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.

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...?

Announcing the release of Common Corpus 2. The largest fully open corpus for pretraining comes back better than ever: 2 trillion tokens with document-level licensing, provenance and language information. huggingface.co/datasets/Ple...

Jedes Wort sitzt.

When it comes to assessing the risks of DeepSeek, are we asking the wrong questions? Governments, journalists, and coders need to know that it’s a much more sophisticated propaganda tool than we all thought.

That Trump does not believe any trade deal is worth the paper on which it was printed is an important insight for European spectators, who should watch, engage with, and draw from Canada’s and Mexico’s experience. with Herman Quarles for @ecfr.eu ecfr.eu/article/what...

Worried about losing access to US federal data that may go off-line, or already is? You’re not alone—but duplication isn’t the answer. Many ongoing efforts have already archived key datasets and many more are ongoing. Check out these existing resources and, if you can, support their work. 🧵

My biography of Xi Zhongxun, the father of Xi Jinping, will be released with @stanfordpress.bsky.social Series on Authoritarianism on June 3. It has new material for people interested Chinese elite politics, generational/family politics, Tibet, Xinjiang.. www.amazon.com/Partys-Inter...

Very good article that hits the nail on the head.

Polisky Dictatorsky Join us next week! On Feb. 11, Yilin Su (UCL) will present "Fake News Labels and Public Opinion in Nondemocracies: Evidence from Singapore" followed by comments by Alexandra Siegel (@colorado.edu) and Hannah Waight (@uoregon.bsky.social ). To attend subscribe: eepurl.com/iJc9FY

Fighting for the truth usually comes at a high cost. For women human rights defenders, it puts a target on their backs as well as their families’. Read their courageous stories here: citizenlab.ca/category/res... #digitaltransnationalrepression

Austria could be the next European country governed by a right extremist prime minister. This can still be prevented, but it looks like the ruling ÖVP doesn’t mind being the junior partner of the far right FPÖ. Tens of thousands of citizens who do mind are protesting in Vienna.

Pro-tip: import your pandas from China instead.

🇨🇳⚽ I am pleased to announce the publication of my book, "The Politics of Football: Institutional Change and Political Steering Under Xi Jinping," with Palgrave Macmillan, which is now available here: link.springer.com/book/10.1007...

One thing the Chinese government has learned, and the US is about to learn, is that negative propaganda is good for destruction, but not construction. And switching from destruction to construction is hard when you initiate your social contract by promising punishment of others.

Strategic reframing. The Chinese government does this too with terms like “democracy”, but different. Conservatives reframe progressive terms in a negative way to win over moderates, the Chinese government redefines “sensitive” terms to redirect focus from criticism to contestation over definitions.