early 1980s, and suggesting that both represent a return to “normal;”  legal scholar Wang Jianxun praises Trump for restoring the “American spirit,” which he defines as “Ayn Rand plus the Bible;” the well-known constitutional scholar Gao Quanxi (together with his colleague Tian Feilong) sees both Trump’s election and Brexit in England as the return of a sensible “Burkean” conservatism, successfully challenging a “borderless” expansion of rights discourse.  The fourth text, by the well-known New Left political scientist Cui Zhiyuan reveals a surprising fascination with former Trump advisor Steve Bannon.  No author mentions Trump’s anti-China rhetoric, and all treat Trump’s rhetoric with what to me was a suprising seriousness. 

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:
​
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.