Ai Xiaoming on Geng Xiaonan’s ‘Dance of Defiance’

Viral Alarm As Jerome A. Cohen, Faculty Director Emeritus of New York University’s U.S.-Asia Law Institute and Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, notes: ‘This week saw the detention in China of Geng Xiaonan, a well-known Beijing publisher and outspoken supporter of the famously harassed former Tsinghua University law professor Xu Zhangrun.… Read

Geng Xiaonan, a ‘Chinese Decembrist’, and Professor Xu Zhangrun

Viral Alarm   The 9th of September 2020 marked the forty-fourth year since the death of Mao Zedong. On the 10th of September, Professor Xu Zhangrun, formerly of Tsinghua University, issued the following statement: Geng Xiaonan 耿瀟男 had been in the international news since early July when, following the detention of Xu Zhangrun by police in Beijing, she had spoken out in his defense.… Read

Crowdfunding a Scholar Becalmed

Xu Zhangrun vs. Tsinghua University   The following announcement was released online by Sun Nutao 孫怒濤 on 31 August 2020. Along with Yan Huai 閻淮, who is seventy-five, the seventy-eight year-old Sun has been active in supporting Xu Zhangrun 許章潤 during his travails with Tsinghua University (see, for example, Yan Huai 閻淮, ‘Rashomon & Growing Pains at Tsinghua University’, China Heritage, 10 May 2019).… Read

The Good Caucasian of Sichuan & Kumbaya China

Viral Alarm   The New Yorker magazine has played a not insignificant role in my life. As my interest in traditional Chinese thought and contemporary politics burgeoned in my teenage years, my grandmother, who spent six months annually with her twin sisters who lived in Forest Hills in Queens, introduced me to the cartoons that were a feature of that weekly magazine.… Read