Politics

posts on political issues relevant to Greater China

How Black Myth: Wukong navigates China’s political and cultural trends

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Source: Think China (9/10/24)
How Black Myth: Wukong navigates China’s political and cultural trends
By Ying Zhu

Black Myth: Wukong has revived interest in everything Monkey King, but the Chinese video game has also been criticised for not fully capturing the original myth. Even so, the game has given the Chinese gaming industry a boost, even though government endorsement may shift the focus from design to politics. Academic Ying Zhu explores the magic of Monkey King.

People wait in line to play Black Myth: Wukong at Gamescom 2023, in Cologne, Germany, on 23 August 2023. (Jana Rodenbusch/Reuters)

People wait in line to play Black Myth: Wukong at Gamescom 2023, in Cologne, Germany, on 23 August 2023. (Jana Rodenbusch/ Reuters)

In summer 2015, a Chinese animation film, Monkey King: Hero Is Back, made headline news for breaking the Chinese animation box-office record previously held by DreamWorks’ Kungfu Panda 2 (2011). The film features the Monkey King, a legendary trickster known for his mischief and magical powers, drawn from the beloved 16th-century Chinese literary classic Journey to the West.

Journey to the West narrates the 7th-century pilgrimage of Chinese Buddhist monk Xuanzang, who travels from Xi’an (the Tang Dynasty capital) to India in search of Buddhist scriptures. This whimsical and fantastical tale chronicles Xuanzang’s challenging journey, accompanied by three troublesome apprentices who have been assigned to him as protectors to atone for their sins.

Among the three, the monkey named Sun Wukong stood out for both his magical power in fighting evil and his troublemaking penchant. His captivating character has enchanted generations of readers, making him a legendary hero in Chinese mythology.

Monkey King fever a decade ago

The Monkey King story has been updated through stage performances, TV series, film and video games in China and beyond. Research shows that from 1906-2021, roughly 170 theatre, film and TV adaptations were said to have been produced in the Chinese-speaking world alone. Among them, Monkey King: Hero Is Back stood out for its success in vanquishing Hollywood in the Chinese domestic market. Continue reading How Black Myth: Wukong navigates China’s political and cultural trends →

Enduring ‘public secrecy’ around 1989

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Source: China Digital Times (9/9/24)
Accused Tiananmen Informant’s Silence Reveals Enduring “Public Secrecy” Around 1989
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The violent repression of the 1989 student protests scarred Chinese society. The campaign to purge “two-faced” protest sympathizers that followed was similarly painful. Yet some of the greatest unresolved anguish from that tumultuous year stems from the realization among those who served prison sentences that dear friends and trusted colleagues informed on them—or even framed them.

Just such a case has re-entered the public eye 35 years after the fact due to the reporting of the investigative journalist Chai Jing, creator of the 2015 air pollution documentary “Under the Dome.” In 1989, the poet Zheng Shiping, better known by his pen name Ye Fu, was charged with revealing state secrets and sentenced to six years in prison. After his release, Ye Fu alleged that the Mao Dun-prize winning novelist Xiong Zhaozheng, his former classmate and friend, had set him up. Ye Fu’s allegation is decades old. Xiong has never publicly admitted to acting as an informant, although according to Ye Fu he has previously apologized in private. As part of a recent interview series for her YouTube channel, Chai Jing interviewed both Ye Fu and Xiong. Her brief interview with Xiong was dominated by silence. Far more than a rehashing of bitter recriminations about 1989, the call, which Chai Jing posted in full and whose transcript is translated below, proves an illuminating example of the “public secrecy” that surrounds the Tiananmen movement.

While the 1989 student movement is among the most sensitive and censored topics in China, the silence surrounding it is not solely a matter of government enforcement. “Public secrecy” is Margaret Hillenbrand’s term for the cult of self-interested silence that surrounds the most traumatic instances in modern Chinese history. Hillenbrand explained the term in an interview on her book “Negative Exposures” published by CDT earlier this year: Continue reading Enduring ‘public secrecy’ around 1989 →

U of Nottingham censorship

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University of Nottingham censorship — is it linked to fears over the Ningbo campus, and Gui Minhai’s case?  On the occasion of Norway’s PM Jonas Gahr Støre traveling to China recently to make new business deals, I wanted to re-up my piece on Norway’s indifference to China’s ongoing genocide and how they censored their own king, when he spoke out about it on his visit:

“Of Kings and Concentration Camps: Xinjiang and Norway,” in Asia Dialogue, the online magazine of the University of Nottingham’s Asia Research Institute, which is listed online as “a world leading centre for expertise on the Asia-Pacific region.”

