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
Even for a powerful authoritarian state, the speed and extent to which the Communist Party is expanding its reach into private lives in China has caught many off guard. Since celebrating its centennial with great fanfare in July, the party has imposed a flurry of regulations telling Chinese people, especially the younger generation, how to… Read More Under Xi Jinping, the private life of Chinese citizens isn't so private anymore
“The thirty-year interregnum of U.S. global hegemony,” writes David Bromwich in the journal Raritan, “has been exposed as a fraud, a decoy, a cheat, [and] a sell.” Today, he continues, “the armies of the cheated are struggling to find the word for something that happened and happened wrong.” In fact, the armies of the cheated know exactly… Read More Andrew Bacevich: The defining lie at the heart of American foreign policy / Pratap Bhanu Mehta: US vs China is the new Cold War
The Imperialism of Nation-states or Soft Power I seek to grasp the genealogy of China’s Belt and Road (BRI) in relation both to the imperial Chinese world order and the historical sequence of forms of global domination, i.e., modern imperialism, the ‘imperialism of nation-states’ during the inter-war and Cold War period as well as… Read More Prasenjit Duara – The Chinese World Order in Historical Perspective (2019)
As general secretary, Xi has returned the CCP to the center of Chinese life. Citizens celebrate the party’s much-edited history en masseat packed Red tourism sites, its founder Mao Zedong enjoys a new reverence, and once-dormant grassroots party cells have been revitalized. Since 2015, Xi has embarked on a widespread program of military reforms and modernization. But as… Read More Xi Jinping set out to save the Communist Party. But critics say he made himself its biggest threat
A new museum commemorating the history of the Chinese Communist party (CCP) opened in June in Beijing as part of the runup to the party’s 100th anniversary. Online images of its collections show reverential black-and-white photos of the dozen or so young men who gathered at the party’s founding meeting in Shanghai in 1921. Those activists, one of… Read More Rana Mitter: China’s Communist party has rewritten its own past – but the truth will surface
Chen Tianshi has kept a secret for the past 32 years. The former student activist was a key organiser of the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989 and was arrested in the aftermath of the massacre. Out of the bloody crackdown, unlikely friendships formed between some protesters and their captors. Today, on the 32nd anniversary of the Tiananmen… Read More Joyce Cheng: Tiananmen Square protesters remember the bonds they formed with the Chinese police who held them captive
Amannisa Abdullah and her husband, Ahmad Talip, were on their way to shop for baby clothes in Dubai, when the message that changed both their lives came through. Ahmad read it and announced an abrupt change of plan: He had to report to a police station immediately. Ahmad dropped Amannisa off at a friend’s house that day in… Read More Uyghurs are being deported from Muslim countries, raising concerns about China's growing reach
My friend then said to me abashedly, “I sometimes think it’s lucky I won’t be here to see what’s going to happen to the world.” And even as she began stumbling all over herself apologizing for saying such a thing, I understood exactly what she meant. I had had the very same thought and sense… Read More TOM ENGELHARDT: A World at the Edge
