The Key to China

By Julia Lovell on May 14, 2012

Say what you like about Mao, he did make it remarkably easy to keep up with developments in Chinese fiction. Thanks to his proscriptions on creative freedom, fictional output fell precipitously during his reign. An average of eight, increasingly socialist realist novels were published each year between 1949 and 1966. That figure shrank further during the Cultural Revolution. Staying abreast of translations was simpler still: until the early 1980s, it was virtually impossible for a mainland Chinese writer to strike up an independent relationship with a western translator. Anglophone readers had to rely on translations of establishment authors published by Beijing’s Foreign Languages Press.

Foreigners Become Unlikely Chinese TV Stars

By Benjamin F. Carlson on May 14, 2012

HONG KONG–At first glance, David Hogue seems like an unlikely reality TV star. He isn’t an acid-tongued Brit or a member of a once famous hair band. He has little penchant for drunken fist-fights, or marathon “smooshfests.” And, of course, his name isn’t “Snooki.” Instead, he’s a bookish, 26-year-old Princeton graduate completing a master’s degree in ancient Chinese classics at Nanjing University. Yet three years ago, as he was walking between classes, a producer from the Jiangsu Variety Channel, a television station in one of China’s eastern provinces, invited him to compete on a game show.

Hierarchies of Snobbery and Contempt by Chinese Netizens

By Rensi on May 14, 2012

Southern Metropolis Daily‘s City Weekly compiled a list of “Hierarchies of Snobbery” or “Hierarchies of Contempt” on April 7th, 2012. These hierarchies show the multi-layered prejudices amongst Chinese when it comes to how the products, brands, sports, media, academic disciplines, music, movies, fashion, etc. they choose reflect their intelligence, sense of fashion taste and fashion, originality, or how “international” they are.

Ma Jian Recommends Five Books on Chinese Dissident Literature

By Alec Ash on May 14, 2012

I realised that the history of Chinese literature has often been shaped from outside of its society—by exiled writers and thinkers. From [3rd century BC Chinese poet] Qu Yuan to Confucius, the Tang dynasty to the Qing dynasty, right up to modern novels today, you find that those authors who in the end became central to Chinese culture were at the time writing from outside of their country—exiled, pushed out or banned.

On Comparative Studies in Sinology

By Xiaofan Amy Li on May 14, 2012

The doubts about reading an early Chinese text like Zhuangzi with French writers whose works are approached through criticisms totally soaked in (post-)structuralist theories, as well as the insistence in Chinese Studies on historical context and the tradition of textual commentaries that refuse to gel with the free-flowing pan-nutritional fluid of Western literary theories, have made me think more than ever about what “comparison” precisely is, how comparability is important to it, and why it is a particularly difficult issue in Chinese Studies done in Western academia.

The Ancient Tea Horse Road and the Politics of Cultural Heritage

By Gary Sigley on May 14, 2012

The production, transportation and consumption of tea—Pu'er tea in this case—is itself a tangible item which has generated over time a series of associated social and cultural practices that unites the disparate peoples of Yunnan. Thus, the tea road and tea fit comfortably into the marketing vision of Yunnan as a 'cultural whole' and feature in all the counties, towns and cities that are touched on by them as a key element of provincial 'branding'.

John Pomfret Reviews "Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom"

By John Pomfret on May 14, 2012

[Platt] has written the next great history of the Taiping rebels. And his argument—which is fresh and important—is that this idea that China was unchangeable and not a significant factor in the world’s history in the 19th century is just plain wrong. Aided by the patently clear fact that China matters now, Platt has marshaled a powerful case that the rebellion—and China—mattered then.

Will the Bubble in China Burst

By Walter Russel Mead on May 14, 2012

China’s apparent immunity to the 2008 financial crisis led many talking heads and columnists to argue that the Chinese growth model – a cocktail of authoritarian political control and so-called “state capitalism” – represented a new way forward for economies everywhere.

American Interest

on May 14, 2012

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The American Interest (AI) is a new and independent voice devoted to the broad theme of “America in the world.” Our agenda is threefold. The first is to analyze America’s conduct on the global stage and the forces that shape it–not just its strategic aspects, but also its economic, cultural and historical dimensions. American statecraft is not simply about power but also purpose. What is important to the world about America is therefore not just its politics, but the society from which those politics arise–including America’s literature, music and art, as well as its values, public beliefs and its historical imagination.

Or Maybe Zhou Won't Step Down Just Yet

By Chris Buckley on May 14, 2012

An audacious escape by blind dissident Chen Guangcheng is the second uproar this year to hit Zhou, who has expanded China's policing apparatus into a vast, costly and - now for all the world to see - a flawed tool of Communist Party control. But even one of the biggest domestic security embarrassments in more than a decade is unlikely to knock him out before a party congress late this year that will appoint successors to him and other retiring leaders, said several experts.