Sam Crane @UselessTree Twitter profile

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

4 years

This is what they killed 31 years ago.

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

2 years

So Twitter is WeChat now.

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

2 years

Xi Jinping and the end of Deng Xiaoping's strategy for political legitimation. A thread 1/

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

4 years

Hong Kong: One Country, One Prison

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

4 years

I'm so old I remember when Hong Kong was free.

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

2 years

Here you go. A good portion of the sources I'll be using in my PRC politics class this coming semester.

Danny Y. Huang

@danny_y_huang

2 years

@UselessTree Post your book list for your Chinese politics class please?!

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

5 years

At an international hotel in Beijing with access to CNN and BBC. At the slightest mention of Hong Kong screen goes black.

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

5 months

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

1 year

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

5 years

Hong Kong thread Perhaps we are at the point when we should stop referring to what is happening in Hong Kong as "protests." Hong Kong people are not simply protesting but struggling for political survival.

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

7 years

Lest we forget.

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

6 years

My Chinese politics class this semester. Let's do this.

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

3 years

The PRC has never controlled the territory nor governed the people of Taiwan.

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@Amb_ChenXu

3 years

Taiwan is a province of China. Political tricks of "Taiwan's contribution to or role in global health and pandemic response" will, by no means, justify its representation in int'l orgs.

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

3 months

Paris 2024 so much more free and diverse and joyous.

China in Pictures

@tongbingxue

3 months

2008 Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremony

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

4 years

I have a Deng Xiaoping joke, but it's hiding its strength and biding its time.

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

5 years

Just gotta say: I'm 62 years old. I've been studying Chinese politics since 1979, forty years. Never did I ever expect to see a US president urge the CCP to investigate an American politician, to encourage CCP involvement in a US election. It is simply, mind-blowingly loathsome.

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

2 years

So many good books. This one captures the time of my earliest and most intense experiences in China. Great read. Going to use it in my Chinese politics class this coming semester.

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

1 year

So much great recent scholarship on Chinese history, politics, and philosophy. 1/

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

1 year

Dancing. Why is it always fucking dancing?

Uyghur Human Rights Project

@UyghurProject

1 year

@ASPI_org Insulting response from a Chinese delegation member about cultural rights: "[Uyghurs] have cultural expression, such as dancing, and they can also enjoy their ethnic food."

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

4 years

A thread of threads. Reading the Harvard History of Imperial China. (don't respond to individual threads, it might disrupt the flow)

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

2 years

Collective leadership is gone. Term limit/age limit norms are gone. Factional balancing at the top is gone. Only Xi remains as the "core." It is not back to Maoism, by any stretch, but it has decisivley shifted away from Dengism. 7/

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

2 years

And, most sadly, in the face of constrained sources of regime legitimacy, we might also expect increased repression, for which Xi has enhanced capacity (see: Xinjiang). /fin

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

2 years

After the colossal Maoist failures of the Great Leap Famine and the Cultural Revolution Deng worked to rebuild the legitimacy of authoritarian one party rule. Two key elements of his strategy were a type of legal-rational legitimacy and performance legitimacy. 2/

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

5 years

Obviously a different situation but the visual parallel to the night of June 3rd, 1989 is unnerving.

Stephen McDonell

@StephenMcDonell

5 years

The moment when a police armored car caught fire after being hit by petrol bombs from student protestors at #HongKong ’s Poly University tonight. #China

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

2 years

But is also means that new sources of regime legitimacy are required. What will they be? That is the big question. Perhaps we can expect even more emphasis on nationalism (though maybe not yet a diversionary attack on Taiwan) and neo-traditionalism. 11/

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

4 years

So what are you doing this summer? I'm going from 221BCE to 1911.

