Current Events

I came across this short piece by Wang Gengxing in Southern Weekend today; I think it’s quite worthy of discussion. (All the links were added by me for the purposes of providing extra context; none of them are in the original piece). Recently officials have been falling one after another: “Watch brother” Yang Dacai,...

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So after a wave of rather violent anti-Japan protests I argued were state-supported, the madness has wound down — or rather, been wound down — by the same folks who drummed it up: the government. This is not an uncommon tactic at all, but it is an exceedingly dangerous one. Let us take, for...

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Like many people around the world, I’ve spent some of the past few days looking at photos and reports about the escalating anti-Japan protests in China. There is an excellent collection of them here for those that are interested. Browsing it, your first inclination may be to marvel at the particularly insane bits, like...

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I came across this story a couple days ago, and found it mildly amusing, but eventually decided it was worth sharing here because it’s indicative of the larger trend. First of all, here are the basics for those that haven’t already read the article: Citing “strong resentment from the local Chinese community,” the Chinese...

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Here’s another one for the annals of Party members being assholes in their cars. This story is being passed around on Weibo and other social media like Tianya right now, though it appears to have happened a couple weeks ago. Here’s the text of the post: “Fuck your mom! You dare to inspect my...

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Today I came across this interesting summary of a recent debate between Minxin Pei and Eric X. Li about Chinese democracy, moderated by James Fallows (thanks to @thats_mandarin for the heads-up). With the important caveat that I didn’t see the debate firsthand and thus am relying on the summary of Li’s position in this...

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In news so depressingly predictable that it’s almost not worth writing about, Ai Weiwei’s legal advisor Liu Xiaoyuan is apparently being held by State Security after being summoned for a meeting at 8:30 PM last night. Although Ai Weiwei’s Fake Studio tax appeal case opens in court today, Liu Xiaoyuan has not yet returned,...

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First off, apologies to everyone for the lack of updates as of late. In part, it’s because I’ve been trying to keep a lower profile since certain CCTV hosts threatened to sue me, but mostly I’ve just been extremely busy with the film and a number of personal things. That will remain true for...

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For any foreigners currently living under a rock1, I suppose I have to start by showing you this rant, posted by CCTV Dialogue host on Sina Weibo: The Public Security Bureau wants to clean out the foreign trash: To arrest foreign thugs and protect innocent girls, they need to concentrate on the disaster zones...

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By now, hopefully everyone has heard that Al-Jazeera English has been forced to close its China bureau after the Chinese government refused to renew correspondent Melissa Chan’s visa or grant one to a replacement correspondent. The Committee to Protect Journalists has already issued a statement condemning Chan’s expulsion, as has the Foreign Correspondents’ Club...

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