Category: China
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Weekly Wanderings: February 16, 2026
I love to write book reviews. I find it incredibly enjoyable when I’m reading a book and feel something spark—an interesting bit of history, or a new perspective, or a wonderful turn of phrase—that makes me impatient to tell everyone else about what I’m reading. I get excited about a book and I want other…
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Weekly Wanderings: February 8, 2026
I have a new review at The Wall Street Journal, discussing a wonderful and very engaging book by journalist Yi-Ling Liu, The Wall Dancers: Searching for Freedom and Connection on the Chinese Internet. I’ve written a lot over the years about the Chinese Party-state’s imposition of internet controls, so it was a refreshing change to…
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Weekly Wanderings: February 1, 2026
Thanks for joining me this week. Recommendations China Stories The AI race is being waged with the top 1% of the 1% of talent in China; the rest of the 99.9% and the humanities majors have much less to look forward to. In the fourth and fifth-tier cities, one of most arresting problems in 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,…
Maura Elizabeth Cunningham 