So to understand why Zhang Shengmin was promoted despite being associated with some very corrupt people, I would read my book and this 1973 classic www.amazon.com/Chinese-High...

“免去李成钢的中华人民共和国常驻世界贸易组织代表、特命全权大使，兼常驻联合国日内瓦办事处和瑞士其他国际组织副代表职务” wait is he purged? Why? www.news.cn/20251020/f64...

China, India, U.S. are arguably the most dynamic ,impactful countries economically and geopolitically. We @21CenturyChina @GPSIndiaCenter are excited to host @tanvi_madan ,@d_jaishankar Evan Medeiros @SusanShirk1 for an indepth discussion. Join us! gps-ucsd.zohobackstage.com/ShiftingTria...

🌍 Join us next week for an exciting virtual panel discussion with: @dhruvajaishankar.bsky.social, @tanvimadan.bsky.social, Evan Medeiros and Susan Shirk 💻 Moderators: @gpsucsd.bsky.social professors Achyuta Adhvaryu and @vicshih.bsky.social Register ➡️ gps-ucsd.zohobackstage.com/ShiftingTria...

Well the suspected purge was made public today. It is still shocking because these were the trusted lieutenants Xi put in key positions. Whatever corruption they engaged in, it must have been very bad, or some other factor led to their fall www.mod.gov.cn/gfbw/qwfb/16...

We @ChinaDataLab and @UCIGCC launch med the China Policy Document Navigator, a first-of-its-kind database giving researchers curated access to thousands of hard-to-find Chinese policy documents. Learn how to use it and register here: chinadatalab.ucsd.edu/viz-blog/chi...

How do promotion prospects drive patterns of repression in China? @baggottcarter, Jonghyuk Lee, and I find that the most promising officials hesitate to use repression for fear of backlash riots, except for in separatist regions www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1...

Both sides are overplaying their hands? www.wsj.com/politics/pol...

Along with our Zhengfawei (soundcloud.com/user-8653541...) colleagues, I've enjoyed a fairly constant on and offline conversation with my friend @vicshih.bsky.social since February 2021, and so it was a delight to continue our chat before a terrific live audience at @fpri.bsky.social yesterday:

For folks interested in some speculations about leadership turnover in China, @NeysunM was kind enough to host this conversation @FPRI in Philly m.youtube.com/watch?v=xZ7B...

4th term for Xi Jinping may be likely, but succession is inevitable. What can we glean from current signals & past practice about how that process might play out? I am looking forward to welcome my friend @vicshih.bsky.social to discuss these Qs @fpri.bsky.social on Tue: www.fpri.org/event/2025/h...

Will read for sure

Someone should do a survey experiment on whether and how these model workers still help bolster the party’s legitimacy. Quite a lot of effort is still expended to select and highlight them, like this model rail worker 车菲菲 zjnews.zjol.com.cn/zjnews/20220...

Ok as of now, if you really rely on LLMs for close reading of government regulations, the interpretation will be mediocre to poor. I think Gemini is pretty good for Chinese material but even it misses many things which would be obvious to a trained human analyst

The Wire China is currently seeking applications for a staff writer. Follow the link below to learn more about the position and how to apply.

A very sad day for China studies as we lose one of the great mentors of the field

Joanna Lewis, Sam Geall, Lauri Myllivirta, I and some others quoted in this Brook Larmer piece on China's global green-tech ambitions. This is part of the focus of my forthcoming book "Chinese Global Environmentalism," out later this year. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/18/m...

China’s once-booming property sector is in crisis. Prices are falling, developers are drowning in debt and millions of homes sit empty Political scientist Victor Shih (@vicshih.bsky.social) explains why China’s housing market has failed to recover. 📺 youtu.be/MAPkc1GxUNA

Trump unveils $100K yearly fee on H-1B visas in clampdown on legal immigration / lets dramatically slow down the flow of top stem talent into this country. That’s going to end well. And guess what, that will benefit all of our tech competitors

Wow, the August issue of Contemporary International Relations, a CICIR journal, has an essay entitled "The End of the West" by CICIR vice director Zhang Jian. Provocative and what timing. The full text is on Ai Sixiang oss.aisixiang.com/download/0fe...

I have had a few chats with @josephtorigian.bsky.social on his book but this one really turned out well and we addressed some core issues about the party and its history www.ncuscr.org/video/the-pa...

