Recently I read a story that I couldn’t stop thinking about: the FBI shut down a Chinese police station… in the heart of New York City. This week on #InTheRoom , Josh Chin took me down the rabbit hole to unravel how a protest and a massacre led to China’s worldwide campaign to…

Presidential candidates Hou Yu-ih and Ko Wen-je concede. Must be nice to be from a country where all presidential candidates accept election results.

The depressing reality is that inside China, this very basic detail - that Chinese nuclear plants have released far more radiation into the sea - is unknown. Instead, the propaganda machine has v successfully whipped up anti-Japan anger and panic

21 weeks. Far too long. #istandwithevan

China’s 40-Year Boom Is Over. What Comes Next? The economic model that took the country from poverty to great-power status seems broken, and everywhere are signs of distress. Lingling Wei 魏玲灵 and Stella Yifan Xie take a big step back.
wsj.com/world/china/ch…

In Surveillance State, Josh Chin & Liza Lin present a fair presentation of the bad & the good of technology (& yes, there is some good). While their focus is on China, their lessons are for everyone, including the US. Read our review in Commonweal Magazine: tinyurl.com/3fe8bzrr

“Tahir Hamut Izgil’s Waiting to Be Arrested at Night … is suffused, rather, by a deep sense of sadness, and of despondency even amid hope. ‘Yet our words could undo nothing here,/even the things we brought to be’, as one of Izgil’s poems laments.” theguardian.com/books/2023/aug…

Call it Friday Night Lights, Guizhou edition.

There are legitimate reasons to give China a wide berth these days, but stories like this one from Jonathan Cheng and Qianwei Zhang make me miss it so much

wsj.com/sports/basketb…

Evan is a leader, positive, considerate, volcanic, charismatic, resilient, determined, a competitor, generous, admirable, gifted, smart, noble. Evan Gershkovich is an American journalist, wrongly detained in Russia. Bring. Him. Home. #IStandWithEvan

.Josh Chin: “China is using data and AI surveillance together to reboot the way governments impose control on societies and they’re doing so basically by taking a page from Silicon Valley.”
More of this GaslitNation episode here: patreon.com/posts/chinese-…

.Liza Lin: “Technologies put in place for public good are often eventually abused. Because technology is easily subverted and perverted, we need checks and balances for these systems.”
More of this GaslitNation episode here: patreon.com/posts/chinese-…

With China determined to win the AI 'space race,' what does it mean for the rest of the world? Investigative reporters Liza Lin and Josh Chin share important insights into China's dictatorship, companies cashing in on its surveillance state, and more: patreon.com/posts/chinese-…

From today's The New York Times. Thanks again to Tiffany May for this outstanding profile of leading #Uyghur poet Tahir Hamut Izgil. It's been a privilege translating Tahir H. Izgil's poetry & memoir, and it's so good to see how his work is raising awareness of the crisis in the Uyghur homeland.

Was really good speaking with Emily Feng 冯哲芸 for her piece on Tahir H. Izgil's new memoir. Thanks to Emily for this excellent piece and to NPR for including some of Tahir's amazing poetry.

Link below to Tahir's memoir of the crisis in the Uyghur homeland.
npr.org/2023/08/01/119…

My review of Tahir Izgil's 'Waiting to be Arrested at Night.' bostonglobe.com/2023/08/03/art…