Thanks to Italian publisher Neri Pozza, Sparks is coming out in Italian and thanks to two Italy-based academics I’ll be on a four-day seven-lecture tour of the country from Rome to Naples to Milan to Pavia to Florence.
I’ve put all the details of the tour on the usual speaking/media page but I thought I’d mention how I like the way the book is being presented. First, the subtitle is pretty grabby–“Clandestine Stories from China.” These are indeed clandestine stories, not only in the sense of them being secret but also because the term has a whiff of the conspiratorial, the dangerous, and the underground.
The talks themselves are also cleverly framed for a general audience. Many of them play on the concept of China being a “vulnerable superpower,” which I think is useful, especially because we’re bombarded with hype about China being on the march forward. It is, but it’s also fragile, in part because of the underground historians’ “clandestine stories,” which undermine CCP rule.
It’s also nice to be speaking at such a variety of venues: universities, think tans, and even a bookstore event at a villa outside Florence. I’m especially grateful to Enrico Fardella at the University of Naples for organizing the Rome/Naples leg and Axel Berkofsky of the University of Pavia and ISPI in Milan.
I look forward to the trip and will update the site if recordings are made.
In another era, Perry Link and Wu Dazhi’s biography of Liu Xiaobo would have been reviewed widely and my review–which appeared a year after the book was published–would have been embarrassingly late. But many societies around the world are focused inward, obsessed with populist concerns, and so this tour-de-force biography was essentially not reviewed in the mainstream press at all. A pity, because it gives us the prequel to Xi’s China–a time of bold efforts to build civil society in China and bold people like the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo. Read the review here.
“Some see in his critique of the Mao era parallels to today: the arbitrary rule of an aging leader, harsh treatment of dissent, and government programs that encourage people to inform on one another.” My profile of the octogenarian essayist Gao Ertai, who lived for years in the deserts of western China and now resides in Las Vegas.
For the past three years I’ve been a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, where I finished my book Sparks on dissent in today’s China, while also working on policy issues. It’s been a great experience: I got the chance to work with collegial, interesting thinkers; I moved back to the United States for the first sustained period of time in nearly 30 years; and our family had stability after I was turfed out of China in 2020 and we faced the uncertainties of the Covid era. For these and many other reasons I’ll always be thankful to the Council for providing me with an intellectual home and a great place to work.
We would have enjoyed staying on at the Council and in New York but a variety of reasons call us back to Europe and so–to bury the lede–we are leaving New York on July 1 for Berlin (via a summer in Southeast Asia).
Why? Emotionally, I love New York but I have felt what the Chinese call yuanfen (affinity) with Berlin ever since I went there before the Wall fell. After leaving Montreal as a teenager, I didn’t feel at home in many places but Berlin–as messed up as it was and is–immediately felt like home. I spent more than a decade there and it was my base for all the years I spent in China.
Now we have a great chance to return to Berlin. I’ll be a fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin. This is modeled on (and in fact its official English name is) the Institute for Advanced Studies, the Princeton-based center for natural and social scientists. I’ll work on my next book there, on religious life in Xi’s China–hint, it has to do with folk religion, pilgrimages, and stick fighting.
Meanwhile, while my wife Sim Chi Yin can be a bit closer to her artistic practice–she’s represented by a gallery there and often works in Europe’s colonial archives.
In fact, we aren’t flying straight to Berlin because she has a performance in Singapore at the end of August. It’s a one-woman show where she uses her photos, videos, and storytelling to look at memory and forgetting. The show premieres at the national theater, the Esplanade on Aug. 30 . (I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention TICKETS.)
So we’ll go in July, spend some time in Penang, and then she has rehearsals for most of the month. Then in early September off to Berlin for a new chapter in our lives.
One of the unpredictable aspects of writing is to see how interest develops over time. In the case of Sparks, it was published last year and I organized the usual tour, which you can see on the book’s tour page and review page. What I didn’t expect is that I’d still be approached about interviews months later. That’s been the case over the past few months as several very different kinds of podcasts–some focusing on law, others on literature–have asked me about the book.
In addition, I was also given a 17-hour grilling by a Stanford University oral history project of China-watchers–a tiring, fascinating, and sobering series of reflections about my engagement with China since the 1980s and how attitudes have radically changed. I probably will never write my memoirs and this may well stand as my most complete set of thoughts on my career, so far at least.
First though, some thoughts on the podcasts.
In March, I was on tech guru Mark Hurst’s “Radio Techtonic” show (from minute 8’30”) about the role of technology in keeping China’s underground history movement alive. For me that was really interesting because Mark noticed that my argument in Sparks is somewhat contrarian–yes, technology is being used to control people in China, but simple digital technologies can (still, at least) be used in an asymmetrical fashion as a “weapon of the weak” (to paraphrase James C. Scott’s argument).
In April, Elizabeth M. Lynch interviewed me for the China Law and Policy podcast on counter-histories. I appreciated her tough questioning–why so little on Tiananmen and are young people really interested in this stuff? I think I gave some pretty convincing answers to these points, but you can decide…
In May I talked to Ed Pulford of the New Books Network about Sparks. The NBN is one of my favorite sources for podcasts–they do several a day so you have to pick and choose–but for me they’re sort of a definitive record of books that have hit the market. Ed is a fellow anthropologist (my PhD at Leipzig is in Sinologie but in a non-German university it would be classified as anthropology) and was super prepared. This short introduction was a masterful exercise in de-exoticizing China by pointing out the role of history in other countries.
Two days later, I went on Lee Moore’s Chinese Literature Podcast, which was also really fun because we could focus on the literary aspect of resistance to CCP rule. In the Cold War, most educated westerners were familiar with great Central and Eastern European intellectuals like Kundera and Solzhenitsyn, so why not their Chinese counterparts today? I ventured some answers.
Finally, I spent 17 hours with Stanford University’s Liu He, who grilled me about my entire career for the Hoover Institution’s oral history project on China watching. Most of it was in-person in Brooklyn but one (see photo at top) was by Zoom. I thought we’d be done in a few hours, but he kept finding interesting threads and pushed me to make analyze what I got right and wrong over a past decade–a sobering exercise!
Not sure where the ledger stands at the end of it all, but he was a really engaged and well-prepared interviewer. (We also spent a fair bit of time together, as you can see from our jokey expressions in this photo.) He went through old stories I did for Baltimore’s The Sun, the WSJ, NYRB, NYT, my three books on China (and even the one not on China) and more recent work at CFR and the China Unofficial Archives. I really appreciated his incredible research into my past.
As for what will happen with the material, some of it could be made public but I was quite honest about the field and so am not sure if I shouldn’t put some of it under lock for a decade.
I write all of this as a kind of update but also as a reflection on how books and ideas have shelf lives that go beyond the initial buzz that one tries to generate on social media. Probably for most authors, this is far more gratifying than the initial interest, which can often be nothing more than a straw fire.
In the future, I’ll be leaving CFR to take up a fellowship in Berlin and devote myself to new projects about China–more on all of that in a later post–but these themes of memory and resistance will continue. I have a new book planned on the uses of religion in Xi’s China, new tools that will make the China Unofficial Archives more useful, and trips back to Asia–perhaps one day even back to China.
The scientific community has been abuzz with the potential of the LK99 superconductor, a material that could revolutionize our understanding of physics and technology. Amidst the flurry of research and speculation, a series of posts on Chinese social media have caught the attention of many, hinting at significant progress in the replication of LK99’s unique properties by Chinese academics.
The posts, shared by two different users in both light and dark modes, originated from Zhihu. They contain appearant WeChat screenshots, a popular communication app used by virtually every Chinese citizen. The screenshots contain a conversation allegedly involving Hu Xiwei, a respected professor at Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST), specializing in nuclear fusion and theoretical physics. Professor Hu, a graduate of Peking University in 1964, also spent time at the University of Maryland from 1984–1986. More about Prof. Hu Xiwei
The content of the conversation is intriguing. It suggests that the Physics Institute has successfully produced a sample of the LK99 superconductor and replicated its magnetizing qualities. However, the Meissner effect, a key characteristic of superconductors, has yet to be observed. The issue seems to lie in the purity of the superconducting material, which is currently only a few percent. Despite this, the conversation implies optimism, stating, “if we have made a start this problem will be solved quickly.”
Dark & Light mode screenshots
The authenticity of these screenshots has been a topic of intense debate. However, a detailed analysis of the screenshots suggests that they are likely genuine:
The timestamps of the messages (circled in green) are consistent with WeChat’s behavior of bunching up messages and not displaying exact time stamp for every single message. The dark mode screenshot displays 18:51, and the light mode displays 6:49 PM and 6:52 PM.
The light mode and dark mode screenshots are posted by different users on Chinese social media. They show the same long paragraph message (circled in blue), with the same messages after the long paragraph, but the light mode also shows the preceding message. It is unlikely this is doctored as there is no reason to doctor a light mode and dark mode screenshot.
The language settings (circled in red) match. The dark mode screenshot is in English, “recalled a message” and the light mode has the same in Chinese. Moreover, the timestamps also conform to how the English vs Chinese versions of the WeChat app would display the timestamp.
Furthermore, the identity of the professor claimed in the screenshot is also likely accurate. Given the wide circulation of these screenshots on Chinese social media and Professor Hu’s prominence in the academic community, it is improbable that an impersonation would go unchallenged. To date, no statements denying the professor’s involvement in the conversation have been posted.
In conclusion, while we still need to wait for the final results on LK99, I personally believe the screenshots are legit and we are on track to at least bear witness to a game-changing material even if it is not a superconductor.
As the world exits the COVID-19 pandemic, more and more companies are pushing for workers to “Return to Office”. Many are also expecting full-time in-person work and dismisses remote work (or Work From Home, a problematic term that I will expand upon later) as “not real work”. There have even been instances where companies that once promised remote work will be implemented permanently turning its back on workers that have structured their life accordingly and forcing them to come back to the office instead. This is done even in companies that according to their own statistics that remote work is more productive.
Opponents of remote work often use the term “WFH”, or Work from Home to describe remote work, and it is often described as a perk. They often believe that working from the office is the only way to do real work.
This is a clear case of the Principal-Agent problem. The managers of the company are supposed to be working for the benefits of the shareholders and maximizing the profit potential. Instead, managers fall to their personal crave for the sense of control. I know someone that manages his team from Toronto that he forces to go into the New York office everyday. After all, how can they know you are doing real work unless they get to force you to commute 2 hours each way? Knowing that someone was forced to lose sleep, gain anxiety, be more stressed, is simply an irreplaceable joy that remote work can never offer. #slam_dunk_argument
Even if we ignore the Principal-Agent problem and pretend there is no personal motivation for the managers making such a decision, and it was purely made for the benefits of the business, it makes no sense.
