1464 posts tagged with china.
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High Quality Industrial Food Grade Glycine
Before being Rednoted (recently), but after sabotaging attendance at Donald Trump's 2020 campaign rally, TikTok users discovered Donghua Jinlong is the only choice when you're looking for High Quality Industrial Food Grade and New Pharmaceutical Glycine (and then going full dada). What does this meme say about TikTok, the future of free speech and the internet?
Depending where you are, you may now or soon need a VPN to see this content. [more inside]
Depending where you are, you may now or soon need a VPN to see this content. [more inside]
What is RedNote?
American users are turning to RedNote, the Chinese equivalent of Instagram/Pinterest, ahead of a looming TikTok ban, which legislators are now urging Biden to extend the Jan 19 deadline for. TikTok has called rumors that it is considering a sale to Elon Musk, "pure fiction", and its parent company ByteDance has said that it would shut down rather than sell to an American buyer. [more inside]
Here's some cute pandas
Giant Pandas Bao Li and Qing Bao play in the snow. The National Zoo in Washington, DC, has a new pair of pandas after returning three pandas at the end of 2023 to China. Bao Li and Qing Bao will be visible to the public beginning January 24, 2025.
The West has the wrong mental model of innovation in China
The Rise of Chinese Biopharma. "The growth continues at a rapid clip, the Chinese investigational drug pipeline has doubled in size over the past three years (according to an analysis in Nature, the number of original Chinese drugs in development grew from 2,251 on July 2021 to 4,391 on January 2024). Again, Europe is the loser here; more novel drugs (new molecular entities) are originated in China now than in Europe....Ten years ago, a major pharmaCo seeking their next breakthrough molecule would have turned to an American or European biotech. Today, they’re just as likely to license a molecule from a Chinese company. Chinese companies will often run the phase I trial in China for cheap, then flip it to a Western pharmaCo to run the expensive US trials and bring the drug to market.." [more inside]
Typically the lowest rung of an international criminal network
How your stolen phone ends up in China [MailOnline]
63 Chinese Cuisines: The Complete Guide
A survey of all the cuisines in China, probably undercounted. Chinese Cooking Demystified attempts to catalog every single regional cuisine in China, complete with explanations, maps, and of course, the food.
underground, in your veins
Some 700 yards deep in Colombia’s richest gold mine, private security guards crouch behind sandbags, trapped in a failing battle with a drug-trafficking gang that has commandeered 30 miles of tunnels worth hundreds of millions of dollars. A Drug Gang Stole 3 Tons of Gold in a Scam So Perfect It’s Still Going (WSJ, archive) But Colombia is not alone in having its mines taken over: Over the past several weeks, the zama-zamas at Stilfontein have been locked in a standoff with police, who surrounded the entrance to the mine shaft and blocked off their food supplies in an attempt — in the words of one cabinet minister — to "smoke them out." South Africa's illegal gold miners are locked in an underground standoff with police (NPR). (previously)
gotta get that good dumpling!
Character Amnesia
Lowest cost estimate: $108,000 per minute for 30 years
The Price: America is Updating Its Nuclear Weapons Systems (slNYT) (Archive) Part of the Series: The Brink (archive)
How the US Lost the Solar Power Race to China
Bloomberg Columnist David Fickling examines the story of how Chinese companies became the largest and most efficient producers of polysilicon, the bottleneck in production of photovoltaic (PV) cells, tackling some myths behind their success and with lessons on what not to do if we don't want a repeat in the future.
"I've seen it all"
“to eat a duck” is to get rid of the oppressor
10 Traditional Mid-Autumn Festival Foods. Mooncakes: to make at home, to protest oppression, to promote mental health care. 11 Recipes to Celebrate Chuseok (Korean Thanksgiving).
But who makes all the food? Why do divorces go up after Chuseok? For many, Chuseok is the season of rage.
But who makes all the food? Why do divorces go up after Chuseok? For many, Chuseok is the season of rage.