I then discovered that the Nottingham magazine has deleted my article — without notice! Luckily it can still be read at a Taiwan site under a different title: “Norway, China and the Deep Hypocrisy of the ‘Human Rights Dialogue’ Ritual.”

Then I discovered that another Nottingham article of mine was also deleted without notice, namely this: “The Xinjiang camps as a ‘Stanford Prison Experiment.'” Being very proud of that piece, I now reposted it here: https://www.academia.edu/37656489/ (and also on ResearchGate.net), to make it accessible again.

The question remains:

Why this censorship by Nottingham university?  In fact, I have learned that it is not just me: Several other scholars have had their published scholarship deleted by Nottingham. Continue reading U of Nottingham censorship →

China, Empire and World Anthropology

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In this piece, I argue that China anthropologists today should not be the handmaidens of China’s imperialism.–Magnus Fiskesjo <magnus.fiskesjo@cornell.edu>

China, Empire and World Anthropology
Magnus Fiskesjö
Anthropology Today, 40 (4) (2024)

Abstract

This comment critically examines the legacy of Chinese anthropologist Fei Xiaotong and its implications for understanding China’s approach to non-Chinese peoples on the territory that became modern China. The author argues that Fei’s concept of ‘pluralistic unity’ has been misinterpreted and actually represents a continuation of China’s imperial ideology of absorbing conquered populations. The piece links this ideology to current Chinese policies, particularly the treatment of Uyghurs and other non-Chinese peoples. It contends that the Chinese Communist Party abandoned its original anti-imperialist stance in favour of continuing imperial practices, resulting in the transformation of multiple nations into nominal ‘minorities’ and then their erasure under the guise of national unity. The author calls for a reassessment of China’s anthropology through the lens of colonialism, racism and imperialism, arguing that China’s imperial legacy must be critically examined to understand its current policies and actions. The article situates this discussion within the broader context of emerging literature on Chinese settler colonialism. It emphasizes the need for a comparative approach in studying China’s past and present imperialism.

HK editors convicted of sedition

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Source: NYT (8/28/24)
Hong Kong Editors Convicted of Sedition in Blow to Press Freedom
The editors said they published stories in the public interest. A judge ruled they were guilty of a crime against national security.
By Tiffany May, Reporting from Hong Kong

Two men stand outside a building as a group of journalists photograph them.

Patrick Lam, left, and Chung Pui-kuen of Stand News leaving court in Hong Kong last year. Credit…Louise Delmotte/Associated Press

The two veterans of Hong Kong’s long boisterous news media scene didn’t shy away from publishing pro-democracy voices on their Stand News site, even as China cranked up its national security clampdown to silence critics in the city.

Then the police came knocking and, more than two and a half years later, a judge Thursday convicted the two journalists — the former editor in chief of Stand News, Chung Pui-kuen, and his successor, Patrick Lam — of conspiring to publish seditious materials on the now-defunct liberal news outlet. Both face potential prison sentences.

The landmark ruling highlighted how far press freedom has shrunk in the city, where local news outlets already self censor to survive and some foreign news organizations have left or moved out staff amid increasing scrutiny from the authorities.

During the trial, prosecutors characterized news articles and opinion pieces published by the two as biased against the government and a threat to national security. The articles were similar to those Stand News had been publishing for years. But after the authorities crushed protests that rocked the city in 2019, China imposed a national security law, and tolerance for dissent in the city’s freewheeling media began to evaporate. Continue reading HK editors convicted of sedition →

‘Zero Day’ raises tough questions about China invasion

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Source: NYT (8/25/24)
What if China Invades? For Taiwan, a TV Show Raises Tough Questions.
Some think the drama, “Zero Day,” helps Taiwan confront an increasingly plausible scenario. Others say the show is alarmist and a tool of the government.
By Chris Buckley and Amy Chang Chien, Reporting from Taipei, Taiwan

A man walks past a barricade placed across a wide road. A large brick building with a tall tower is behind him.

Members of the film crew for the drama series “Zero Day” preparing for a protest scene to be shot on location in front of the presidential palace on Saturday in Taipei, Taiwan. Credit…Lam Yik Fei for The New York Times

On the boulevard in front of the presidential palace in Taipei this weekend, Taiwan’s worst nightmare was unfolding in front of film crews. A crowd of actors and extras portrayed one kind of chaos that might come with a Chinese invasion: a protest descending into violence and bloodshed.