Companies usually pay their workers something called a salary, along with possibility other perks. All of these compensation have a singular purpose, make the employee happy enough to keep doing the job. If a company can pay someone $5k a month to do the job, chances are they won’t find someone at $10k a month if they deliver the same quality of products. It is the same theme as the Murphy’s law of combat, “Remember, your weapons are made by the lowest bidder”. Considering this, allowing workers more freedom in deciding where they want to live would be an obvious way of improving their happiness. A happier worker = A more productive worker, so a manager who is forcing their team to go into a shoebox office is engaged in active sabotage against the company interest.
The auto plants of Detroit shutdown because of cheaper costs of producing in Japan. Outsourcing labor is just one of the many ways of remote work, but somehow with the advent of new technology that allows for a programmer to code from anywhere in the world, they are somehow not doing “real work” unless they go to a desk that has the same Wi-Fi connection as any other Starbucks?
As a woman, the traditional office environment can often be actively hostile. From the increased potential of physical sexual assault due literally being in the same physical location, to the air-con temperature that is often too cold for women’s comfort, it is simply a space that is not friendly, and therefore reduces the productivity. Many woman are also expected to bear household chores, and there are way more stay-at-home moms compared to dads. The inability to participate in the working world from your kitchen counter has been a huge career barrier for many women.
The gender pay gap exists for a reason, prejudice. However, I argue the solution is simple, let capitalism take over. If a woman’s work quality is the same as their male counterpart, fire the guy and hire another woman. Gender pay gap exists? Good! Exploit it!
Societal attitudes towards work changes depending on the era. When computer programming first started, newspapers pushed that women are more suited to do the job, then thought as mere clerical work, because women are more “careful”. It was only after men realized the job was important that the prejudice against female coders started and programming became a male dominated domain. This shows that societal attitudes towards work and its relationship with gender has nothing to do with objective reality.
Different societies also have different attitudes towards work. In this video, the Japanese salaried worker spends most of his days travelling across Tokyo to meet with clients face to face to resolve matters that can often be done on the phone, because Japanese culture believes face-to-face meetings to be more “polite”. He also arrived at the office 40 mins before the official start time and had work even after arriving at home after 8 pm. Japan is not known for creating the biggest startups, perhaps for a reason. After all, how much brain space do you really have for creativity after such a long day?
Japanese work culture is also known to be very prejudiced against women, who often have no real path towards career success and are often expected to marry, baby, and quit. How far can an economy go that ignores half of its highly educated population?
By not opening jobs that can done remotely to remote workers, a company ignores the entire global population, apart from wherever they happen to have an office at. Remote work is not “Work from Home”, which usually leads to the logical fallacy of “You are at home for the entire day, therefore you are not working, therefore WFH is not working, therefore remote work does not work”. Remote work is just work in a different environment, one that can be adjusted to fit the individual needs much better than a standardized office environment, one that boosts productivity, and eventually revenue.
Ignoring women means ignoring 50% of the potential talent pool, mandating in-person work means ignoring 99.99% of the potential talent pool. Remote work is simply, work. An employee of any gender is simply, an employee.
Soviet Union is dead, but capitalism has been defeated.
Disclaimer: This contains my personal views on religious beliefs (not necessarily formal religions) as an ex-Christian and therefore might cause offense to others, viewer discretion advised
Everyone dies.
The irony is, most humans live as if they are immortal, my explanation is because no one’s conscious mind has experienced unconsciousness, and thus death. It is surprisingly easy to forget that you will, and everyone around you, will one day die. Everyone we see on the streets are typically, not dead. Everyone reading this sentence is definitely not dead. So you walk through you daily life without ever thinking about this one great certainty.
I have an app called WeCroak remind this to myself five times a day. This made me appreciate the things I have much more, but also has created a great fear in me. Will I still be here tomorrow? What if I go to bed and never wake up? Obviousy the logical conclusion is, you won’t have to worry about that if it does happen anyways so don’t worry about it now.
But this wasn’t enough for me. Naturally, I started exploring religious beliefs. Turns out, in some religions, depending on who you are, what you did, and many other things, after you die you go live in a place, either good or bad, that we cannot experience while we are still living. In some other religions, you come back to this world, in some shape or another, also depending on who you are, what you did etc. In some others, you simply die and there is no afterlife.
All of this sounded insane to me. I cannot possibly convince myself to believe that there will be something waiting for me on the other side after I close my eyes for the last time, either that something is good or bad, because no one has ever seen it. I’ve read a couple dozen Christian books of visions of heaven and hell, back when I was still one. They offered many contradictory accounts. Buddhism’s version of coming back to this world, in one form or another did not make much sense to me either, how to we account for the population boom?
I was in a valley of despair. I was going through life without any meaning. What awaits me at the end is unknowable. I cannot choose a religion to believe in to convince me that there is something beyond the end of my life.
All of this fell on me about 2 weeks ago. I fainted, for the first time in my life, at my desk due to overworking. My head smashed against the keyboard. I was typing right before I felt my entire body was disconnected from my head, and I could not feel anything that is beneath my head, not even my neck muscles. It felt like a guillotine experience. I started falling towards the keyboard, without any control over any part of my body, but remained conscious even if I was extremely dizzy. The world started rotating in my eyes. I laid on the keyboard for 15 seconds before I started feeling my body again.
As I was falling, I thought, this is it. I’ve worked myself to death. If only I had more time to figure out more stuff and enjoy life more. Surprisingly, I was still alive. I took a few days off to recover and have a much better work-life balance now.
But what if I really died that day? Did I have any regrets (other than dying this early)? Did I have a good run? Was everything worth it?
In retrospect, I can say that everything has been worth it. 2 weeks after it, I finally figured it out via some very unexpected events.
It was late, I stumbled on a new (only to me) song called 兰亭序. For those not into Chinese culture, Lantingxu is one of the most important calligraphy in Chinese history written in the year 353. That is more than 1600 years ago. The modern song version is by Jay Chou, a Taiwanese singer.
I was in love with the song, particularly a slowed version of it, which made me very emotional. I went on to search for other versions of it, and stumbled on a version that used it as the BGM with edited scenes from the Three Kingdoms tv series showing Zhuge Liang, the chancellor and later regent of the state of Shu Han in that era. He is regarded as one of the most capable and accomplished strategist & statesperson in Chinese history. He died trying to achieve his goals, but he never gave up against overwhelming odds. The video I watched that portrayed his story was extremely moving, and I started crying. The comments show that many felt the same way.
Portrait of Zhuge Liang
Sound familiar? A great historical figure that inspires many across 2 millennia. Someone called Jesus is also someone who inspires many across 2 millennia.
Except there is one key difference.
No one believes Zhuge Liang came back from the dead. A lot of people believe Jesus did.
And that is where the key difference between the religion of the Chinese and other more formal and established religious beliefs lie.
Chinese people believe in a myriad of things. Many contradictory. However one thing remains constant. No one believes with all their heart that there is an after-life. Even if there are made up stories, many even written in history books, about how when an emperor was born, some magical supernatural things happened. Everyone knows they are made up, often at the command of the emperor themselves.
There is no one that can turn water into wine by just snapping a finger. There is no one that can create a road in the ocean without building a bridge or filling in the ocean with earth and sand.
So, does the Chinese believe in gods? No, but yes.
The Chinese believe that mortals who die can do godly things.
Yes, there is nothing after death. Yes, there is no way to avoid it. But no matter who you are born as, it does not necessarily preclude you from becoming anything. 王侯将相宁有种乎 (No one is nobler simply by their birth) was the spirit of the first peasant uprising in China in 208 B.C. Even as a deeply patriarchal society, there has been Wu Zetian(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wu_Zetian), the first and only female emperor who ruled China. No one needs to be given birth by a virgin mother to achieve greatness. No one needs to have riden flying horses to be impactful.
This belief is not regarded as religious belief by many as it lack the structures of a formal religion that the West is more familiar with, but that is the beauty of it. No one needs to communicate with the originator of this belief through a special class of people who interprets ancient texts. This belief is universal, yet personal. It is held in the subsconsciouness.
It is a belief in humankind. In ourselves.
No one will get an after-life? That is ok, just make sure you are using your life for a cause worthwhile.
I don’t know about you, but this feels oddly comforting. As a mortal, I know I do not have the ability to go 40 days without food and water. If that is the only way to transcend death, then I would be out of luck.
But if people who have died, remain dead, have been able to use their human ingenuity against all odds to do things that are so great that their writings are still taught in schools, their stories still make people drop tears, then as long as you are a human, there is hope.
The Chinese does not believe in immortal gods.
Instead, we believe in mortal, fragile, weak humans, who do godly things.
They transcend death by accepting it as their destiny, and fight for a cause worth living for.
The most powerful authoritarian government in the world has locked down its most economic productive city over a month ago. It has since mobilised Shanghai municipal government, Chinese army, local volunteers, and ordered other provinces to send help to Shanghai. Yet, despite all the effort (at least seen on the news), Shanghainese are starving, literally. Many hospitals are closed to non-COVID patients, many with long term diseases are therefore unable to sustain treatment, resulting in unnecessary casualties. Everyday there are reports of citizens, civil servants, medical staff and other people sustaining the fallout. Local government overwhelmed, logistics broken down, people committing suicides, and until very recently, infected children regardless of age being separated from their non-infected parents. It is difficult to state the seriousness of the situation in Shanghai. It is more than dire, it is hopelessness.
The United States is the proceeding global power after the collapse of the United Kingdom. Both countries share the common law system, and has intertwined origins. For those not familiar with the terms ‘civil law’ and ‘common law’, they refer to different systems of laws where the major difference is court judgements in common law jurisdictions typically hold precedent value, meaning case outcomes for similar situations tend to be similar, whereas judgements in civil law jurisdiction typically do not hold precedent value. This means that in civil law, the law is the law as interpreted by different courts each time, while in common law, the law is the law as created and evolved through court judgements. Court cases in common law can be more important than the law itself, as it provides additional meaning. The US Supreme Court famously ruled same-sex marriage to be constitutionally protected when the US constitution said nothing about same-sex marriage.
Common law provides more flexibility for the society and freedom for the individual. While most civil law countries require a mandatory national ID, Hong Kong and Singapore are the only common law ones requiring so. However, as technology and how the world is shaped continues to progress, the common law system in its current form fails to keep up with its time.
Employment laws are unable to address the issues of remote work, since the assumption was employment had to be performed at the work site. Hong Kong recently faced such a dilemma of the validity of treatment prescribed by a physician licensed in Hong Kong while being physically outside of Hong Kong to a patient in Hong Kong. Where do one country end and another began? Once I step on a Cathay flight taking off from New York, Hong Kong laws apply and I can get my wine legally before 21. Laws are created based on assumptions from past experiences, and as such is unable to fulfil their original intentions when the underlying assumption has shifted dramatically.