Recent titles at Project MUSE
What's Hidden Inside Planets? (interview with Sabine Stanley) and What if Fungi Win? (interview with Arturo Casadevall) are open access titles launched at Project MUSE in the past few years. Miscellany of the South Seas: A Chinese Scholar's Chronicle of Shipwreck and Travel through 1830s Vietnam is a remarkable shipwreck narrative there too. The "Deities, Spirits, and Clergy" chapter in A Ming Confucian's World has an interesting complement in a reissue of much earlier stories: Classical Chinese Tales of the Supernatural and the Fantastic. The Georgia Open History Library reprints texts on colonial America. And in media studies, a reissue of Film Makers on Film Making has recent counterparts in books on Ultima and a bunch of Landmark Video Games--plus I Know You Are, but What Am I?: On Pee-wee Herman.
Absolutely Nothing
More frightening still is that the stakes are becoming absolute all around. For China, Russia can’t lose in Ukraine or its most powerful ally against the West seeking to contain it will be formidably weakened. For Western leaders and their Asian allies, Russia can’t be allowed to win or the entire liberal order of open societies will be at risk of geopolitical bullying by well-armed autocrats, notably Xi, who they fear will come to believe seizing what they please by force will only be met with limited repercussions. from The World Is Assuming A Pre-War Posture [Noema] [more inside]
In Milan I asked my mom, Doesn’t this remind you a little bit of China?
Because I had inherited a vast legacy of silence, because silence was my country, I had to build a wall to see its borders. These two methodologies—the persistent Italian unchanging, the hyper Chinese dream of progress—are two ways of addressing the same vacancy: the void between where we came from and how we got here. [more inside]
Everything we have is going to go to Ukraine until their needs are met.
A round-up of links inside on the Russia-Ukraine war. Today is day 848 of the invasion. [more inside]
Thanks.
Reuters: Pentagon ran secret anti-vax campaign to undermine China during pandemic 'The U.S. military launched a clandestine program [that started under former President Donald Trump and continued months into Joe Biden’s presidency] amid the COVID crisis to discredit China’s Sinovac inoculation – payback for Beijing’s efforts to blame Washington for the pandemic. One target: the Filipino public. Health experts say the gambit was indefensible and put innocent lives at risk.' (ungated)
35 Years Later: A Retrospective on the 1989 Tiananmen Protests
China File's retrospective on the 1989 student protests and ensuing massacre. Silence and heavy security in China and Hong Kong marked the anniversary. There are 47 activists and protesters who have been accused by the Chinese government of trying to "overthrow" the government in Hong Kong 3 years ago. In Hong Kong, US and EU consulates marked the anniversary with candles. Taiwan's President William Lai Ching-te has promised that the anniversary would not be forgotten. Previously.
exploiting a legal exemption from the 1930 Tariff Act
Nineteen percent of cotton on the U.S. market still sources back to the forced labor heartlands of East Turkestan (Xinjiang), according to a new analysis from Applied DNA of 822 cotton-containing products sampled from February 2023 to March 2024.... More info on enforcing the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which prohibits the importation of goods produced wholly or in part from the so-called Xinjiang Autonomous Uyghur Region unless it can be proven that they are not the fruits of coerced labor.
Anti-American partnerships during WWII and the early Cold War
Confronting Another Axis? History, Humility, and Wishful Thinking. A long historical essay by Philip Zelikow, describing the perspectives of past and present US adversaries. "Zelikow warns that the United States faces an exceptionally volatile time in global politics and that the period of maximum danger might be in the next one to three years. Adversaries can miscalculate and recalculate, and it can be difficult to fully understand internal divisions within an adversary’s government, how rival states draw their own lessons from different interpretations of history, and how they might quickly react to a new event that appears to shift power dynamics." Via Noah Smith.