#APSA2025 if you still read books, you need to come to MacLeod’s Books

1/2 Yes, it's "locked in" only in the sense that if China doesn't dramatically change its domestic economy, and if the rest of the world continues absorbing its surpluses, Chinese surpluses will keep growing. They are "locked in" only to the same extent that Japanese trade surpluses in the late...

Hong Kong: a comeback with Chinese characteristics / yes finance is doing well but you need tourism to come back to generate employment

www.bloomberg.com/news/article... / wait what? The price of labubu won’t go up forever??

You know i actually read an article today arguing that this large surplus is “locked in” for China. I don’t buy it at all b/c all China has to do is erase all export rebates and transfer proceeds to households directly. Of course trade surplus will not disappear but will shrink

If there is a unique technology that can extend life, the dictator can use it himself but deny it to other senior leaders. That may not be the optimal strategy though since it would increase incentive for a coup.

You wouldn’t know it from Vancouver hotel prices 😂😂

Wow great move by CAC to force AI providers to label generated content across all modes, even AI augmented content. We desperately need something similar here here (but will not get it of course) www.cac.gov.cn/2025-03/14/c...

What are members of congress saying about China? We @21CenturyChina @ChinaDataLab are documenting this in real time via their tweets. Check it out here (but be sure to click on the button with four horizontal lines on the top to get all the features) chinadatalab.ucsd.edu/tweets/

The problem in wages and benefits in China isn’t just what’s written on paper but also that workers have few legal recourse if employers renege on wage promises or do not pay for legally required benefits

What is a database of tongue images for? "通过前期采集的约一万个舌象数据"

Look forward to reading and - more importantly for you - to assigning it to my large lecture class on autocracy and democracy in the spring. Congratulations.

Wow I hadn’t realized how huge it was going to be

Interesting that Russia and the CCP have lower level dialogues on cadre management and anti-corruption. The two political systems are quite different so I am not sure what they can learn from each other www.xinhuanet.com/world/202406...

New @21CenturyChina note showing Trump tariffs decreasing real income of Americans in all but 3 states. Alaska, Pennsylvania and Indiana will see a yr or more of income growth wiped out. Removing tariffs will give most Americans 500-1k boost in real income chinadatalab.ucsd.edu/viz-blog/tar...

In collaboration with colleague Marc Muendler, we @21CenturyChina are proud to present a note “TARIFFS AND WAGES” showing the harmful effect of tariffs on ordinary Americans. Those in Alaska, Pennsylvania and Indiana will lose a year or more of income growth chinadatalab.ucsd.edu/viz-blog/tar...

Actually really interesting

Half a trillion RMB in reverse repo on one day is pretty massive. The monetary impact is potentially equivalent to 5% of gdp. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

This is the Kotkin podcast we have thirsted for, brought to you by @bumingbai.net podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/%...

Liu Jianchao, a senior Chinese diplomat widely seen as a potential foreign minister, has been taken away by authorities for questioning / another person who had impressed Xi … shows observed meritocracy doesn’t always work well, tho the reason may be complex

This gives me hope for US China relations since both countries now produce official statistics in the same way, continuing the convergence between the two governments

What is Congress and the White House doing about China? No worries the wonderful team @ncuscr.bsky.social is helping us keep track with this new substack ncuscr.substack.com/p/china-and-...

Wow, another great month of events at JF Books in DC, if I lived there I’d definitely want to catch both the comparing gilded ages dialogue between @ewong.bsky.social & @eosnos.bsky.social & the Nan Z. Da talk about her King Lear book (recently published with one of the blurbs from me)

New podcast: @hooverinstitution.bsky.social Bill Whalen talks to me about my book "The Party's Interests Come First: The Life of Xi Zhongxun, Father of Xi Jinping" for Matters of Policy and Politics www.hoover.org/research/fat...

Here is what I think: if all 3 reviewers think a paper is terrible or potentially generated by ChatGPT, the authors should be barred from submitting for 6 months to a year

Papers I reviewed today 1. A paper I think is generated by ChatGPT based on the superficial analysis also done by ChatGPT 2. A paper which intentionally or unintentionally omits a key fact which changes the interpretation of the result dramatically. Now I am depressed

So my question is, you have dozens of planes flying across the ocean with multiple refuelings. Don’t you think Chinese satellites would have picked that up? And if so, why didn’t they tell Iran? Perhaps they did and Iran decided not to put up any defense?….

Thank you!

Hopefully they don’t mean scholars who don’t publish!