The fundamental issue hindering arguments for a planned economy is justified in criticism towards the current legal system. Information is asymmetrical for different stakeholders and even if it is perfectly shared, there is latency which means circumstances on the ground would have changed by the time a decision comes from the top, and thus no longer reflects the actual needs. Government and firms are in direct contrast with each other. While government acts with authorisation of law, companies act without prohibition of law.
Despite all the criticisms Chinese legal system gets (often quite rightly so), there are lessons that can be learnt. Chinese cities and counties are empowered to make regulations that have legal force to govern themselves as they see fit. This is contradictory to the usual image that China as a unitary state, which will perhaps be explored in a future article. Back to the point, what China has done is essentially employing different cities to test out different regulations in action, before compiling lessons learnt in all of them and create a single uniform law. This is a very pragmatic approach and allows for a very efficient legal system, one that is both needed to support the tremendous growth and to govern a country of over a billion. Shanghai in 2022 shows what could happen if a government is not as efficient as the market, which is (almost) always. Similar results can be expected from laws that fail to keep up with the times.
In a globalised world dominated by multinational firms, companies choose the government they work with instead of the other way around. Venue shopping on a global scale. It is a world where some companies are more powerful than many countries, and while becoming entirely subordinate to the will of private firms is not something any country would wish for, it is increasingly the reality. While seemingly different on the surface, the government and firms actually have a lot in common. Government is just as concerned about the bottom line as companies are, except the word for it is “GDP”. Shareholders the citizens, board of directors the cabinet, and share price the Human Development Index (HDI). Whatever you call it, the fundamentals do not change. Trust in the future keep shareholders from selling and citizens from emigrating, good management keep employees from quitting and citizens from “laying down” (躺平 tang ping, a Chinese social trend similar to the “anti-work” sentiment), and satisfactory growth keep the seat at the highest office, and revolutions at bay. Dollars keep companies coming and governments running. Firms and governments are not that different after all. As such, it is even more surprising to see the lack of communication and cooperation between them, to the point of viewing each other as enemies. Given interaction is long term, this cannot be simply explained by calling it a Prisoner’s dilemma but rather long term game theory applies, to an extent. The problem is the government’s priority changes every few years once someone new is elected, rendering prior co-ooperation meaningless. Singapore provides clues in the way out, maintaining consistent governing standards over decades. While it is certainly not perfect, it is most definitely better than the United States’ system offers. “Checks and balances”, more like “Clogged and barely functions”.
“Empires … are little more than sandcastles. Only the tides are forever”. — Inspector Kido, Man in the High Castle
I never thought I would read the Communist Manifesto. Growing up in Hong Kong, capitalism seemed as normal as the sun. This changed after visiting Singapore’s hawker center. Good food at cheap prices for hard working people who provide for themselves and their families. It did not seem that much different from food centres in Hong Kong. “Workers of the world unite” was the only thing I know about the Communist Manifesto, and at that moment that sentence cannot be more memorable. Then I realised, Marx was perhaps right, at least in part.
Walking by the 9–11 memorial in downtown New York everyday, as I am currently staying in a hotel a few blocks away, I cannot stop thinking about the horrifying events that has happened on that fate defining day many years ago. What is right beside the two giant memorial waterfalls, are countless gift shops selling various souvenirs. 满身罗绮者 不是养蚕人, a Chinese expression in Chinese that silk makers cannot be silk wearers. The shops sell products that commonly say “I love New York” or something similar. What they also say, is “Made in China”. They are shipped all the way to the other side of the world to be bought by tourists, sometimes Chinese, to take back home. What no one ever thinks of, is whether the workers that made these products even know Latin alphabet or where New York is. They never will have a passport or a US visa that would enable them to come to see the actual place, whose name is written on their work.
In this increasingly globalised world, the core of major international cities are becoming difficult to tell apart. In malls you have the same shops, and the jobs that the customers hold are typically similar as well. For some, moving from one country to another does not mean changing of lifestyles, just the flight time to home, if they even truly have one. Human brains are not good at understanding abstraction. We need certainty, something quantifiable. What could be more quantifiable today than the means of exchange? It is a single number you look at which determines, often unfairly, the treatment the person receives. The terms “lifestyle”, “status” have such weight on it, viewed so highly, in my mind, simply pretentious. No matter how rich you are, you still die (as of 2022). Why does it matter celebrity A is cheating, mogul B has just gotten married, why does it matter? Does it really provide “entertainment” or does it reinforce a system that is boring for everyone? At least Squid Game’s Il-nam told the truth, the poor nor the rich find the system fun.
Anna Sorokin was not shamed because of her spending habits, life style, or even because she is a con artist, one of the only people who find fun by playing the system. She is put on public display because she failed. Public image of hers will be very different if she did succeed and confess afterwards, it will just be another ‘rags to riches’ and ‘fake it till you make it’, inspirational story.
The New York Anna Sorokin is attracted to is not necessarily the same New York that attracts others. Pingtan County, Fujian Province is a small village in China that is infamous for residents engaging in irregular/illegal immigration. It goes the other way, too. Taxi driver talked to me about “buying a Vietnamese bride” in the same calm tone as asking where I am from. You can have a wife for as low as 800 USD, less than even the ticket to New York, where many from Pingtan ended up at. They did not go to New York to visit the United Nations, join the “high societies” or study in a foreign university. They spent a fortune to procure services from smugglers to simply earn a better living. New York’s 15 USD per hour minimum wage equates to earning a wife back home in 2 weeks, after they pay back some 2500 USD fee to the smugglers. Many would not ever leave the United States, and some goodbyes, permanent. They did not go live in a foreign country, they merely went to work very far from home.
America is perhaps not the greatest country in the world, but is certainly still the richest. Yet some declare bankruptcy because of hospital bills. Yet I know people whose only hope for their children is find a minimum-wage job that is full-time, because they can only get part-time ones which barely pay their bills. Yet when some Americans have never even travelled internationally, others are renouncing their US passport for tax reasons. “Workers have no country”, neither does the rich.
Marx was right, it never was a problem of value creation, just the distribution. The United States was built for “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”, yet there are beggars on Wall Street. They certainly see more nationalities than the number of poor people out there.
Borders do not exist for the rich. Borders do not matter to the poor.
View of New Jersey from Financial District in Lower Manhattan
Singapore is a city-state situated at the southern tip of the Malay peninsula. Onlookers would marvel at the country’s miraculous growth over the past decades. Far from the impoverished past, she is now a bustling metropolitan, a multicultural society, and a Republic that provides for all* its citizens.
*Subject to interpretations by the Singaporean government
If you look even closer, you might attribute this tremendous growth to the continuity of the Singaporean government. The ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) has never lost their power since the country’s founding. Stability in governance leads to being able to plan extremely long-term without having to worry about pesky election cycles. However, stability in rulership does not necessarily lead to long-term planning, nor does it entail growth. What does, is the continuous focus on appealing to businesses, and sometimes blurring the lines between corporate and state governance.
Some call this state capitalism, but there might not be the full picture. In Stellaris (a space strategy game set in the future developed by Paradox), there is a special government type called the Megacorp. The company is the state, and the state is the company. The state considers its commercial interest before all else, and other aspects of its external relations take a back seat.
Hong Kong, Singapore, and Macau are essentially (mega)corporations that have treaty signing abilities. Their citizens the labor pool, and their education system the corporate training. Their population did not come from a shared ethnic background like Germany or Korea, out came these cities newly forged identities that cut across nationality lines. Human rights isn’t a concern for the governments, does giving people free speech generate revenue?
A certain standard of human right and welfare is provided and expected, but not just for the good of the people. It is done to preserve and grow its labor pool. Their citizens are highly educated, it is not hard for them to locate overseas and start a new life. The three megacorps utilize different strategies to deal with this problem. Singapore makes illegal multiple citizenships, so you can either give up being a Singaporean, or remain forever tied to Singapore. Hong Kong more or less accepts this loss of population, however she makes up for it by open up to immigration for both skilled and unskilled labor through student-work-settle pathways, talent pathways, and direct immigration from China. Plus, if you are not of Chinese nationality, you will loss your ‘Permanent Residency’ (essentially citizenship as explained in my other article) if you leave Hong Kong for a continuous period of 3 years. Macau does it the brutally simple way, paying its citizens yearly, essentially corporate year-end bonuses in reward of their loyalty.
The situation is perhaps most evident in the case of Hong Kong. As a non-sovereign state (as explained in my other article), Hong Kong was designed by both the British and Chinese to be a megacorporation. The British introduced common law and free trade, while the role of Hong Kong was codified by the Chinese through the Hong Kong Basic Law (read: Constitution). Excluded from handling her own diplomacy, she is explicitly authorized to conduct ‘economic external affairs’ on her own. She is her own member in the WTO, APEC, and many other organizations that China is too happy to let her be in. Her ‘embassies’ are ‘Economic and Trade Offices (ETO)’, and her ‘President’ the ‘Chief Executive’.
Macau presents a far simpler business case. Read this, gambling. As of writing (6 Oct, 2021), Macau is battling a fresh local outbreak of COVID-19 and has mandated closure of many entertainment facilities. Surprise (or perhaps not)! Casinos are business as usual. As long as Asian countries still outlaw gambling in their territories, Macau will remain a popular destination for tourist to try some legal luck. With just 600 thousand citizens and not even an airport before 1995, Macau plays a far less influential role than Hong Kong with only 5 overseas representative offices when Hong Kong has 18. Good thing is, casinos are far simpler to operate than say an international arbitration center that Hong Kong is trying to be.
What is perhaps more interesting is, in Hong Kong and Macau, companies have the legal right to vote as legal persons, just as their natural person counterparts. This is a process called the ‘Functional Constituency’ where instead of basing seats in the legislature solely geographic divisions, it is based also on different industries. Agriculture & Fisheries sector gets one seat, legal sector gets another, accountancy gets one, you get the idea. Corporations and individuals within a given sector has the right to register as voters and vote for their particular functional constituency. Corporations now have the legal right to vote and direct participation in politics.
All three megacorps have discriminatory practices for certain foreign workers. It is no different than outsourcing unwanted work to a foreign country, except in a much more direct manner. In Hong Kong, foreign domestic helpers are statutorily excluded from the minimum wage protection, and no matter how many years they stay in Hong Kong, they will never be entitled to any right of abode and have to return home when their contracts expire. This also applies to their children who are born in Hong Kong, their residency will forever be temporary. In Macau, non-local workers (commonly referred to as blue card holders) are also similarly, never entitled to staying in Macau no matter how long they have worked here. In Singapore, a work permit holder even has to apply for approval to marry a Singaporean or permanent resident, and can only get pregnant or deliver a baby once they are married to a Singaporean or permanent resident. The three megacorps practices openly discriminatory policies on foreign workers, and the only laws that govern their practices are the laws they write themselves.
