On the evening of 17 July 2018, China’s party-state media reported on a meeting of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress in Beijing. Chaired by Li Zhanshu 栗戰書, a member of the ruling Politburo and formal head of the National People’s Congress, the meeting hailed Xi Jinping’s statement that ‘Every era has a narrative arc; people of every generation have a mission’ 一個時代有一個時代的主題，一代人有一代人的使命.… Read

Watching China Watching (XXXI)   … the only thing that gave us security on earth was the certainty that he was there, invulnerable to plague and hurricane … invulnerable to time, dedicated to the messianic happiness of thinking for us, knowing that we knew that he would not take any decision for us that did not have our measure, for he had not survived everything because of his inconceivable courage or his infinite prudence but because he was the only one among us who knew the real size of our destiny.… Read

Watching China Watching (XXIX)   China Heritage launched the series Watching China Watching in early 2018 by quoting the observations of László Ladány and Simon Leys on reading the Chinese Communist press.… Read

  Before Cui Jian 崔健 rocked the Mainland, Lo Tayu 羅大佑 was making himself heard on Taiwan. *** In the 1910s, during the early years of the Chinese Republic, advocates in favour of replacing Literary Chinese 文言文 with the Vernacular Language 白話文 summed up the older written form of expression with a shorthand: zhi-hu-zhe-ye 之、乎、者、也.… Read