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

2 years

Oh, we're dragging out historical statements? Here's Mao recognizing Taiwanese independence to Edgar Snow on July 16, 1936: "It is the immediate task of China to regain all our lost territories, not merely to defend our sovereignty below the Great Wall. This means that... /1

Lijian Zhao 赵立坚

@zlj517

2 years

“Not an inch of #NATO ’s present military jurisdiction will spread in an eastern direction.” —Memorandum of conversation between Mikhail Gorbachev and James Baker in Moscow, 9 Feb 9 1990

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

5 years

Can we please stop using this narrow definition of "China," which excludes vast stretches of territory where under-resourced schools are a major problem, to other countries? Please.

ian bremmer

@ianbremmer

5 years

Countries with highest average science, reading, and math scores from the OECD PISA test 2018 1 *China (Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang) 2 Singapore 3 Estonia 4 Japan 5 S Korea 6 Canada 7 Finland 8 Poland 9 Ireland 10 UK, Slovenia (tie) US #22

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

2 years

Legal-rational legitimacy (in the Weberian sense) in this case meant rebuilding Party instutitutions, regularlizing decision-making processes, and creating a foundation of rule of law. It was a difficult process in the aftermath of Maoism. 3/

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

4 years

@Billyhottakes Billy is going to win because he read Max Weber in Intro to Comparative Politics and knows why the routinization of charisma is so difficult. (You did that reading, didn't you, Billy?)

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

4 years

Wuhan Diary Thread. Tomorrow is the first substantive day in my class on contemporary Chinese politics. And the first reading my students will have done: Fang Fang's Wuhan Diary. Some thoughts. 1/

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

5 years

Han Feizi on why Li Keqiang and not Xi Jinping is in Wuhan: "Where there are accomplishments, the ruler takes credit for their worth; where there are errors, the ministers are held responsible for the blame; hence the ruler's name never suffers." (Watson, p. 17)

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

2 years

Economic growth will likely not revive without more significant reforms, which seem increasingly unlikely in the political moment Xi has created. Moreover, the international environment has turned against the PRC in ways that cut off external sources of growth. 9/

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

2 years

But the Dengist use of personalist political dynamics to move toward a more impersonal, legal-rational basis for political legitimacy seemed to be working. Decision-making and succession were more institutionalized. Xi has now irrevocably shifted away from the entire project. 6/

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

2 years

Deng re-established a regular schedule of Party Congresses, gradually eased the old guard out of power, and tried to instill norms of political succession. At times he contradicted himself, using his own personal power to create more impersonal bureaucratic procedures. 4/

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

2 years

Getting ready for a new semester. Undergraduate seminar on authoritarianism.

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

2 years

Xi knows that he cannot rely on performance legitimacy as much as his post-Mao predecessors did. Further centralizing power in his person limits the possibilities for some other political leader to use deteriorating economic conditions against him. 10/

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

2 years

As to performance legitimacy, Xi would no doubt be happy if robust economic growth helped to legitimate Party hegemony. But the "new normal" of slower growth has only become more problematic and constraining (which might be one reason he has so stenuously centralized power) 8/

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

6 months

To categorize the PRC as a "democracy " is to rid that word of it's central meaning.

Xie Feng 谢锋

@AmbXieFeng

6 months

Democracy is not an ornament or a show. It should be about solving real problems for the people. From day one of its founding, the CPC is a champion for democracy. Ours is whole-process people's democracy. It is a democracy in both process and outcome; a combination of both

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

3 years

Communiqué of the 6th Plenum/19th CC of CCP Mentions: Xi Jinping 17 Marxism/Marxist 14 Mao 7 Deng 5 Three represents 4 Confucius 0 fine traditional culture 1

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

3 years

He's running.

China Xinhua News

@XHNews

3 years

This is a man of determination and action, a man of profound thoughts and feelings, a man who inherited a legacy but dares to innovate, a man who has forward-looking vision and is committed to working tirelessly

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

5 months

So, are PRC propagandists now just straight up Trumpists or do they not recognize rule of law when it's staring them in the face?

