A group of men in Tangshan were caught on camera brutally beating a woman after she turned down unwanted attention from one of them. The assault has sparked furious demands to address misogyny in China.
A Uyghur in eastern China has written a letter describing his life before and after the mass internment campaign that has swept up Muslim minorities from across the country.
@dtbyler
has translated this letter, published here with permission:
On the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown,
@anthonytao
compiles 30 essential stories to read about June Fourth — from firsthand accounts to analysis of Party documents to multimedia — that make the events of 1989 feel fresh to this day:
New draft rules circulated today would force China’s private education companies to turn nonprofit. Share prices of tutoring companies plummeted, and some see the end of a highly lucrative industry.
When Chinese state authorities prepared to release Gulbahar Jelil, an ethnic Uyghur woman, they told her not to tell anyone about what she had experienced over the 15 months in which she was detained.
She didn’t listen. This is her story: by
@dtbyler
100 (+) people you should follow on China Twitter:
Obviously couldn't get all the people we wanted into this first edition, but hopefully it gets the conversation started
Like the list? Hate it? Keep letting us know. There will be an addendum.
While China is no stranger to xenophobia, the COVID-19 pandemic has taken hostility toward foreigners to a new level. In a recently published cartoon, foreigners who “seek special treatment and run wild” in China are depicted as trash to be disposed of.
Great news for those who like Twitter lists: We've updated ours! The Twitter 100 is now Twitter 100+, and based on reader feedback is more representative in a number of ways. We've also re-arranged the list by theme, rather than follower count.
When the Kenyan Students Association of Wuhan lobbied for Sarah Serem, Kenya’s High Commissioner in China, to help evacuate them out of Wuhan, Serem replied: “Praying that the LORD’s protection be upon each one of you.”
Also, she said no.
@aprzhu
reports:
In 1947, two years into Chinese Nationalist rule, Taiwanese people violently rebelled, briefly controlling their homeland. It would cost them a generation of leaders.
On the eve of the February 28 Incident,
@heguisen
looks back at 228's lasting effects:
Today is Chinese Valentine's Day, which commemorates the bittersweet love of the Cowherd and Weaver Girl. Read up on the backstory and cultural significance of this day, and how it has become commercialized:
"And if they fail, and the people of HK remain to the end powerless to govern their own affairs, vulnerable to anything that may come out of China? Then the British will leave behind them, if not a sense of betrayal, at least a sense of disappointment."
An experienced excavator operator from Liaoning Province, China, is a rising star on Kuaishou, a Chinese video social platform, because of his exceptional operating skills. In his spare time, he uses them to play with small objects.
In popular understanding, the Qianlong Emperor's rejection of Lord Macartney & King George III was an act of hubris, the last prideful act of a waning empire before a "century of humiliation."
But what if our understanding is all wrong? by
@jayjamescarter
Manoj Kewalramani is an Indian researcher whose interpretations of the People’s Daily, the flagship propaganda broadsheet of the Chinese Communist Party, provide a daily guide to how China leaders are thinking.
Is this bodybuilding video posted by Lara Zhang "pornographic"?
China’s cyber police thinks so, and warned Zhang of the legal consequences of posting “obscene” content on the Chinese internet.
Zhang has fired back:
.
@CameronWEF
lives in Pudong District, Shanghai. He has been locked down in his residential compound for nearly two months. Here’s the diary of a man — and a city — slowly losing his mind:
Millennials and younger Gen-Zers are having a feminist awakening in post-
#MeToo
China, despite a conservative backlash and a government increasingly hostile to the movement. Their unlikely hero is a 74-year-old Japanese provocateur:
Aston Villa has been pushed to the brink of financial ruin under its enigmatic Chinese boss, Tony Xia, who bought the club two years ago. How much longer will
@AVFCOfficial
fans put up with the mismanagement and unanswered questions? by
@DreyerChina
A Chinese wife who was fed up with her lazy husband left garbage at home unattended for days. Her social media posts documenting her story inspired other women to create similar experiments to test their partners:
A former Apple executive — and China bull — writes about the dark days ahead for multinationals in the People’s Republic, and tells a revealing story about how Huawei developed its facial recognition technology
Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates will be admitted to the BRICS club. It remains to be seen if the enlarged bloc’s members can agree on anything substantial, and counterbalance the West.
