Happy Year of the Dragon!

​New on the site this time:
 
Two texts, both having to do with China’s flagging economy and what to do about it. 
 
The first, “Are Young People Starting to Envy the Incomes of Confinement Nannies and Delivery Drivers?” seems to be advising Chinese young people in search of a job to take a look at blue-collar jobs like pet-grooming or bricklaying.  I would not have paid much attention to this were it not published in the high-profile Beijing Cultural Review.
 
The second, "Joining the Don't Buy Crowd," celebrates the end of consumerism and the reembrace of saving money and living simply.
 
Neither of these pieces is a major statement but both speak to the fundamental issue of the legitimacy of the Party-State if China has truly entered an era of slow (or even “normal”) growth.  A rising tide lifts all ships and makes the work of any government easier.  A falling tide poses other challenges, especially when China’s rising tide produced a belief in China’s uniqueness and a China model.  At some point, China’s intellectuals will surely participate in whatever rethinking this crisis provokes, but I confess to not seeing a lot of this in what I read these days.  I’ll keep looking.
 
I would also like to share a link to an article just published in English by my friend and colleague Wu Fei, who teaches in the Philosophy Department of Beijing University, and who I met while in Beijing last spring.  The article suggests some of the directions China’s New Confucianism is taking these days, even if I’m not sure Wu appreciates that label.
 
I’ll be hitting the road again on Sunday.  Will be in Oaxaca, Mexico, between February 25 and March 9, Bogotá and the Colombian Amazon between March 9 and March 19, Arequipa, Peru, between March 19 and 24, Lima between March 24 and 28.  Then I’ll be in Lausanne for several weeks, and will give a few talks in Germany in late April.  I’m not counting on meeting up with RTCD followers on my Mexico-Colombia-Peru trip, but would love to be surprised.  I’ll update when I can.

Happy New Year!!

New on the site this week:

​Duke University sociologist Gao Bai’s lively “Trade Wars, Hot Wars and the Rise of the Global South: The Future of the Dollar Standard,” on recent changes to the international order – the U.S. China containment policy, the Russia Ukraine war, the rise of BRICS, the war in Gaza – and what these changes may be doing to undermine the dollar standard; and

Chen Yaya on “Twenty Years of Online Feminism:  From the Margins to the Focal Point,” an even-handed summary which nonetheless illustrates how Chinese feminism now basically exists only online, the state having outlawed all forms of organization and activism.  Online discussions seem to be between radical feminists, who want nothing to do with men, marriage, and children – and who condemn women who marry – and anti-feminist men, who accuse the feminists of being Western agents and undermining China from within.  The whole thing could readily devolve into the kind of nasty stasis that would probably make the Chinese Party-State happy, except that “gender incidents” continue to erupt, keeping the feminist movement alive in China.
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I’m off for the States tomorrow, driving south to Tennessee to see my mother.  If there are readers in the Knoxville, TN area, give me a holler, as we say down there (a shout, in case holler is not in the dictionary).  On the way back, I’ll be giving a talk at Johns Hopkins on January 26, which you are invited to join in person or by Zoom.

I’ll be posting soon on my travel blog about the cruelties of winter in Montreal, and the difficulties of finishing a China book.  Stay tuned!

Click here​ to contribute and keep Reading the China Dream going.
 

Only one new text on the site this time around: Wang Mingyuan, “Why Have Repeated Efforts to Revitalize the Northeast Failed? Rethinking the Twentieth Anniversary of the Strategy of Revitalizing the Old Industrial Base Areas.”  Wang, a law professor at Tsinghua, seeks to explain the Northeast region’s persist economic underperformance during reform and opening, and interestingly warns that all of China may be headed in the same direction, given declining birth rates in China and trends toward economic sovereignty throughout the world.
 
Enjoy, and have a safe and happy holiday season!

New on the site this time, three fun texts:
 
Zhao Yanjing, “Preface to The Great Rise:  China’s Economic Growth and Transformation,” which is Zhao’s own preface to his own book, which came out this year.  Zhao is an architect who worked in urban planning before becoming a professor, and his book represents his thoughts about China’s growth over the past few decades.  This is not a work of chauvinism, but a systematic study of what China accomplished through land finance and debt.  I hope people read the book.  They should at least read the preface.
 
Renwu/People Magazine, “Being a Big Sister has Become a Thing,” which despite the title is a feminist text – in fact a reader’s letter to the editor and the editor’s response- discussing the little girls who were hidden during China’s one-child policy.  Organized feminism is impossible in China, but I am convinced that it is everywhere, just beneath the surface.  There are lots of texts on young people these days too, although they are too full of memes and Internet slang for me to translate readily.  The number of these texts makes me think that someone in China has realized that the kids are not all right.
 