The scene being shot was for “Zero Day,” a new Taiwanese television drama series that depicts an effort by China to take over the democratically governed island. Beijing has long claimed Taiwan as its territory and urged it to peacefully accept China’s sovereignty. The Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, has said he would not rule out using force to absorb it.

“Zero Day” will not air until next year, but it has already set off heated debates in Taiwan, after the release of a trailer. Supporters of the series say it could encourage a much-needed conversation about the threat that China poses. Critics have denounced it as scaremongering.

Cheng Hsin-mei, the producer of “Zero Day,” said she wanted to jolt Taiwanese people out of what she sees as widespread complacency and reticence about the possibility of war.

“How everyone would really face up to a war, how you would confront that possibility — nobody’s actually talking about that,” Ms. Cheng, who is also a main scriptwriter for the series, said in an interview. “I want to talk about it, because I think it’s the biggest fear in each Taiwanese person’s heart.” Continue reading ‘Zero Day’ raises tough questions about China invasion →

Shangyuan Art Museum: A Demolition

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Last week the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung published my text about the demolition of Beijing Shangyuan Art Museum in June. It is available online, maybe for free by the time you read this. I have assembled screenshots with some commentary in English on my blog (https://banianerguotoukeyihe.com/2024/08/20/shangyuan-art-museum-in-the-faz/). What follows is the English version. Please email me if you have any questions. Thank you!

Best,

Martin Winter 维马丁 <dujuan99@gmail.com>

Shangyuan Art Museum. A Demolition.
Martin Winter

How can I write about it? Write down what I know. In detail. How did it start. On June 3rd suddenly there were people measuring buildings. Three or four people. Then one of us artists asked them what they were doing. These houses will be demolished. What? Yes, all of these. Our studios. Why? It’s all illegal. We are just measuring, they sent us. Who? The village committee. And those above. On June 4th too, other people. Where is Cheng Xiaobei? Does she know? She is coming to Beijing. Next week. She is the boss. One of the founders of Shangyuan Art Museum and the only person around willing to take charge, able to negotiate and decide.

I am one of the artists. Every year they invite artists to live and work there. Over thirty, sometimes 40 people. From early April to late October, sometimes late March till early November. Trees bloom in March, some bloom in February. But there’s no heating. Each year water is freezing somewhere in the walls. Doors and windows are not made for winter. The one really solid building, the big exhibition hall, is now gone. Continue reading Shangyuan Art Museum: A Demolition →

Exhibit shows how China wants to remake HK

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Source: NYT (8/23/24)
A History Museum Shows How China Wants to Remake Hong Kong
阅读简体中文版 | 閱讀繁體中文版
A new exhibit calls for the city’s residents to be patriotic, loyal to the Chinese Communist Party and ever vigilant to supposed threats to the state.
By Tiffany May, Reporting from Hong Kong

A person spreads their arms wide as they pose for a picture in front of a Chinese flag in a darkened museum room. Other patrons are nearby, in shadow.

A new exhibit on national security at the Hong Kong Museum of History. Credit…Anthony Kwan for The New York Times

The Hong Kong Museum of History was the place to go to understand the city’s transformation from fishing village to a glittering metropolis. It housed a life-size replica of a traditional fishing boat and a recreation of a 19th-century street lined with shops.

That exhibit, known as “The Hong Kong Story,” is being revamped. People have instead been lining up for a splashy new permanent gallery in the museum that tells a different, more ominous story about the city — that Hong Kong is constantly at risk of being subverted by hostile foreign forces. The exhibit features displays about spies being everywhere and footage of antigovernment street protests in the city that were described as instigated by the West.

As he kicked off the exhibition this month, John Lee, the Beijing-backed leader of Hong Kong, made clear that its overarching purpose was to be a warning to the city. “Safeguarding national security is always a continuous effort. There is no completion,” he said. The gallery, which is managed by Hong Kong’s top national security body, opened to the public on Aug. 7.

The exhibit points to a new aspect of the Hong Kong government’s crackdown on the city after antigovernment protests in 2019 posed the greatest challenge to Beijing’s rule in decades. The authorities have introduced security laws to quash dissent in the years since. They are now pushing to control how people will remember the recent political turmoil. Continue reading Exhibit shows how China wants to remake HK →

‘When we die, our bodies are plundered for parts’

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Source: China Digital Times (8/16/24)
Quote of the Day: “When We Die, Our Bodies Are Plundered for Parts”
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A recent scandal involving the organized theft and trafficking of thousands of corpses that were later processed into bone-graft material for dental procedures has prompted horror among the Chinese public, and tremendous censorship on Chinese social media platforms. CDT editors have identified 21 censored Weibo hashtags, about a dozen deleted posts and investigative reports, and many deleted comments and filtered comment sections on social media platforms.