Hong Kong in all of her shimmering glory
Imagine living in a place where the grocery store chains, the power company that provides for your electricity, the phone company, the media, the restaurant chains, the port that imports all the stuff you need, and even the very place you live in are built and owned by one company, and ultimately one man. You do not have to imagine. That place is Hong Kong and the man is Li Ka-Shing. He is so powerful that urban legend (half serious) has it that he can influence whether Hong Kong Observatory issues a Typhoon 8 warning, in which case Hongkongers would not have to go to work and make him lose money.
One of the richest places on Earth, and one of the most unequal places on Earth. Listening to a joyful instrumental allegro playing at Li’s restaurant chain, designed to make you eat faster, have a higher turn over rate and make him more money. All hail the mighty King who provides for everything. All hail the modernity of our city. There exists all the amenities that you can think of, as long as you can afford it.
Hong Kong is a Special Administrative Region (SAR) of People’s Republic of China. SAR is an administrative division of China, a singular, centralised state.
Behind that sentence, Hong Kong hides its true self of being a quasi-state. To understand what Hong Kong truly is, we must look at what Hong Kong truly regard itself and act as.
Let’s start with the basics. This is the map of Hong Kong, a city with 7.5 million people. It has its own immigration, customs, and basically all other control within its borders. For example, if one is travelling from Shenzhen here, to Hong Kong, during the pandemic, one might be subject to 14 days of quarantine.
Map of Hong Kong with borders
Have you been noticing the change from simply ‘Country’ on many selections to ‘Country/Region’? Yes, it is done to conform to China’s pressure, as they do not like to view Hong Kong as an independent, national entity separate from the rest of China. However, that is (with a few exceptions) the reality. All this time, all the Hong Kong and Chinese government has been doing, is simply concealing the fact by changing words, technicalities, and the fine prints.
Chapter 1: Hong Kong’s domestic matters
Hong Kong, within its own borders, have near full agency. It’s status is conferred by Article 31 of the Chinese Constitution which allows for the establishment of SARs when necessary, with specific laws that apply on a case-by-case basis. For Hong Kong, that law is the Basic Law of Hong Kong, passed by the Chinese Parliament. It is a Chinese domestic law, created because of an international treaty with the UK that serves as the de facto constitution for Hong Kong. Although under Chinese sovereignty (which will be discussed later), Hong Kong is therefore not subject to much of the laws that apply in Beijing, including the Chinese Constitution (in practice).
The Basic Law of Hong Kong is the foundational document for Hong Kong, much like other constitutions. Laws that go against the Basic Law will be declared unconstitutional by Hong Kong courts and made invalid. Basic Law prescribes the ’One country, Two systems’ formula for Hong Kong, allows for continuance of its capitalist system and way of life until at least 2047 as guaranteed by the Sino-British Agreement.
One of the things prescribed is Hong Kong’s citizenship. As part of the word changing, it is not called citizens rather than ‘Permanent Residents’. In actuality, the two statues are very similar. Only Hong Kong permanent residents (HKPR) may vote in elections, regardless of their nationality. A Chinese national without permanent residency have to apply for visas to enter Hong Kong, oh sorry, I meant ‘entry permits’. Few differences still matter when its comes to nationality. Only a HKPR with Chinese nationality as per Chinese nationality laws may obtain a Hong Kong passport which labels the bearer as a Chinese citizen, but it cannot be used at the airport in Beijing as although technically it is a type of Chinese passports, that is only the technicalities. Only a HKPR with Chinese nationality may never lose their HKPR status, a foreign (non-Chinese) HKPR may lose their HKPR after a continuous period of 3 years’ absence from Hong Kong, after which they will be given the ‘right to land’ allowing them essentially all prior rights, just without suffrage. Chinese HKPR and non-Chinese HKPR votes weigh the same, but non-Chinese HKPR have limited seats in Hong Kong’s parliament (‘Legislative Council’). One can argue that this is unfair treatment, but one can also argue that many other countries have protections for their ‘indigenous population’. Chinese Hong Kong residents (whether permanent or not) and non-Chinese HKPR who cannot obtain any other foreign travel document can apply for a ‘Hong Kong Document of Identity for Visa Purposes’, which have less rights than a full Hong Kong passport including visa-free access. However, the bearer of these two documents are considered to be Hongkongers by U.S., with the same nationality code entered on the visa issued (HNK). In effect, Hong Kong’s citizenship scheme gives preferences and protections to Chinese nationals without tipping the balance too much.
As a recent story about how Hong Kong thinks in the ‘city-state’ mentality, it is from neighbouring Shenzhen, where residents angrily discovered that Hong Kong is planning to build a mass cemetry near the border. For Hong Kong, the location is perfect as it is far away from any of its population, but across the river, there is a flourishing business and leisure district. To this protest from Shenzhen residents, Hong Kong’s president/prime minister (‘Chief Executive’) basically just shrugged, and said ‘too bad, that is a they problem’.
Chapter 2: Hong Kong’s foreign relations
Hong Kong has signed a wide range of treaties and conventions, and participates in many international organisations under the name ‘Hong Kong, China’, from the WTO, APEC, IMF, Universal Postal Union and much more. A Hongkonger even once chaired the WHO, however this is not well known as she was officially a member of the Chinese delegation. According to the Hong Kong government, she participates in 39 international organisations that are full sovereign states only, either as less-than-full members or as part of the Chinese delegation, and 54 organizations not limited to soverign states.
As part of international diplomatic practice, Hong Kong maintains an order of precedence. Note the lack of any Chinese government officials on the list, as they are treated as special guests when visiting HKSAR, like any other foreign dignitary. The CIA World Fact book lists the Chinese President Xi Jinping as Hong Kong’s head of state and Hong Kong’s Chief Executive Carrie Lam as Head of Government. In most cases, Head of State is more of a ceremonial role and Head of Government is one that has the real power. For example, the Queen is the Head of State of the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and her other Commonwealth Realms but the actual power is exercised by Prime Ministers, the Heads of Governments. In effect, the CIA considers the Chinese President to be important in Hong Kong’s politics but not exercising much direct influence, which is true.
Various foreign Consulate-Generals are accredited to Hong Kong, and despite their official classification as Constulates, they are in actuality treated as Embassies by many of the sending states. For example, the U.S. Consulate in Hong Kong is not subject to the control of the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, and report directly to the Department of State like what any other embassy would do.
Hong Kong also has representations outside of its borders, called Hong Kong Economic and Trade Offices (HKETO), a name similar to what Taiwan’s foreign representations call themselves, ‘Taipei Economic and Cultural Office’. In reality, HKETO’s and Taiwan’s representation perform like any other embassy or consulates. They communicate with foreign governments, help citizens in need (for example, repatriation flights such as during COVID-19), and issue passports and visas (though only some of the HKETOs perform this function as Hong Kong government decided it was not worth the money). Hong Kong has 5 main offices (with sub-units) in Mainland China, 1 in Taiwan, and 11 elsewhere in the world. They are typically granted diplomatic privileges by special legislation of the host country (as done in Germany) and represents the interest of Hong Kong. Bangkok office has been the latest one opened in 2019, and Hong Kong is prepared to open one in Dubai after talks and signing an agreement with the UAE.
Signing of the Hong Kong-UAE Agreement on Investments
As a counter part of the Hong Kong offices in Mainland China, the Beijing government has several offices in Hong Kong, including the ‘Office of the Commissioner of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ which deals primarily with diplomatic matters that are not within the scope authorised by the Basic Law for Hong Kong, the ‘Liaison Office of the Central People’s Government’ which functions as an sort-of Chinese embassy that communicates with the Hong Kong government, organises receptions for guests, issues certificates with legal force recognising and authenticating Hong Kong issued degrees for use in Mainland China and more. Hong Kong SAR passport is issued by Immigration Department, Hong Kong, but for a proper Chinese passport with the red cover, that is issued to Mainland Chinese citizens by the aforementioned Office of the Commissioner, where one can also apply for Chinese visas among other functions.
I don’t know about you, but that seems to me pretty much like Hong Kong is conducting foreign relations like any other country. Gasp, how can that be possible for a ‘region’?
Chapter 3: Chinese Soverignty
Chinese sovereignty over Hong Kong is evident in several matters. The Basic Law allows for unilateral, direct application of Chinese Laws by the Chinese parliament in Hong Kong that affect foreign affairs, national defence or matters not within Hong Kong’s autonomy through amending Annex III, which was used to bring the ‘Hong Kong National Security Law’ into legal force in Hong Kong. Hong Kong’s signing of international agreements must be consented by the Chinese government, and ultimately, Chinese government has the power to unilaterally revoke Hong Kong’s status, perhaps through using the Chinese army stationed in Hong Kong. Much of the potential power is not exercised, as it is not in China’s interest to completely destroy Hong Kong.
Mainland Chinese residents wishing to travel to Hong Kong for tourism do not need a visa from the Hong Kong government, instead ‘entry endorsement’ is given by the Chinese government with legal force not found in Hong Kong’s Immigration Law (‘Immigration Ordinance’), but in the Basic Law itself which provides the constitutional right for Beijing to control the entry of Chinese citizens resident in other parts of China into Hong Kong.
Still, this does not diminish the fact that Hong Kong acts much like its own independent state on the world stage. Chinese sovereignty over Hong Kong should be interpreted as control over a foreign state like the U.S. over the 3 countries it is in Free Association with, and New Zealand over its various domains. This is consistent with that fact that Hongkongers, even those of Chinese nationality, are foreign in Mainland China. Not allowed to book into ‘domestic travellers’ only hotels (usually budget hotels), facing huge restrictions on many day-to-day matters such as opening a bank account, obtaining a phone plan, getting the national social insurance and many more. Some of the hurdles comes from the fact that many systems are designed only to support the Chinese national ID and not other documents, and some come from the fact that although Chinese government would like to emphasize that all Hong Kong Chinese compatriots are fully Chinese, and Chinese diplomatic representations have a duty to represent Hong Kong’s interest in the absence of a direct HKETO, often they only pay lip service and heavy suspicion remains. Having a passport stating you as a ‘Chinese national’ is not enough for entry to Beijing, because the passport is in fact a Hong Kong passport that Beijing thinks is just another type of Chinese passport, but for immigration purposes it is suddenly not a Chinese passport anymore. Hongkongers are only claimed as Chinese when it benefits the Chinese government, and ignored when it does not, such as when including the country wide number of COVID-19 cases.
