自 2015 年起，各省最低工资调整趋于停滞，上调频率下降，增长率降低。一方面，调整最低工资标准的频率已由原来的至少两年一次，变为至少三年一次，甚至在疫情期间全面停滞。另一方面，最低工资的年均增长率也大幅下降，平均增长率由 2013 年的约 14% 左右降到 2022 年仅有 5% 左右。此外，最低工资增长率也在 2017 年后开始低于人均 GDP 增长率，经济增长成果无法被基层劳动者共享。

https://www.laodongqushi.com/minimum_wage/

The Fall of Stack Overflow

https://observablehq.com/@ayhanfuat/the-fall-of-stack-overflow

Ice Cream Is Good for You

To the surprise, dismay, and—to read between the lines—embarrassment of experts, more than one legitimate scientific study has suggested that the consumption of ice cream might mitigate or even prevent diabetes.

Perhaps it’s the same difference when you consider the mental-health potential: by the end of a recent date there, a friend and I were both very, very happy.

Ice-cream used as cryotherapy during high-dose melphalan conditioning reduces oral mucositis after autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplantation

In simpler terms, the study found that eating ice cream during chemotherapy can help reduce the chances of developing painful mouth sores, a common side effect of the treatment. This is a cost-effective and easy method that could improve the quality of life for patients undergoing this type of chemotherapy.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-02002-x

To all the missing masturbators

This book navigates an overlooked history of representation during the transition from the Qing Empire to the Chinese Republic — a time when older, hierarchical notions of licentiousness were overlaid by a new, pornographic regime.

The book draws on previously untapped archives to argue that pornography in China represents a unique configuration of power and desire that both reflects and shapes historical processes.

On the one hand, since the late imperial period, pornography has democratized pleasure in China and opened up new possibilities of imagining desire. On the other, ongoing controversies over its definition and control show how the regulatory ideas of premodern cultural politics and the popular products of early modern cultural markets have contoured the globalized world.

The book emphasizes the material factors, particularly at the grassroots level of consumption and trade, that governed “proper” sexual desire and led to ideological shifts around the definition of pornography.

By linking the past to the present and beyond, the book’s social and intellectual history showcases circulated pornographic material as a motor for cultural change. The result is an astonishing foray into what historicizing pornography can mean for our understandings of desire, legitimacy, capitalism, and culture.

Wang, Y. Yvon. Reinventing Licentiousness: Pornography and Modern China. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2021. https://doi.org/10.7591/cornell/9781501752971.001.0001.

反思百年前全球第二波民主化（第三讲） #秦晖

https://youtube.com/watch?v=T6DdFCfhduo

Desperate Chinese parents are joining dating apps to marry off their adult children

Chinese parents are turning to an array of new online matchmaking services, where they are able to create dating profiles and set up first dates for their unmarried children.

In recent years, as marriage rates have plummeted to the lowest it has ever been in decades, Chinese parents are increasingly pressuring their children to marry, give birth and continue the family line.

Given China’s former one-child policy, many parents have only one child, adding to their anxiety.

On apps such as Perfect In-Laws (完美亲家), Family-building Matchmaking (成家相亲), and Parents Matchmaking (父母牵线), parents create profiles to advertise their offspring to prospective suitors — sometimes without their children’s consent.

锁志刚 and 庄得年 What a lovely story!

https://twitter.com/zhigangsuo/status/1686328559655088128

China’s Latest Problem: People Don’t Want to Go There

Half a year after China lifted Covid-19 restrictions and reopened its borders, few international travelers are coming—another sign of decoupling between China and the West that could have negative repercussions for a long time.

Nationwide, just 52,000 people arrived to mainland China from overseas on trips organized by travel agencies during the first quarter, the latest period for which national data is available, compared with 3.7 million in the first quarter of 2019.

Matt Kelly, a Boston-based business consultant, said he has fond memories of his trip 15 years ago cycling around Guilin, a picturesque hilly city in southern China. He visited China two more times, but said he had no interest in going back today.

Many foreigners would love to return to China, but they can’t because they’re turned down by the authority or they’re just afraid.

https://twitter.com/UselessTree/status/1468388598563184644

https://twitter.com/isaacstonefish/status/1687191264389984256

https://twitter.com/dearclarissa/status/1687318015686410240

Xi Jinping’s revealing response to floods and heatwaves

Alas, the party seems allergic to freewheeling grassroots debate about whether the climate is changing. To date, most public discussion about China’s year of extreme weather has been strikingly inward-looking. State-media outlets have dwelled on heroics by soldiers, officials and rescue teams. Netizens have complained about instances of official incompetence. Social-media users have asked whether storm warnings were given in time, or whether floodwaters were diverted away from Beijing towards less privileged places.

China is both a climate hero and a potential villain. It is a leader in renewable energy. But it is also rich in coal and run by officials worried about power cuts and paranoid about their dependency on imported oil and gas.