Ren Ci, “After Two Endless Hot Wars, the U.S. Arsenal of Democracy Suffers a Severe Capacity Crisis,” a well-argued discussion of U.S. military capacity.
 
I will be in Paris beginning tomorrow, through next Tuesday.  The only public talk I am giving is this one, a book launch to which you are all welcome (ha!).  My weekend calendar seems fairly open so far if someone wants to share a coffee, a glass of wine, or a meal.
 
From Wednesday through Sunday, November 22-26, I will be in Barcelona, invited by the wonderful people at the ALTER research group at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya.  I will be giving a talk Thursday before lunch (which of course is late-ish in Spain).  Let me know should you want to attend.  We have not yet nailed down the logistics.
 
Forgive me for plugging my travel blog yet again.  Four posts already!

​Enjoy!  ​To contribute to the site, click here.

New on the site this time:

Only one text:  Ren Jiantao “Han Fei and the Theoretical Gestalt of Operationalized Politics,” long and a bit contentious, but worth a look!
 
Otherwise, I have started my career as a retired world traveler, visiting Colombia for two weeks in early October before flying to Switzerland to settle into my new life in Lausanne.  Turns out I fractured my ankle in the mountains of Colombia just before leaving (sounds more Harrison Ford than it was), so my mobility is a bit limited, but I will still visit Paris for my book launch (ooh la la!) on November 17, and will try to give a couple of talks and see friends while I’m there.
 
I am also launching a travel/retirement blog entitled “The Red-Eye to Bogotá,” in which I try to become a writer.  I welcome you to be a reader!

Enjoy!  ​To contribute to the site, click here.

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”
​
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.

New this time on the site:
 
​Sun Liping on the overproduction crisis in which China’s economy finds itself, and on the fact that only deep structural reforms will be of much help.  This post was taken down by authorities and reposted elsewhere on the Chinese Internet.
 
Cui Qinglong, a well-known psychologist and online commentator, on the burnout phenomenon in China and what to do about it.
 
Enjoy!  Click here if you want to contribute to Reading the China Dream.  Thanks!

New on the site this time:

“The Beijing Cultural Review on the rise of Trump and the End of American Hegemony.”  Here I translate the editorial introductions to five cover stories in the Beijing Cultural Review between 2020 and 2023 on the topic in question, as part of a chapter I am writing for my book on how Chinese intellectuals view the United States.  I look both at the issues involved and at the way the editors and authors shape these issues.

In addition, a fascinating and well-done interview with the scholar-entrepreneur Liang Jianzhang on “Why are Today’s Young People Not Having Children?”  Here, Liang is speaking as a demographer and talking about China’s imminent demographic disaster, the result of rapidly declining birth rates.  Whether Liang is right or wrong, he is refreshingly frank, a reminder that not everyone in China is thinking only about Xi Jinping Thought.

I have two book projects on which I need to make major progress over the next couple of months, so my contributions to my blog may be a bit less frequent.  My impression is that people read less in the summer anyway, so it may make little difference.
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For those who are reading, enjoy!  And for those who want to contribute to the blog or the project, click here.  Thanks!

​New on the site this week:
 
The big news is that as of July 1, 2023, I have retired from the Université de Montréal.  This was my choice; I am in great health and very excited about the future.  I absolutely plan to continue the website and thought that this might be an appropriate moment to ask for contributions from readers to defray the costs of running it.  So I added a contribution button to the site.  This button is more easily accessed from the website than from your phone, although if you feel that you must contribute while driving to work or crossing the street, you can click on the three buttons in the top right of your cell and choose “desktop site,” from which you can see the button.  I stress that this contribution is voluntary and that I will not bombard you with messages about it.  Thanks.  More about my retirement plans in future updates.
 
New translations this time include:
 
An interview with Wu Xinbo on Secretary of State Blinken’s visit to China, a moderately hopeful if realistic view that I think resonates with a good number of Chinese;
 
A talk by Jiang Shigong on the decline of the American empire, the rise of “civilizational states” (Russia, Turkey, India) and how Chinese socialism will save the 20th century from a coming clash of civilizations;
 
An interview with Japanese feminist Chizuko Ueno and Chinese sexologist Li Yinhe.  This is part of a huge “Ueno moment” in China – in the past few months, 9 of her books have been published in Chinese and some 1 million copies purchased.  This is surely Chinese feminism finding a way to make its voice heard even as the movement’s leaders are silenced or exiled.
 
If you missed me on Kaiser Kuo’s Sinica podcast on June 8, you can give a belated listen here.  That interview earned me another with Kalavinka Advisors which is available here (a written interview, so the vibe is a bit different).
 
Enjoy!  More soon!