There is no such thing, as Starmer well knows, as a "golden ticket of resettlement and family reunion" for people who have been granted refugee status. This is meaningless guff aimed to play to populist fantasies that refugees get provided with everything. 1/ www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

New today: my essay in @jodemocracy.bsky.social on The Golden Age of Transnational Repression: www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/the...

Most of the restrictions mentioned in this article are in 2021's Internet Religious Information Services regs. www.chinalawtranslate.com/en/internet-... What is new in the Code of Conduct is that it impacts online conduct of registered clergy in their personal, as well as professional capacity.⏬

My head is actually spinning at how many current and future colleagues, both in the China field and beyond it, we are about to lose because of this

Most humanities research — including the best, most world leading research by people we’ve all heard of — is unfunded, by which they mean produced as part of one’s routine job as a university lecturer, just “not funded by a big competitive external grant”. This would mean the death of research.

This is a jaw-dropping statement from anyone in a uni leadership role — but also — what exactly is ‘low-quality’ and ‘hobbyist’ research? Nearly every academic I know is burning the candle at both ends and STILL producing important work in their fields. This feels like an anti-humanities dog whistle

Tens of thousands of people in China are barred from leaving their province and sometimes even their homes by the world’s largest surveillance apparatus. An AP investigation finds much of this technology came from U.S. companies.

We just released IMMARKUS 1.0 - our first full release! An open-source tool for semantic image annotation: multi-image workbench, AI-powered selection tools, ontology builder, knowledge graph, #IIIF support. Runs fully local–no login, no-signups, no data sent to the cloud! 👉 immarkus.xmarkus.org

From Sanmenxia and Three Gorges to the Yarlung Tsangpo Dam, China has long relied on monumental hydropower to prove state capacity. @zenel25.bsky.social and @pguer.bsky.social show how such projects, while promising development and security, often deepen the very insecurities they claim to resolve.

Lovely to hear Melvyn Bragg talking about the big idea behind "In Our Time": to get academics on the air, talking about the subjects they were most passionate & knowledgeable about, without worrying about whether they had "media training". It's remarkable that this was (& remains) such an odd idea!

Oh damn, always my dream to one day make to In Our Time, so I am delighted it will continue. But this still feels huge to me - so much admiration for Bragg and his curiosity about absolutely everything.

A reminder that it is not illegal to claim asylum in the UK, no matter how you arrived here.

CFP: Joint Conference of the Historical Society for 20th Century China and the Institute for Modern History, Academia Scinica Deadline: October 15 Please note that papers/panels can engage any aspect of China and/or Taiwan's long 20th Crntury All the info: hstcconline.org/announcements/

CDT Quote of the Week: chinadigitaltimes.net/2025/08/inte...

This is terrorism.

Would any Xinjiang scholars be interested in chatting with me for a newsletter issue 👀

not really beating the "authoritarian government" allegations by demanding a gallery in ANOTHER COUNTRY censor artwork about..........authoritarian governments

🚨 New research report 🚨 “Preventing Transnational Repression: the case of the Uyghur diaspora” By David Tobin and @nyrolaelima.bsky.social sites.google.com/sheffield.ac...

grotesque abuse of law

21 years later and this reads almost like prophecy.

@doctorswithoutborders.org released a report this morning documenting the targeted, orchestrated killing of civilians at Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) aid distribution sites. Please read and do everything in your power to stop this. www.msf.org/not-aid-orch... 1/7

Great new must-read from The China Journal: Disappearing Research: Academic Control & Self- #Censorship in #China Self-censorship restricts #academicfreedom w/in China & hinders Beijing's access to information, impacting effectiveness of its policymaking. www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

In June 2025, academics and civil society organisations met in London for an International Network for Critical China Studies workshop to analyse how to prevent transnational repression. Governments & NGOs have not paid enough attention to TNR and need to do much more to protect people's rights.

Oh damn. I'd seen the news of Andrew West's passing, and had somehow failed to connect the name to @babelstone.bsky.social, an online presence I've been following for years in various forms for epipgraphy, all of the weird scripts, musings and old photos. This is a really tragic loss.

Deeply deeply problematic shit going on here. This is why so many people said that proscribing Palestine Action was a massive overstep & was a direct attack on freedom of speech & expression.

Decades of mechanistic talk about university degrees as if they were bundles of 'skills' and 'prep' are about to be proved completely wrong (obviously). Want to get a real boost? Do History or English.

