New on the site this time:
 
A dazzling essay by feminist activist Lü Pin on feminism and the blank paper revolution which effectively brought China’s zero-covid policy to an end;
 
The eighth of Qin Hui’s essays on the Russia-Ukraine war, this one on the destruction of the Kakhovka Dam—in which he scoops the New York Times;
 
Wu Chaojin and Zhang Jingrong on “goofing off” at work, a further addition to our project on Chinese youth concerns.
 
By the way, if you missed me on Kaiser Kuo’s Sinica podcast on June 8, you can give a belated listen here.
 
À propos of nothing at all, if there are elliptical aficionados among my readers, I highly recommend Chancha Via Circuito’s “Río Arriba” (available on Spotify) as musical accompaniment.  Put on your headphones, close your eyes, turn up the music, and you will be loping across the Argentinian Pampas before you know it.  You can be the mustang or the cowgirl/cowboy, your choice. 

​Enjoy!

Back from China after an extremely interesting three weeks in Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong.  International flights to China have definitely not returned to normal, and I had 30+ hour trips both going and coming back, but once I got to China, everything was smooth sailing.  I had no problems with access, saw lots of old acquaintances and made many new friends. 
​
Nonetheless, I confess that I found China quite bleak.  One reason was the general atmosphere as reported in Western media—the uncertain economy, the dismal political scene.  More surprising to me was that much of China has still not gotten over the abrupt conclusion to the zero-covid policy in mid-December 2022.  For many Chinese young people, particularly, this episode has led to an ongoing existential crisis, as their patriotic faith in China’s government as responsible and competent has been shaken to its core.  My experiences are too complicated to explain here, but the introductions to the texts translated for this update – both of which deal with youth issues – provide more details:  Fu Yu and Gui Yong, “The Five Intriguing Paradoxes of Contemporary Chinese Young People,” and Youthology, “A Diary of Four Years of Psychological Treatment:  From Seeking Help to Helping Others.”

Enjoy!

New this time:

​Shi Zhan’s new preface to the re-edition of his 2018 work The Hub:  Three Thousand Years of China, which has sold some 420,000 copies in China and had an important impact.
 
An interview with Wu Fei, a Peking University professor of philosophy, on the subject of suicide in contemporary Chinese society.
 
I am leaving for China later today (!) for my first visit since 2018.  I will be in Beijing for the week of May 7, in Shanghai for the week of May 14, and in Hong Kong (and Guangzhou) before and after.  It is shaping up to be a busy trip, so I doubt that I will update the site while I’m gone, but I will keep a diary…
 
Since everyone is talking about ChatGPT, I thought I would add my own two cents.  Over the course of the past few weeks, I finished up a book manuscript in French based on my talks at the Collège de France in June 2022.  I have taught in French for more than 30 years now, so I am quite fluent, but I did not go to school in French or write an M.A. thesis or a doctoral dissertation.   As a result, my written French can be idiosyncratic, and I don’t always know the difference between formal and informal writing, nor can I always distinguish Québécois French from the “standard” version. 
 
Turns out that ChatGPT is just the thing.  I fed my manuscript in, paragraph by paragraph, and it invariably found le mot juste and ironed out my idiosyncrasies, as well as my attempts at humor (my impression is that the French don’t want their books to be funny anyway).  ChatGPT readily does the same thing with first drafts of translation, which are often garbled.  Of course, ChatGPT seems to have no sense of style, so an entire book penned by ChatGPT would be rather dull.  But who knows what’s coming down the AI road?

New on the site this time:

Xu Jilin reflects on the “silence” of the Shanghai lockdown in a talk with the Chinese branch of the PEN organization in June of 2022, a few weeks after the lockdown was lifted.
 
Chen Zhiwu talks about how “risk avoidance” has shaped the course of civilization, in an interview with Southern People Weekly on the occasion of the publication of Chen’s The Logic of Civilization (2022).

​Enjoy!

New on the site:

An interview with Gao Quanxi (on the right) and Huang Jisu (on the left), entitled “Left and Right are Getting Along Just Fine,” from a book by Xiao Sanza, Standing with the Hedgehog (2016).  The interview is quite interesting, as Gao rails against Chinese authoritarianism and Huang condemns China’s New Left as “statists who are flirting with fascism.”
 
Only one text this time, but the end of the semester is approaching, which should free up more time for the site.  I will be heading for China in May for the first time since December of 2018.  I will be in Beijing for the week of May 7, Shanghai for the week of May 14, and in Hong Kong for a few days before and after the China trip.  If readers would like to meet up for a meal or a beer, send me a message!

Enjoy!

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.