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Reading the China Dream
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CENSORSHIP IN CHINA:  PART THREE

30/9/2024



 
New on the site this time:

Only one of my translations - Xu Jilin’s brief comments on the American
election. In “What is the Meaning of Taylor Swift's 100 Million Dollar Ragdoll
Cat?”  Xu argues that Taylor Swift’s endorsement of Kamala Harris will swing the
election in Harris’s favor.  The piece is not meant to be deep – Xu wrote it in
his spare time while traveling in Turkey – but illustrates nonetheless the
degree to which Chinese intellectuals are following the US election.  The link
to censorship is that Xu took it down shortly after posting it.

The other translation – into Chinese this time - is of a piece I published
recently in China Books Review on China’s New Left, in which I criticized New
Left intellectuals for having embraced the state. I was flipping through my
WeChat subscriptions a few days after arriving in China in early September, and
to my surprise found it translated and available online in China. 

Turnabout is fair play, I guess; I don’t ask my Chinese authors for their
permission before I translate their work, and this translator did not talk to me
or the China Books Review.  The translation appears on the WeChat forum of
someone who claims to be a former railroad worker who was fired for his
activism.  In other words, a genuine leftist who appreciated my takedown of the
phony New Left in China.  It appears that former railway workers read widely.

I was a bit taken aback, because while the piece is hardly scathing, I did not
write it to be read in China – and there I was.  Foreigners have been detained
and harangued for hours for less.  I mentioned this to a Chinese friend, who
wisely remarked that “if anyone notices it, the censors will take it down.” 
Well, here we are three weeks later and not only is the piece still available in
China, but it has also been read almost 40,000 times.  Of course, this is a drop
in the bucket in China, but surely a personal best for me.

A couple of notes for readers planning trips to China. 

For phone service, I used eSim (you have to have a fairly recent, top-end phone)
and Airalo (a company that provides eSim services) and my phone was perfect
throughout (you don’t have a Chinese phone number, or any phone number, but you
have WeChat and WhatsApp and can phone through them if necessary).  I
use Astrill VPN, but did not turn it on for my phone, because what eSim and
Airalo do is connect you to Internet service providers in China, so of course I
did not want to block that.  I don’t know why, but Google services worked like a
charm on my phone from start to finish; I could even listen to Spotify on the
Beijing subway.  The only downside was that a Chinese phone number remains
necessary for certain apps, and you don’t have one, but there are sometimes
workarounds if you are persistent.  I turned the Astrill VPN on for my laptop,
otherwise no Google, so for me, no life.  Everything worked like a charm most of
the time.

In order to promote tourism, the Chinese government now allows foreigners to pay
via WeChat (Weixin) and Alipay (here’s a Youtube video that I did not watch on
how to do this).  All you have to do is enter your credit card number and you’re
ready to go.  You may have to do things twice, and there are a couple of bugs
here and there (you can order cars and cabs through the Alipay service, but not
Weixin, because Weixin requires a Chinese phone number, which a friend might
loan you), but in my case it was worked 99% of the time, a very welcome change
from last year.

Enjoy!






READING ALICE MUNRO IN CHINA

26/8/2024



 
New on the site this time, a Chinese feminist reflection on the late Alice
Munro's fall from grace, following revelations that Munro learned that her
second husband had sexually abused her daughter from a previous marriage a
decade or so after the fact, but remained with her second husband and kept
silent about the abuse throughout the rest of her life.  There is nothing
distinctively Chinese about the text I chose to translate, but that is precisely
the point:  Alice Munro has readers in China who think about her much as
everyone else does.

I'm off to China on Friday for a month.  I'll be in Shanghai August 31
and September 1, 26, and 27; in Nanjing between September 2 and 6; in Beijing
between September 7 and 13; then in Shandong, Sichuan, and Qinghai for the rest
of the month (because I haven't visited anywhere except Beijing and Shanghai for
the past 15 years, or so it seems).  Send me an email if you want to meet up!





CENSORSHIP IN CHINA, PART 2

12/8/2024



 
New on the site this time:

A continuing collaboration with GreatFire on Reading and Writing under
Censorship in China.  GreatFire is an anonymous and award-winning China-based
organization that works to bring transparency to online censorship and to help
Chinese people freely access information.  One thing that they do is to rescue
posts that have been suppressed on various platforms in China, making them newly
available to anyone with access to their sites.  Over the summer, I will
translate several such texts in an effort to understand how intellectuals and
editors deal with what looks to be a fairly random system where pretty much
everyone gets taken down at some point. This time we have texts by Liu Yu on
illiberal democracy in Russia, Zhao Tingyang on logic and illogic in China, and
Hsu Cho-Yun on China’s spiritual crises.

Enjoy!






