US lawmakers have started debate on a law that would ban the successful TikTok app.  Political analyst Kaiser Kuo dismisses the effort as misguided at best, he writes in the ChinaFile. “In a sense, the threat of TikTok is real: In this crisis of confidence, and in a state of moral panic that we’ll look back on red-faced a decade out, TikTok is causing us to inflict grievous self-harm.”Read More →

China veteran and Pulitzer prize winner Ian Johnson discusses his newest book Sparks: China’s Underground Historians and their Battle for the Future with Bao Pu at City Lights Live. First question: who are the underground historians? And how do they survive in China’s system and challenge the state’s efforts to whitewash its history.Read More →

In an in-depth account of his book Sparks: China’s Underground Historians and their Battle for the Future, author Ian Johnson explains how China’s rulers have been changing the country’s history to solidify their position. He quotes extensively the current generation of so-called underground historians, who use new technologies to reinstate their views on their history, for a talk at USC China Institute.Read More →

History called the communist party to save China, that is the way history is used by the party, says author Ian Johnson in a speech about his newly published book Sparks: China’s Underground Historians and their Battle for the Future in WorldOregon.  But the official history doesn’t remain unchallenged. “Ian Johnson explores how some of China’s best-known writers, filmmakers, and artists have overcome crackdowns and censorship to forge a nationwide movement that challenges the Communist Party on its most hallowed ground: its control of history,” says the website.Read More →

Xi Jinping has put much effort into rewriting China’s history. China expert Ian Johnson, author of Sparks: China’s Underground Historians and their Battle for the Future, looks at underground historians, and how they oppose that trend. He discusses his discoveries at NPR. “There are still people who are keeping alive the idea of a more decent, humane China that confronts its problems of the past and thereby lays the groundwork for a better China of tomorrow,” Ian Johnson says.Read More →

In his latest book, Sparks: China’s Underground Historians and their Battle for the Future, the Stephen A. Schwarzman senior fellow for China studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, describes a movement of underground historians, trying to safeguard the country’s history from eradication by the communist party, in a discussion at Politico.Read More →

Chinese companies and emerging government regulations have marked the rise of AI tools in China. Marketing expert Ashley Dudarenok most certainly keeps an open mind to using those tools when they become available, she tells at Campaign Asia. “Their availability could offer us access to innovative solutions and capabilities to enhance our operations and drive further efficiency.”Read More →

China veteran and scholar Ian Johnson will publish in September 2023 his next book Sparks: China’s Underground Historians and their Battle for the Future. “It describes how some of China’s best-known writers, filmmakers, and artists have overcome crackdowns and censorship to forge a nationwide movement that challenges the Communist Party on its most hallowed ground: its control of history,” writes Ian Johnson at his weblog.Read More →

China’s internet censors took down a popular influencer showing a tofu tank, which suddenly made this year internet users aware of an issue that was mostly ignored: Beijing’s tank man on June 4, 1989. Political expert Shaun Rein explains how the censor shot into his own food at ABC News.Read More →

Not authoritarian rule but solid support from China’s citizens allowed its government to beat the Covid-19 and effectively deal with the coronavirus crisis, argues Singapore-based journalist Ian Johnson, in the New York Review of Books. He uses the Wuhan Diary: Dispatches from a Quarantined City by Fang Fang, to show the government did not silence critics but did win majority support by its people, helped by indeed heavily manipulated media in China.Read More →

China watcher Kaiser Kuo discusses Western narratives on China’s rise. Technology did not beat authoritarian regimes, he explains, just as other Western views on China were profoundly wrong. The Arab Spring uprising was the first sign technology did not bring repression down, but not the last one, he argues.Read More →