‘A Sunflower Glaring at the Sun’ — on Geng Xiaonan being formally arrested

Viral Alarm   On 19 October 2020, legal counsel acting on behalf of Geng Xiaonan and her husband, Qin Zhen, publishers who had been detained by the Beijing authorities on 9 September 2020 on suspicion of ‘illicit business practices’, was formally notified that, following a preliminary investigation, his clients had now been officially arrested and would, in the fulness of time, be arraigned in court.… Read

Geng Xiaonan & the Siege of Beijing

Viral Alarm   On 8 October 2020, we reprinted an account of the one hundred days since the National Security Law was imposed on Hong Kong, from 1 July 2020, compiled by Katja Drinhausen of the Mercator Institute for Chinese Studies (MERICS) (see: The Siege of Hong Kong — The First Hundred Days of the National Security Law.)… Read

Hong Kong & 講耶穌 gong2 je4 sou1

Hong Kong Apostasy   The Cantonese expression 講耶穌 gong2 je4 sou1, literally ‘to give a sermon about Jesus’, or ‘to be preachy’, generally means to prattle, or to speak in a boring and vacuous fashion.… Read

Geng Xiaonan, Ren Zhiqiang & China’s Refuseniks

Viral Alarm   Over the years we have all too frequently had reason to quote a famous observation by Sima Qian 司馬遷, the Grand Historian of the Han dynasty: The refusal of one decent man
outweighs the acquiescence of the multitude.… Read