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

2 years

In this context, collective leadership was an important means toward legal-rational legitimacy, even if it, too, seemed to rely upon balancing personalist factions at the very top of the political system. 5/

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

1 year

Just starting to dig into this. An impressive and insightful analysis.

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

5 years

"Both demonstrators and police are guilty of incidents of brutality. But blame for the current crisis must be laid primarily at the feet of the Hong Kong government and Beijing."

The Hong Kong authorities have lost their legitimacy

Violence that has escalated for months has reached a critical pitch

www.ft.com

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

4 years

Just finished the fifth book of the six volume History of Imperial China series from HUP. What a great read! Here are some thoughts 1/

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

4 years

And the backyard furnaces have broken all records for steel production!

Josh Marshall

@joshtpm

4 years

Jared on Trump COVID19 response: "The federal government rose to the challenge and this is a great success story."

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

5 years

Before the violence it is a time of hope and joy.

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

5 months

Some personal news (as they say) In August I will be moving to @UniofOxford to take up the directorship of @WilliamsCollege 's study abroad program at @ExeterCollegeOx . We'll be there for two years. Looking forward to connecting with people there.

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

1 year

Putting this marker down now: Li Keqiang is not Hu Yaobang. 2023 is not 1989. There will likely not be significant political protest/mobilization if there is a public funeral for Li.

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

5 years

They face existential political extinction upon absorption into the PRC. Thus what might appear to us as a defeat or tactical miscalculation is for them a necessary expression of their political identity.

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

4 years

Mmm.... K.

Jeff Mason

@jeffmason1

4 years

Trump says he will sign an executive order on patriotic education in schools

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

4 years

Finished! My summer reading project - all six volumes of the Harvard History of Imperial China - is complete. A great run. Here are some thoughts on the Qing. 1/

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

1 year

Getting ready. Undergraduate senior seminar on authoritarian regimes.

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

1 year

And then he ran toward Beijing's money.

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

4 years

Xi is playing long game with virus origin investigation: accept it in principle to control the timing and terms of it. Delay until virus "controlled" globally (i.e. long time). In meantime, spread around resources to shape who is on panel and how it works. Leaving Trump in dust.

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

4 years

Remembering better times in the capital.

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

2 years

Help. I've lost the thread. Is the black mermaid playing the flute? Is that the problem?

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

4 years

One of the things I miss most about China - since travel there now is foreclosed - is the food.

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

3 years

But, of course, he did not send the Japanese packing. ROC forces did much more of the heavy lifting, and the US ultimately defeated Japan in WWII. But to say so likely counts as "historical nihilism" in PRC today.

Carl Zha

@CarlZha

3 years

3 month before his death, Mao said on June 15, 1976: “I did 2 big things in my life. 1) send Japanese packing to their home islands and send Chiang Kai-shek to off-shore island. 2) Cultural Revolution...” Today he will mostly be remembered 4 founding PRC

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

3 years

Party's strategy: Use IOC as leverage against WTA; use upcoming Olympics to distract other sports federations; control info coming from Peng Shuai; quietly maintain pressure on her, her assets, and her family. Remember: Peng is not free and faces multi-dimensional coercion.

Raf Sanchez

@rafsanchez

3 years

NEW: IOC president says he spoke to Peng Shuai in a 30-minute video call. He seems to believe she is not being coerced. "She explained that she is safe and well, living at her home in Beijing, but would like to have her privacy respected at this time."

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

5 years

Same holds true now. Leninists in Beijing deny Hong Kong people a political future and identity. That is what ultimately incites violence.

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

4 years

Let's please stop with the Cultural Revolution analogies. What US is now experiencing is nothing like PRC in 1960s and 70s. Then, Mao, supreme commander of state power, was very much in charge. Now, civil society is mobilized against the state. 1/

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

5 years

Periodic reminder of weakness/irrelevance of political Confucianism in China. Destroying graves, sites where predecessors are commemorated, is the very definition of Confucian inhumanity. But Confucianism is impotent against the CCP's monstrous violations of decency and dignity.