Extreme weather surely frightens China’s rulers. Any challenge to their absolute control alarms them more.

Despite not using Vim extensively in my everyday tasks, I extend my deepest gratitude to Bram for his remarkable contribution.

RIP Bram Moolenaar

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bram_Moolenaar

许成钢用 视频 的形式阐述了他在《剑桥中国经济史》中所写的这篇文章中的核心观点，以及中国的极端 不平等 等问题。

Hsü, Immanuel C. Y. The Rise of Modern China. 6th ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-rise-of-modern-china-9780195125047

著名历史学家徐中约，以个人致 30 年之力，综述 400 年中华史。

这是网友基于香港中文大学出版社 2001 年翻译出版的版本制作的简体中文版。

Chen, Janet Y. The Sounds of Mandarin: Learning to Speak a National Language in China and Taiwan, 1913–1960. New York: Columbia University Press, 2023. https://doi.org/10.7312/chen20902.

Mandarin Chinese is the most widely spoken language in the world today. In China, a country with a vast array of regional and local vernaculars, how was this “common language” forged? How did people learn to speak Mandarin? And what does a focus on speech instead of script reveal about Chinese language and history?

This book traces the surprising social history of China’s spoken standard, from its creation as the national language of the early Republic in 1913 to its journey into postwar Taiwan to its reconfiguration as the common language of the People’s Republic after 1949. Janet Y. Chen examines the process of linguistic change from multiple perspectives, emphasizing the experiences of ordinary people.

After the fall of the Qing dynasty, a chorus of influential elites promoted the goal of a strong China speaking in one unified voice. Chen explores how this vision fared in practice, showing the complexities of transforming an ideological aspiration into spoken reality. She tracks linguistic change in schools, rural areas, and urban life against the backdrop of war and revolution.

The Sounds of Mandarin draws on a novel aural archive of early twentieth-century sound technology, including phonograph recordings, films, and radio broadcasts. Following the uneven trajectory of standard speech, this book sheds new light on the histories of language, nationalism, and identity in China and Taiwan.

The Evolution of American Contemporary China Studies: Coming Full Circle?

In the nearly 75 years that the People’s Republic of China has been in existence, the field of contemporary China studies in the United States has developed and evolved through six distinguishable ‘generations’ of scholarship.

The evolving social science scholarly analyses of contemporary China have paralleled the changes in the PRC itself over time, but they have also reflected paradigmatic changes in scholarly disciplines in the United States. Other stimuli which have also impacted the field include domestic politics in America and shifts in US-China relations.

This article traces the evolution of field (as observed and interpreted by the author); it concludes that while the field is generally very healthy, diverse, and enjoys great breadth and depth of knowledge, it faces significant new challenges for source material and research in Xi Jinping’s China.

Six ‘generations’ of scholarship of contemporary China:

- Generation 1: The Soviet Era (1950s through the mid-1960s)
- Generation 2: The Chaotic Era (late-1960s through the late-1970s)
- Generation 3: The Liberal Reform Era (1980s)
- Generation 4: The Hard Authoritarian Era (1989–2002)
- Generation 5: The Soft Authoritarian Era (2002–2012)
- Generation 6: The Neo-Totalitarian Era (2012–present)

To cite this article: Shambaugh, David. “The Evolution of American Contemporary China Studies: Coming Full Circle?” Journal of Contemporary China, July 27, 2023, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/10670564.2023.2237918.

徐中约在他的 一篇论文 中提到了曾国藩的一段话，英文是这样说的：

> When we negotiated on boundaries and trade with Russia (in 1689 and 1727), we actually treated her with the etiquette due an enemy state, which was entirely different from that accorded dependencies like Korea.

这段话的中文原文出自《筹办夷务始末（同治朝）》第 54 卷曾国藩的奏折（1867 年）：

> 伏查康熙十五年，聖祖仁皇帝召見俄人尼果賚事，其時儀節無可深考。然當日與俄羅斯議界通市，實係以敵國之禮待之，與以屬藩之禮待高麗者迥不相同。

出自：中華書局編輯部, and 李書源, eds. 籌辦夷務始末（同治朝）第六册. 北京: 中華書局, 2008. p. 2226.

在同一份折子中，曾国藩还有一句话很有意思：

> 即異日中國全盛，洋人衰弱，亦但求保我黎民，而别無耀兵海外之心。

很像邓小平说过的一句话：

> 如果中国有朝一日变了颜色，变成一个超级大国，也在世界上称王称霸，到处欺负人家，侵略人家，剥削人家，那么世界人民就应当给中国戴上一顶「社会帝国主义」的帽子。就应当揭露它、反对它，并且同中国人民一道打倒它。

中華書局編輯部, and 李書源, eds. 籌辦夷務始末（同治朝）第六册. 北京: 中華書局, 2008. https://book.douban.com/subject/3322880/.