It was never quite her decision. ‘I wasn’t ready to be a mother, but it was impossible not to,’ Hui (a pseudonym) said during our interview in 2016, not long after China’s decades-long One-Child Policy ended. Her husband had made it clear to her that the ‘DINK’ (Double Income, No Kids) life—which Hui had long […]
On 18 November, a fire broke out in the basement of an apartment block inhabited mostly by migrant workers in Beijing’s Daxing district, killing nineteen and injuring eight. Around four hundred people lived in cramped conditions in the two-story structure. In the aftermath of the tragedy, the city authorities launched a fortyday campaign to inspect […]
Co-living residents highlight the present, exploration, and fluidity as central to their ‘experience orientation’, viewing these traits as essential to the uniqueness of their life. Interactions within co-living spaces tend to emphasise the present. Upon leaving, the roommate relationship typically concludes, with any further developments being largely serendipitous and not a primary focus during the […]
On 16 November 1957, China’s labour minister Ma Wenrui appeared before the country’s top legislature, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPCSC), with proposed updates to China’s retirement scheme. Faced with a deluge of secondary-school graduates but insufficient job openings, the government hoped to make it easier for older workers to retire (Literature […]
In the Chinese music scene, women have traditionally been confined to roles embodying elegance and obedience. This is exemplified by groups such as the 12 Girls Band, whose success, built on performing traditional instruments such as the guzheng (古筝) and pipa (琵琶), aligns with societal expectations of femininity, reinforcing Confucian stereotypes of Chinese women as […]
When Liu Lipeng first contacted me in July 2020, I was still in China. I initially wanted to write this as a fictional short story, but I didn’t have the courage to do it at the time because it would have landed me in prison. I left China in 2021 and spent time thinking about […]
In late March 2022, Shanghai imposed its strictest lockdowns since the Covid-19 outbreak two years earlier. Amid China’s stringent zero-Covid policy and crackdown on personal freedoms, internet searches for ‘conditions for immigrating to Canada’ surged, drawing the attention of authorities. To circumvent censorship on emigration-related searches, Chinese netizens adopted the code word run (润), whose […]
The People’s Daily (人民日报) publishes important announcements on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). It covers high-level politics, economic achievements, diplomatic breakthroughs, and other serious topics. So, on 14 December 1984, a reader might have been surprised to see the paper run the playful headline ‘Interprovincial Dating Project’ (跨省市恋爱协作) (People’s Daily 1984). The article […]
Covert Colonialism: Governance, Surveillance and Political Culture in British Hong Kong, c. 1966–97 (Manchester University Press, 2023) examines state–society relations in one of the United Kingdom’s last strategically important colonial dependencies, Hong Kong. Using underexploited archival evidence, it explores how a reformist colonial administration investigated Chinese political culture, and how activism by social movements in […]
This essay re-examines the Great Translation Movement (GTM) as an activist-journalistic initiative that challenges the authority of the Chinese Party-State by exposing its support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Highlighting a problematic aspect of the GTM, it calls into question its oversimplified portrayal of the Chinese people, as it perpetuates national character discourse by attributing societal issues to perceived inherent traits of the populace rather than holding the regime to account. The GTM’s engagement with Chinese political discourse appears to be driven by its coordinators’ alignment with Euro-American right-wing populism, fostering self-racialisation and internalised racism that ultimately distort dissent within China’s political landscape.
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