CNN International

@cnni

5 years

More than 100 Uyghur graveyards demolished by Chinese authorities, satellite images show

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

5 years

She's on the Insider Trading Subcommittee of the Senate Republican Caucus.

Yashar Ali 🐘

@yashar

5 years

New: US Senator Kelly Loeffler Dumped Millions in Stock After Coronavirus Briefing

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

1 year

But you see the PRC is a meritocracy because Qin worked all the way up the hierarchy, passing many evaluations, based, no doubt, on his virtue and skill. He was meritorious.... until he wasn't.

George Chen

@george_chen

1 year

It’s official. Qin Gang is gone - no longer foreign minister.

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

3 years

My sense is that #PengShuai case is already over. The Party has likely comprehensively threatened her, her assets, and her family, making any kind of uncoercred statement by her impossible. Question: is WTA willing to play a long game to increase the costs of Party's actions?

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

2 months

personal/professional news: We've completed our move to Oxford where I will take up the position as Director of the @WilliamsCollege @ExeterCollegeOx Programme (WEPO). Looking forward to meeting up with @ox_chinacentre folks and other friends.

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

6 years

A reporter contacted me this morning to ask for a citation for an alleged Confucius quote: “It’s hard to find a black cat in a dark room, especially when it’s not there.” My PSA for the day: THIS IS NOT A CONFUCIUS QUOTE. (excuse the all caps, I just needed to vent a bit).

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

5 years

Perhaps an esoteric literary allusion?

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

2 years

The more I think about this the more I think he is saying out loud what Xi says privately. Anxiety about the dissolution of the Soviet Union and discourse about Gorby not being "man enough" to keep it together, could easily slip into: those countries don't really exist.

Yaroslav Trofimov

@yarotrof

2 years

“Former Soviet states don’t have an effective status in international law,” the Chinese ambassador to France says, brushing off the sovereignty and territorial integrity of 14 nations. Quite a statement, basically denying the legality of the USSR’s dissolution.

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

5 years

Would Hong Kong people "win" if the streets were empty tomorrow, if there were a return to business as usual, with an emphasis on business? Seems like many Hong Kong people now would say "no."

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

4 years

Preparing for class - contemporary Chinese politics - tomorrow. Only a week on Maoist period: one day on Great Famine; another day on Cultural Revolution. This is the reading. Not all of it but a good chunk. I think this is best single volume on the period. Some thoughts 1/

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

3 years

One of my last photos in China. July 2019. Hot, steamy evening at Zhonglou. Kids playing Wonder if I'll ever get back.

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

5 years

And even though it's patently obvious it must be said: Protests in HK cannot be compared to the Cultural Revolution. Not in the scale and nature of violence. Not in general political context. Not in motivations of protesters. Nothing. Is. Remotely. Similar.

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

1 year

No, Prigozhin is not Lin Biao. In Lin's case we at least had a lurid story of an attempted coup. Prigozhin's narrative is much more subservient to the supreme leader. The question, though, is: why did Prigozhin not believe that Putin would eventually kill him?

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

6 years

Reading Minxin Pei's China's Crony Capitalism with my class on PRC politics. Remember when some folks argued that PRC is a meritocracy? Ha! The density of Pei's empirical analysis, case upon case upon case of deep, structural, collusive corruption, pretty much ends debate.

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

3 years

This is the best thing I've seen today.

RADII

@RADII_Media

3 years

“No matter how you do on the gaokao, Dad & Mom love you”

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

2 years

The problem with this query is that it focuses too narrowly on withholding COVID data now. The underlying pathology is that the Party has never been honest about policy failures and national crises 1/

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

5 years

Wouldn't it be great if airlines everywhere stood together with Cathay Pacific and said they will not land in PRC until the ban is rescinded? Yeah, I know.....but it's nice to dream.