The situation has improved in recent years, as China allowed for Hongkongers with Chinese nationality to obtain ‘Resident IDs’ that are similar to the Chinese national ID, however, differences and hurdles will remain for as long China treats Hongkongers as less-than-full citizens. Only time will tell whether this will ever be possible.
Chapter 4: Fine Prints
Not an Air Force, just the ‘government flying service’. Not a visa, just an ‘entry permit’. Not a consulate, just the ‘Economic and Trade Office’. Not a president, just a ‘Chief Executive’. Not an ambassador, just a ‘director’. Not a member state, just an ‘member economy’.
The list goes on.
Hong Kong is the master at the art of fine prints, using it to portray herself as a subnational part of China. That is true, however this is not the whole picture, far from it.
Hong Kong is a city, an administrative of China with provincial level status. It also is part of the three/four(if you include Taiwan) legal jurisdictions that make up the PRC (Mainland, Hong Kong, Macau), signing not treaties with Mainland China but rather ‘arrangements’. On the world stage, it is a separate legal entity from China in most matters, having its own seat on the table.
The hypocrisy cannot be any more stronger than the fact that Hongkongers can obtain international driving permits because Hong Kong is a party to the Convention on Road Traffic, but not Mainland Chinese because China is not a party. Oh, so can Taiwanese and Macanese citizens.
The legal fine prints build up the illusion that the closest word to describe Hong Kong would be a ‘Special Administrative Region of China’, when the closest word would instead be ‘puppet Chinese city-state’.
The fact is, Hong Kong’s government structure, mentality, society, international relations, laws, finance, and a lot of other matters are just separate from China’s, for the most part albeit similarities that exist because of the shared Chinese heritage. Even the Chinese Nationality Law applied to Hong Kong ‘directly’ through Annex III of the Basic Law was of a different version, but of course it is not called an amendment, just a different ‘interpretation’ issued by the Chinese Parliament.
Cathay Pacific, the de facto flag carrier of Hong Kong, flies no flags of either Hong Kong or China on its planes. Story was that they could not come to a decision about whether to fly the Hong Kong flag or the Chinese flag, or both at the same time, so they decided that doing nothing would be the most correct decision. It is one of the only flag carriers to fly the flag of the company, the other being neighbouring Air Macau.
Hong Kong’s state institutions are, undeniably, separate from the rest of China. With its own currency, border, government, laws, international presence, and basically all the things you would expect from a full sovereign state. In establishing this ‘Special Administrative Region’, China has in effect, gave life to this grand experiment about how far one can push the definition of a ‘country’ to, considering that officially, even despite all the common knowledge suggesting so, Hong Kong is an inalienable, and integral part of the People’s Republic, and all the differences you see here, can be simply explained by ‘One country, two systems’.
As long as everyone is willing to play by the absurdity, China is happy to let Hong Kong be herself, satisfied mostly with just the recognition that Hong Kong is Chinese. As long as SAR is added after Hong Kong to signify the non-sovereign, subnational status, China is willing to let Hong Kong join international organisations and sign international treaties, as long as you call them ‘agreements’. As long as Hong Kong opens consulates in the name of ‘Economic and Trade Offices’, as long as the name ‘Hong Kong, China’, as long as Hong Kong passports label bearer as ‘Chinese’, as long as everyone is buying into the fine prints and not questioning the facade or trying to change the situation, music keeps playing.
Even as China is turning Hong Kong more authoritarian, money will still flow, after all, the world never cared about Singapore’s less-than-democratic regime, only profit.
The horse races on, the dance goes on.
Note: ‘The horse races on, the dance goes on’ is a translation from Paramount Leader Deng Xiaoping’s quote, ‘马照跑，舞照跳’, as a promise to Hong Kong that she will keep her life style and everything will be just as the usual.
A hugely controversial company that aims to transform the future of transportation, and our world by introducing an electricity revolution, Tesla has been in the media spotlight for years. As its valuation surpassed all other car manufacturers that sell much more cars and have much more history than Tesla, we must ask ourselves, does the magical story of Tesla really stands?
Chapter 1: Elon’s cult of personality
Elon Musk has received many praises throughout the years and has managed to gather a very enthusiastic following. Arguably, he can be considered as a social media influencer that utilizes his following to achieve his goals. He frequently interacts with his fanbase on twitter and replies to requests from random users which keeps the flame going. It is like having a hand-shaking meeting which is practiced by singers and others alike in Japan, where their fans would be able to shake their hands and the star would typically say a sentence in return. This has proven to be hugely successful in Japan, and based on Elon’s twitter feed, the same works online.
His cult of personality has grown through arguably one of his most damning failures, the production numbers of Tesla Model 3, where for months the actual production numbers remained much less than his promised ones, and as Tesla faced more bottlenecks in increasing production capacity, he kept on promising more without delivering. However, he even managed to turn this in his personal following’s favor, when he finally delivered by pulling some ‘superman tactics’, such as by working extremely long hours, sleeping in the factory, being actual hands on with the production line, building a temporary factory in a tent, and flying in equipment from Germany. However, if we cut out Elon’s cult of personality, we will see that this as a huge red flag instead of Elon pulling his magic. It is unfathomable that Elon as the CEO of Tesla has to get on the production lines to make things worked out, as he was instead wasting precious time needed to make proper, good, and reasonable decisions as the CEO instead of a production line worker. Tesla does not pay him to be on the production lines making tweaks, Tesla pays him to make those proper, good, and reasonable decisions that he neglected to do, when he instead made bold claims about the production numbers without a way of fulfilling it. Flying in heavy equipment was the solution to increasing the production numbers but had there been better planning, such an expensive manoeuvre could have been avoided entirely.
The truth is, Elon remains much less than a responsible CEO and is more of an engineer that likes to focus more on the technical as seen by his role as chief engineer in SpaceX. A responsible CEO would not have said ‘The coronavirus panic is dumb’, ‘Am considering Tesla private at $420’, ‘Tesla stock price is too high imo’, and much more. What Elon has instead continuously demonstrated is that he is very much still an individual that is not willing to be bound by his duties and rules that apply to him, and such an individual in charge of the biggest car manufacturer in the world by valuation, makes him Tesla’s greatest asset and liability at the same time.
Elon Musk smoking a weed on a podcast live
Chapter 2: Underlying culture
‘Autopilot’ is a feature that can be included in Tesla EVs, but the term is misleading. For one, assisted driving technology is classified into different tiers, each representing the extent that machine is in control of the car, or autonomous level. Tesla’s autopilot feature is classified as level 2 where the car can act autonomously but requires constant driver supervision who needs to be prepared to take over control at all times. A German court has ruled Tesla’s claims misleading and there have been numerous cases where the driver who is supposedly in constant supervision instead falls asleep or is on their phone. The National Transportation Safety Board have criticized Tesla’s lack of system safeguards in a fatal 2018 Autopilot crash in California and for failing to foresee and prevent the ‘predictable abuse’ of autopilot.
The fact is, although the claims on ‘Autopilot’ are believed to be abusive and dangerous or at the minimum, misleading by many professionals, they are kept in Tesla’s marketing. This decision is just one of the many intentionally made decisions that show a truer picture of Tesla’s culture, one that does not consider itself to be accountable to rules that apply to Tesla, just like its CEO.
One such instance happened in China, the biggest car market in the world and where Tesla has gained huge grounds, some literal, as Gigafactory 2 was opened in Shanghai a few months ago. Just as the sales of Tesla cars grew, so did the problems that encountered it. Tesla has been ordered to recall 30,000 cars by the China’s State Administration for Market Regulation, but instead of addressing the suspension problem that forced the order to recall those cars, Tesla instead blamed it on ‘driver abuse’ without offering any evidence to support the claim. This came after Tesla executives were summoned by the China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology back in March 2020 because Tesla used the old version of computer chips in Model 3s instead of the new version as promised to the consumers, which sparked outrage and resulted in the same Chinese government agency to formally require Tesla to immediately correct the chip downgrade, which Tesla again, instead of recognizing the problem and their own fault, blamed their actions on the supply chain disruption due to COVID-19.
As these stories show, the below-grade manufacturing is far from just a few instances in Tesla, be it in China or elsewhere. It is in fact the culture of Tesla that causes this, of course, at the expense of its customers and potential future sales.
Beyond manufacturing problems that are caused by this culture, these has been numerous whistleblowers and articles that is alleging all sorts of crazy acts happening within Tesla. Mr. Karl Hansen has filed a lawsuit alleging Elon and Tesla’s management have ‘intentionally interfered with efforts to seek employment with other employers in retaliation for outspoken union support’, actively concealed and participated in spying on its employees, improper contracts, theft orchestrated by organized crimes, terminated a Tesla employee’s contract after reporting the theft of $13,000 USD of copper wire to law enforcement, and more. There are more claims after from Mr. Hansen’s, and numerous lawsuits have been filed in what is described by some media as ‘Whistleblower Hell’. It is likely that we continue to see more allegations to come out of Tesla, a terrible position to be in for anyone, especially so for a company that dissolved its U.S. PR unit in October 2020.
To a large extent, Elon is Tesla, and so is his mentality the Tesla culture. Just as his successes support the entire company, so does his own problems creep in. This translates into troubles for Tesla, and if not managed well enough, could be potential deathtraps that threatens the existence of the company itself. The mentality of Elon Musk to ignore the rules whether social expectations, constraints, or perfectly legitimate laws has sparked equal number of innovations and PR crises that lacks a PR department to manage (in the U.S.), and this does not always mean well for the culture of any company, let alone a multinational which is the most valuable car maker in the world.
Simply put, Tesla’s history of troubling actions will continue into the future as it is the company culture that shapes its actions, and Elon’s mentality that shapes its culture.
Chapter 3: Tesla China
Tesla in 2018 became the first foreign car manufacturer to be in sole possession of its Chinese subsidiary, this is followed by the construction of Gigafactory 2 in Shanghai after being offered very beneficial terms by the Shanghai Municipal Government. Construction progressed at a rapid pace and production started just 1 year later in 2019. One of the most impactful effect that Giga Shanghai has brought has been the lowered production cost of Tesla EVs in China, since localized production gets rid of import taxes and lower cost overall. As a result, Tesla has been able to lower its offerings in China to attract more customers, but the way this has been accomplished has tainted its image.
