China Odds and Ends
But first, an obligatory baseball note. Yesssssssssssssssss! The U.S. presidential election will be held on Tuesday, November 6th. The 18th Party Congress of the Communist Party of China, as noted...
View ArticleXi Jinping Is Less Important Than You Think
Time Magazine has a cover story (subscription required) profiling Xi Jinping, China’s putative next president and the man the magazine has cleverly dubbed “the leader of the unfree world”*. The piece,...
View ArticleWhat Norodom Says About China
The New York Times‘ obituary of Norodom Sihanouk, the former Cambodian king who died yesterday at the age of 89, is fascinating and well worth a read. During his reign, Norodom cultivated a close...
View ArticleTough on China
One of the most memorable moments of the 2nd presidential debate was when President Obama scolded Mitt Romney for his business dealings with China. “You’re the last person who’ll get tough on China,”...
View ArticleTwo China Economy Links
The New York Times has a good piece discussing how difficult it will be to loosen the grip of state-owned enterprises in China’s economy. Meanwhile, over at the Wall Street Journal‘s China Real Time...
View ArticleThe China Questions I’d Ask at the Debate
President Obama and Mitt Romney will debate for the third and final time tonight, focusing exclusively on foreign policy. As usual, I expect most of the questions to be about the broader Middle East,...
View ArticleRomney’s China Position
Princeton Professor Aaron Friedberg, one of Mitt Romney’s principal advisers on China, has an op-ed claiming that President Obama’s China policy is a massive failure. Basically, his arguments are that...
View ArticleDoes the Educational Background of China’s Leaders Matter?
One of the most curious facts about China’s current leadership is is comprised almost entirely by engineers. This thought-provoking Facebook post by Kaiser Kuo reminds us that the academic disciplines...
View ArticleBook Review- Behind the Red Door: Sex in China
Sex is everywhere in China. Every city of a certain size is teeming with “adult product” shops selling sex toys and condoms, while every third barbershop, massage parlor, and karaoke hall operates as a...
View ArticleGrandpa Wen Jiabao Does Very, Very Well
The New York Times‘ revelation that the family of Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao controls assets worth as much as $2.7 billion does not, at first glance, seem to be that big of a story. After all, earlier...
View ArticleChina News Roundup
First, a brief update from New York City in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. Much of the flooding, infrastructure damage, and electrical blackouts avoided my part of uptown Manhattan, and as a result...
View ArticleDeveloping China’s Interior
Matthew Yglesias has a good post at Slate putting China’s growth- and current slowdown- into some perspective. Toward the end, he lays out the bullish case for China’s interior: My bull case for China...
View ArticleThe Art of Leaving China
Will Moss at Imagethief has a funny, poignant post announcing his departure from China after eight years. I particularly liked this part: For an increasingly cosmopolitan and globally interconnected...
View ArticleThe Chinese Tax Payer
Eli Binder of Tea Leaf Nation has noticed an interesting rhetorical shift in Chinese discourse: people have begun referring to themselves as “taxpayers”: Over the past year, the word “taxpayer”...
View ArticleNew Year, New City, New Job
Happy New Year! It’s hard to believe that it’s already 2013. (Where did the time go? I have so many appointments!) Once again, as always, I want to thank all of you for reading and for your e-mails and...
View ArticleThoughts on Richard Sherman
I know sideline interviews after football games are stupid. I know players rarely speak with candor, so Richard Sherman’s remarks were refreshing. I know racist bigots said terrible things about him on...
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The Perils of Chinese Bootleg DVDs
Matthew Yglesias has an amusing post about the Chinese pirated version of Old Boy, a Korean film recently remade in the U.S. Alas, the DVD cover included a negative blurb of the film: Oops. Yglesias...
View ArticleOn Kunming
I have a piece up this morning at the Daily Beast on Saturday’s horrific terrorist attack in Kunming, arguing that China still hasn’t figured out a way to deal with its Uighur minority. We still have a...
View ArticleWhy Suicide Is Just Suicide
Just over a year ago, early one Thursday morning, I sent an email to my college friend in Oakland with a link to a story about Jason Giambi, a baseball player he had admired when we first met, 13 years...
View ArticleLanguages Change. Deal With It
As a person who makes a living as a writer, I take the English language quite seriously. So I was of course delighted that The New York Times Sunday Review published an op-ed addressing one of my pet...
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