I’m off to Hokkaido. In a tragic case of mis-timing, I will be back before the Five Year Plan-cum-Policy Address on September 16. Indeed, I will barely miss the 11th Belt-cum-Road Summit.
Some stuff…
Joshua Wong will be in court today, facing a possible life sentence for ‘collusion with foreign forces’.
From Brian Kern’s substack – more translations of Chow Hang-tung’s writings from jail.
A Hong Kong academic studying in Europe explores the Hong Kong diaspora in Taiwan. (Tells you rather more about social sciences research than Hong Kong emigres – but still interesting.)
The Guardian looks at Western social-media influencers fetishizing China…
“The younger generation feel like there is no meaningful method to change society. They feel defeated when they see what’s happening in Gaza – there’s been protests but the government doesn’t care and is collaborating with atrocities in wars. There’s also the Epstein files in America, which show how the elite is corrupt,” says Badiucao, who, along with Chan, is in Sydney to promote their new book, You Must Take Part in Revolution.
“When you want to see change, there is the hard way, which is being innovative and finding a solution. And there is the lazy way, which is finding a cheap alternative and fantasising about a faraway, oriental, communist country that might be your future,” he says.
Fifty Cent-er influencers Don’t Understand China.
Long-time lurker from Decadent Amerikastan, Gen-Z, and the Sinofetishim is horrifyingly real, my god. I’ve got an IRL friend, a physics major, who moved to Montreal for his PhD because of funding drying up here and the ‘well the chinese care about public housing as a good more than America does, the ghost cities are being filled at long last, a Chinese coworker of mine told me so’ stuff is driving me nuts.
I’ve held off on going off on him, but, like – it’s not that hard to see where this is going, right? Damn the ‘ooo they’re so developed’ line, Americans fell for that at the ’36 Berlin Olypmics and the ‘asia for asians’ line of the co-prosperity sphere. I think Xi will be known in decades to come as a kind of Chancellor Von Hindenburg, channeling nationalist forces but never a true fascist demigod. That will come for the guy after him.