Hey, if you support CDT but can't give cash- give a retweet. Maybe someone with more funds will see it. They are almost at their modest goal of $10,000, but there's no reason 10,000 RTs shouldn't have been reached ages ago.

Feeling slightly thrown for a loop finding out about recent changes to the skilled worker visa late last night and not reall seeing much chatter about it elsewhere… But again, most British citizens do not care about immigrants, so shouldn’t be surprised 😮‍💨 www.ein.org.uk/news/major-c...

Dear god, @princetonupress.bsky.social is even proud of the visit to Xinjiang, issuing a press note that gushes about newfound appreciation for "the incredible power of Uyghur poetry," nevermind poet Tahir Hamut Izgil literally wrote a book called WAITING TO BE ARRESTED AT NIGHT.

Hey @princetonupress.bsky.social - I think it's a great idea to share the story of Xinjiang in English with the world. You got off to a great start when you published Sean Roberts's book The War on the Uyghurs - maybe continue in that vein: press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

not looking good for Princeton University Press is it @princetonupress.bsky.social the video can be found on Facebook www.facebook.com/share/v/16Rv...

I cannot emphasize enough how needlessly cruel the UK immigration system is to ordinary people who want a family life together and aren't well-off already, and anyone wanting to make it worse should be shunned.

Has someone already said that we are in the late Ming? Because we are definitely in the late Ming.

This is absolutely terrible for researchers. And a sign of how fragile digital "preservation" is.

"uncontrolled immigration" Lol you guys know how much you have to pay to apply for permanent residence in France? €225 Germany? €113 The UK? £3,029 PER PERSON. You are a family of three? that will be ten grand please.

Still trying to work out what the 'incaluable damage' the PM thinks my husband has done might be. He broke a plate once? Very bad puns?

This is a tragedy and a needless own-goal by the U.S. , which is now blindfolding itself to events in Uyghur, Tibet and ceding the info-space to PRC propaganda. hongkongfp.com/2025/05/03/r...

This is the real news story: Disillusioned Labour votes far more likely to vote Green or Lib Dem (43% and 40%) compared to only 9% shifting to Reform. Share widely to counteract all the misinformation that justifies a further shift to the Right by the gov.

Awful. //The situation affected nearly 40 people who hold employment-based visas at RFA and came from countries known for harsh crackdowns on press freedom, including China, Vietnam and Cambodia, where journalists are routinely harassed or jailed.//

if you are a cis person it costs you nothing to just say today that you see & hear your trans sisters & brothers & others over in the UK today -- and around the world, too, knowing that rulings like today's ripple out in ugly ways.

I've got family in Scunthorpe, I know how much the town needs those jobs. I'm glad this is happening for them - but how I wish HE would be given similar consideration. Day after day I see news of cuts, and the shadow of the axe looms over my own institution once again.

Hear hear! Language skills, critical and analytical skills, the ability to exhaustively research and clearly articulate accurate information. These are highly valuable in any demanding profession.

🚨 Outrage as 20 police officers break into Westminster Quaker Meeting House and arrest six. 🚨 This shocking violation of a place of worship is a direct result of crackdowns on protest and dissent - freedom of speech, assembly and democracy are at risk.🕊️ 👉 www.quaker.org.uk/news-and-eve...

I continue to be appalled at the lack of accountability around the SLAPP case that targeted me. If I can get sued for saying a warlord sanctioned by the EU, UK, and US for his role in Wagner is involved with Wagner then can we really say there's any protection for journalists in the UK from SLAPPs?

Powerful, chilling RFA story on the use of lawfare targeting Chinese activists through Chinese and American courts, profiling the case of Ma Ju, a Hui activist and community builder now in New York. www.rfa.org/english/spec...

A story I did of memories of secretly listening to Voice of America in mainland China… a massive legacy. www.npr.org/2025/03/18/n...

Exciting new open access issue of Global China Pulse on China's linguistic frontiers, from Tibet to Thailand via Kenya, Ghana and more globalchinapulse.net/wp-content/u...

Says it all, really.

former VOA Mandarin service employee here, and as bad a loss as that is, the shuttering of RFA is awful news for less commonly represented languages -- Uyghur was the first to come to mind for me, but I'm sure you can think of others

Statement from the director of the Voice of America (who has been placed on administrative leave).