The Legacy of KMT's "Lost Army" After Losing China
Unless you knew modern Chinese history well, you probably have no idea what I am talking about. Most people only knew that "after Chiang Kai-Shek's Nationalists, or KMT, was defeated by Mao Tse-tung Communists, Chiang took his army to Taiwan and settled there and turned it into an economic powerhouse..." What most people do not know is that a portion of the KMT Eight Army, under General Li Mi, comprised of KMT 26th and 93rd Divisions, actually remained in Yunnan after after Chiang's retreat, and in order to grow their support, they, with permission from Chiang, allied themselves with the the Karen National Defense Organization and tried to help them take over Myanmar / Burma. Those of you who watched Rambo (2008) may recognize "Karen", as in the Karen Rebels. Yes, it's the same people, still fighting the Myanmar government decades later. And there are a lot more involvement of the Lost Army... [more inside]
Fear, Cynicism, Nihilism, and Apathy
Even in a state where surveillance is almost total, the experience of tyranny and injustice can radicalize people. Anger at arbitrary power will always lead someone to start thinking about another system, a better way to run society. [...] If people are naturally drawn to the image of human rights, to the language of democracy, to the dream of freedom, then those concepts have to be poisoned. [...] Here is a difficult truth: A part of the American political spectrum is not merely a passive recipient of the combined authoritarian narratives that come from Russia, China, and their ilk, but an active participant in creating and spreading them. Like the leaders of those countries, the American MAGA right also wants Americans to believe that their democracy is degenerate, their elections illegitimate, their civilization dying. The MAGA movement’s leaders also have an interest in pumping nihilism and cynicism into the brains of their fellow citizens, and in convincing them that nothing they see is true. Their goals are so similar that it is hard to distinguish between the online American alt-right and its foreign amplifiers, who have multiplied since the days when this was solely a Russian project. Tucker Carlson has even promoted the fear of a color revolution in America, lifting the phrase directly from Russian propaganda.The New Propaganda War: Autocrats in China, Russia, and elsewhere are now making common cause with MAGA Republicans to discredit liberalism and freedom around the world. [SLAtlantic]
Troubling the Water (Conceptualizing science, academic freedom & China)
Yangyang Cheng explores the historical evolution of how we think about science, its capitalization, politicization, and securitization, & how the US' competition with China is restricting the future of scientific research:
"To understand the present woes in scientific collaboration between the United States and China and to conceive of a better future, one must go back in time to trace the evolution of this transpacific relationship."
^•ﻌ•^ฅ oh, hello ฅ^•ﻌ•^ฅ...
meow.camera lets you watch live feeds from hundreds (thousands?) of cozy and custom-decorated cat feeders set up throughout various cities in China. [more inside]
Or, random facts about Imperial China
“The Apothecary Diaries” is an anime (/web novel/novel/light novel/manga/other manga) that takes place in a fictional kingdom based on Imperial China. Youtuber LibeliumDragonfly, a Chinese-Canadian translator, provides an episode-by-episode “viewing appendix” to separate the facts from the fiction. (SLYTPL)
The 3 Body Problem is out!
After a failed adaptation in 2017, Netflix has finally released the home-streaming adaptation of Cixin Liu's Three Body Problem trilogy. How will the slow build to epic scope that prevented some readers from finishing the book series fare in the hands of the same showrunners that brought you Game of Thrones? Binge ready for the weekend (trigger warning: starts with violence). [more inside]
TikTok... DOOM!
The seemingly dormant push to target ultrapopular video platform TikTok on national security grounds roared back to life this week as the House teed up a surprise bipartisan vote on forced divestment of the app's US operations.
An attempt by Chinese parent company ByteDance to mobilize users against the legislation clearly backfired, angering lawmakers into delivering a unanimous vote to proceed.
Critics warn the app offers the increasingly authoritarian CCP government reams of sensitive data and an unprecedented insight into the American psyche (along with a potent avenue for propaganda and influence operations), while defenders cite the company's diversified ownership and ongoing efforts at re-shoring US data operations.