The way that Tesla has lowered the price of its offerings can be described as bad business practice at best, and on the far end, intentionally fooling its customers. Tesla lowers its prices without any prior warning or compensation for customers that have purchased the cars right before the price was lowered. Often customers find themselves to have purchased the car the very day before the price decrease, when Tesla sales agents employ marketing techniques to urge customers make the purchase quickly, presumably before the price is lowered. It is not one, or twice, or thrice that Tesla has lowered its prices this way, but Tesla has adjusted its prices near 60 times after entering the Chinese market which saw the price of Model 3 slashed in half. Predictably this has angered customers that think they were tricked into buying the cars right before the price decrease, often without any compensation and this has sparked outcry on Chinese social media.
Lowering the price of products is generally a good thing for a business because it attracts more customers, but the way that Tesla has done it has made Chinese consumers weary of purchasing Tesla cars because there would be no guarantee that the price would drop by 10% right after you have made the purchase.
Apart from the price issue, Tesla has sparked more outcry on Chinese social media after the recent article that came out with allegation such as quality control issues, ‘Giga-sweatshop’, Tesla operations in Greater China being isolated from the rest of the world bringing opportunities to use practices banned by the company elsewhere, and sales personnel selling Model 3s through private channels at a discount, in stark opposition with the direct sales model that Tesla embraces.
PingWest is the media that published the article, and this is the third instalments of their ‘Tesla China chaos’ series. Only the third is translated into English, and the Chinese version offers much more detail and includes links to the first two instalments of the series.
Chapter 4: Giga Shanghai, my observations and speculations
Disclaimer: My words do not constitute professional opinion, investment advice, or any similar notion in any way, it is only my personal speculation as a tourist and is not meant to be taken seriously beyond the mere literary expression, and the actions you take out of my words is taken entirely at your own responsibility.
In this chapter, I will only address the latest instalment of the series by combining what is described in the article and what I saw and speculate as a result at Tesla’s Giga Shanghai.
There was nothing notable about the factory, the east side expansion was on its way and trucks transporting construction materials were parked on the side of the road. However, given what I was able to see through the extremely limited information outside of the factory, I believe that the article mentioned prior is true.
Rubbish on the side of the road
On the road out of the factory gates, the side is littered with primarily 2 kinds of rubbish, masks and food packaging, in particular, masks were on top of food packaging suggesting that the food packaging existed before the pandemic began. This corroborates with the claim that Giga Shanghai’s food options have been deteriorating since it opened (in 2019, before the pandemic) and inadequate. The container made guard room at the gate of the factory also show signs of trouble, I was unable to take pictures inside due to the guards but if you believe what I say, there was the phone number for the local police station placed at a prominent position that is easy for viewing by the guards. I believe that it was placed later and was not there initially because it was in an awkward position, put on the wall surrounded by plans of the factory and other images, far away on the left-side from where other phone numbers are posted (on the right-side). This has led me to believe that the police number was put there later because they did not put it along with all the other phone numbers (that were on the right-side of the wall), but only felt it was necessary later, potentially due to the chaos described by PingWest.
The grey container is the guard room
The other speculation I would make is that Giga Shanghai faces management chaos. This is the car transporter truck that came out of the factory and this is the same truck a few minutes later stopped at the end of a road. You can tell it is the same truck because it carries Teslas and is white, the other car transporter truck that came out of the factory around that time is blue. The white truck stopped at the end of the road where I observed all other trucks make a U-turn to head towards the highway. I was unable to take a picture of the two workers (due to fear of increased risk as I have lingered around the factory for sometime already) so you have to take my word for it. Two workers were standing on the left side of the truck, one appears to be the driver as the driver’s cabin door was open and there was no one inside, and he wore the driver’s uniform I saw earlier, and the other one appears to be another type of worker, potentially a supervisor as he wore a different uniform than the two kinds I saw earlier. The ‘supervisor’ was holding a binder that contained documents and a pen, and he appeared to be checking with the driver on something. While it is impossible to speculate on the content of the binder or what they were specifically checking on, I believe this shows the management chaos as no reasonable company would conduct its final checks on its deliveries right outside the factory instead of inside, because of the increased risk. Furthermore, this appears to be an isolated instance as I did not see the blue truck that departed later, suggesting that they only discovered something wrong with the white truck last minute and managed to stop it right outside of the factory. In the best sense this shows mismanagement as it is risky to park a truck full of newly made cars at a road construction site, worse this shows the chaos in management that even the checks on new deliveries cannot be done properly.
Tesla has come far and has made giant leaps. Elon Musk has been monumental for Tesla in terms of pushing it to come to where it is today. Not willing to obey the rules is the reason behind Tesla’s numerous innovations, but also its crises. A Chinese proverb says that ‘water floats, and sinks a ship’, what has made Tesla Tesla, could also ultimately be its downfall.
Images taken at Giga Shanghai
White truck departing the factoryThe blue truck came laterWhite truck stopped at the end of the road (do not enter sign can be clearly seen)Map showing where white truck was parked
Further reading
252 judgements: Behind the lawsuits that Tesla brought onto itself in China (in Chinese)
Chinese culture places heavy value on one’s academic successes, stemming partly from the country’s long history around education, and this is one of the underlying factors that makes Gaokao (the college entrance exam) so notoriously difficult. Similar situations can be seen across different societies with affinities to Chinese culture. In South Korea, students are trapped in a lifetime of study and stress never ends. The Singaporean education system excels in global rankings but its students are struggling to cope under relentless pressure and stress. Seeing examples outside China, thus, it is hardly surprising that students in China from a young age has been pushed towards various types of tutoring or extracurricular classes, in order to better their grades or explore their ‘passion’.
What really ends up happening, is the even though these extracurricular activities might indeed help the child to explore their passion, more often than not, it is what the parent wants for themselves as a bragging right, rather than genuine care for their child. In China, face (roughly the equivalent of honor) is taken with the highest regard. For your child to stay behind in schools, in their education, combines the two all-important elements of face with academic successes, thus, not acceptable.
Do the tutoring classes and extracurricular classes such as piano lessons, and as a growing trend, competitions such as math competition, robotics competition etc., really benefit one’s overall education and life?
Let’s begin on exploring the impacts of extracurricular classes. There are many stories that an ethnic Chinese parent forces their child to do piano or violin lessons and the child ends up hating it, so I will not elaborate on those. Instead, let’s look at the competitions. A robotics competition aimed at teens and pre-teens that I went to recently went to is a perfect example of this. Do primary school students in the lower grade have the mental capacity to develop a program? Sure there are exceptions but for the majority of the population, no. Children around this age also often lack other crucial capacities such as having enough patience and determination to pursue a complex project thoroughly. One reason for this is because biologically, the human brain takes an awful amount of time to fully develop. Whatever benefits (when these benefits are actual and not just perceived) that these classes offer, even when retained later in life, are not always useful. What usually ends up happening, is that the children are fed knowledge, instructed by their teachers to perform tasks that often they themselves have no idea, no interest, in the task itself or the meaning behind it.
Now I sound like against all sorts of extracurricular classes and tutoring classes, but this is not the case. They do offer some benefits, at the very least many extracurricular activities are things a child would enjoy, tutoring classes can help a child understand knowledge that they were not able to grasp during school time. What is happening in China, however, is on . As most parents do not sign their children up for these classes as a result of them wanting their child to enjoy the classes or understand what they couldn’t in class, but rather a desire for their children to come up on top compared to others of the same age.
This fierce competition can sometimes lead to bizarre outcomes. This might have been a parody, but is not far stretched from the reality. The Chinese state television network has produced a documentary series on Gaokao that is also uploaded to YouTube, and you can have a more in-depth view of how pierce the competition is.
The true picture in China involves parents that are desperate to get their kids more ‘education’ in order to have a competitive edge, children often overloaded and tired, and the ‘educational agencies’ that are racking up in cash.
These agencies promise to teach your child knowledge, life skills and more. Of course all they want is some handsome amount of cash, but you would do everything for your child’s future, so you would pay for whatever that betters your child’s future, no matter how ridiculous the class sounds. All an agency need is a syllabus that involves words that the parents cannot understand, teachers working there that promises you that the knowledge that they are teaching there is invaluable for your child’s future, and if a foreign teacher (preferably white) is there, it would have been even better.
Thus, begins the enslavement.
You have become a slave that needs to pay those invoices sent by the ‘educational agency’, and your child has their time and childhood taken away from them. The slave master is not worried about a parent or two that decides to escape this slavery, there will almost certainly be more parents ready to sign the voluntary slavery contract.
Chinese parents believe that the ‘slavery’ is freedom, freedom for their children to choose in the future, but in reality, they hardly even have the freedom to not choose the option of voluntary slavery. From primary school and even kindergarten (and in Hong Kong, even before kindergarten), parents around you have been signing their kids’ childhood away form them in droves, and teachers are encouraging you to do so as well, with sayings such as ‘the summer vocation is the best time to catch up and surpass other students’ going around, how can you be so defiant of the system that is not beneficial to you?
After all, while your life is bound by endless responsibilities, your child is just starting out in life, and have an infinite number of possibilities and unlimited growth potential. How can someone be so cruel to not give them that tiny amount of money and rod your child of their infinitely bright future?
With the pandemic, the world is shifting into a changing new reality that we are experiencing, and seeing in front of our eyes. One of the biggest change for me personally, is attending Zoom University.
My college is located in New York City, but I am currently residing in China. 16 hours of flight and 14 days of quarantine away from where my school is physically located. This is possible because of the transition to online classes only, meaning I only need internet connection (including some, illegal softwares, to get pass the Chinese internet censorship to access things like Gmail) to get my education.
Aside from not being limited to geographic location, I also save a ton of time. Many classes that I take are taught in an ‘asynchronous’ format, meaning that I get to learn on my own pace, and for me, that means much more efficiently. An accounting class that I am taking would have taken up 4 hours per week of class time if taught in person, in addition to homework assignments, but instead I get to only spend 1 hour for that class in total, and still managing an A. I wouldn’t have paid attention during class anyways, I am constantly on my laptop doing some other stuff, like coding, reading, or just researching on my own on certain topics that I happened to want to research on.
To me, school is not the same as education. In fact, schools can stand in way of my education, for example, a teacher took away a book I was reading during her class in middle school, hindering my education, because I understood everything in her class already. To most teachers, I have never been a good student, but that does not mean I am not a good learner.
I would never spend 80% of my effort to get an A, because to me, that is not cost efficient. I am much happier when spending 20% of the effort to get a B in a course, because that means I was much more efficient in my education. Instead of remembering every single detail needed to get an A in the exam, I get to have time to educate myself in other ways. By reading, by experiencing, by conferencing, by going to seminars.
The ‘education’ system believes in the superior quality of the knowledge acquired through it, because the system taught it in schools, and the system measured it through exams. This is evident on the non-acceptance of home schooling or other types of non-standard education, and also to students that study in different education systems, which often do not recognize some parts of their education (such as educational level, grades, courses taken etc.) taught in another education system, where some have to revert back a year or two when transferring between education systems that disagree with each other too much.
