The Wang Liqiang spy/defector story: real or fake?

Apologies for the last post, which went out without a title.

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The Wang Liqiang spy/defector story: real or fake?

Wang Liqiang is a Chinese national now in Australia who recently went to the Australian press (here, The Age) to…

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The “rule of law” and the concept of an “essentially contested concept”

Recently in the course of some writing I’ve had to address the problem of “essentially contested concepts.” But because the…

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Dagong bond rating agency taken over after licenses suspended

The Financial Times reports that the Dagong bond rating agency has been taken over by a state-owned investment company after…

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Introducing two new co-bloggers

It’s my pleasure to welcome two new co-bloggers here: Ling Li and Nils Pelzer. Ling is a Lecturer in the…

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Controversy about Chinese students at Bard College: not what it appears to be on the surface

I’ve never been to Bard College, but it has always been a little special to me, since that’s where Donald…

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The Xinjiang Initiative

The Xinjiang Initiative is a project to raise awareness about the terrible things happening in Xinjiang right now. I urge…

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Whataboutism: valid and invalid forms

A recent discussion on a Chinese politics discussion group of which I’m a member raised the issue of whataboutism. What…

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Does English-language (or more broadly, “Western”) media focus too much on human rights issues in China?

[CORRECTION JAN. 8 2018: I have learned that the writer is a she. Please deem all relevant pronouns as changed…

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“Low-end” people in China

Yesterday I blogged about the response of He Weifang and others to the sudden expulsion from Beijing of large numbers…

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