If you liked this experiment, I published a full piece today in the same vein: a text that gets 100 years older with every section, from a modern blog post to a medieval chronicle. It's a single story spanning 1000 years of English. See how far you get. www.deadlanguagesociety.com/p/how-far-ba...

"She said her family pays 8,000 yuan ($1,148) to heat their home for a winter. That is more than one-third of the average annual rural salary in Hebei of 22,022 yuan, according to 2024 figures." The side of China which the influencers don't show you. www.reuters.com/sustainabili...

I'm in Siem Reap's new airport, built in 2023 by a Chinese company. The old airport was right next to the city, this one's an hour's drive away. It looks just like a provincial airport in China, but it seems they haven't got the memo about what you call the Chinese New Year.

This year the Chinese nationalists have really got worked up about this. Twitter's full of it. The argument they've come up with is that it's not a lunar new year, but a "lunisolar" one, since the Chinese calendar has a leap year in it. It's a weird technicality, but they've convinced themselves.

The UK government has plans to set up a national alternative to Visa and Mastercard, which should be operative by 2030, as a response to Trump's unpredictability. De-globalization is real. www.theguardian.com/business/202...

In Jan 2020, another set of 5 Demands appeared. Actually, several new sets of Demands appeared. All were responses to what would become the pandemic, because again, by this stage, Wuhan was in full lock down and it was clear to HKers something terrible was coming... Source: Telegram (Jan 2020)

Quite the chart

Yeah, I wonder what he could have done to be disapproved of in Ukraine and in Sweden, a country that feels directly threatened by Russia? What a racist propagandized garbage continent!

Everyone's focusing on Japan, but Thailand has also just had elections, and the results are not what I was hoping: the People's Party, the progressives who want to take on the country's entrenched oligarchies, have been roundly defeated. This wasn't expected. abcnews.go.com/Internationa...

My latest travelogue from central Vietnam. gabrielstravels.substack.com/p/vietnam-pa...

All the main Chinese state-backed propagandists on Twitter are continuing to make use of the opportunity presented by the Epstein files to blacken the Dalai Lama's name and push the usual propaganda about how barbaric Tibet was before the Chinese "liberated" it.

Chinese propagandist openly calling the man still revered as holy by most Tibetans a "pedophile" on the basis of the fact that he is mentioned in Epstein's emails (there is no suggestion he did anything wrong, let alone engaged in pedophilia).

Elections are coming up next week in Thailand. Here's an election poster by the "Economic Party", a small nationalist outfit, in my Bangkok neighbourhood.

This marks the end of Rojava, the relatively democratic, secular, and feminist Kurdish polity that emerged in Syria in 2012. The one that the left should have been supporting, but I guess the pro-Assad tankies made too much noise. www.theguardian.com/world/2026/j...

"He complains that German society is cold and bureaucratic, that he cannot open an account in Switzerland, that banks in Germany have closed his accounts more than once—while a Beijing bank reactivated an account that had been dormant for years within minutes". substack.com/home/post/p-...

Reacting to an ignorant tankie who thinks Mandarin and Cantonese are China's main languages, a pro-unification Taiwanese tech bro shows off his own linguistic ignorance: Cantonese is a "niche dialect", Cantonese, Hakka and Teocheow are all dialects but are somehow in different language families.

In Da Nang, Vietnam. The Vietnamese Communist Party is having their fourteenth national congress right now. The meeting, held every five years like in China, is referred to as Đại hội, which is probably cognate with the Chinese 大会.

“'Some of the opposition are wrong and also terrorists,' said Museveni, who has ruled the east African country since 1986, when he seized power at the head of a rebel army. 'They are working with some foreigners and some homosexual groups.'" www.theguardian.com/world/2026/j...

Shaun Rein posts long attack on Ai Weiwei. Apparently the artist dared not respond when Rein once gave him the thumbs up in a Beijing park, and it all went downhill from there...

In spite of the fact that large segments of Iran's population clearly despise the regime, it just doesn't seem possible to overthrow it. After 2009 and 2022, this round of protests also seems to be floundering. www.theguardian.com/world/2026/j...

What's up with the Swiss?

This video by a Filipina girl has caused offence in Thailand. People from English-speaking countries, including ones where English is official but not spoken natively like the Philippines, always find it hard to believe when they arrive in a place where people really don't know English.

My new substack on how China "became cool" in the West in 2025, just as the Chinese are becoming less optimistic about their own country capitalinthenorth.substack.com/p/the-year-w...

This is by a long shot the most important piece of new you'll read today. Renewables are winning the fight. www.theguardian.com/business/202...

This once reasonable American-Taiwanese commentator continues her sad descent into the abyss. I wonder if she's being paid, looking for attention, or genuinely believes this nonsense?

