Lots to chew on in this superb series of articles by @DSORennie for @TheEconomist on China's goals for world order.

Struck by examples of when 🇨🇳 presents itself as a generous benefactor w/ grateful recipients only for the details contradict that image 1/ economist.com/special-report… "Chinese leaders boast of 'providing' almost 3.8bn doses of covid vaccines to the world. Dozens of Chinese embassies lobbied recipient countries to hold airport arrival ceremonies for arrivals of Sinopharm and Sinovac jabs." 2/

Apparently the UCD Confucius Institute under the label “The Irish Institute for Chinese Studies” can hire permanent faculty to teach at UCD and nobody in university management seems to think that’s problematic. jobs.ac.uk/job/CFK602/lec… To be clear and to state the obvious, it is highly problematic for several reasons:

1) we’ve been told repeatedly not to worry about the CI since it’s just about language & culture. The CI is now directly involved in curriculum and hiring decisions at the university.

My @OUPAcademic book Making the World Safe for Dictatorship is now officially published.

[Thread] You can see more details and purchase the book here: global.oup.com/academic/produ…

Please see my new article with @sbrazys_ucd in @JoDemocracy

It analyzes the global messaging of Xinhua - China's main state news agency - in several languages.

[Thread] journalofdemocracy.org/articles/china… It takes a 30,000 foot view - analyzing tone & topics in hundreds of thousands articles over a 5-year period.

Obvs there are strengths & weaknesses to this approach, but esp given how many foreign news agencies have content agreements w/ Xinhua, we find some interesting things:

Been thinking about the Chinese gov's expulsion of some US journalists b/c it is directly relevant to a book I'm writing on how authoritarian states manage their image for foreign audiences (indeed, there's an entire chapter on foreign correspondents in China). A few thoughts: While the proximate & public justification for these measures is US-China tensions, a response to awful Trumpist racism, the WSJ "sick man" headline, ect., the issue is much deeper. It's not as if China was an ordinary environment for foreign correspondents before this.

Few people would have ever known or cared what the Houston Rockets' GM had to say about #HongKong had the Chinese gov not made a big deal about it. So now everyone knows, and it is backfiring on Beijing, right? Actually, I'm skeptical of that argument: bbc.com/news/business-… In this particular episode perhaps it is making the NBA look craven & making Beijing look petty, but when one takes a longer view the strategy may work. As with all of these grovelling corporate apologies, it is a reminder to others: toe the party line or lose market access.

A few weeks ago we learned that Taylor & Francis became the latest academic publisher to have its catalogue censored in China. A thread with a few thoughts and context. This has been happening more frequently (or visibly) since 2017. SpringerNature acquiesced to Chinese government censorship demands seemingly without putting up much of a fight. nytimes.com/2017/11/01/wor…

After a trip to China, UCD leadership sent an email to staff lauding the "wisdom of the Chinese approach" to funding higher ed & encouraging the Irish government to learn from China.

OK, but here are a few aspects of the "Chinese approach" the message forgot to mention: First, Xi Jinping has advocated tightening ideological controls on universities. chinadigitaltimes.net/2014/12/xi-cal…