How China’s New Left Embraced the State

China’s New Left thinkers shifted towards embracing the state, seeing China’s success as a model of advanced socialism. They advocate for the superiority of the Chinese system and engage with Western socialist ideas to rejuvenate Chinese socialism. Despite internal challenges, they align with Xi Jinping’s push for socialism with Chinese characteristics.

https://chinabooksreview.com/2024/05/16/how-chinas-new-left-embraced-the-state

How to Walk and Talk: Everything We Know
https://kk.org/thetechnium/files/2023/12/howtowalkandtalk.pdf

These were the critical final years when the Cold War was drawing to a close, and there were nearly simultaneous democracy movements in several other parts of the world. “People power” successfully brought down the Filipino dictator Ferdinand Marcos in 1986, student demonstrations in South Korea led to a democratic presidential election in 1987, and in that same year Taiwan repealed martial law and legalized the formation of opposition parties, becoming a genuine multiparty democracy. In 1989, the Berlin Wall fell, beginning the unraveling of the Soviet bloc in Eastern Europe and the collapse of the Soviet Union. But the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations in China ended very differently.

35 years ago today, June 4, 1989, Poles ousted the communist party in the first partly free elections since WW2. The election set off a chain of events that led to the opening of the Berlin wall. The USSR's European empire had collapsed by the end of the year.

Also on June 4, 1989, the Chinese army fired on Tianamen Square protesters, ending any hope of political change. The massacre helped inspire the Chinese communist party to create the total surveillance state they are completing today.

https://journa.host/@anneapplebaum/112556790042181586

二零二三行香港记

在香港访学时，我认识了一位很可敬的老师，她听到小胡的案子，问我，你明知道没有结果还要撞墙吗？我对她说，因为我觉得我能提供程序价值；因为我觉得有些事，在更远的未来，会开花结果。

https://telegra.ph/%E4%BA%8C%E9%9B%B6%E4%BA%8C%E4%B8%89%E8%A1%8C%E9%A6%99%E6%B8%AF%E8%AE%B0-05-30

Environment in Asia Series Discussion: Stevan Harrell’s “An Ecological History of Modern China”

05:07 The first thing is we have to remember that China is a repressive regime and is putting innocent people in prison for life sentences. I’m gonna say a lot of good things about China in this talk, but I don’t want people to forget that, especially during the sad time.

Stopping the Next China Shock: A Collective Strategy for Countering Beijing’s Mercantilism

It is a mistake to presume that Xi and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) think about the Chinese economy the same way Western economists do. The key to understanding Xi’s economic policies is to recognize that they are principally about power, not prosperity.

He will almost certainly forge ahead toward concentrating the world’s industrial power within China, even at the risk of provoking a cataclysmic trade conflict with other countries.

Only by banding together in a trade defense coalition—an idea I developed with an economist in Asia—can countries with market-based economies protect themselves against China’s predatory practices.

Xi and his colleagues are not concerned primarily with the pursuit of efficiency or the enhancement of aggregate national welfare for its own sake. Neither market-loving capitalists nor true-believing Marxists, they can best be understood as mercantilist Leninists whose top priority is to acquire and exercise political power.

Their economic policies are designed to preserve the CCP’s dominance and control at home while boosting the country’s industrial and technological capacities to transform China into the world’s most productive, innovative, and powerful state.

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/china/stopping-next-china-shock-friedberg

在坏系统里做好老师：聊聊何伟的新书 Other Rivers

https://busangpodcast.com/episodes/liao-liao-he-wei-de-xin-shu-other-rivers-f2fee67a

China’s Fragile Social Compact

The point that I have been working my way toward is that more than ever before, this trip left me with the impression of China as a deeply and increasingly bifurcated society, one in which inequality is high and seems to be growing, where people are living in increasingly separate worlds.

Brought up to date, a newer disposition might go something like this: If you’re rich, good for you; enjoy, indulge, and don’t make waves. If you’re not, though, well, you’re largely on your own.

Not only are people seeking to leave via emigration, but Chinese also seem to be expressing their feelings and confidence about the future in another, even more telling way: their decisions about when or whether to get married and have children.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/08/20/china-society-economy-migration-demographics

中国不可企及，这令人更加向往

https://www.the-mayfly.com/p/911

这时候我决定做一件厉害的事情：学习中文。于是我和几个朋友花100美元买了一辆没有地板的别克车，开去加州，去斯坦福大学学习中文。但效果不好，没什么收获。

有些人生来天赋异禀，但这种人很少。你必须学会​​如何思考、写作、编辑，并坚持下去。同时，为读者写作于学术不同；学术写作基本上是没有读者的，甚至你的教授也不想读。

我无法亲身前往中国，但这让我对中国更加痴迷。我后来写了一本关于西藏的书。我去过几次西藏，西方人对西藏如此着迷的原因正是它的不可达性。

蒋介石是个怎样的人？他非常冷漠。他更加克制。他应该很感到屈辱，困在这个小岛上，跟像我这样的人一起梦想着去北京。

我当年在哈佛可以接触到许多在战争前就与中国有外交经历的人。 但如今学术圈追求终身教职，需要依靠研究福柯或德里达那些虚无缥缈的理论问题。你失去了许多通过现实经验、不靠学术体制来回答问题的人。在我看来，这是美国教育的一个重大悲剧。并不是说现在没有好文章或者有趣的教授，但如果你现在环顾四周，已经没有那种像太阳一样让行星环绕的人物。也许有人会认为这是一个老旧的模式，但我还是有点怀念它。

那个时代的中国知识分子为人确实可以很傲慢。我认为这触及了理解中国其领导人、毛泽东、习近平等的一个根本问题。

一代人有一代人的方便面

https://archive.ph/Eyv3Y