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Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️

@chenchenzhang.net

8.4K followers 320 following 1.4K posts

migrant & researcher interested in politics and other things. currently: digital narratives, postcolonial nationalism, the global right, China stuff. neurodiversity-affirming parenting. she/her. 不必等待炬火. https://chenchenzhang.net .. more

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Environmental science 62%

Geography 19%

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Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️ @chenchenzhang.net · 5d

recently fell in love with some Malaysian Chinese content creators on IG... they use simplified hanzi so usually it's not immediately clear to me where the creator is located. then you notice a bit of English, a bit of local references, but also digital expression from 🇨🇳 as well. really interesting.

Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️ @chenchenzhang.net · 5d

don't know anything about Namibian politics and I was today years old when I learnt that Namibia's ruling party Swapo's ideology is "socialism with Namibian characteristics"

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Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️ @chenchenzhang.net · 5d

is this a metaphor...

photo of a trampoline turned upside down

Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️ @chenchenzhang.net · 5d

"Takaichi has been a long-time admirer of Britain's first female prime minister, Margaret Thatcher. " ok
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Sanae Takaichi set to become Japan's first female prime minister

Takaichi is a long-time admirer of Margaret Thatcher, but many female voters do not see her as an advocate for progress.

www.bbc.co.uk

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Reposted by Cas Mudde, Marc Lynch, Patrick A. Jansen , and 12 more Cas Mudde, Marc Lynch, Patrick A. Jansen, Zhang, Tom Shakespeare, Rosemary A. Joyce, Luca Rossi, Kurt Vandaele, Alan Richardson, Dana R. Fisher, Rebecca Zorach, Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò, Nathan P. Kalmoe, Bruce Buchan, James M. Thomas

The Associated Press @apnews.com · 5d

Over 2 million people across Italy have rallied in more than 100 cities for a one-day general strike.

2 million rally in Italy for Gaza as general strike halts key services

Over 2 million people across Italy have rallied in more than 100 cities for a one-day general strike.

bit.ly

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Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️ @chenchenzhang.net · 5d

"it's not clear" 😭

Eric Lipton NYT @ericlipton.nytimes.com · 6d

It is not clear that Mr. Trump’s image can be featured on a coin. An 1866 law enshrined a tradition that only deceased people could appear on U.S. currency to avoid the appearance that America was a monarchy. Trump admin is planning to do it anyway.
By Alan Rappeport

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/03/b...

Treasury Plans to Mint $1 Commemorative Trump Coin

www.nytimes.com

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Reposted by Kim L. Scheppele, Brendan Nyhan, Zhang , and 12 more Kim L. Scheppele, Brendan Nyhan, Zhang, Tom Clark, Stefanie Walter, Elizabeth Stokoe, Laurent Pech, David R. Miller, Silvia Secchi, Michael D. McDonald, Ann Bartow, Andrew Rudalevige, Farah Mendlesohn, Nathan P. Kalmoe, Colin Woodard

Eric Lipton NYT @ericlipton.nytimes.com · 6d

Treasury Plans to Mint $1 Commemorative Trump Coin

www.nytimes.com

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Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️ @chenchenzhang.net · 6d

the illustrator obviously had never seen a public toilet with cubicle doors and this was what most toilets looked like in China back then. one does wonder how can James Bond retrieve a secret letter when everything is visible to all...

Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️ @chenchenzhang.net · 6d

continue on the theme of different "toilet cultures", I grew up using toilets without flush water and without cubicles. this is a widely circulated image showing an illustrated 007 book likely from the 1980s. the illustration is about James Bond retrieving a secret letter in a public restroom...

Black-and-white photo of a man retrieving a letter from a partitioned restroom stall, while others stand nearby observing. Chinese text is printed below the image.

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Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️ @chenchenzhang.net · 6d

"a motley association of self-described Classical Liberals, evangelists of free-market capitalism, ethnonationalists, atheists, and conservative theologians".
journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

‘A great awakening of men of action’: What does the ‘right-wing Davos’ represent? - Huw Crighton Davies, 2025

The Financial Times called the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship’s 2025 conference the ‘right-wing Davos’. The Alliance involves academics from elite univers...

journals.sagepub.com

Reposted by Zhang

Saul Staniforth @saulstaniforth.bsky.social · 6d

@zackpolanski.bsky.social is asked about the Home Secretarys comments that yesterdays protests about Israels actions were dishonourable (she also said they were unBritish).

Zack is spot on.

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Reposted by Anna O. Law, Zhang, Mark D. White , and 2 more Anna O. Law, Zhang, Mark D. White, Nicolas Véron, Laurent Pech

Reuters @reuters.com · 7d

Apple removes ICE tracking apps after pressure by Trump administration reut.rs/4mIfztt

Apple removes ICE tracking apps after pressure by Trump administration

Apple said on Thursday that it had removed ICEBlock, the most popular ICE-tracking app, and other similar apps from its App Store after it was contacted by President Donald Trump's administration.

reut.rs

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Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️ @chenchenzhang.net · 7d

LOL. AI's over-talkative tendency can be so funny. asked it to come up with some marketing blurbs. It gives suggestions - completely normal stuff. then gives "what to avoid": "this is the first and only book to ever tackle..." WHO in their right mind would say that.

Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️ @chenchenzhang.net · 7d

thanks to the Rowling & Watson row I got myself involved in the trans debates on Douban and getting death threats as a result :)

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Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️ @chenchenzhang.net · 7d

hahaha is there a club for this

Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️ @chenchenzhang.net · 7d

my research identity is basically "a little more theoretical than empirical people and a little more empirical than theory people"

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Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️ @chenchenzhang.net · 7d

I wouldn't say it's uniquely Anglo though. Thanks to the Rowling & Watson row I got myself involved in the trans debate on Chinese social media and receiving death threats as a result...

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Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️ @chenchenzhang.net · 7d

the extreme politicization of the toilet issue in the English speaking world. anyhow, point being, when you have some cross-cultural comparison, it's clear that obsession with gender segregation in restrooms is not "natural" but learned.

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Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️ @chenchenzhang.net · 7d

that unisex restrooms are everywhere in the city probably reflects there's little contestation. as an international, my first reaction was "interesting" in that I noticed this is a bit different from other places I lived. but then I never thought about it again. it was later that I learned about

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Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️ @chenchenzhang.net · 7d

sometimes it's intriguing to think about when things get politicized and when they *don't*. I used to work in Copenhagen uni (that's a decade ago), and almost all toilets in the uni are unisex. no one ever talked about it. maybe there was and my Danish wasn't good enough to get, but the fact

Lee Hurley @hleehurley.com · 7d

So tired

[News Letter]

Trans case hears of ‘secret toilet’

An engineer began using a “secret toilet” at her workplace after encountering a transgender colleague in the female bathrooms, an employment tribunal has heard.

Maria Kelly said she does not want to “sacrifice my privacy and my dignity” by sharing toilets with a man and is taking legal action against her employer Leonardo UK.

She has lodged a complaint alleging harassment, direct and indirect discrimination.

Ms Kelly, people and capability lead for the aerospace firm’s electronics department in Edinburgh, said that as someone who suffers from heavy periods, female toilets are important to her as a place of refuge and privacy to deal with them.

She told the tribunal in Edinburgh that after encountering a transgender colleague in the female bathrooms she began using two toilets that only women know about.

She added: “I don’t know any man who knows about them. I know women who use them because of the increased privacy.”

Ms Kelly said she had first become aware of a transgender person using the female toilets in 2019 when a member of staff from an office elsewhere in the UK came to Edinburgh and female colleagues told her about it, seeming “genuinely upset”.

She said she did not raise the issue with the company at the time as she feared being labelled “transphobic” or being put on the “naughty list”.

Her lawyer Naomi Cunningham asked her for her understanding of what constitutes a man and a woman.

She replied: “It’s always been related to sex, so it’s the sex that you were born, so if you were born male you remain male and if you were born female you remain female.”

The tribunal continues.

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Reposted by Zhang

Lee Hurley @hleehurley.com · 7d

So tired

[News Letter]

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Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️ @chenchenzhang.net · 7d

‘She didn’t realise how dangerous it was’: London-bound student held in China over Tibet support www.theguardian.com/global-devel...

‘She didn’t realise how dangerous it was’: London-bound student held in China over Tibet support

Zhang Yadi was due to begin a degree in the UK but the activist vanished on holiday amid tensions over Dalai Lama

www.theguardian.com

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Reposted by Zhang, Antoine Bernard de Raymond

Jean-François Bonnefon @jfbonnefon.bsky.social · 7d

what a playful cover featuring examples of what participants told the AI to do in our ‘delegation to AI can increase dishonest behavior‘ article

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

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Reposted by Zhang

eileen chengyin chow @chowleen.bsky.social · 8d

I am so sorry to hear the news.

Jane Goodall has passed away, October 1, 2025. She just spoke in Taipei in June: "Young people are the future...we've been stealing their future for a very long time..So we've got to spend time with them and help them understand [that there] is a way forward."

photo of Jane Goodall in Taipei in a public lecture, a stuffed animal monkey holding a banana is on the desk beside her

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Phil Lewis @phillewis.bsky.social · 8d

Jane Goodall, ethologist and conservationist, has died. She was 91

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Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️ @chenchenzhang.net · 8d

journals, and newspapers published in China (CNKI coverage), used this in the title since 2000. It's like, rare. But for some reason every English-language writing on China likes to throw this in, as if using this phrase is evidence of expertise.

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Reposted by Graham Webster

Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️ @chenchenzhang.net · 8d

one of the most overused cliche phrase in English writings on China? century of humiliation
national humiliation or 国耻 is a keyword in Chinese discourse, as in 勿忘国耻 never forget national humiliation. but 百年国耻 is not frequently used at all. a CNKI search shows 12 articles, from all magazines,

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Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️ @chenchenzhang.net · 8d

national newspapers and ex-wife of a senior politician? Emma Watson may well be privileged. but it's never about Emma Watson. dehumanizing racial other and delegitimating social justice by attacking the "privilege" and "hypocrisy" of celebrities, my friend, is 90% of the anti-baizuo discourse

Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️ @chenchenzhang.net · 8d

like the "oppression Olympics", we're getting the "privilege Olympics". that's when accusing another person of being privileged loses any critical purchase, and weaponized by whom? literally the richest writer on earth with 14M followers on social media? columnist for one of the largest

Lee Hurley @hleehurley.com · 8d

"Emma Watson’s so typical of the entitled generation who think they’re right about everything – like the young woman who rolled her eyes at me the other day" Sarah Vine, Mail

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Reposted by Zhang

Lee Hurley @hleehurley.com · 8d

"Emma Watson’s so typical of the entitled generation who think they’re right about everything – like the young woman who rolled her eyes at me the other day" Sarah Vine, Mail

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