Maura Elizabeth Cunningham

Recommendations

China Stories

Mr. Hu has not explained his silence; nor have China’s internet authorities. But many in China think he has been censored, pointing to signs that party officials may have been irked — paradoxically — because Mr. Hu lauded them in the wrong way. In China, even misplaced praise for the party may be enough to draw the ire of censors.

— Chris Buckley, “One of China’s Most Talkative Nationalists Suddenly Goes Silent”

Chip Cutter, with photographs by Sandy Huffaker, “Inside the San Diego Zoo’s Six-Month Sprint to Bring Pandas Back to America”

Nectar Gan and Eric Cheung, “Taiwan is making a TV show about a Chinese invasion. And it’s hitting close to home”

Wanderings Around the World

Nadia Beard, “A Summer of Hope and Despair in Tbilisi”

Brett Forrest and Louise Radnofsky, “The Americans Left Behind in Russia After Historic Prisoner Swap”

Valerie Hopkins, “Belarus Casts Aside Dissident Athletes, Their Talent ‘Buried’”

The devastation has put severe pressure on the country’s sports system, challenges that were evident on a Friday in late June during a visit to the prominent Dnipro Sports College in east-central Ukraine. By midafternoon, the teenage students had sought cover in the school’s bomb shelter seven times because of air-raid alerts.

— Jeré Longman and Oleksandr Chubko, with photographs and video by Chang W. Lee, “As Ukraine Collects Medals in Paris, Its Sports Pipeline Is in Tatters”

Standout Story

In an earlier post I linked to a story about Kamala Harris’s relative lack of China experience. Harris’s selection of Tim Walz as her running mate balances the ticket in that regard, as Walz has decades of interactions with China—starting with the year he spent teaching there in 1989-90, arriving just after the June Fourth Massacre. Tim and Gwen Walz (who married on June 4, 1994) conducted annual tours to China with high-school students throughout the 1990s, and as a politician he has consistently criticized the Chinese Communist Party on human rights. Walz strikes me as pro-engagement and a strong supporter of people-to-people diplomacy—two positions that have become more difficult to hold in recent years as U.S.-China relations soured.

Recent reports on Walz’s history of engagement with China:

Walz has said his decision to continue with the teaching program despite the crackdown angered some observers. “But it was my belief at that time that the diplomacy was going to happen on many levels, certainly people to people, and the opportunity to be in a Chinese high school at that critical time seemed to me to be really important,” he told fellow members of a congressional panel in 2014.

— James T. Areddy, “Tim Walz Is Fascinated by China—and Disturbed by Its Human-Rights Record”

Nectar Gan, Eric Cheung, Isaac Yee, and Will Ripley, “Kamala Harris’ VP pick has a long history with China. But Beijing may not be happy about it”

Lily Ottinger, “Tim Walz on China”

Mr. Walz’s record in the House, from 2007 to 2019, showed a lawmaker who often drew on his personal experience in the country to lay out sharp critiques of China’s human rights record. He took a special interest in Tibet and Hong Kong, meeting with both the Dalai Lama and Joshua Wong, a prominent Hong Kong pro-democracy activist.

— Amy Qin and Keith Bradsher, “Tim Walz’s Long Relationship With China Defies Easy Stereotypes”

Featured photo: “Villa of the Mysteries” mural, University of Michigan Kelsey Museum of Archeology, August 11, 2024.