Put this by @franceshisgen.bsky.social on my list awhile back, and being the scatterbrain I am it took a bit to get around to it. It's worth a few minutes of your time, if for nothing else than to acknowledge the bravery it takes to stand up and say this right now. nuvoices.com/2025/07/01/i...

Delighted that Joseph Torigian (@josephtorigian.bsky.social) will be joining us in Glasgow for
our Scottish Centre for China Research seminar series.

Join us! Wed 8 Oct 4pm UK time

To join online register via link at:
www.gla.ac.uk/research/az/...

Ok as of now, if you really rely on LLMs for close reading of government regulations, the interpretation will be mediocre to poor. I think Gemini is pretty good for Chinese material but even it misses many things which would be obvious to a trained human analyst

We are saddened to hear of the passing of Jerome A. Cohen, the eminent scholar of Chinese law. Our condolences to his family and all those who loved him.

He authored many books, most recently the memoir, "Eastward, Westward: A Life in Law."

(1/2)

Abolishing ILR is a deranged level of racism and xenophobia even by the standards of these deranged, xenophobic racists.

Academia.edu is changing its Terms and Conditions, and they're so outrageous (AI training; signing over ownership to them etc) I closed my account today.

A thread with some practical tips if you want to delete your account (5 steps):

Pacific island leaders gathering in the Solomon Islands this week have adopted a novel strategy to prevent US-China tensions from overshadowing the region’s most important annual summit: inviting neither.

On parade day, amid talk of a new world order, Jordyn Haime looks at the notion of China as a "civilizational state" (文明型国家). Arising years before "civilization" joined the core of CCP thought, it connects today to Xi's “Global Civilization Initiative.” chinamediaproject.org/the_ccp_dict...

We seem to be living in an age of norm sabotage so this looks particularly relevant

I’ll be presenting tomorrow at 14.00 on Xi Jinping’s Global Security Initiative and then at 16.00 I’m on a Global IR panel talking about my forthcoming OUP book, Securing China: Worlding Security Studies #EISAPEC2025 come join!

This reminds me of the classic blog entry about falsehoods that programmers believe about names: www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/f...

And this excellent follow-up with examples: shinesolutions.com/2018/01/08/f...

“You don’t fight Reform UK by making its strongest issue the national priority. Nor, as countless political-science research projects have illustrated, do you effectively combat the radical right by accommodating them.” 👏👏👏Also: there’s no such thing as ‘politically acceptable racism’. Depressing.

“This is Chinese culture” reminds me of a white American friend in Beijing who cheated at mahjong and insisted she was playing by “Inner Mongolian rules” if anyone called her out on it

In the latest in our series on belief, we’re examining the emergence of incels in the world’s largest manosphere. China’s growing incel community is fuelled by state-approved nationalism and simple demographics—by one estimate, 30 million Chinese men won’t find a life partner. (1/3)

wrote an explainer of how the sausage gets made when it comes to censorship in China, partially to serve as a useful comparative study for America

foreignpolicy.com/2025/08/19/c...

China's chatbots are silent about a protest in Sichuan last week, telling us not to spread "unverified information."

These AI models are now a crucial part of the Party's censorship system for sudden-breaking stories and emergencies (突发事件).

As always, Ted Chiang is great in this interview.
cdh.princeton.edu/blog/2025/08...

Weird Al becomes a martyr of the revolution and by the 2050s we're all getting teary-eyed when a mournful rendition of "Eat It" comes on the radio.

Since 2015, a new concept has emerged in the PRC propaganda sphere: "peripheral communication" (周边传播).
For @nbr.org, @angrant.bsky.social examines how this new propaganda theory purports to help China better penetrate the information space of its neighbors.
strategicspace.nbr.org/expanding-ch...

the destruction of expertise has direct, immediate geopolitical consequences. www.smh.com.au/world/europe...

New paper!

Govand Khalid Azeez & I ask:
- What's a Marxist critique of ecomodernism?
- How should Marxists think about technological innovation & climate crisis?
- Why haven't they thought about this more?

Our proposition: seizing the means of innovation.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

So urban workers will be sent down to the countryside, then?

If only history could be our guide…