What these systems are for, how they are built and executed, however, is extremely backwards.
Imagine a single professor teaching the same course at different universities. Are the students in those universities getting vastly different education in regards to that course? No. Yet they can be paying vastly different tuition. There has been a joke that the only difference between students in expensive private colleges and public colleges nowadays is the tuition they pay, the Zoom is all the same.
If universities keep on issuing degrees and count coursework during online learning towards graduation, then what is the point in going back to in person teaching after the pandemic ends? It has been proven that online education works for a wide range of classes, why not keep it this way?
Instead of worrying about the seating plan for the students and whether a big lecture hall is needed to accommodate the extra students this year, all colleges need is to distribute laptops to every student. In fact, it might provide better education. A snow storm, traffic jams, even a pandemic, cannot stop a virtual classroom from functioning.
Schools nowadays act more as gateways to get to the next step instead of providing meaningful education. If you are presented with a choice of obtaining the same education at half the prize as you would in undergraduate studies, but you would not be issued with a degree, most people would not have taken that offer.
That offer has always been possible, because of the internet, and consequently, mass availability of knowledge. Colleges existed because only the intellectuals had access to knowledge, and they were made professors that teach their students knowledge otherwise unavailable. Some knowledge still exists only in the heads of the few, but most knowledge can be found using a simple Google search available to everyone with access to the world wide web.
The reason why people seek to attend prestigious institutions is because those institutions are prestigious, that give out degrees branded with the highly sough after names. Does the employer care what courses or what professors that you said ‘attracted you’ to that specific university? The courses taught at those institutions have no content that is otherwise inaccessible, what is otherwise inaccessible, is the resources and social circle. That is the reason those institutions are highly sought after, and learning of knowledge comes as an after thought.
Memorable speeches on TEDx were memorable because of their content, regardless whether you listened to it in person or watched it on YouTube. Your favorite music do not suddenly become unattractive when you get out of the concert. So why does acquiring knowledge have to be any different? It is not like the quality of the knowledge is always better when you acquire it through the formal system, countless college graduates fail at their new jobs because lack of work experience, but somehow they are considered (and paid) more highly in many cases than someone who started working and gaining experience earlier but did not attend college.
Is college an investment in education? No, because those knowledge are taught for free on the internet. Are grades a reliable measure of your understanding in a certain topic? No, just because it is the only quantifiable data out there does not mean it is good data or grade inflation would not have been a thing.
But will the system stay?
Yes, because it is too big, and people are too committed, from companies who hire the people who went through the system to students paying tuition and taking on debts, as their commitment fee towards the system.
Such a big system is reluctant to change, as it refused to in the past. The basic teaching methods have remained largely the same for hundreds of years. Students are still learning in much of the same format, despite the advancement of nearly everything else.
An arbitrary syllabus teaching knowledge in an arbitrary pace that some arbitrary person deemed suitable for that particular course, in order to allow for some arbitrary evaluating method to come up with an arbitrary value, that will be forever printed on a certain piece of paper called a transcript, then transformed in an arbitrary way into another piece of paper called the degree, that somehow confirms your understanding and the school’s endorsement attesting to that fact, however arbitrary it is.
And yet this system is one of life’s most certain certainties.
How arbitrary.
In Zoom, there are no students sitting on the backrow.
Sparks came out last September but I have a full plate of mostly public talks through the end of spring, 2024.
The year starts out with talks at York University in Toronto and continues to Yale, Boston University (which made the poster above) and on to Washington, Seattle, Stanford, UC San Diego, Cornell and Princeton.
After months of work, on Dec. 13 we launched the China Unofficial Archives, a repository of hundreds of underground periodicals, books, and movies.
The site is a project that I began to think about when I was working on Sparks, my book on counter-history in China. One key point is that the digital revolution has made it easier than ever for people inside an authoritarian state like China’s to share information by basic technologies, such as PDFs or digital films. And yet much of the information sharing is ad hoc. A person may get an email with a PDF book attached on, say, the Cultural Revolution, but not realize what else has been published or filmed on this topic. Or they might like the author but might not have an easy way to access that person’s works. An online archive, I thought, could help fill this gap.
After incorporating the archive as a non-profit over the summer, I secured funding from a charity, hired a web designer and had invaluable help from people such as the independent journalist Jiang Xue (who also features in Sparks).
We “launched” via an online event sponsored by Westminister University’s China Centre. I was joined by Gerda Wielander, who has done much research on history and state narratives in China, and Shao Jiang, a London-based scholar who advises the archive. The event will eventually be posted to YouTube.
As I mention in the note, this is a work in progress. We’ve already received very useful feedback on how to improve it and are also in the middle of uploading hundreds of new movies and other files. We currently have about 850 items in the archive but need to double it–and fill in many holes (also outlined in my note)–before it will really take shape.
“With firm but never dogmatic moral conviction, Johnson pays tribute to the writers, the scholars, the poets, and the filmmakers who found the courage to challenge Communist Party propaganda. These dissenters looked beyond the official lies about the past and the present, and decided to document the truth about forbidden topics, including Mao Zedong’s campaigns to massacre putative class enemies. They often paid for their candor with long prison terms, torture, or death. Their conclusions—presented in homemade videos, mimeographed sheets, and underground journals—didn’t reach a wide audience when they appeared. And yet, as Johnson makes clear in his superb, stylishly written book, the value of their legacy is incalculable.”
The Economist
“A Pulitzer-prize-winning journalist describes the valiant e!orts of China’s “underground historians”, a motley and persistent group of academics, artists, film-makers and journalists attempting to correct the sanitised official record and provide truthful accounts of history. A rare insight into the extraordinary risks that some Chinese take to illuminate the darkest corners of communism.”
The FT
“‘Who controls the past, controls the future,’ wrote George Orwell. This is a fascinating and important story of dissident historians in China, who are challenging the Communist party’s authorised version of history.”
The New Statesman
“In a year of unrelentingly bleak news, I’ve chosen Sparks (Allen Lane), Ian Johnson’s evocative study of China’s underground historians documents both the relentless crackdown on civil society and intellectual freedom under Xi Jinping, and the quiet courage of those who refuse to be crushed. Drawing their inspiration from earlier acts of resistance that appeared hopeless in their own times, these independent scholars, filmmakers, and journalists have come to view their work as time capsules, determined to preserve an accurate record of the country’s past for future generations. ‘They want future Chinese to know,’ Johnson writes, ‘that in the 2020s, when things had never been darker…. Not everyone had given in.'”
The Tablet
“Controlling the interpretation of what has happened in China since the Communist revolution is an integral part of President Xi Jinping’s ever-tightening grip on his vast country. In Sparks: China’s Underground Historians and Their Battle for the Future (Allen Lane, £25; Tablet price £22.50), Ian Johnson charts the brave attempts of individuals, the ‘underground’ historians, to challenge the party line and reveal the brutal arbitrariness which has marked its rule from the beginning.”
“Neijuan (the Chinese term for stasis or an inward evolution) now permeates all aspects of life in Xi’s China, leaving the country more isolated and stagnant than during any extended period since Deng launched the reform era in the late 1970s.”
After leaving China in 2020, I returned earlier this year for an extended visit. Some of my observations were of trends that began much earlier; perhaps being away for a few years made them much clearer. In any case, I came away thinking that China is pursuing a deadend path toward ever-greater state control and suppression of individualism, which ultimately means a rejection of the ideas that underpinned its rise in the reform era.
Please read the full article, unpaywalled for now, at this link. And thank you for any constructive feedback!
I’ll start out on the launch date, Sept. 26, at McNally Jackson in New York City, followed the next day with a talk at the Harvard Bookstore in Cambridge, MA. Then back to NY for a Council on Foreign Relations talk, down to Washington DC for talks at Georgetown and Politics & Prose, followed by a trip to the U.K., and then the West Coast of the United States.
Next year: the Association for Asian Studies meeting in Seattle (where I’ve organized a panel on counter-history in China), Stanford, SMU in Dallas, and more… For some of the details, please visit my Sparks-tour page here.
A documentary filmmaker who spent years uncovering a Mao-era death camp; an independent journalist who gave voice to the millions who suffered through draconian Covid lockdowns; a samizdat magazine publisher who dodges the secret police: these are some of the people who make up Sparks: China’s Underground Historians and their Battle for the Future, a vital account of how some of China’s most important writers, filmmakers, and artists have overcome crackdowns and censorship to challenge the Chinese Communist Party on its most sacred ground–its monopoly on history.
Why history? The past is a battleground in many countries, but in China it is crucial to political power. In traditional China, dynasties rewrote history to justify their rule by proving that their predecessors were unworthy. Marxism gave this a modern gloss, describing history as an unstoppable force heading toward Communism’s triumph. The Communist Party builds on these ideas to whitewash its misdeeds and justify its continued hold on power. Indeed, one of Xi Jinping’s signature policies is the control of history, which he equates with the party’s very survival.
But in recent years, critical thinkers from across China have begun to challenge this state-led disremembering. Using digital technologies to bypass China’s ubiquitous surveillance state, their samizdat journals, underground films, and guerilla media posts document a persistent pattern of disasters: from famines and purges of years past to ethnic clashes and virus outbreaks of the present.
Based on ten years of on-the-ground investigations and interviews, Sparks challenges stereotypes of a China where the state has quashed all free thought, revealing instead a land engaged in of one of humanity’s great struggles of memory against forgetting–a battle that will shape the China that emerges in the mid-21st century.
Advance Praise
For more than three decades, Ian Johnson has conducted some of the most important grassroots research of any foreign journalist in China. With Sparks, he turns his attention to history—not the sanctioned, censored, and selective history promoted by the Communist Party, but the independent histories that are being written and filmed by brave individuals across the country. This book is a powerful reminder of how China’s future depends on who controls the past.
—Peter Hessler, MacArthur grantee, National Book Award Winning author of Rivertown, Oracle Bones, and Strange Stones.
An indelible feat of reporting and an urgent read, Ian Johnson’s Sparks is alive with the voices of the countless Chinese who fiercely, improbably, refuse to let their histories be forgotten. It’s a privilege to read books like these.
—Te-Ping Chen, author of Land of Big Numbers, and Wall Street Journal national correspondent.
China’s most famous modern writer Lu Xun predicted that “as long as there shall be stones, the seeds of fire will not die.” In Sparks Ian Johnson introduces us to a new generation of unofficial historians — modern-day “seeds of fire.” Their work will survive the Xi Jinping era, both to shed light on the past and to illuminate China’s better future.
