Watching China Watching
&
Xi Jinping’s Empire of Tedium
Appendix XVI
覿
In January 2018, we launched an ongoing series titled Watching China Watching. Over nearly five years we have published a number of essays and reflections on studying the Chinese world and approaches to understanding the Chinese People’s Republic.… Read
A Language Lesson for New Zealand Chinese Language Week
A Lesson in New Sinology
China Heritage marks New Zealand Chinese Language Week 2022 (25 September-1 October 2022) by reprinting a poem and a series of tweets by Chris Tse, New Zealand’s poet laureate (2022-2024), as well as a report by Eda Tang for Stuff News.… Read
Other People’s Thoughts, XXXI
Other People’s Thoughts is a section in the Journal of the China Heritage site. It is inspired by a compilation of quotations put together by Simon Leys (Pierre Ryckmans), one of our Ancestors, during his reading life.… Read
Sinology vs. the Disciplines, Then & Now
Old & New Sinology in China
The following paper by the historian Brian Moloughney originally appeared in the December 2017 issue of the New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies (NZJAS). We are grateful to Duncan Campbell for being this text to our attention and to the author, as well as Paola Voci, editor NJAS, for permission to reprint it.… Read
A Country Besieged by Itself
Xi Jinping’s Empire of Tedium
Appendix XVI 圍 The unofficial annals of China’s People’s Republic are crowded with instances of self-inflicted wounds. The grim tally includes: The ‘lean-to-one-side’ policies of Mao Zedong that bound the new nation to the Soviet Union and all that would mean in terms of its social, political and economic life; the emulation of Soviet-style ‘culture wars’ that devastated education, publishing, research, the arts and civic life; Mao’s experiments in radical utopianism that left tens of millions of people dead; his attempt to remake humanity itself one person at a time in a vainglorious Cultural Revolution that frittered away fourteen years; the purblind approach to an otherwise successful reform era from 1978 to 2008 that, while supercharging the economy of the country, continued to infantilise its people; and, the Xi Jinping decade during which strong-man politics has further entrenched some of the most revanchist and self-destructive impulses both of the Communist’s party-state and of the people over which it rules.… Read
Appendix XVI 圍 The unofficial annals of China’s People’s Republic are crowded with instances of self-inflicted wounds. The grim tally includes: The ‘lean-to-one-side’ policies of Mao Zedong that bound the new nation to the Soviet Union and all that would mean in terms of its social, political and economic life; the emulation of Soviet-style ‘culture wars’ that devastated education, publishing, research, the arts and civic life; Mao’s experiments in radical utopianism that left tens of millions of people dead; his attempt to remake humanity itself one person at a time in a vainglorious Cultural Revolution that frittered away fourteen years; the purblind approach to an otherwise successful reform era from 1978 to 2008 that, while supercharging the economy of the country, continued to infantilise its people; and, the Xi Jinping decade during which strong-man politics has further entrenched some of the most revanchist and self-destructive impulses both of the Communist’s party-state and of the people over which it rules.… Read
Other People’s Thoughts, XXX
Other People’s Thoughts is a section in the Journal of the China Heritage site. It is inspired by a compilation of quotations put together by Simon Leys (Pierre Ryckmans), one of our Ancestors, during his reading life.… Read