Bolstered by support from the White House (and a troubling intelligence report on election interference), the bill sees likely passage in the House today and an uncertain path in the Senate, as well as a long legal battle after that. The biggest twist: former president Trump, a longtime Sinophobe who signed a failed executive order banning the app, has suddenly flipped in favor of it as a counterweight to Facebook -- a move many insiders see as calculated to undercut Biden's already precarious support from young voters. [more inside]
China's vet shortage
China has less than one-third the number of vets per capita as the United States or European Union. My cat had a health emergency this week and I had to call about 30 different animal hospital/clinics to see which one had a surgeon and a free OT to operate on my cat that afternoon. Thankfully, one out of the 30ish were able to take us at short notice. [more inside]
A remarkably efficient way to reduce America’s international reach
The risk of Americans being held on spurious charges by a foreign government is now so widespread that the State Department warns U.S. citizens against traveling to countries accounting for nearly a quarter of the world’s population. In diplomatic parlance, those nine nations are classified “D” for the risk of detention. Classification D is America’s gathering new reality: an increasingly piratical global system where the taking and trading of foreign citizens—once the preserve of guerrilla bands or fundamentalist insurgencies—has become a tactic deployed by nuclear states. from How Snatching American Citizens Turned Into a Tool of Hostile Governments [WSJ; ungated]
No hookups; yes Jubensha
Equal parts Murder Mystery Party, Escape Room, and Parlour LARP, Jubensha are the Chinese gaming experiences that you've probably never heard of. (NYT) [more inside]
Chinese Democracy
Voting begins in Taiwan's critical elections watched closely by China - "Polls opened on Saturday in Taiwan's presidential and parliamentary elections which China has framed as a choice between war and peace and are happening as Beijing ramps up pressure to get the island to accept its sovereignty. Taiwan has been a democratic success story since holding its first direct presidential election in 1996, the culmination of decades of struggle against authoritarian rule and martial law."[1,2,3] [more inside]
For the first time, I knew women could live differently
Heavily persecuted, highly influential: China’s online feminist revolution - by Wanqing Zhang in Rest of World. I couldn't pick a favourite quote, they are all so good!
Ten interesting dissertations on games, play, and meaning
May-Ying Mary Ngai (2011), "From entertainment to enlightenment: a study on a cross-cultural religious board game with emphasis on the Table of Buddha Selection ...," highlighted in 2021 by George Pollard on Twitter / IA / Nitter: "around 830 C.E. a man named Li He ... invents a game named 採選 Cǎixuǎn, Selection with Dice, about promotion and demotion in the ranks of the state bureaucracy," giving rise to Shengguan Tu (pics: 陞官圖 / 升官图). Serina Laureen Patterson's (2017) "Game on: medieval players and their texts" discusses fortune games like "Chaunce of the Dyse" (see also), "Truth or Dare" / Q&A games with a chosen king/queen, e.g. "The King Who Does Not Lie" or "Le jeu du Roi et de la Reine," and more. [more inside]
"Ghosts haunt cities, seeking revenge for the disappeared past"
The Haunted City is an essay by Azania Imtiaz Khatri-Patel about the ghosts who haunt modern life, concentrating on London, Mumbai and Japan. Meanwhile Andrew Kipnis' essay The Haunting of Modern China focuses on the ghosts of urban China, and the living's changing relationships with the dead.
A Land of Contrasts ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Sinicisation
How China is tearing down Islam [ungated; viz. cf.] - "Thousands of mosques have been altered or destroyed as Beijing's suppression of Islamic culture spreads."[1,2] [more inside]
Apple takes a bite out of speech
Jon Stewart's Apple TV show ends over editorial dispute regarding coverage of AI and China. Apple previously garnered public attention by removing an app in order to support the crackdown on Hong Kong protests in 2019. They bolstered this position with a curtailing a file sharing tool used to evade Chinese censorship in 2022.
Top science journal faced attacks from Covid conspiracy theory group
"One of the world’s most prestigious general science journals, Nature, was the target of a two-year-long sustained and virulent secret attack by a conspiratorial group of extreme Brexit lobbyists with high-level political, commercial and intelligence connections, according to documents and correspondence examined by Computer Weekly and Byline Times."
Magic mushroom diplomacy
“There was this delicious mushroom dish. I was not aware that these mushrooms had hallucinogenic properties...I learned that later.” Janet Yellen visited a Yunnan restaurant during an overseas visit and enjoyed local mushroom cuisine: jian shou qing, which means "see hand blue", referring to the blue stain the mushroom makes when bruised or cut. The dish is made with a local bolete mushroom called Lanmoa asiatica. When not properly cooked, the mushroom has been reported by some sources to have hallucinogenic properties.
Chinese zoo denies its sun bears are humans dressed in costumes
Hangzhou zoo insists animals are real after video of one standing on hind legs triggers online speculation
A zoo in eastern China has denied suggestions that some of its bears could be humans dressed in costumes, after video of one standing on its hind legs circulated online.
Video of a sun bear standing on its hind legs had circulated on social media, with people noting that its slender legs and folds of fur made it look like a human was acting the part of the bear.
