70-20-10 and the Parading of Lies in Beijing on 3 September 2025

Celebrating New Sinology 真偽莫辨   In this chapter of Celebrating New Sinology, published on the eve of the 3 September 2025 Victory Day parade in Beijing, we start with a short essay on the ‘70-20-10 Strategy’ attributed to Mao Zedong in 1937 and the debates surrounding the Second Japanese War.… Read

Underground Elegies — on a China that won’t be silent

The Other China 敢有歌吟動地哀   … although the People’s Republic is anything but voiceless under Xi Jinping, it has paradoxically become silent. Censorship and fear are commonplace, as has so often been the case in the past, and there is cowed conformity.… Read

Other People’s Thoughts LXIV

This is the sixty-fourth chapter in Other People’s Thoughts, a China Heritage series inspired by a compilation of quotations put together by Simon Leys (Pierre Ryckmans), one of our Ancestors, during his reading life.… Read

The Duck of American Fascism

Contra Trump When I see a bird that quacks like a duck, walks like a duck, has feathers and webbed feet and associates with ducks—I’m certainly going to assume that he is a duck.… Read

The Strange Tales of Aladdin Dogballs

Celebrating New Sinology 狗蛋誌異 The culture of Qi-Lu 齊魯, modern-day Shandong province, brackets the Chinese tradition. At one end there are thinkers like Confucius, Zhuangzi and Mencius, while at the other is Pu Songling (蒲松齡, 1640-1715).… Read