ROLAND BARTHES IN CHINA (Simon Leys; re-published in his book of essays: The Hall of Uselessness, 2014) Sed perseverare… (To err is human, (but) to persist is diabolical) IN APRIL and May of 1974, Roland Barthes made a trip to China with a small group of his friends from the review Tel Quel. This visit coincided… Read More Roland Barthes in China; or how to plumb the depths of professorial vacuity…
Vanessa Hua’s Forbidden City is narrated by a courageous, risk-taking sixteen-year-old whose life in a small village in China is up-ended when she is selected to join an elite dance troupe of young women trained in ballroom dancing to entertain Party leaders, including the Chairman. Hua’s is a fresh feminist take on the Cultural Revolution, an intriguing… Read More Vanessa Hua on Writing About the Forgotten Women in Mao’s Inner Circle
From 2017 to 2021, gas pipeline leaks averaged more than 200 a year. In most cases, leaking gas either ignites at the construction site or passes through a confined space underground and enters nearby premises before exploding. For example, one of the most deadly accidents in recent years in terms of casualties was a gas explosion… Read More Frequent gas accidents threatens safety of Chinese workers
KARACHI, April 26 (Reuters) – A suspected female suicide bomber killed three Chinese teachers in Karachi on Tuesday, police and officials said, drawing strong condemnation from Beijing, in the first major attack this year against nationals of long-time ally China working in Pakistan. The three were among passengers on a minibus returning to Karachi university… Read More Female suicide bomber kills three Chinese teachers at Karachi university / KU attack ‘final wake-up call’ on crisis in Balochistan
Just as the relentless grinding of the earth’s tectonic plates produces earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, so the endless superpower struggle for dominance over Eurasia is fraught with tensions and armed conflict. Beneath the visible outbreak of war in Ukraine and the U.S.-Chinese naval standoff in the South China Sea, there is now an underlying shift… Read More Alfred McCoy – The Geopolitics of the Ukraine War: Putin and Xi Jinping in the Struggle over Eurasia
Consider us at the edge of the sort of epochal change not seen for centuries, even millennia. By the middle of this century, we will be living under such radically altered circumstances that the present decade, the 2020s, will undoubtedly seem like another era entirely, akin perhaps to the Middle Ages. And I’m not talking about… Read More ALFRED MCCOY: China Is Digging Its Own Grave (and Ours as Well)
A chill is blowing through Chinese civil society as activists, journalists and academics report receiving police warnings and censorship of their social media platforms in recent weeks as Beijing prepares to host the Winter Olympics beginning on Friday. In mid-January, the Beijing-based human rights activist Hu Jia said in a tweet that China’s state security… Read More ‘Nobody can say anything’: China cracks down on dissent ahead of Olympics
NB: A very thought-provoking essay. “The real cell of society in the United States is the individual…. the family, has disintegrated.’ (In the American system) “everything has a dual nature, and the glamour of high commodification abounds. Human flesh, sex, knowledge, politics, power, and law can all become the target of commodification (which) corrupts… Read More N.S. Lyons: The Triumph and Terror of Wang Huning
NB: I agree with much of Gray’s argument about the fragility of liberal democratic values, but would like to underline one of his sentences, containing the phrase about earlier generations of ‘liberal and socialist thinkers downplaying the colossal human toll of communism in Russia and China‘. There’s no denying this, but let us also remember that… Read More The West isn’t dying – its ideas live on in China. By John Gray
Hong Kong (CNN): When Ho Feng Shan died at the age of 96, he took a secret to his grave. The only clue was a single sentence in his obituary in 1997. Throughout his long life, Ho never mentioned his heroic deeds during World War II – not to his wife, his children or friends.… Read More Ho Feng Shan: The 'Chinese Schindler' who saved thousands of Jews. By Wayne Chang
After the truth-shower 