Ooops. 😁

A brave and important protest that is underreported in international media.

How do voters behave in democracies with unstable parties? In a newly published article in Party Politics, @pward89.bsky.social and I examine South Korea, a textbook case of an “ephemeral party system.” The article is Open Access. journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

Interesting that Bluesky is certain that UK labor's right turn on immigration is doomed. A sharp right turn on immigration by Danish social democrats (yes, with a left turn on welfare) led them to pulverize the populist right. I do not know it will work, but the determinism in opinions is strange.

(1/4) It was America and Britain that guaranteed the sovereignty of Ukraine and its borders in return for persuading them to give up their nuclear weapons.

"Destroying America's Brand" One way to think about this is to say that Trump is doing to America what Elon Musk is doing to Tesla, destroying a valuable brand through erratic behavior and repulsive ideology. Paul Krugman

What do the useful idiots, also called Trump-fan Chinese pro-democracy dissidents, say by now actually?

The new sherrif in the US is voting with North Korea, Belarus and Russia in the UN. Welcome to the brave new world. news.sky.com/story/trump-...

The right-wing FPÖ wanted a German-requirement for university research in Austria during coalition negotiations. The next thing will probably be teaching in Austrian dialect. www.ots.at/presseaussen...

Dear @posit.co, can you please invent an update button. 🙂

I wonder what incentivizes left-center governments, such as Vienna's, to promote gender neutral language. Public opinion is leaning heavily against it. Granted, Vienna's population is likely more accepting. But I still doubt this wins more voters than it is driving voters away.

Author affiliations in a random sample of publications in 3 top China Studies journals. The dominance of Anglo-US scholars is remarkable. A whopping 48% of knowledge on China published in these journals was produced in the US, UK, AUS and CAN. Only 33% was produced in Mainland China or Hong Kong.

European societies, Germany in particular, had 8 years to rethink their dillusional assumptions about the nature of the international system and the value of hard power. Now the hand wringing and panicking starts again...

Interesting initiative to highlight and critique the severe under representation of the Global South in German-speaking television news. weisses-rauschen.de/hero/202409P...

Merry Christmas from the Hong Kong government:

Many great #Chinawatchers have joined BlueSky recently. So I’ve updated this large #starterpack with experts and journalists writing about #China ‘s #foreignpolicy, #economy, and #politics. Join, share, and follow! go.bsky.app/NZzqdpY

South Korea may have been closer to military rule than it initially appeared. 👇

Good to know. In research that hopefully will see the light of the day soonish, I try to make the point that one key argument for surveillance in China has been that "society needs to be protected from itself."

Right, Junius "fraternizing with triad hooligans" Ho.

1/4 Either the consensus has become nearly unanimous, or the media are freezing out alternative views, but what some of us were arguing over a decade ago seems to have taken a firm hold of much of the economic reform discussion. www.yicaiglobal.com/news/china-n...

Some structural background behind the South Korea martial law event. 👇

President Yoon Suk-yeol declared martial law in South Korea, citing alleged anti-state activities by opposition forces. This extremely surprising move grants the military authority over civilian affairs. Why did this happen? Some context and thoughts are below. apnews.com/article/sout...

In this new study with Xue Gong and Jan Delhey, published in the Chinese Sociological Review, we re-evaluate the widely shared belief that China experienced a "trust crisis" – the rationale behind the “social credit system” – during its rapid modernization. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Last year, @profgustafsson.bsky.social and I published this article on how to deal with the insecurity of doing research. It is now assigned to an issue of European Political Science. It’s Open Access, so please feel free to download a copy or recommend to students! link.springer.com/article/10.1...

In this new study published in The China Quarterly, YANG Kai and I show that value-driven protests in China (advocating non-materialist and public interest claims at odds with the regime) are less rare and less often repressed than previously assumed www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Opposition fully liquidated. Hong Kong has become the world's most radical effort to combine free markets and political unfreedom. To the extent that they succeed, we will all suffer hongkongfp.com/2024/11/19/b...

Fantastic that with #LittleBigLies we now have series that brings the world of blasé Western "expats" with their absurd sense of entitlement into our living rooms. In my more than 10 years in Hong Kong I tried to avoid this bubble. Should I watch this? www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/big_littl...

Some professional news. I have been elected speaker of the ASC, the "Working Group on Social Science Research on China" under the German Association of Asian Studies (DGA). Looking forward to doing my share in moderating China research in the German-speaking world through these challenging times.

Ever wondered where the idea of #SocialCredit came from, and how it landed on the agenda of China's leaders? Pierre Sel has you covered in his forthcoming article in the China Review. www.researchgate.net/publication/...

Public support for democracy is crucial to prevent backsliding. But existing survey questions focusing on “democracy” may not measure the concept well, as the term “democracy” varies in meaning and may prompt social desirability. polisky 1/3

“A new set of draft rules issued by China would, if finalized, roll back a key part of China’s data regulatory regime that was on course to force a disruptive data decoupling between China and the rest of the world” www.piie.com/blogs/realti...

The Department of East Asian Studies, Sinology will host Andrew MacDonald from Duke, Kunshan to enlighten us on online privacy attitudes in China. Wed October 11, 18:30-20:00. Be there or be square.

The conversation is based on a research project with my co-author, Peter Ward. We show how the structure of social relations among citizens in North Korea, particularly social capital and trust (and the lack thereof in the DPRK), stymies information flow. There are no weak ties!

Hi, I am a scholar of Chinese-speaking societies. I will use this space for occasional professional communication and anecdotal observations. I am happy to report that after more than three years, I finally managed to reconnect with Mainland China, HK and Taiwan, visiting all of them in 2023.