“We must maintain a holistic view of national security. We take the people’s security as our ultimate goal, political security as our fundamental task, and economic security as our foundation.” —Secretary General Xi Jinping, April 2014. Are we ready for what comes next? The news this week is that the United States of America has […]
Image Source It is not luxury and pomp that make a king a king. It is when his orders are never disobeyed that he has entered a title such as yours. —Mudrarakshasa 3.99 [c. 300 AD] The always excellent Stella Zhang directed me to a newish paper by political scientists Lee Jones and Zeng Jinhan […]
This video is a good demonstration of what Chinese teenagers (or in this case, a Taiwanese teenager) mean when they say the 2D world is more ‘meihao’ than the 3D one. I have spent a great deal of time with Chinese teenagers. When I lived in Beijing, I paid no rent: instead I lived in […]
Chiang Kai-shek reviews Taiwanese conscripts in the 1950s. Image source. Two weeks ago The National Interest published an important, hard-nosed essay by Wendell Minnick. I have had the opportunity to meet Minnick before. His knowledge of and long experience with the ROC Armed Forces (the “guojun” 國軍) has few equals. His assessment on Taiwanese defense preparations […]
Image source I have spent the last month in Cambodia. During my time here I have taken a keen interest in what every day Cambodians think about the torrent of things Chinese that has flooded into their country over the last few years. I have not found any survey data on this question (readers are […]
Rainer Hachfeld, Stalin-Mao-Xi, originally published 12 March, 2018. The most striking difference between ancient and modern sophists is that the ancients were satisfied with a passing victory of the argument at the expense of truth, whereas the moderns want a more lasting victory at the expense of reality. In other words, one destroyed the dignity of human thought […]
Image Source The New York Times had an interesting piece out this week about the lengths their reporters in China go to try and protect their sources and their data from the digital surveillance state. To quote a bit from the piece: I use an iPhone because Apple tends to be more secure than Android. […]
Rainer Hachfeld, Stalin-Mao-Xi, originally published 12 March, 2018. The State is a machine in the hands of the governing class for suppressing the resistance of its class antagonists. In this way the dictatorship of the proletariat differs in no way essentially from the dictatorship of any other class. —Joseph Stalin (1937) Over at Sinocism, Bill […]
. The twelve core socialist values.Image Source. The few intellectuals who incited the students to action oppose the socialist system and advocate bourgeois liberalization. By that I mean they want China to be totally Westernized and to take the capitalist road. Our experience has shown, however, that we cannot take that road. —Deng Xiaoping (1986) […]
A picture of a book shelf I own. We often hear of people who will descend to any servility, submit to any insult for the sake of getting themselves or their children into what is euphemistically called good society. Did it ever occur to them that there is a select society of all the centuries […]
