An Introduction by David Ownby and Timothy Cheek This essay by Jiang Shigong 强世功 (b. 1967), published in the Guangzhou journal Open Times (开放时代) in January 2018, aims to be an authoritative statement of the new political orthodoxy under Xi Jinping 习近平(b. 1953) as Xi begins his second term as China’s supreme leader. It offers … more
An Interview with Ai Weiwei by Zeng Jinyan Ai Weiwei 艾未未 is renowned for making strong aesthetic statements that resonate with timely phenomena across today’s geopolitical world. From architecture to installations, social media to documentaries, Ai uses a wide range of mediums as expressions of new ways for his audiences to examine society and its … more
Translator’s Preface It takes some nerve to title one’s essay ‘A China Bereft of Thought’ 没有思想的中国 for this is, surely, an extravagant claim. Yet, as we will discover in Rong Jian’s essay of this title below, he is utterly dogged in his ambition to make the claim stick. He knows he is being deliberately polemical … more
As of January 2016, the Thinking China section of The China Story has introduced several aspects of contemporary Chinese thought and debate under three headings: key intellectuals, key articles and currents of thought. We have been particularly interested in the interplay of intellectual and official perspectives on a range of pressing social and political questions. Thinking China forms … more
The ideas of Carl Schmitt (1888-1985), a man known as ‘the crown jurist of the Third Reich’, have enjoyed enormous currency among mainland Chinese scholars since the 2000s. The role of prominent academics such as Liu Xiaofeng 刘小枫, Gan Yang 甘阳 and Wang Shaoguang 王绍光 in promoting Schmitt’s ideas, and the fact that his theories on the … more
The text below is based on discussions conducted at the symposium of this name in Sydney 17-19 December 2013. Organised by the Australian Centre on China in the World, the symposium was also the culmination of a two-year project on ‘Re-reading Levenson’ undertaken by six historians: Geremie Barmé (Australian National University), Timothy Cheek (University of … more
In 2013, an anonymous story about the lives of some sixty interns at an unnamed bank in China, posted on the popular online forum Tianya, went viral on the Chinese Internet. The author, who claimed to work at the bank, highlighted the importance of family background and connections in determining a person’s fate. It wasn’t … more
The 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing and China’s robust economy that year, despite the global financial crisis, made many Chinese citizens immensely proud of their country. They felt that China had regained the admiration of the world and resumed its rightful place as a global superpower. But such feelings are often undercut by worries about … more
Since the start of 2014, China’s economic situation and its prospects has been much discussed and debated in the Chinese-language media. Three factors have contributed to this focus on the economy: Xi Jinping’s strong leadership style and rapid centralisation of power since assuming the role of Party General Secretary in November 2012; the current administration’s … more
The digital revolution has had a profound effect on the practice of reading: tablets, e-readers, blogs, and multimedia channels have changed the way we read and our views of writing. As a result, traditional bookstores are under threat and booksellers are suffering. This change is not limited to the West: in China too, electronic writing … more
