Nevertheless, Chinese Civil Society Persisted

By Alison Sile Chen on August 8, 2022

In an autocracy, atomized individuals, without power or influence, seem to have only two options: willingly serve as “social livestock,” or accept their fate and lie flat. But in a society as large as China’s, with 1.4 billion people, can that really be all there is? In the China presented by the media, the “official” China, yes, that’s all there is. But the strict censorship dictates hide a complex array of feelings and behaviors. Even today, there remains “civil society,” a network formed by individuals who disagree with the regime, with some of the members taking action to uncover injustice and fight against suppression. Some resist passively, committing to operate in a space outside of the mainstream; some earn money in the mainstream but direct that money and their own personal aspirations toward endeavors that run counter to the regime’s goals. What these people have in common: they refuse to be “social livestock,” and yet they also won’t lie flat.

For Your Weekend, August 5, 2022

on August 4, 2022

Thanks to our colleagues at Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations, we are reading this excellent investigation into the effects Chinese iron mining in Guinea, by Bloomberg’s Sheridan Prasso and featuring the work of our old friend, environmental lawyer Zhang Jingjing, and well summarized in this excellent video. It came out in June, but if we missed it, maybe you did too?

As we continue to follow the aftermath of Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan earlier this week, we recommend checking out the latest installment of the Lawfare Podcast with Julian Ku, Zach Cooper, and Sophia Yan joining Lawfare’s editor Benjamin Wittes, this op-ed by Yu-Jie Chen and this Isaac Chotiner interview with longtime American Taiwan expert, Shelly Rigger.

In happier news, last week, a ChinaFile essay by Shen Lu, “Scallion Dutch Baby: How I Revised My Recipe for Home,” won the Association of Asian American Journalists award for Excellence in Commentary. The essay is in part about cooking, and so to share our celebration of the prize with all of you, we invited Shen to share recipes for two of the dishes that appear in her essay.

In What Purport to be Lifestyle Videos, Uyghur Influencers Promote Beijing’s Narrative on Their Homeland

An Analysis of Some 500 Uyghur Vlogs Suggests They Are Created as Government Propaganda

By Rune Steenberg & Seher on August 4, 2022

For the past few years, Uyghur and other young members of ethnic minority groups from Xinjiang have been creating videos like Anniguli’s in which they appear to display details of their personal lives while simultaneously evincing support for the policies of the CCP. These videos are a type of state propaganda, but for those producing them they also serve as a form of self-promotion, an income stream, and a pathway to political safety.

Pelosi in Taiwan

A ChinaFile Conversation

By Brian Hioe, Lev Nachman & more on August 2, 2022

On the evening of August 2, Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, landed in Taipei to begin an official visit. The trip, the first by a U.S. official of comparable rank in 25 years, came amid debate about how Beijing would likely respond and what it would mean for Taiwan’s future, its relationship with Beijing, and the U.S. role in both.