— Geremie R. Barmé, editor, China Heritage.
Ian Johnson’s Sparks was a revelation: this historian from overseas spent years penetrating the world of underground Chinese historians, becoming in his own right a recorder of pioneers such as Hu Jie, Ai Xiaoming, and Jiang Xue, who use text and video to record China’s lost history.
—Liao Yiwu, author of The Corpse Walker, God is Red, For a Song and a Hundred Songs, and recipient of the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade.
Sparks tells the stories of underground historians who are determined to write down China’s hidden histories of famines, political campaigns, massacres, and virus outbreaks. These stories show why Xi Jinping wants to control history–because memories like these are sparks of light in a heavy darkness.
—Li Yuan, New York Times columnist and host of the Bumingbai podcast.
In the long years of Chinese people’s pursuit of justice and equality, preserving historical truth has always been a fierce but invisible battle. As Ian Johnson’s Sparks shows, today’s fighters for the truth are backed by vast armies—the seen and unseen, the living and the dead—who together are prying open the lies on which totalitarianism is built.
—Cui Weiping, Beijing Film Academy professor, translator of Vaclav Havel into Chinese.
Ian Johnson has presented a powerful narrative of how the human spirit has survived the cruel repression of Maoist totalitarianism and is still doing the same against Xi Jinping’s determined efforts to impose a new form of digital totalitarianism. In telling the individual stories of Chinese citizens who choose to defend freedom and dignity, Johnson has also provided a powerful illustration of how Xi’s repressive regime works. A must read for anyone interested in the Chinese and China.
—Steve Tsang, historian of Hong Kong, director of the China Institute at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London.
This is a necessary book charged with historical urgency. The sparks, left by the eponymous underground magazine suppressed in the 1950s, are preserved here and ready to burst into a firestorm.”
—Ha Jin, author of the National Book Award-winning novel Waiting
This compelling and highly enjoyable book will greatly enhance the general reader’s understanding of the subtle counter-currents of resistance at work in Chinese society below the smooth surface of control and compliance. In fifteen chapters and a conclusion, the author provides a comprehensive and detailed picture of what he calls “underground history” and its practitioners in mainland China—amateur or one might say guerilla historians who devote considerable efforts to reconstructing the past through independent inquiry, bypassing and challenging state-condoned narratives of the past.
—Sebastian Veg, author of Minjian: The Rise of China’s Grassroots Intellectuals, professor of history at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, Paris.
Publication Rights and Editions
This book will come out in the United States and Canada via Oxford University Press, and via Penguin (Allen Lane) for other English-language rights areas, including the U.K., Australia, New Zealand and Asia.
Foreign rights have also been sold for Korea, Japan, and Taiwan.
Some notes on the covers
The US and Canada cover (at the top of this post) was made by Yang Kim, a Brooklyn-based book designer who works for Crown (Random House). She used a collage of images inside a torch, which she took from an image used in a 1960 student journal, Spark, which was the inspiration for my book title. Thanks Yang for such a brilliant job!
The designers for Allen Lane in London opted to use an Ai Weiwei papercut called “River Crabs.” Ai uses the traditional art form of paper cutting and combines it with topical issues, such as pollution, protests, and the state’s demolition of private property. River Crabs are a form of Internet slang for censorship and protests against it.
Photos
The book contains more than thirty photos. Some of them are historical, such as images of the students who founded the original journal. Many of these people ended up in labor camps for years and some were executed. Thanks to several Chinese historians, such as Song Yongyi and the documentary filmmaker Hu Jie for sending me these valuable historical prints. These images survived the maelstrom and thanks to digital technologies are now part of China’s collective memory–a key theme of this book.
Four students from Lanzhou University exiled to the city of Tianshui, standing in front of the party offices. They would publish the journal Spark, which has become a touchstone in the battle for China's history.
The first page of the 1960 journal Spark, founded by Lanzhou University students exiled to western China during the Anti-Rightist Campaign. They witnessed the Great Famine and wrote trenchant essays on China's political system that still echo today.
Others photos in the book were taken by the Singaporean artist and former Magnum photographer Sim Chi Yin, who accompanied me on some of the interviews. Chi Yin did beautiful landscapes that caught the theme of repressed and recovered memories that lie at the heart of this book.
Widow's Bridge, Daoxian, where many were beaten and tossed into the river in August 1967.
Chi Yin also took portraits of key people involved in the piece, especially the journalist Jiang Xue and the documentary filmmaker Ai Xiaoming.
Chinese writer Jiang Xue, whose essays were among the most popular accounts of China's draconian zero-Covid policy.
Chinese underground filmmaker and feminist scholar Ai Xiaoming in her home in Wuhan.
The book also contains reproductions of artworks that try to counter the “tyranny of the archive”–that reality is more than state-controlled archives can ever show us.
The artist and filmmaker Hu Jie's depiction of the poet Lin Zhao, forced to wear a "monkey mask" to prevent her from speaking in the days before her execution. Hu's work is an effort to fill in the archives' voids, allowing us to feel the past more viscerally than is possible with words.
Maps
Once again I was fortunate enough to work with the mapmaker Angela Hessler, who put together the beautiful map that you can see below, which reflects a key theme in the book–the landscape of memory. The logo of the magazine Spark is reproduced in the lower left-hand corner, while the logo of the contemporary journal Remembrance is in the lower right. The little torches indicate key locations mentioned in the book. Thanks Angela!
Purchase
Last but not least….the book is available now for preorder from OUP, Penguin, Amazon, Barnes, and any indy bookstore that you frequent.
I’d appreciate any pre-orders as it helps improve how the book is marketed, both in the bookstore and online. And afterwards, any reviews or feedback to the bookseller would be great–it helps keep the book in stock and in print.
One of the talks is at the Asia Society on March 1 and has to do with concepts of hell and the afterlife in China–especially how this played out after the Communist Party tried to destroy most values. Details here.
The second, and more relevant talk to my new book is on the idea of Civil Religion in China. I took a stab at this in early 2023 at a talk at Fordham University and will do so in a more systematic way in March at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, aka Germany’s Institute for Advanced Studies.
I’ll be on a podium with Franciscus Verellen, a distinguished historian of religious life in middle-period China (and along with Kristofer Schipper the editor of one of the great recent works of sinological study, The Taoist Canon, which is a magically written and illustrated two-volume companion to the canon, which is essentially an encyclopedia of Taoist thought).
Prof. Verellen will talk about state and religion in classical China and I’ll talk about the concept in the country today, especially as the Communist Party uses it to cement legitimacy.
You can see details of both talks on this site’s “Talks and Media Appearances” page. The German talk will be in German. Both will be posted to YouTube, and I think the German talk will have subtitles.
If you get a chance to hear these and have feedback, please do send me an email at ij@ian-johnson.com I’d appreciate any feedback.
How I got to know Wang Yi, the jailed pastor of Pray for Early Rain Covenant Church. This article in Christianity Today (简体字 / 正體字）is an introduction I wrote to a collection of his theological writings, Faithful Disobedience: Writings on Church and State from a Chinese House Church Movement, which has recently been published in the United States.
His thoughts go far beyond the specifics of China, raising universal questions about how religions and governments act. But they also illuminate the party’s new stricter policies on religions, and explain why he chose to go to jail for his belief.
Spending time with Wang Yi (which I describe in detail in The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao) was a privilege, and it still sickens me to think of him in jail, far from his wife and son. I can only hope that he makes it through to the other side and is reunited with them.
Thanks to Christianity Today for reprinting this introduction, and Hannah Nation and others for their editing of his writings
How did Xi Jinping botch his country’s exit from its zero-Covid policy? And does this herald a new era of protests in China. I answer these and other questions in this Foreign Affairs essay.
In this piece for the Council on Foreign Relations, I give my quick take on the recently concluded party congress, questioning whether Xi is really as powerful as people make him out to be, or if his omnipresence is a sign of looming weakness.
It’s an honor to be on “The President’s Inbox,” one of the snappiest podcasts (most are about 30 minutes long) on offer. And I don’t say that because my supervisor at CFR, Jim Lindsay, is the host! It is really a great summary of key issues in the news and Jim keeps it moving briskly–as one would expect for something that the president might listening to at the start of the day. On this episode we discuss the upcoming 20th congress of the Chinese Communist Party and Xi Jinping’s norm-busting third term. Here’s a link to the podcast, which has links to Apple podcasts, Google, and others.
(Sensible Person Trigger Warning: contains inappropriate and somewhat tongue-in-cheek comparisons to the Junkers in 1933, and Mario Puzo’s most famous character.)
One of my favorite parts of working for the Council on Foreign Relations is writing “In Briefs,” which are Q&A-style explainers of a current event. They’re aimed at anyone from high school students facing a term paper to people who’ve been in the field for a long time but weren’t quite sure about a particular topic.
In this one just published on the cfr.org website, I delve into the tricky issue of what is China’s upcoming party congress, and why it matters. On one level it’s easy to explain: party congresses take place every five years, and at every other congress China gets a new leader. They’re where we find out who will run China for the next five years. But this sort of “explainer” article is actually challenging because one question leads to another and another. Where to begin? When did China start changing leaders every decade? And why has Xi decided to be different? And what position is Xi getting at the congress anyway? Is it a third term as president?
The answer to that one is NO! One key misperception I wanted to lay to rest is the idea that Xi’s most important title is “president.” It’s not–it’s like if Joe Biden were chairman of the Delaware Country Club and so we called him Chairman Biden. That would be ridiculous because that title is an honorary position with no real power. What matters is that Biden is president. So, too, in the Chinese system is it basically irrelevant that Xi is president. The title “president” just means that Xi is head of state and so he gets a 21-gun salute whenever he goes abroad. That’s it.
Instead what matters is Xi head of the party: run the party and you run China. And it’s at the forthcoming congress that he gets his third term as general secretary of the party. He also gets his second-most important title: chairman of the Central Military Commission, which essentially means he controls the military. (He gets his third term as president next spring but who cares unless you’re in the gun-saluting business!)
So please read on here. It’s free and it’s part of our public education service at CFR.
了解过上述概念，你就应该知道我想做什么了。没错，就是将当前的物理系统 Windows XP，迁移到虚拟机中圈养起来，然后在新安装的 Windows 7 下面运行。这可不是文件复制粘贴做镜像那么简单。Paragon Virtualization Manager 将物理系统虚拟化的完整技术原理如上图所示。
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The talks themselves are also cleverly framed for a general audience. Many of them play on the concept of China being a “vulnerable superpower,” which I think is useful, especially because we’re bombarded with hype about China being on the march forward. It is, but it’s also fragile, in part because of the underground historians’ “clandestine stories,” which undermine CCP rule. 
