Source: NYT (9/2/25)
Xi Parades Firepower to Signal That China Won’t Be Bullied Again
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The parade, attended by the leaders of Russia and North Korea, had a defiant message. President Trump fired back, accusing Xi Jinping of ignoring America’s role in World War II.
By David Pierson (David Pierson reported from Beijing, where he was told to be in position at 2:45 a.m. along with other journalists covering the parade.)

China’s flag was raised as a military band played during the parade. Credit…Greg Baker/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

China’s leader, Xi Jinping, presided over a massive military parade in Beijing on Wednesday featuring fighter jets, missiles and goose-stepping troops as he issued a defiant warning to rivals not to challenge his country’s sovereignty.

His message was underscored by the leaders gathered by his side in the viewing gallery, representing states that have challenged or questioned American dominance of the global order. He was flanked by President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, along with the leaders of Iran, Pakistan and other mostly authoritarian nations.

Cannons fired 80 times to mark the anniversary of the end of World War II, as soldiers carried a Chinese flag and marched across a red carpet covering part of Tiananmen Square. Crowds watching the parade waved small flags and saluted as the national anthem was played and the flag was raised. Later, pigeons and balloons — said to number 80,000 each — were released into the air.

The parade was the highlight of a weekslong campaign by the ruling Communist Party to stoke nationalism, recast China’s role in World War II and project the party as the nation’s savior against a foreign aggressor, Imperial Japan. The evoking of wartime memories serves to rally domestic Chinese support in the face of economic uncertainty and tensions with the United States, which Mr. Xi has accused of trying to contain and suppress China. Continue reading Xi parades firepower →

Too long to post here in their entirety, find below links to Gu Yan’s two-part memoir about his relationship with Lin Zhao. Fascinating reading.–Kirk Denton

Source: China Unofficial Archives (8/26-27/25)
我与林昭（上篇）： “她走上了夏瑜的道路” （顾雁回忆录选登）
“She Chose a Martyr’s Path”: Lin Zhao and Me (Part 1) (Selected Excerpt from Gu Yan’s Memoirs)

我与林昭（下篇）： “她走上了夏瑜的道路” （顾雁回忆录选登）
“She Chose a Martyr’s Path”: Lin Zhao and Me (Part 2) (Selected Excerpt from Gu Yan’s Memoirs)

Source: China Unofficial Archives (8/19/25)
The Flower of Thought That Blossomed in a Barren Wasteland: Yu Luoke and “On Class Origins”
By Hu Ping

Yu Luoke at home (1967).

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Exactly 59 years ago, in the “Red August” that followed the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution in 1966, a couplet was everywhere in China: “If a father is a hero, then his son is a true man; if a father is a reactionary, then his son is a bastard.” Yu Luoke, a 24-year-old apprentice in Beijing, wrote a long article titled “On Class Origins” (also known in English as “On Family Background”). It was the most powerful challenge to the Chinese Communist Party’s long-standing policy of discrimination against people–including their children–who belonged to certain classes in society that the party defined as its enemies.

In that darkest of times, Yu raised a powerful voice for equality and human rights, shaking the entire country in a way not seen since the founding of the People’s Republic of China nearly two decades earlier. In January 1968, Yu was arrested and imprisoned. On March 5, 1970, the authorities executed him as a “counter-revolutionary,” at the age of 27.

Yu’s impact was all the more remarkable because he had been into a family belonging to one of the “five black categories” (heiwulei) of defined class enemies: landlords, rich farmers, counter-revolutionaries, rightists, and a catch-all group known as bad elements. One might assume this discrimination would weaken as time passed and the authorities’ power became more secure. However, in the 1960s, discrimination against the children of class enemies actually grew more severe. This was partly because Mao Zedong, in 1962, called on everyone to “never forget class struggle.” Continue reading Yu Luoke and ‘On Class Origins’ →

Bian Zhongyun’s husband Wang Jingyao holding his camera.

Though I Am Gone, Judgment Has Not Arrived: Remembering Bian Zhongyun
By Yu Fei 于飞

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Nearly six decades ago, on August 5, 1966, 50-year-old Bian Zhongyun became the first educator murdered during the Cultural Revolution. As the party secretary and vice principal of the all-girls Affiliated Middle School of Beijing Normal University, she was killed by a mob of Red Guards who were students from her own school.

Student assaults and denunciations of teachers had already begun in the initial weeks after the Cultural Revolution broke out in June 1966. Bian’s death signaled the arrival of Beijing’s bloody “Red August” and marked a dangerous escalation of violence in the Cultural Revolution. “Red August,” also known as the “August Massacres,” refers to a series of killings in Beijing during the early days of the Cultural Revolution, primarily carried out by Red Guards incited by the authorities. Following Mao Zedong’s reception of Red Guard representatives in Tiananmen on August 18, 1966, the wave of Cultural Revolution massacres in Beijing intensified. According to official figures alone, over 1,700 people were killed in Beijing in August and September 1966. Continue reading Remembering Bian Zhongyun →

Source: China Unofficial Archives (7/29/25)
Yang Xiaokai’s Captive Spirits: China’s Gulag Archipelago – A Political Textbook Forged in Blood and Tears
By Wu Lei

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The cover of Yang Xiaokai’s Captive Spirits.