But in an audio recording circulating on WeChat, a spokesperson for the zoo said the animal was real and that such deception would not happen at a state-run facility. He also noted that in the 40C (104F) summer temperature, a human in a fur bear suit “would not last more than a few minutes before collapsing”.[more inside]
Anti-semitic conspiracy theories + Chinese version of TikTok =
In less than eight minutes, the video’s narrator accuses Jews of starting China’s “century of humiliation” by financing the Opium Wars, and describes their cunning Fugu Plan. This 1939 Japanese proposal to resettle German Jews in the puppet state Manchukuo was named after the deadly blowfish that is a delicacy if handled correctly and was based on "expert" analysis of the fabricated antisemitic text The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. While about 20,000 Jews found refuge in Japanese-occupied Shanghai between 1938 and 1941, the Fugu Plan never gained traction, even with the putative beneficiaries. Nonetheless, in July 2023, the Fugu Plan is in the top search result for the word “Jew” (犹太人) on Douyin.
to learn what it feels like to be dead
White people food is the latest social media trend in China, with posters presenting minimalist lunches of raw veggies, crackers, slices to cheese, cold cuts and other staples, as Chinese young people discover the "lunch of suffering."
“Don’t speak of how women can’t become heroes”
Qiu Jin was a Chinese feminist revolutionary [archive link] beheaded by agents of the Qing empire in 1907, becoming a martyred hero to her cause. She was also a poet, and Canadian translator (and SF writer) Yilin Wang has been publishing new translations of her poetry in various venues. For more about her approach, you can read her essay about translating. These new translations have been widely appreciated, including by the British Museum, who stole them and published without attribution or compensation.
Coercive Diplomacy
Coercive diplomacy [PDF], "where international politics often takes place in a gray region involving no-peace and no-war, wherein the threat of violence – more than its mere application – is the critical variable," is everywhere. China recently published a laundry list of the US' efforts, while China's are also well-known, if less-than-effective. [more inside]
Cheetah immigration, tiger personality tests, lion triplets
Good news in big cat news. First cheetah cubs born in India since extinction 70 years ago. Tigers that scored higher on words such as confident, competitive, and ambitious fell under what the researchers labeled as the “majesty” mindset. With her third litter (three cubs!), Florence the lioness has now given birth to approximately one third of Senegal’s Niokolo Koba National Park 's lion population. [more inside]
Young Chinese Love Everything About Sweden. Except Living There.
After years working in China’s finance industry, Helen Wang was feeling on the edge of burnout. She was fed up with working grueling hours, then being expected to be on call during her precious time off. The 28-year-old wanted to find a new path: one where she could “lie flat” for a while.Then, a friend gave her a left-field suggestion: move to Sweden. On Chinese social media, Scandinavia is often portrayed as a socialist utopia — a place where women’s rights are respected, parents of young children receive lavish support, and the working culture is relatively relaxed. What better place to start over? [more inside]
Nüshu
Nüshu: China’s secret female-only language "Throughout history, women in rural Hunan Province used a coded script to express their most intimate thoughts to one another. Today, this once-“dead” language is making a comeback." [See also: Tan Dun's symphony Nu Shu: the Secret Songs of Women]
TSMC
I Saw the Face of God in a Semiconductor Factory [ungated] - "As the US boosts production of silicon chips, an American journalist goes inside TSMC, the mysterious Taiwanese company at the center of the global industry." (part of wired's 'let's get physical' series; previously: 1,2) [more inside]
As the Great Game Goes 'Round: Middle East Rapprochement & Realignment
Qatar and UAE in process of restoring diplomatic ties [ungated] - "The restoration of ties comes amid a broader regional push for reconciliation with Iran and Saudi Arabia agreeing last month to re-establish relations after years of hostility, which threatened instability in the Gulf and stoked the war in Yemen." [more inside]
Extra-national Chinese Police stations
Canadians describe surveillance, intimidation and terror 'under China's shadow'. In the UK, Alarm Over Chinese Businessman And 'Secret Police Station'. And in the Washington Post, Chinese police stations in NYC are part of a vast influence operation.
(archive link) [more inside]
(archive link) [more inside]