Can‘t say the writing wasn‘t on the wall.

My department is hiring an associate professor in contemporary Chinese politics. Come and join me in Oslo! www.jobbnorge.no/en/available...

Our new ASPI report 'The Party’s AI' is out now. It shows how China’s LLMs, vision models and “AI+” governance architecture are hard-coding censorship and control into the future of AI. www.aspi.org.au/repo...

Online survey research is screwed. LLM-enabled agents can take surveys just like humans. Here's a video I made where the Comet browser agent takes a simple survey and gets around nearly all my bot detection checks. The crisis is here already...more in this 🧵 www.youtube.com/watch?v=05Je...

While Hongkongers are mobilizing to get beds, student's textbooks, curtains, baby formulas, missing pets to survivors of the Tai Po Hung Fuk fire, western-centric discourse are quick to paint us as "backwards, unscientific, unsafe"... and I have zero patience for this racist bs.

I’ve been monitoring online discussions from Hong Kong about why HKers consider blaming bamboo scaffolding is a gov spin, and I think many AUS media have got it WRONG. They think it’s a spin NOT because they see bamboo scaffolding as a tradition that distinguishes HK from China.

State-backed Hong Kong newspaper Ta Kung Pao has taken down an investigative report published on 28 Nov which cited industry sources saying building maintenance works effectively controlled by cartel, rife with corrupt practices in tender process, widespread cost and corner-cutting in materials.

Multiple local new sources in Hong Kong are reporting that the police have begun arresting activists calling for independent inquiries and accountability for the Tai Po fire 😡

天朝物產豐盈，無所不有，原不藉外夷貨物以通有無

📊 In this blog post, I use my visits database to look at Xi Jinping’s changing dominance seen through diplomatic patterns in MFA data: the third term really is different. sensehofstede.nl/xi-jinpings-...

I lied. Put your clothes back on. We’re going to talk about how there are actually female scholars within Confucianism who contributed significantly to Chinese literature, philosophy, and history, and their accomplishments are worthy of note and should be studied just as much as the men

Stellar, important and painstaking work tracing China's external investments worldwide on a project-by-project level, more than 33k in total. The dataset and very good visualisations available on china.aiddata.org. Can't believe this isn't getting more attention here.

Interesting conversation on China's lending and investments in the US, UK, and EU. With AidData's Brad Parks, David Culver, and Sailor Miao (all @wm.edu alums). Foreign aid nerds, see Brad's comments on U.S. now emulating China: www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8ZL...

Delighted to share a new @carnegieendowment.org report on China’s Foreign Police Training: A Global Footprint. Over 50 entities in China have provided training to at least 138 countries, forming a major pillar of Beijing’s drive to reshape global security: carnegieendowment.org/research/202...

Leib Littman at CloudResearch notes that acquiescence bias is often exacerbated on some opt-in online panels typically used for consumer research, where fraudulent respondents have an incentive to say "yes" and route themselves into more surveys.

New edited volume just dropped! Quantitative History of China: State Capacity, Institutions, and Development edited by Chen Zhiwu, myself, and Ma Debin is now able as a free PDF/ePub download. 1/2 link.springer.com/book/10.1007...

Independent Chinese-language film festival in US canceled after pressure campaign – Nikkei Asia: ‘said that he did not feel he was in physical danger but that the relentless messages forced him to shut down the event.’

Tang Dynasty

In case you missed it, Kerry Brown wrote a book that plagiarized Shelley Rigger’s classic book title. I, along with others who were asked to review Kerry’s manuscript, said verbatim to change the title. In the most tacky and unprofessional fashion, he stole her title anyway.

Includes a photo timeline of other "warrior" protests, which shows how they inspire each other: echoed slogans, repeated strategies like remotely activated projectors …. but the man behind the famous Sitong Bridge protest was reportedly sentenced to 9 years, and still most do this in person.

"a decision by the university not to publish a final phase of the research... was communicated to the National Security Service..." "China is not believed to have an organisation named National Security Service, so it is not clear who the individuals were". www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Local LLM just translated 王文涛 as "Wang Textao" 😂

A British university complied with a demand from Beijing to halt research about human rights abuses in China, leading to a major project being dropped, the Guardian can reveal.

