Maura Elizabeth Cunningham

Thanks for joining me this week.

Recommendations

China Stories

James T. Areddy, “The China Foe Storming State Capitols”

Ben Bland, “Making sense of China-Southeast Asia relations”

Jonathan Chatwin, “The Race to Type in Chinese”

Chang Che, “‘You Think We’re Afraid of America?’” and “3 takeaways from my visit to Yiwu, the frontlines of the trade war”

Eliot Chen, “Grading Day—2025 has arrived. Has China’s grand vision for tech supremacy lived up to the hype?”

China Books Review, “Shortlist: 2024 Translated Literature Award”

Eileen Guo, “Yahoo will give millions to a settlement fund for Chinese dissidents, decades after exposing user data”

On a rising wave of demands for democracy, the party grew to more than 1,000 members at its height in 2008. Its effort to maintain a moderate stance drew criticism, including from within its own ranks, from those seeking to push harder against Beijing. Yet moderation could not save the party’s leaders from being caught in the dragnet as China tightened its control over Hong Kong.

— Tiffany May, “A Chapter Closes: Hong Kong’s Democratic Party to Disband”

Henry O’Connor, “In The Dragon’s Shadow w/ Sebastian Strangio”—interview with Strangio about his book, In the Dragon’s Shadow: Southeast Asia in the Chinese Century

Moira Wegel, “I Trained at an Amazon Center in Hangzhou. You’d Be Surprised What They Think of Trump.”

Yu Xiaobai, “Television in Crisis”

Zeyi Yang, “Stumbling and Overheating, Most Humanoid Robots Fail to Finish Half Marathon in Beijing”

Yuan Ling, “The Nanny’s Tale”

Juan Zhang, “Taiwan Deports Mainland Spouse Amid Rising Cross-Strait Friction” and “Fears of a China Initiative Revival Stir Anxiety Among Chinese American Academics”

Wanderings Around the World

Josie Huang, “As DOGE cuts hit SoCal cultural spaces and libraries, Little Tokyo museum fights to keep programs alive”

Sadaf and Breshna turn to books and reading as ways to preserve the rich cultural and literary traditions that are often part of the everyday lives of ordinary Afghans. Mainstream portrayals of asylum-seekers tend to focus on integration — on the need to teach them new languages, new customs and ways of life. But Sadaf and Breshna’s story challenges this stereotype. For them, reading is their resistance to the erasure of exile.

— Taran N. Khan, “The Women Helping the Afghan Refugee Community Connect with Literature and Culture in Delhi”

Frank Lidz, “How to Evade Taxes in Ancient Rome? A 1,900-Year-Old Papyrus Offers a Guide.”

Graham Smith, “The State Department is changing its mind about what it calls human rights”

Rainesford Stauffer, “Being a librarian was already hard. Then came the Trump administration”

Featured photo: View from the top of Diamond Head State Monument, Honolulu, Hawaii, March 30, 2022.