Category: China
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Weekly Wanderings: January 25, 2026
WHAT A WEEK We’ve truly made the final transition from news cycle to news tornado. As the number of links below indicate, I spent way too much time every evening sitting on my couch doom-scrolling on Bluesky. I need to do less of that, but it’s hard not to feel an obligation to read and…
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Weekly Wanderings: January 18, 2026
Thanks for joining me this week. New Goodreads Reviews Recommendations China Stories The conviction of Lai, the self-made entrepreneur and pro-democracy media publisher, was in fact an anti-climax — a footnote in a long and carefully orchestrated exercise to silence one of the Party’s most stubborn and effective critics in the nominally autonomous special administrative…
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Bookshelf: Mission to Mao
The U.S. Army Air Force C-47 transport approached a dirt airstrip in North China, an informal ground crew guiding it in for landing while bystanders watched on a late July day in 1944. As the plane’s wheels touched down, all initially seemed well—until a loud boom sounded, the aircraft veering sharply to its left and…
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Weekly Wanderings: January 12, 2026
Thanks for joining me this week. Recommendations China Stories Eliot Chen, “Cheng Lei On Life in Chinese Prison” Jenny Huangfu Day, “Ice Hockey in China” David Frazier, “Aircraft bunkers in Taiwan’s Yilan county shines light on little-known kamikaze outpost” After Xiaomi launched an online lottery last January for public access to its highly-automated facility on…
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Weekly Wanderings: January 4, 2026
So … 2026. What a year, huh? 🤨 One good thing: I had the pleasure of serving as moderator for my friend Joseph Torigian at a discussion of his book, The Party’s Interests Come First: The Life of Xi Zhongxun, Father of Xi Jinping, at Three Cats in Clawson, MI this afternoon. Three Cats is…
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Weekly Wanderings: December 21, 2025
Here we are—the shortest day of the year, and the final regular Weekly Wanderings post of 2025, although I’ll pop into your inboxes next Sunday with a year in review sort of thing. Thank you to everyone who has read, clicked, liked, subscribed, etc. I already have some writing lined up for 2026, both here…
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Weekly Wanderings: December 14, 2025
Two housekeeping notes to start: (1) If you’re in Clawson, Michigan, on Sunday, January 4, I’ll be the discussant for a talk by Joseph Torigian on his book, The Party’s Interests Come First: The Life of Xi Zhongxun, Father of Xi Jinping (read my write-up of the book from earlier this year). Tickets are free,…
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Weekly Wanderings: December 7, 2025
Thanks for joining me this week. Recommendations China Stories Keith Bradsher, “The New York Times Marks the Centennial of Its Shanghai Bureau” Violet Du Feng, “How to Find a Date in a Country With Over 30 Million Extra Men” (video) Oliver Holmes, “‘Don’t say we didn’t warn you’: Beijing summons journalists in Hong Kong after…
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Weekly Wanderings: November 30, 2025
Black Friday Sale! Small-Business Saturday Savings! Maura’s Cyber Monday Mania! Wait, no, that’s not right. I’ve read those words so many times in the past few days, I forgot that I’m not here to sell anything. Nor do I have a holiday gift guide to share. There’s nothing to buy here, just a handful of…
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Weekly Wanderings: November 23, 2025
Thanks for joining me this week. Recommendations China Stories The results of an invasion would be catastrophic not just for Taiwan but the entire globe, with as much as $10 trillion in annual losses to the world economy, according to a recent analysis by Bloomberg Economics. It could wipe out over ten percent of global…
Maura Elizabeth Cunningham 