I get occasional DMs about what you can read to actually learn stuff about China today, Chinese history, etc. And the short answer is lol. But I figured it might be useful to share some books ive read over the years, pop history and not, that have helped out with this.🧵: first is Jonathan Spence's Penguin History of Modern China. Is it a good unbiased history? No. Is it exhaustive? Also no. Does it cite sources carefully? Also no. But if you want a one volume overview of The Standard Liberal History of China, here it is, readable and easy

MANCHUKUO 1987 is my alternate history novel. At the sunset of the decaying Japanese empire, four people -a guilty Kempeitai officer, a Chinese communist in hiding, a model patriotic schoolgirl and a closeted propaganda writer - are brought together by a horrific crime





been writing this since January 2021. I wanted to think about how absurd manchukuos propaganda idealism (and the reality of cynical exploitation) would get by the 1980s, and to draw a parallel with other long, protracted colonial hangovers (south Africa was a big inspiration)

for all that "Dengism" represents a break with Marxism-Leninism in some ways, ultimately it's a continuation of the wartime developmentalist logic of Stalin. this quote from Kotkin's "Magnetic Mountain" struck me as being at the core of post-1978 China as well as the 1930s USSR and since I think we're past "Stalin betrayed the revolution" now, I would say that in this sense you *can* find a Marxist logic to modern China. Deng's reforms were an inevitable result of MLism the Chinese context made possible (unlike in Europe), not a sudden departure

if we return to the "reformers/conservatives" perspective of the 1980s and see that today's China is dominated by "reformers", that loose pro-market blob of liberals, technocrats, grifters etc. we might ask why this group is not held more responsible for the country today the Party itself erases much of that 1980s divide but so do we; it's very expedient to blame it to disguise how many of these problems (corruption, inequality, social alienation) are the result specifically of marketisation being pursued without opposition for decades now

for me the psychology behind our perspective on China's Zero-Covid policy and its end, as well as the usual Sinophobia, also comes from a desire to see the pandemic win everywhere - so it wasn't us that fucked up, you see - that has been a theme since 2021 in 2020 lots of early Covid media coverage was about how the west would obviously do better. when this didn't happen at all it switched to how "living with the virus" was obviously inevitable, and by speedrunning this we actually won in the end anyway.

real significance of recent protests in China was just as another indicator of tide of politicisation - alongside hardcore nationalism, interest in old socialist ideals, even "lying flat" etc. - clear younger Chinese are going to be much more political than their parents western pov on this oft ignores nationalism, pro-gov/socialist politics as artificial and only really cares about "down with xi jinping", but it's all the same trend which is tied in with the increasing breakdown of the managerial party-state represented by jiang-hu years

i think a lot more of the Communist Party of China's current ideological and practical dilemmas make sense when you think of them as being a 1990s "neither left or right but forward" third way managerial centrist party. a short thread: the CPC shares with other 1990s centrists the positioning itself as above left or right; the focus on politics as control of undeniable (right-defined) systems; the attacks on the left as old-fashioned, outdated, etc. while also co-opting their emotive pull on the old base, etc.

a stormy day out today to Chen Clan Academy (陈家祠), a Qing era temple and study hall for the 72 Chen families. the academy is famous for its rooftop sculptures and now serves as the Guangdong Folk Art Museum

find "reform and opening up was so successful because of political and economic decentralization" a gross take given how it ignores a key part of this 'decentralization' was the destruction of mass organizations, erosion of workers rights and the explosion of local corruption reform is often treated as a miracle where relaxing the stifling hand of the state = growth; the deliberate destruction of socialist institutions, and the ugly deal of then selling the labour of disenfranchised Chinese workers to HK/RoC/foreign capitalists is conveniently ignored

American foreign policy being defined by reaction, an overstretched attempt to maintain the peace of 1991 everywhere, has come to fetishise action - since action is what strong, vigorous powers do. something China (and Taiwan) should bare in mind is the basic incoherence of this Ukraine from this POV was a good thing, since it allowed many actions to be taken. in that example we see all-out war with another big power, which America could win but not with the ease of Iraq, is the only action off the table. but there's no big plan to *avoid* war either.

thesis: Tsai and the DPP focus so much on this democracy vs authoritarianism angle to obscure the fact that China's fundamental concern re:Taiwan is rooted in national identity, not different political systems.

https://twitter.com/iingwen/status/1445314377633067009

China never got so butthurt with the elected KMT, so it seems to me it's all about the independence question, not democracy. but the DPP can't admit this bcoz then we might ask "why don't you just fudge the sovereignty issue like the KMT did and does, and avoid all this shit?"