In commemoration of the Tiananmen Massacre, the following is from a pamphlet issued by the Autonomous Federation of Students on June 4th, 1989. It outlines and reiterates the need to remain nonviolent. “This fascist massacre pushes the people of the entire nation beyond the outer limits of toleration. The blood will not have been shed … More Urging Nonviolence After Tiananmen
Yesterday ChinaFile published a short collection of responses from journalists, academics, and politicians expressing their analysis and illustrating what they see as the correct path forward regarding the non-renewal of journalist’s visas in a piece called: Will China Shut Out the Foreign Press Here is my immediate reaction: I think Bill Bishop‘s remarks are the … More Foreign Journalist Reprisals in Beijing
This interactive map of China catalogs labor unrest and offers a quantitative view into the geography and grievance base of labor rights resistance. The good folks down at China Labour Bulletin have been working hard to produce an interactive map updated and full of useful information for tracking and understanding labor contention in China. The … More Interactive Labor Contention China Map
As the government of China continues its crackdown on civil society actors, especially those who have publicly endorsed or claimed membership in the New Citizen’s Movement, human rights activists gathered in Hong Kong to do something many like minded Chinese citizens are forbidden from doing within the Chinese mainland under the 1989 Law on Assemblies, … More In Hong Kong, Protests Against New Citizen’s Movement Crackdown
Out along the high speed rail lines, somewhere between Beijing and Tianjin is the Italian themed outlet mall Florentia Village. The pastiche of Roman, Venetian, Florentine and Chinese styles, facades, walkways, and faces is replete with a miniature canal ride fit for a low budget Disneyland ride, a pizza chain, and Costa coffee. The stores … More Florentia Village: Pastiche halfway between Beijing and Tianjin
Amid the usual frenetic pulsing throngs of passing subway patrons, Beijing denizens and tourists rushing from the sliding doors of subway cars to be the first ones up the escalator to make their connections or meetings, I examined my reflection in a glass partition waiting for the train to pass. After the train rushed away, … More Toothless Tigers in the Subway: An Animal Rights Campaign in China
This morning the rusted scaffolding that had been clanging and crunching on the pavement, manipulated by the gloved and calloused hands of migrants workers as they assembled the hulking trellis to scale the side of my building, reached its first pinnacle of construction. With the early hour came the skull splitting, sonorous sound of drilling … More A Mingong Morning
“At least 25 people drowned in Saturday’s rains, the heaviest to fall on the city since records began in 1951. Six died in housing collapses, five were electrocuted and one person was struck by lightning,” reported Al Jazeera. Atlantic Cities has a nice photo essay. In the wake of the deluge a flurry of resentment … More BEIJING0721
In a number of posts to follow I will identify three places where symbolic power operates, that is, how the Chinese State has exerted its monopoly of symbolic power to instill a signification of Uyghurs as an undeveloped singing, dancing subaltern subject. Indeed, this colonialist objectification: the predominant representation of Uyghurs, and other minzu (ethnic … More Deconstructing ‘Minzu’
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