"After 7/5, many Han people cursed Uyghurs. It is becoming very hard for them to see things from the other’s perspective. Now we are all scared of each other."
@dtbyler
on how July 5, 2009, changed everything:
#Xinjiang
(image by
@Guly780
)
One of the myths about 19th-century imperialism in Asia is the different ways in which China and Japan responded to Western technology, with the former shunning it and the latter embracing it. This is, at the very least, misleading,
@jayjamescarter
writes:
The original Chinese-language edition of Sanmao’s "Stories of the Sahara" was incredibly popular in Taiwan and Hong Kong, and throughout China, with the author representing a very different type of Chinese woman,
@chinarhyming
writes:
"The idea of a Hong Kong community, a Hong Kong identity, is still very new. In the past, we’d say we were Chinese, we’d go to the Chinatowns abroad. But now, certainly for these few years, we have our own identity. We identify ourselves as Hongkongers":
China's first high-profile athlete, soccer player Li Ying, came out last week.
The response to her on social media was very different from the response that Carl Nassib got when he became the first active NFL player to come out one week prior:
“Most foreigners’ photos, they come from some exoticizing angle, or they're standing from the point of view of the conqueror. They are really attentive to our beggars, our poor ppl...But for a Chinese photographer, we would focus on beauties and dignities”
It may seem counterintuitive to some, but many Chinese people, especially younger people, seem to be very happy with the performance of their government. Economics, history, culture, and, yes, propaganda all play a role in shaping attitudes.
Perhat Tursun is the preeminent modernist Uyghur author, a self-proclaimed Kafka character whose work is among the most influential in Uyghur society.
He was disappeared two years ago and is now serving a 16-year sentence.
@dtbyler
's Xinjiang Column:
In 1517, Portuguese arrived in China on the first formal diplomatic mission to the country in nearly 200 years. The mission failed — but perhaps for unexpected reasons,
@jayjamescarter
writes:
We have screenshots from Peking University, arguably China's most free-thinking university, of a political survey recently administered to select students, with questions blatantly pandering to Xi Jinping and the CCP:
Hong Kong resident
@midwaydude
has launched a project called “Tree Hole” (树洞), a platform for mainland Chinese people to anonymously profess their support for the Hong Kong protests:
Today in 1966, 17yo Song Binbin ties a Red Guard sleeve onto Chairman Mao's arm on the Tiananmen stage. By the end of August, Red Guards have killed 1772 in Beijing and 10k nationwide.
@jayjamescarter
recounts this moment in
#ThisWeekinChinaHistory
The United States has eliminated restrictions on exchanges between American and Taiwanese officials.
@jessicadrun
and
@MargaretKLewis
joined
@joannachiu
on the
@NuVoices
podcast to discuss what this means for the future of the U.S.-Taiwan relationship.
There was a time, not too long ago, when friendship was possible between the Han Chinese of Xinjiang and their Uyghur neighbors. But where there once was camaraderie, now there is suspicion, fear, and empty slogans: by
@dtbyler
How can we understand China if we don’t know what its most prominent intellectuals are saying? A translation project by David Ownby aims to make up for the absence of Chinese voices in Western discussions.
After witnessing two world wars, Senator J. William Fulbright identified nationalism as a root cause of human destruction. For him, international education exchange was an important way to foster understanding between people and allay fears of conflict:
We know almost nothing about how the leadership of the Communist Party makes decisions, but that does not stop wild speculation in the media. Wu Guoguang shares how we should think about the information vacuum, translated by Geremie R. Barmé.
The fall of Kabul to the Taliban reminded some nationalistic Chinese commenters of the victory of the People’s Liberation Army in 1949. They have a point, argues the noted Sinologist Geremie R. Barmé of
@chinaheritage
:
Our understanding of Chinese history — specifically, what constituted “China” throughout history — is fundamentally flawed. The result isn’t merely academic, writes
@jayjamescarter
: It has profound implications for present-day policies.