XIANG BIAO ON THE STUDENT PROTESTS

29/7/2024



 
New on the site this time, “Xiang Biao Talks about the Worldwide Student
Movement, the Crisis of the Liberal Order, the Nearby and ‘Global Grassroots,’”
an example of how one Chinese scholar – who works in Germany – has experienced
and understood the student demonstrations against the war in Gaza. 

The text is in fact in interview that Xiang gave to Wu Qi, the same journalist
with whom he worked to put together his book Self as Method.  Xiang and Wu were
both in Germany when the demonstrations – and the vigorous and conservative
reactions to the demonstrations – occurred, and were shocked by the illiberal
reactions of the universities, which should be core institutions of the liberal
order.  His argument, in a nutshell, is that the backlash against the
demonstrations is a product of a larger failure of the postwar liberal global
order.  But his interview is more a reflection on what engaged, or “grassroots”
scholars and activists should do in the face of an order that seems to be
crumbling before our eyes.  At present, the piece has been read 36,000 times in
China.
 
Enjoy the interview and your summer!






CENSORSHIP IN CHINA

3/6/2024



 
New on the site this time:
 
A collaboration with GreatFire on Reading and Writing under Censorship in
China.  GreatFire is an anonymous and award-winning China-based organization
that works to bring transparency to online censorship and to help Chinese people
freely access information.  One thing that they do is to rescue posts that have
been suppressed on various platforms in China, making them newly available to
anyone with access to their sites.  Over the summer, I will translate several
such texts in an effort to understand how intellectuals and editors deal with
what looks to be a fairly random system where pretty much everyone gets taken
down at some point.  I start with translations of texts by Liu Qing and Yao
Yang.
 
I might mention as well that I published a piece a couple of weeks ago on “How
China’s New Left Embraced the State” in China Books Review, a new journal edited
by Alec Ash that everyone should be reading!






YANG PING AND THE BEIJING CULTURAL REVIEW

3/4/2024



 
New on the site this time, an interview with Yang Ping, editor of the Beijing
Cultural Review, arguably contemporary China’s most important intellectual
review – Yang himself has compared his journal to The Atlantic.  The interview
is a fascinating illustration of what is possible in contemporary China’s
intellectual world, but also of the compromises that are required.
 
I’m home in Switzerland now after a lovely month-long tour of Latin America
(Mexico, Colombia, Peru).  I’ll be giving a series of talks in Germany in a
couple of weeks, and between April 14 and 26 will be in Halle, Würzburg,
Göttingen, Berlin, Heidelberg, and Stuttgart, mostly as part of the project
“Worldmaking from a Global Perspective:  A Dialogue with China,” sponsored by
the Federal Ministry of Education and Research.  The cover title for my talks
is:  “A China we can talk to?”
 
For those interested in attending one of my talks, here is the schedule:
 
April 17, 6:00 p.m., Universität Würzburg, Zentrales Hörsaal- und
Seminargebäude, Z6, Hörsaal 0.001, Am Hubland, 97074 Würzburg
 
April 18, 4:00 p.m.  Universität Göttingen, Kulturwissenschaftliches Zentrum
0.602, Heinrich-Düker-Weg 14, 37073 Göttingen
 
April 22, 4:00 p.m.  Universität Berlin, Friedrich-Meinecke-Institut, Koserstr.
20, Raum 336, 14195 Berlin
 
April 24, 6:15 p.m. Universität Heidelberg, Center for Asian and Transcultural
Studies (CATS), Voßstraße 2, 69115 Heidelberg, Seminar Building, R. 010.01.05
 
If anyone wants to meet up for a chat somewhere, just send me an email and we’ll
see what we can do.
 






CHINA'S ECONOMIC WOES

19/2/2024



 
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.






GAO BAI ON THE DOLLAR-STANDARD AND MORE

20/1/2024



 
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.

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.
 





WANG MINGYUAN ON CHINA'S NORTHEAST

18/12/2023



 
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!






ZHAO YANJING ON CHINA'S GROWTH AND MORE

15/11/2023



 
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.




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 * Mission statement

 * Liberals
 * New Left
 * New Confucians
 * Others

 * China and the Post-Pandemic World
 * Chinese Youth Concerns
 * Voices from China's Century
 * Rethinking China's Rise
 * Women's Voices
 * China Dream-Chasers
 * Textos en español

 * Texts related to Black Lives Matter
 * Texts related to the CCP
 * Texts related to Civil Religion
 * Texts related to Confucianism
 * Texts related to Constitutional Rule
 * Texts related to Coronavirus
 * Texts related to Democracy
 * Texts related to Donald Trump
 * Texts related to Gender
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 * Texts related to Ideology
 * Texts related to the Internet
 * Texts related to Kang Youwei
 * Texts related to Liberalism
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 * Texts related to Socialism with Chinese Characteristics
 * Texts related to Tianxia
 * Texts related to China-US Relations

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