China’s 1980s and its Denouement on 4 June 1989

  ‘Open Source’, a program based in Boston, MA, North America, calls itself ‘an American conversation with global attitude’. Initially a podcast it is now a weekly show on 90.9 WBUR, broadcasting on Thursday nights at 21:oo and on Sundays at 2:00 pm.… Read

Rumour — a Pipe Blown by Surmises, Jealousies, Conjectures

*** During the early hours of the 4th of June 1989, the authorities reoccupied Tiananmen Square in the heart of the Chinese capital by force of arms. As the repression of nationwide rebellion unfolded in Beijing and dozens of other cities, often with great local violence and always with punitive glee, the work of convincing the nation, including the army and the Communist Party itself, that the official account of events starting with the astrophysicist Fang Lizhi’s appeal to Deng Xiaoping to release the dissident Wei Jingsheng in February, up to and including the Beijing Massacre of 3-10 June, commenced.… Read

A Writer’s Desk & the Vastness of China — 1989, 2019

Xu Zhangrun vs. Tsinghua University
Voices of Protest & Resistance (XXV)   Despite being under a formal interdiction that bans him from writing or publishing new work, Xu Zhangrun has taken to reworking and releasing essays on a range of topics composed before the authorities of Tsinghua University launched their ‘kangaroo investigation’ into him in late March 2019.… Read

A Scholar’s Virtus & the Hubris of the Dragon

Xu Zhangrun vs. Tsinghua University
Voices of Protest & Resistance (XXIV)   Upon taking up a position at Tsinghua College (later Tsinghua University) in 1914, the prominent thinker and political activist Liang Qichao (梁启超, 1873-1929) addressed a student audience on the theme of ‘The Gentleman’.… Read