The Curator of Old China:
@huizhong_wu
interviews
@tongbingxue
(pictured below) about his tweets of historical yet timely photographs, part of his larger quest to uncover China's rarely-seen past:
COVID stranded many international students outside China. Now, many of these students are campaigning online for their return to China. One such community is
@takeusbacktoCHN
, a group with representatives in more than 200 universities in the country:
One Uyghur woman said that her employer regularly organized “dance parties” on Fridays for the Uyghur women and Han “comrades” who worked at her firm. Those who wanted to skip the parties had to come up with very convincing excuses:
From 2007 to 2015, she covered breaking news from Beijing for the Guardian newspaper. Then she went home to the U.K., and wrote a book about the Cultural Revolution and its lingering effects, which are still felt in China today.
Jolin Tsai's recent concert in Shenzhen was filled with queer visuals, including rainbow flags and banners. But throughout her mainland tour, there were also reminders of the intensifying censorship of LGBTQ-related expression:
Anti-eviction protest breaks out in Beijing's Feijia Village - just above 798 Art District - as protesters chant, "Violent evictions violate human rights":
#HumanRightsDay
"If you hang out in public today, / Grass will grow on your grave next year"
Local officials around China have taken to ... creative? ... measures to get people to stay indoors during the
#CoronavirusOutbreak
From
@goldkorn
's latest Editor's Note, titled "patriotic thugs" ( )
SupChina has been under a sustained attack since the weekend from nationalist trolls on the Chinese internet... 🧵
Virtually all residents in rural China now have incomes above the government’s absolute poverty standard. This does not mean poverty has been eradicated, but it does mean “improved livelihoods for almost 100 million people over the last eight years.”
The transformation of Southern Xinjiang came in waves. It involved policies that would turn Xinjiang into a center of trade, capitalist infrastructure, and agricultural development capable of further serving the needs of the national economy: by
@dtbyler
Maoist campaigns were as much visual as they were literary. Stefan Landsberger recognized this, and collected a large stash of Chinese propaganda posters that would eventually become one of the most unique books in the China space.
@chinarhyming
's latest:
In China, the Trump administration sees a rising power that threatens American primacy,
@KaiserKuo
writes. It has reacted the same way white nationalists are reacting to the Black Lives Matter movement: with belligerence and racist rhetoric.
The China Twitter 100 —
SupChina’s guide to the best of China Twitter, featuring accounts you already know and up-and-comers you should follow now:
Also a public list:
Our explainer of China’s
#MeToo
movement includes a summary of the most prominent attempts, successful and failed, to hold men in China to account for sexual harassment. As a companion piece, we also did a Q&A with Lü Pin, a leading feminist activist.
In a new cookbook, journalist
@dearclarissa
seeks to retell the story of Taiwan’s distinct cuisine for a world that often misinterprets it.
@jordynhaime
has this review:
"Celebrating the work of women": An interview with
@joannachiu
, creator of the Greater China Female Experts Open Directory and the women writers collective / anthology NüVoices:
Marxism, Sharon Olds, James Baldwin, Chinese Communist Party lore — they're all weaved together in Liuyu Ivy Chen's poetic and unflinchingly honest essay about how she, as a child in an anonymous Chinese city, viewed the 9/11 attacks:
Last month, Akida Pulat celebrated her birthday alone, her third birthday since her mother, Uyghur anthropologist Rahile Dawut, had disappeared in Northwest China. In this month's Xinjiang Column by
@dtbyler
, Akida explains what it's like to be left behind
In racing past Starbucks, Luckin has not only dethroned a foreign brand that’s been synonymous with coffee for more than two decades in China, it has also declared a new chapter of its business as it tries to move on from its scandal-riddled past:
Ink brush writer Wang Huaizhong(王怀忠) likes to use brushes that weigh around 66 pounds! It’s quite a workout to lift one of them up. But Wang can do that and hold the brush with one arm. And — he can also write with it!
