Maura Elizabeth Cunningham

What a week.

I don’t have any deep insights or grand analysis to share about the election. Since Wednesday, my inbox has been filled with newsletters and articles titled “What did Harris do wrong?” and “What this election means for America” and so forth. I’ve opened all those emails and mostly skimmed over them before deleting, my brain beyond its capacity for Monday-morning quarterbacking. As you’ll see in the first section below, I’ve been taking refuge in fiction.

Thanks for joining me this week.

Recent Goodreads Reviews

Recommendations

China Stories

Keith Bradsher, “How Volkswagen Lost Its Way in China”

Given the opaque nature of Chinese politics, the world often fixates on Mr. Xi, who since taking power in 2012 has centralized control and surrounded himself with loyalists, making it hard to know whose views he most values. In his circle, Mr. Wang (Huning) stands out for rising to the top despite never having led a province or city, and for advising three successive Chinese leaders across three decades — a rare feat of adaptability and survival.

— Chris Buckley, “The Man Who Shaped China’s Strongman Rule Has a New Job: Winning Taiwan”

Dylan Levi King, “Don’t Write Off the Mao Dun Literature Prize”

Chongjing Li and Alfred Cang, “The Epicenter of China’s Gold Craze Is a Former Fishing Village”

David Moser, “Character Amnesia in China”

Stephen R. Platt, “Finding the Way: Three Translations of the Dao De Jing”

Qin Shi, “The Crimes and Punishments of China’s ‘Internet Auditors’”

Christian Shepherd and Katrina Northrop, “As ties with the U.S. worsen, China asks: Who’s the new Kissinger?”

Talk of neijuan (involution) doesn’t mean there is no forward progress in China. Far from it. The vastness of China means it contains many paradoxes. And in the “new era”, there is surely a paradox of advancing technological prowess in many sectors—China is now world leading in electric vehicles, solar panels, and infrastructure. But the gains in these sectors have not yet (or perhaps never will) fully radiate prosperity outward to lift everyone’s boats. That’s the hope of party leaders overseeing a techno-industrial policy to promote indigenous innovation and research aimed at making China and indispensable global leader in key technologies. But the payoff of such innovations for individuals may be a long way off, if they ever come.

— Andrew Stokols, “The paradoxes of China’s new era: cultural self-confidence, neijuan, and innovation.”

Jeremy Wallace, “How Do We Know What’s Happening in China?”

Vivian Wang, “Part-Time Farmers, Part-Time Rock Stars: A Chinese Band’s Unlikely Rise”

Graham Webster, “The US and China stand together at the heights of political anxiety”

Wanderings Around the World

Anne Helen Petersen and Lilah Raptopoulos, “Cooking in the Age of Infinite Recipes” (podcast)

Andrew Restuccia and Rebecca Ballhaus, “America’s Top Archivist Puts a Rosy Spin on U.S. History—Pruning the Thorny Parts”

Muktita Suhartono, “An Indonesian Tribe’s Language Gets an Alphabet: Korea’s”

Standout Story

Since the end of World War II, no one has been killed in a nuclear attack by a foreign adversary, but many lives have been forfeited for their country to gain the bomb, and countless more are dying from the ensuing ecological devastation. Mao might have sounded like a madman, and the dedication of the Chinese nuclear scientists might have exceeded reason, but the greater absurdity lies in relying on the bomb for protection, and detonating it to scare off the presumed enemy. Nuclear war is not just a future possibility. It has already happened. Time and again. It has been waged not between countries or ideological rivals, but under the same sovereign, by the metropole against the colonies.

— Yangyang Cheng, “Where the Malan Blooms: 60 Years After the First Chinese Nuclear Bomb”

Featured photo: A resident of the Tiny Lions Cat Café, Ann Arbor, November 10, 2024.