Ma, Chicheng. 2024. “Classicism and Modern Growth: The Shadow of the Sages.” The Journal of Economic History 84 (2): 395–431. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022050724000111.

This paper examines how the worship of ancient wisdom affects economic progress in historical China, where the learned class embraced classical wisdom for millennia but encountered the shock of Western industrial influence in the mid-nineteenth century. Using the number of sage temples to measure the strength of classical worship in 269 prefectures, I find that classical worship discouraged intellectuals from appreciating modern learning and thus inhibited industrialization between 1858 and 1927. By contrast, industrialization grew faster in regions less constrained by classicism. This finding implies the importance of cultural entrepreneurship, or the lack thereof, in shaping modern economic growth.

秦晖教授 2024 年 5 月最新演讲：关于五四的再思考（哈佛费正清研究中心）

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30GhAT63o08

前几天读到这篇文章，我想起之前读过的一篇博士论文致谢中关于高华的内容，但当时没找到。今天看到这条 Tweet 中「现在的上海展览馆，建造于中苏交好时期」，突然就想起了那篇博士论文《上海中苏友好宣传教育运动研究（1949–1965）》。

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student demonstrations in South Korea led to a democratic presidential election in 1987, and in that same year Taiwan repealed martial law and legalized the formation of opposition parties, becoming a genuine multiparty democracy.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