The history of Asian Americans is not the history of new Chinese immigrants. The latter have rarely been taunted with “ching chong,” and don’t feel offended by the question, “Where are you from?” No wonder they're increasingly turning to the American right
One of the few bright spots for civil liberties in China in recent years has been a growing public and official acceptance of the LGBT+ community. But the government now seems determined to put a stop to that.
The Chinese Communist Party, in its earliest days, outwardly championed women and their place in the revolution. But Ding Ling—on the heels of
#InternationalWomensDay
in 1942—had the courage to point out the CCP's hypocrisies: by
@jayjamescarter
“It is mind-boggling that, to this day, since this current nightmare started about 18 months ago, no Muslim country, no Muslim leader, has criticized the Chinese government in the slightest,”
@nuryturkel
tells
@KaiserKuo
and
@goldkorn
in this week's Sinica
Everything wrong with
@crikey_news
's now-retracted "China's queer purge" series, as explained by two journalists (
@stevievzh
and
@qianjinghua
) passionate about reporting on LGBTQ issues:
Three senior Hong Kong police officers held a small roundtable with foreign media and said some things that contradicted official statements from mainland Chinese authorities, namely that foreign influences are not behind the Hong Kong protests:
When
@MeiPickart
returned to China four yrs ago, she expected to reconnect with her old friends in deep and meaningful ways—or at least to reintegrate into the society of her birth country.
But she would find herself ostracized from her Chinese companions
In the two weeks since its disappearance, the show has released a short announcement, saying that the delay is a result of its production team wanting to create “better stage effects.” But the promised fancy effects turned out to be odd and perplexing.
In this prelapsarian episode of the
@SinicaPodcast
, taped on December 19, Gordon H. Chang chats with
@KaiserKuo
about the rising tide of Sinophobia — presaging things to come once Trump really started fanning the flames during the present pandemic.
Word of the day: Mahathir 马哈迪 mǎhādí. Dr. Mahathir Mohamad is the prime minister of
#Malaysia
. Today, he told a forum in Tokyo that his country would use technology from
#Huawei
“as much as possible."
Princess Taiping wielded all but ultimate power in the Tang court and seemed destined to succeed to the throne. As extraordinary as that feat would have been, it was an ordinary miscalculation that led to her downfall,
@jayjamescarter
writes:
China has announced a probe into people who have avoided taxes, and has vowed to implement guidelines that were issued in March this year on taxing high-income and high-net-worth individuals. First in the firing line are pop stars and actors.
Scholar of Chinese law Jeremy Daum has been on a one-man mission to demystify China’s social credit system. His rage at inaccurate reporting on the subject finally got to him.
The U.S. govt launched the "China Initiative" two yrs ago to counter "national security threats." But with the recent indictment of MIT prof Gang Chen, we have a clear example of how the policy fails.
@MargaretKLewis
argues for ending the China Initiative:
We began as a single newsletter in 2016. Over the years, we have grown into a multimedia and business services platform, and now our name is finally growing up, too.
Introducing: The China Project.
What would a progressive policy on China look like? To answer this question and more,
@tobitac
and
@jwdwerner
joined Kaiser on Sinica this week to discuss progressive globalization, authoritarianism, and a potential Joe Biden presidency.
News assistants, sometimes dubbed “researchers,” really are journalists who rarely get the glory of a top-of-the-page byline like foreign correspondents, despite often doing much of the journalistic legwork
@axliu
and
@joannachiu
in their debut podcast!
"For many American-born Chinese caught up within the hellstorm of geopolitics, our joy is policed. For Eileen to find a way to negotiate a new norm feels like a form of resistance."
@helenliwrites
on why she's celebrating Eileen Gu:
At the heart of Ilham Tohti's work is the reverence Uyghurs have for their ancestors and the Indigenous traditions and places they came from, and that is why the Sakharov committee recognized his work,
@dtbyler
writes in his monthly Xinjiang Column:
"She has been an inspiration for so many."
A diverse crowd gathered outside a Beijing courthouse last Wednesday to offer support for Xianzi (holding the scroll in the photo below), the face of China's
#MeToo
movement.
@CaiweiC
reported from the scene:
China is attempting to codify patriotic education practices into law, with extensive reach. When passed, the implications will extend beyond its borders: