An article from Emily Feng at NPR, “A public payphone in China began ringing and ringing. Who was calling?,” manages to be both inspiring and deflating. The story it tells brings together themes of environmental justice, public protest, art as a tool of advocacy, and the increasing difficulty of evading China’s pervasive surveillance regime.
The Economist has a great new podcast out about Xi Jinping. The Prince traces Xi’s life from his early career, through his posts in Fujian and Zhejiang, to his current seat at the apex of power in China.
Another piece of deeply researched multimedia reporting is this video on COVID whistleblower Li Wenliang from the Visual Investigations team at The New York Times.
Earlier this week, Asia Society launched its new Center for China Analysis (CCA) with a series of panels on China’s domestic politics in the run-up to the 20th Party Congress, “building guardrails” in U.S.-China relations, and prospects for U.S.-China collaboration. CCA also recently launched a new online feature, “Decoding the 20th Party Congress,” which includes an interactive tool for exploring the relationships among potential candidates for the Party’s Politburo, as well as analysis about how the composition of China’s new leadership may affect the policy landscape.
And finally, at a moment when the world seems to be pulling apart, our friends at The China Project (the publication formerly known as SupChina), have this gem on Peking University students learning Yiddish, and the ways it draws awareness to China’s own vanishing regional dialects.