Category China

“Well short of government targets”

An interesting piece in The Guardian this morning, by Michael Safi (based in Beirut), Theo Merz (Moscow) and Helen Davidson (Taipei). “Why home-produced Covid vaccine hasn’t helped India, Russia and China rollouts.” As vaccinations rates soar in Israel, the UK,…

A reading list on Xinjiang

After writing these two posts on Xinjiang, I did some more searching for a comprehensive introduction into the history, geography and culture of the region. I can’t say I found what I’d set out for but I came across this:…

Ruins of a Theater

At the Vereshchagin retrospective in 2018, I spent some time staring at a painting of a ruined Chinese theater somewhere in Central Asia. After posting these notes on Altishar and Kashgaria, I wondered if had Vereshchagin found his theatrical ruins…

Altishahr, Beshbalik, and Yettishar

In a text to accompany an exhibition of visual works by the artist Mikray Pida, Edward Luttwak wrote: Mikray Pida’s art is her own transcendental creation, yet it is not irrelevant that she is an Uighur, that being a rather…

Luttwak on Napoleon, China and Trump

Back in 2014, more than two years before Trump’s elevation to the presidency, Edward Luttwak summed up his thoughts on grand strategy in application to the Napoleonic wars: In retrospect​ the fight against Napoleon seems to have engendered a new…

Last summer in Wuhan

There’s new evidence that an outbreak of an infectious disease closely and suspiciously resembling Covid-19 occurred in Wuhan months before the officially recognized beginning of the coronavirus epidemic. Satellite images of hospital parking lots in Wuhan as well as internet…

The First Socialist War

To quote myself: Vietnam’s quarantine, I imagine, was much facilitated by the people’s apprehension of threats and dangers coming from the north. That is, from China. Back in 1979, China invaded Vietnam, devastated the borderlands and withdrew in the face…

Whatever slows it down

OK, if you insist that COVID-19 is just like the flu, I could agree if you dropped “just.” It’s like the flu, sort of – but much deadlier and, in all likelihood, more contagious. I’ve seen the COVID-19 mortality rate…

D. S. G. Goodman on Chinese elites

I first came across this finding by Prof. Goodman in a Kommersant opinion piece (Victims of Sexual Inequality, that is, Chinese men with low prospects of finding a female partner). It was a revelation; I couldn’t believe it at first.…