No comment

To be blunt probably the only real takeaway in Beijing right now from the Venezuela op is “jesus we could never pull that off” foreignpolicy.com/2026/01/06/c...

CGTN's Li Jingjing, one of the rising stars of China outward-facing propaganda, making it very clear where she stands. At least she's not hiding behind vague statements, and saying clearly how much she despises all the "despicable sellout" Venezuelans who disagree with her about their country.

This is their worldview: America is their hemisphere, Europe is Russia's hemisphere, Asia is China's hemisphere. Scary stuff.

The popular idea in China is that Northerners are more keen on government careers, and Southerners are more interested in going into business. This map might seem to confirm it, but then what about Zhejiang and Fujian? (Image created by @BaronDC20005 on Twitter)

This post remains a great example of toxic apologia for the CCP. In one swoop Andy displays his complete misunderstanding of how authoritarianism works, while confirming misconceptions about foreigners in China being above the law or "not respecting China".

I think it's a serious (and concerning) point that Russia and China will "respect" the US's "sphere of influence" in the Americas, as long as the US also respects what they see as their own spheres of influence.

@scholarsstage.bsky.social is probably right about this. Even in here in Southeast Asia, with its history of Japanese occupation in WWII, no one seriously thinks modern Japan is militaristic or expansionistic.

Bilibili video shows Italian living in Nanjing being interviewed after watching 南京照相馆, the new historical epic about the Nanjing Massacre. Speaking in Italian with a strong southern accent, the man warns the Chinese against the current "Japanese cultural invasion", and other such nonsense.

The Economist's choice of "country of the year" will raise eyebrows. Basically it was a contest between Argentina, due to great economic improvements under Milei, and Syria, due to great political improvements under Sharaa. The title went to Syria. www.economist.com/leaders/2025...

A report on the humble life of one of the delivery riders who make the great "convenience" of modern China possible. www.pekingnology.com/p/life-as-a-...

Taiwan had already established strong relations with Somaliland, in spite of Somalia and China's strong protests. It seems unrecognised nations and regional pariahs are starting to band together. www.reuters.com/world/middle...

Member of Hong Kong's legislative council Dominic Lee, known for his anti-refugee and anti-immigrant stances, puts out this tweet. The only thing breathtaking here is his logic: Xinjiang has beautiful mountains and valleys, how can the Western media claim people are repressed there?

Iranian women are quietly, collectively, refusing to comply with the mandatory wearing of the hijab, which dates back to the revolution in 1979, and the regime feels unable to push back. www.theguardian.com/global-devel...

This is such a typical scenario: 20-something European just arrived in China, taking the HSK, feels on top of the world, thinks he's cracked the code and understood China, unlike all those deluded Sinophobes back in the West, and wants you to know about his amazing insights. We've all been there.

This article repeats the spurious claim that Chongqing has the world's biggest population ("Its population is already bigger than that of Peru or Iraq"), based on confusing the municipality with the city itself. And journalists are still doing this today. Sensationalism over accuracy, as always.

Clips of Wang Leehom's recent Chengdu concert featuring dancing robots doing backflips have wowed viewers around the world, including Elon Musk. Few have noted that during the viral clips he's singing a song with nationalistic lyrics closely reflecting China's state propaganda.

Blaming digital nomads for rising rents is the "anti-imperialist" equivalent of blaming immigrants for falling wages. As is mentioned, a Mexican study found that fault lies with the fact almost no new housing has been built in Mexico City for the last 7 years. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/j...

The fact this could appear in a Thai outlet, albeit in English, is testament to the relative freedom still enjoyed by the Thai media as compared to some other countries in the region. www.khaosodenglish.com/opinion/2025...

CGTN reporter Li Jingjing pushing the line that the "socialist forces" of the USSR and China saved the world from fascism, because they lost the most people in WWII. Never mind that the Chinese forces were mostly led by the Guomindang in that war, so they weren't even "socialist".

I didn't realise Jakarta had overtaken Tokyo as the world's most populous city. I still thought its metropolitan area had around 30 million people, but it now has 42! Even more surprised to learn that Dhaka now comes second with 37 million. www.economist.com/asia/2025/12...

I think @michaelpettis.bsky.social might have a thing or two to say about this article. www.economist.com/leaders/2025...

The Nobel Prize committee should announce the World Cup winner tomorrow

The community note isn't really accurate, with the partial exception of Hebrew, which was revived recently as a spoken language, and Icelandic, which has changed very little over the centuries due to Iceland's isolation.

This insistent campaign to discredit Japanese sovereignty over the Ryukyu islands is definitely going to get Japan to back down. That's always how countries react when a neighbour starts threatening their territorial integrity.