I'm excited to share my piece in Los Angeles Review of Books @lareviewofbooks.bsky.social, which examines OpenAI's claims about ChatGPT's creative writing skills, Big Tech's weaponisation of grief and nostalgia, and the collapse of the academic humanities. lareviewofbooks.org/article/lite...

Very solid and entertaining introduction to Labubu mania. Wondered why my visitors from China went into the Vienna Labubu store and straight out again last summer. Now I have an explanation. The Labubu store probably had no Labubus.

Genuinely delighted to have received a postcard from @polbehavior.bsky.social today. This is a very nice gesture that truly made my day.

Dear Indonesian on bsky, my name is ogi- I am an Indonesian zinester, and I am planning to make an informative/educational zine about what happened in Indonesia. I want to share it in one of my zinefest in Växjö Sweden and you can use the ready-print version to share awareness when its finished!

Here's my epic failure against Trump's tariffs: I placed an order from a Ukrainian woodworking shop on Aug 17, but it's still stuck at the customs. It turns out, big platforms like Temu ends up getting an advantage over indie sellers because they can better handle the post-de minimis tariff regime.

A very moving and informative essay with insights on how and why individuals (in China) consult LLMs for medical advice, and how Chinese companies employ LLMs in healthcare already now.

This will be one of the few things I’m looking forward to having in my inbox. Wired’s (China) reporting has been stellar, so I’m looking forward to more of it. I just signed up.

Oh, wow. I just know this will be good.

‘Containing Xi’, or refining party rule? – Holly Snape for Observing China: ‘These planned regulations are part of Xi’s longstanding pet project to govern the CCP and the PRC by rules’ ‘Xi has used rules not only to maximise his concentration of power, but also to facilitate its use.’

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.

If anyone uses bsky data to research the impact of the New York Times #NYT recent reporting on #Mamdani, here is a data point: I'm not invested in US domestic politics, but cancelled my subscription because of what I perceive of as an inexcusable lack of journalistic and editorial standards.

If you’re a political scientist please consider joining @epssnet.bsky.social as a member to help support this new (not for profit!) organization and the next European Political Science Conference in 2026 in Belfast 👇 If that’s not in the budget: spreading the word is just as important 😊

Lucky shot, glad I had my camera with me.

A critical resource, under threat because of DOGE cuts. No group is better at finding cracks in the Great Firewall. If you think it’s important to understand China, consider donating

Some thoughts on the significance of all this. Besides their other work, CLB collected, verified and traced the outcomes of labor action in China. Between 2011 and 2025, they documented more than 19k events. The data was exportable, meaning that a program created an excel file based on your

A great service to anyone who will want to work with this data down the road. A big thank-you to whoever did this.

Nice collection of labor stats with charts

Speech-to-text just invented the Bureau of Lettuce and Complaints.

“Well, would you like to know what you'd be without us, the good ol' U.S. of A. to protect you? I'll tell you. The smallest fucking province in the Russian Empire, that's what! So don't call me stupid, lady. Just thank me.“ (Otto in A Fish Called Wanda)

This is a hilarious story. Real-life Little Bobby Tables. xkcd.com/327/

We're bang in the middle of global upheaval that's sweeping all before it. This could include the EU-China relationship We're still waiting for the *actual* change, but there has been lots of noise, so here's a long thread on what has happened this year and where we are today Anatomy of a detente?

300 000 more troops, at least 250 billion additional investment *per year* - that's what it might take for Europe to defend itself without the US. Important read by @bruegel.bsky.social: www.bruegel.org/analysis/def...

I wouldn't be surprised if the US position in the "peace talks" is that unless Ukraine gives it access to minerals, the US will actively support Russia against Ukraine - and work out a deal with Russia to split the loot. If Ukraine accepts the deal, Europe will be responsible for enforcing it. The

Collections like these are incredibly important for holding those in power accountable and documenting history but are becoming increasingly difficult to establish and maintain due to shifting political priorities. @archive.org is great, but can only function as a backup, not as a replacement.

This is very sad. David Webb’s collection of data has been a treasure trove for journalists and HongKongers alike. Thank you, Mr Webb, for all your hard work. Godspeed! webb-site.com/articles/shu...?