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

2 years

"...imperialism, we will extend them our enthusiastic help in their struggle for independence. The same thing applies for Formosa." "The same thing applies to Formosa" - i.e. Taiwan has same status as Korea. What happened to that? /fin

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

5 years

As time unfolds and PRC political repression tightens, they can only lose. It's lose now or lose later, and the latter loss only helps their oppressors by allowing Beijing to appear more "reasonable" and being more profitable for both local and mainland power holders.

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

4 years

For 6/4 this year, a photo of Zhao Ziyang. He wasn't a savior but might have been a sponsor of modest political liberalization in the PRC. He is now excluded from official history. He is part of an alternative history that was crushed by Deng and the PLA.

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

2 years

The most interesting thing in Hessler's piece, for me, is his observation that competition - for access to higher ed; for jobs and money; for social status - is a key stabilizer of authortarianism. 1/

The New Yorker

@NewYorker

2 years

At Chinese universities, professors face the risk of jubao—being reported for political wrongdoing—by their students. Peter Hessler writes about his experience coming under government scrutiny.

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

5 years

Students in Beijing made tactical mistakes, but the Party defined the political context and logic. Things got worse in the PRC politically but the most radical students were right: as long as Leninists are in power genuine political liberalization is impossible.

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

2 years

Several issues with this article (no recognition of Russian agency!) but the thing I want to call out is Yan's inability to clearly recount the Maoist era. This is what political control of history does. 1/

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

4 years

My teaching week.

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

4 years

Reported from abroad: The restive southern province of Texas is on the verge of sectarian violence as angry partisans of the declining majoricy white ethnic group use their pickup trucks, rifles likely concealed inside, as political weapons.

Elise Hu

@elisewho

4 years

At what point do we just start calling these insurgencies sectarian conflict in America?

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

4 years

Online teaching: Working twice as hard, Accomplishing half as much.

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

3 years

one person, one vote

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

3 years

With all the war talk can we take a minute to demythologize Sunzi. Bottom line: there is nothing really extraordinary about his strategic thought, it is not some sort of mystical Eastern thing. At heart he is advocating: planning, intelligence, and reconnaissance. 1/

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

4 years

Just finshed volume 2 of the Harvard U Press series on imperial China. Another great read! Here are some takeaways: 1/

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

5 years

Clearly this discovery of 500 year old Bibimbap proves that China was a part of Korea. ....since ancient times.

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

4 years

OK everyone. Take a deep breath. It's going to be alright.

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

5 years

The virus is bringing an end to 改革开放, "opening and reform," which has defined the PRC since 1980. The theme now seems to be closing and retrenchment, not just in the PRC but the US and elsewhere, too. We lose a lot, though, from closing off to each other.

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

4 years

For no particular reason; just a photo I've always liked. Dazhai Township, Yunnan, 2011. Two girls in a middle school classroom.

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

5 years

Let's all raise a glass for Liang Wudong, hero of Wuhan.

Ramy Inocencio 英若明

@RamyInocencio

5 years

NEW: Chinese doctor treating patients for coronavirus dies from coronavirus. State run @CGTNOfficial tweeted Liang Wudong, a doctor at Hubei Xinhua Hospital who had been at the front line of the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan city, died from the virus aged 62.

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

4 years

That's why we call it the Florida Special Administrative Region and signed an international treaty to ensure its autonomy.

Jonathan Cheng

@JChengWSJ

4 years

"Hong Kong is a part of China, like Florida is a part of the U.S."

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

4 years

OTD, 10/10/1986, I defended my dissertation at the University of Wisconsin Madison. A good day!

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Sam Crane

@UselessTree

3 years

Finishing up my syllabi for the coming semeter and putting this right at the top: The Master said: “Study as if you’ll never know enough, as if you’re afraid of losing it all.” 子曰：學如不及，猶恐失之。 Confucius, Analects, 8.17 (Hinton, trans.)

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