Yang Xiaokai (1948-2004) was a renowned Chinese economist. He received two nominations for the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for his groundbreaking theories of new classical economics and super marginal analysis, earning him the title “the Chinese economist closest to the Nobel Prize.” July 7 marked the 21st anniversary of his passing.

However, the enduring book this economist left us is not an economic treatise; it is Captive Spirits: Prisoners of the Cultural Revolution

Reading this book offers a truly unique experience. For me, the most significant realization was that even during China’s era of extreme political oppression, like the Cultural Revolution, countless vibrant, individual lives openly pursued their political aspirations. Their statements, their understanding of Chinese society, and even their joys, sorrows, and romantic relationships are vividly presented in the book, allowing readers to grasp the highly individualized existence of that generation. The book’s descriptions of political prisoners, their spirit and acts of resistance, and the brutal price they paid, leave readers deeply unsettled.

Yang Xiaokai, originally named Yang Xiguang, was born in 1948 into a high-ranking Communist Party cadre family. In 1968, while still a middle school student in Hunan, he was sentenced to ten years in prison for “counter-revolutionary crimes” due to a big-character poster titled “Whither China?” He served his sentence in various detention centers, prisons, and labor camps. Captive Spirits is Yang’s account of the diverse individuals he encountered during his decade in prison. Continue reading Yang Xiaokai’s ‘Captive Spirits’ →

Liu Xiaobo.

This is adapted from a speech that Ian Johnson gave at Berlin’s Zion Church commemorating the first anniversary of the death of Liu Xiaobo. July 13, 2025, is the eighth anniversary of Liu’s passing and, instead of his importance fading, it only grows. In this essay, Johnson hints at some of the reasons for his enduring relevance—partly because of his courage for staying and fighting, but mainly for his self-reflection, which allowed a callow, arrogant intellectual to develop into a thoughtful person with sophisticated ideas for how people can live a decent live in an authoritarian regime.

The Man Who Stayed: Remembering Liu Xiaobo Eight Years After His Passing
By Ian Johnson

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In 1898, some of China’s most brilliant minds allied themselves with the Emperor Guangxu, a young ruler who was trying to assert himself by forcing through reforms to open up China’s political, economic, and educational systems. But opponents quickly struck back, deposing the emperor and causing his advisors to flee for their lives.

Among those who stayed was a young scholar named Tan Sitong. Tan knew that remaining in Beijing meant death but hoped that his execution might shock his fellow citizens awake.

It wasn’t a modest decision. Tan was one of the most provocative essayists of his generation. He had published an influential book decrying the effects of absolutism. He had founded schools and newspapers and advised other political figures on how to change the system. There was every justification for him to save himself so he could contribute to future battles. But these arguments also made Tan realize how valuable it was that he remain in the imperial capital: facing death proudly, at the hands of those resisting reforms, could make a difference; people might pay attention to China’s plight. Continue reading Remembering Liu Xiaobo →

Hu Feng and his wife Mei Zhi.

Revisiting the Hu Feng Case 70 Years Later: Storm under the Sun and a Baseless Literary Inquisition (七十年后重温胡风案：《红日风暴》和一场莫须有的文字狱)
By Ma Qinuo 马奇诺

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2025 marks the 40th anniversary of Hu Feng’s death and the 70th anniversary of the infamous case of the “Hu Feng Counter-Revolutionary Clique.”

Hu Feng passed away on June 8, 1985. Thirty years prior, in May 1955, his arrest on charges of counter-revolution ushered in a large-scale literary inquisition following the Chinese Communist Party’s establishment of the People’s Republic. The case of the “Hu Feng Counter-Revolutionary Clique” implicated over 2,100 people in China. Hu Feng himself was initially sentenced to 14 years in prison, a term later escalated to life imprisonment during the Cultural Revolution.

A poet and theoretician within the Chinese Communist Party, Hu Feng was considered a successor to the great Chinese writer Lu Xun, who helped found the New Literature Movement. In the 1930s, he served as head of the propaganda department for the League of Left-Wing Writers, founding the magazines July and Hope, and nurturing a significant number of left-wing poets and writers.

After 1949, his theoretical views on literature and art clashed with Zhou Yang, who was one of Mao’s favorite literary theorists. Mao Zedong also perceived his ideas as opposing the rules that Mao set forth in his 1942 “Talks at the Yan’an Forum on Literature and Art.” This ultimately led to Hu Feng’s imprisonment. The Hu Feng case had profound consequences; although only Hu Feng and two others received formal sentences, as many as 2,100 people were implicated. Official statistics later revealed that 92 individuals were arrested, 62 were held in solitary confinement, and 73 were suspended for investigation during the movement. Several designated key members endured decades of imprisonment and forced labor. Continue reading Revisiting the Hu Feng Case →