A Day in the Life of an Internet Censor China’s social media boom let its people speak out — but its censorship network silenced them. One of those censors reveals what happens behind the curtain. Read the excerpt from Yi-Ling Liu's new book "The Wall Dancers": chinabooksreview.com/2026/02/05/c...

Our new column What China's Thinking is underpinned by the work of my former colleagues at @chinadigitaltimes.net The superlative Chinese team & my friends/role models @samuelwa.de @cindycarter.bsky.social have contextualized so much of recent Chinese history chinabooksreview.com/2026/01/27/w...

real China heads know that is not the case @jmzbeijing.bsky.social

My favorite part of this piece on the ever-more relevant Orwell by @jwassers.bsky.social brings us into the potential literary inspirations of his nightmares of a tri-partite world... prophetic? I hope not... theconversation.com/how-george-o...

a hero who paid the price, what an obituary. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/14/w...

nothing on my favorite D.C. version of this: "我附近的草店" (above the equally delightful NBDUB, a post-Wizards must)

good on Joseph H. Thompson www.nytimes.com/2026/01/13/u...

insane. trump officials want to speed when driving into the city (they all live outside it) — and don't care about the lives of anyone who lives here. terrible. www.politico.com/news/2026/01...

Trump is collaborating with Maduro's regime because he's upset Machado accepted the Nobel. Everything, everything, everything is greed, spite, bile and malice. www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...

The Jan 6 pipe bomber was inspired by The Troubles in Ireland

The best China books of 2025, across nonfiction and literature, as selected by experts and the editors. Read the full list: chinabooksreview.com/2025/12/18/b...

One of my favorite columns — Translated Chinese Literature — need to check out Diablo's Boys. Hunter was a personal favorite! chinabooksreview.com/2025/12/09/t...

What do Flannery O'Connor, "Blind Shaft" [2003], and itinerant Daoists have in common? BINGO; they're all discussed on the latest China Books Podcast. Take a listen! chinabooksreview.com/2025/12/02/e...

The modern world

Socialism with Chinese Characteristics: Good!

Jeremiah's latest Archive Pick is really quite something, was an honor to join him on a special editions of Barbarians! (read the article, it's great: chinabooksreview.com/2025/11/11/h...)

Good words thread 🧵 1. Garrigue: a scrubland biome found around the Mediterranean, specifically in France. h/t: John Minford in intro to Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio by Pu Songling

this entry in @jeremiahjenne.com’s Archive project is a gem.

NED – China Digital Times: 2025 Democracy Award Honoree www.ned.org/china-digita...

"Countless Yingzhis live among us, while the Zitaos of China are fading away with time. The tears of Chinese women, if unleashed, could drown a nation." For @chinabooksreview.com, I write about gendered violence and illusions of liberation through two novels by Fang Fang (tr @bairuiwen.bsky.social):

a guy who makes cookies & posts about it in insta came up to me while recording on his raybans in Minneapolis and frankly it was quite invasive. he was sweet but if he'd asked to record me I would've given a real review of the cookie. instead it was a "no thanks, best of luck."

The day I left for America.

very cool translated short story + interview combo, give it a read!

Read Fei Dao's Q&A on Chinese sci-fi, and his story "The Storytelling Robot," translated by Alec Ash: chinabooksreview.com/2025/09/18/s...

Three Days of the Condor was almost an all-time Secret China Movie™. RIP Robert Redford

“be right there, dude, I’m on the L. Ron Hubbard express.”

Texas A&M has as much free speech as Shanghai. None. In 2021, a Chinese student secretly recorded his teacher questioning the Nanjing Massacre's death toll — a Party taboo. He also said she's a "walking $500k," a reference to the award money for turning in traitors to secret police.

The Shiji abounds with examples of corrupt, venal, or stupid rulers getting cosmic comeuppance. In today's timeline, it's almost quaint to believe in a universal order that punishes terrible leaders. Read more in my latest for @chinabooksreview.com chinabooksreview.com/2025/09/09/s...

reading a very popular book right now and....

Translating literature is a brutal and impossible task, so this is not a criticism of the translator. But am I insane for saying that translating this line, "香港不也是中国的地盘吗，所有需要证件的地方，她一概不能去" as "Hong Kong was part of China" is a real loss?

DC house parties are fun, actually, and everyone hating on them here is talking about a small subset of staffer functions that wrap up by 8:30...

LeBron James' essay in the People's Daily, the mouthpiece of the Party. An odd move for such a image-minded man, especially as the essay was actually written by a People's Daily journalist based on an interview.

The Red Wind Howls, states @bennoweiner.bsky.social in this magnificent new review, "is a monumental literary achievement, an act of defiance that helps pierce a regime of forced forgetting." Tsering Döndrup's magnum opus is now available in English — read it! chinabooksreview.com/2025/09/04/i...

Please check out my review of Tsering Döndrup’s magnificent and important novel, *The Red Wind Howls* (tr. Chris Peacock) in @chinabooksreview.com (then read the book!) Thanks to editors @alexludoboyd.bsky.social and @alecash.net chinabooksreview.com/2025/09/04/i... @columbiaup.bsky.social

this story could not be more tailored to me. How Chinese pigeon passion has fueled a crime wave in the Flemish countryside… www.washingtonpost.com/world/intera...

Another podcast! Was wicked fun to chat with bossman @alecash.net about the worst China books around — tune in to the China Books Podcast and check out our other episodes too while you're at it! chinabooksreview.com/2025/09/02/e...

great essay from @arthurkaufman.bsky.social

National Guardsmen armed with rifles on the DuPont Metro platform this morning — there is no possible justification for them carrying rifles beyond intimidating the people of D.C. Truly despicable.

It really is Moby-Dick Summer

JUST POSTED: How China Influences Elections in America’s Biggest City - a NYT investigation with Jay Root, Bianca Pallaro, and @fahrenthold.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2025/08/25/n...

Actually fascists

Jen Lin-Liu thinks we're going about Chinese cookbooks all wrong... read this tour de force essay on everyone's favorite China book: their cookbook. chinabooksreview.com/2025/08/21/c...

I asked the question we are all wondering: IS XI JINPING FUNNY? The answer may (not) surprise you. substack.com/home/post/p-...

Seven people from the church right outside my window have been detained by ICE, including an usher on the way to Sunday Mass. Cruel, antithetical to true American values, and cowardly. religionnews.com/2025/08/19/a...

Barber shop "The Supreme People's Coif" (a pun on China's top court) shut down by authorities in Guizhou. The tagline, "dealing with matters of top-most importance" did not pass muster either. No fun!

for those not already in the know... China Books Review has you covered: chinabooksreview.com/2024/01/11/o...

What does Americans read about China? Conspiracy theories. All are really about America. But China, its agents and its sympathizers, is presented as the cause of the myriad social ills — addiction, violence, poverty and disease — that plague American society. chinabooksreview.com/2025/08/19/n...

I got back in the lab... by reading a clutch of terrible books on China. Dropping tomorrow!

What’s happening in D.C. is tyranny.

insanity. standing silently on the sidewalk now earns you a threatened beating from trump’s thugs.