Maura Elizabeth Cunningham

At the AAS #AsiaNow blog, I have a new interview in my series of exchanges with authors (which you can now find all linked here at my website). This time, I talked with historian Douglas Ober about his first book, Dust on the Throne: The Search for Buddhism in Modern India. Ober takes on the oft-repeated assertion that Buddhism was “all but dead” in India after the 14th century until it was “revived” by British colonizers in the 1800s. Instead, Ober shows that Buddhism persisted in India throughout those fallow years, and that its 19th-century revival owed as much or more to Indian thinkers and practitioners as to the British. Read our discussion at #AsiaNow.

Recent Goodreads Reviews

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China Stories

Irene Chan, “On this day: 28 years on, Hong Kong artists and researchers bring a moment in 1996 back to life”

Burns said that Beijing has ramped up its suppression of American diplomatic activities in China. He tallied 61 public events since November in which China’s Ministry of State Security or other government bodies pressured Chinese citizens not to go, or attempted to intimidate those who attended.
Some attendees of the U.S. Embassy-organized events—which include talks by mental-health specialists, panel discussions on women’s entrepreneurship, documentary screenings and cultural performances—have been interrogated by officials, sometimes at home late at night.

Jonathan Cheng, “In Rare Rebuke, U.S. Ambassador Accuses China of Undermining Diplomacy”; China’s Foreign Ministry then responded to Burns’ claims, reported by Cheng in “China Rejects U.S. Ambassador’s Accusation That Beijing Is Undermining Diplomacy”

Emily Feng, “China convicts 99% of defendants in criminal trials. Reversing a conviction is hard”

Li Xin, “Lonely Planet Reaches the End of the Road in China”

Steven Lee Myers and Tiffany Hsu, “New Tactic in China’s Information War: Harassing a Critic’s Child in the U.S.”

SHer Life, “Shanghai’s Forgotten Ferries: A Commuter’s Tale”

During the Cold War, communist ideology ultimately pushed the two countries apart, while now they are united by a more general set of conservative, anti-Western, and statist attitudes. In the old days, poor relations between individual leaders damaged the relationship, while today, Xi and Putin have made their personal connection a feature of the strategic partnership. Then, the exigencies of the Cold War alliance, which required each side to sacrifice its own interests for the other’s, contained the seeds of its own demise, whereas the current axis of convenience allows more flexibility. China and Russia will never again march in lockstep as they did in the first years after the Chinese Revolution, but they won’t walk away from each other any time soon.

Joseph Torigian, “Xi Jinping’s Russian Lessons: What the Chinese Leader’s Father Taught Him About Dealing With Moscow”

Edward Wong, “In Search of My Father’s Frontier: His Years in Mao’s Army” — a preview of Wong’s new book, At the Edge of Empire: A Family’s Reckoning with China

John Yoon, “After Escaping China by Sea, a Dissident Faces His Next Act”

Wanderings Around the World

Surbhi Gupta, “Indian Films Are Showing the Realities of Life for the Country’s Housewives”

This is just one family’s story, but it is one that reflects just how difficult it has become for ordinary people to live in North Korea — and to escape it.

Michelle Ye Hee Lee, “How one family escaped North Korea in a rickety boat on the open sea”

Conor Niland, “‘I’m good, I promise’: the loneliness of the low-ranking tennis player”

Standout Story

Not unlike her one-time inspiration, Zhuge Liang, Cheng draws upon a diverse range of disciplines — physics, politics, history, and personal experience — to explore the evolution of Sino-American scientific exchange and the responsibility of scientists in both an authoritarian China and an America that is increasingly suspicious of China’s technological rise. Her writing has developed a fan following of its own, partly because it has become rare for someone like her — a Chinese scientist in America — to be so unapologetically outspoken and to insist, as she does, that “science is an inherently political endeavor.”

Katrina Northrop, “Physicist in Exile: Yangyang Cheng and the role of scientists in U.S.-China relations”

Featured photo: The Philadelphia Phillies, on their way to defeating the Detroit Tigers 8-1 at Comerica Park, June 24, 2024.