Despite attempts to suppress discussion of the corpse-trafficking scandal, public interest in the case—currently being investigated by authorities in Taiyuan, Shanxi province—remains unabated. CDT editors have put together a selection of online comments, quips, poetry, and blog excerpts related to the case. Some of the writers described the corpse-trafficking scheme as just another example of how ordinary citizens are subjected to various indignities—treated as “chives” or “huminerals” to be harvested and exploited, both in life and in death. Others drew connections between this and previous scandals about melamine-tainted powdered milk and baby formula, recycled “gutter oil,” and tanker trucks used to transport both fuel and cooking oil without being sanitized between loads.

The following are some online reactions to news of the corpse-trafficking scandal and censorship of related hashtags: Continue reading ‘When we die, our bodies are plundered for parts’ →

Battle over Li Rui’s diaries

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Source: BBC News (8/20/24)
US trial begins in battle for Mao secretary’s diaries
By Tessa Wong, BBC News, Reporting from Singapore

Getty Images Li Rui in an interview in 2006

Getty Images Li Rui was a former secretary to Mao Zedong and vocal government critic. Getty Images

A trial has begun in California to decide whether Stanford University can keep the diaries of a top Chinese official, in a case that is being framed as a fight against Chinese government censorship.

The diaries belong to the late Li Rui, a former secretary to Communist China’s founder Mao Zedong.

Following Li’s death in 2019, his widow sued for the documents to be returned to Beijing, claiming they belong to her.

Stanford rejects this. It says Li, who had been a critic of the Chinese government, donated his diaries to the university as he feared they would be destroyed by the Chinese Communist Party.

The diaries, which were written between 1935 and 2018, cover much of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) rule. In those eight tumultuous decades, China emerged from impoverished isolation to become indispensable to the global economy.

“If [the diaries] return to China they will be banned… China does not have a good record in permitting criticism of party leaders,” Mark Litvack, one of Stanford’s lawyers, told the BBC before the trial began. Continue reading Battle over Li Rui’s diaries →

Video game seeks to curb ‘negative discourse’

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Source: NYT (8/20/24)
Hit Chinese Video Game Seeks to Curb ‘Negative Discourse’
Black Myth: Wukong tried to forbid influential overseas streamers from discussing “feminist propaganda,” Covid-19 and China’s video game industry policies.
By Daisuke Wakabayashi and Claire Fu

Two people walking by a promotional image for a character in a video game.

A promotional image of a character from the video game Black Myth: Wukong. It is considered China’s first “AAA,” big-budget game. Credit…Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Black Myth: Wukong is one of the most highly anticipated Chinese video games ever, a premium title with a blockbuster-worthy budget that underscores the country’s push to become a global cultural power.

But ahead of its debut on Tuesday, a company affiliated with the game’s China-based developer rankled some influential overseas players with a list of topics to avoid discussing while livestreaming the game.

The list of forbidden subjects laid out in a document under “Don’ts” — politics, “feminist propaganda,” Covid-19, China’s video game industry policies and other content that “instigates negative discourse” — offered a glimpse of the restrictions that content creators face in China as well as the topics deemed sensitive to Beijing.

“I have never seen anything that shameful in my 15 years doing this job. This is very clearly a document which explains that we must censor ourselves,” said Benoit Reinier, a prominent video game streamer on YouTube and a French journalist, in a YouTube video. Continue reading Video game seeks to curb ‘negative discourse’ →

China’s genocide tourism strategy

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Source: The Diplomat (8/19/24)
China’s Genocide Tourism Strategy
The use of tourism as a propaganda weapon is an old trick of authoritarian regimes
By Magnus Fiskesjö

China’s Genocide Tourism Strategy 

Credit: Depositphotos

A journalist based in Poland recently described a surprising find: a Nazi tourist guidebook from 1943 for tourists going to the so-called General Government, Nazi Germany’s most infamous dumping zone for deported undesirables on the ashes of occupied Poland. The region’s many sightseeing spots were recast as German heritage, which proud German tourists visited with the guidebook’s help.

This is exactly what we see today in China’s own genocide zone in Xinjiang (called East Turkestan by the native Uyghur population). Having suppressed all possible resistance – through a formidable surveillance apparatus, mass detention of anyone remotely suspect of pro-native sentiment, and mass forced labor for camp survivors – the Chinese government is now promoting both domestic and foreign tourism to the Uyghur region.

The campaign is accompanied by a propaganda blitz, hoping to thwart foreign criticism of the genocide launched in 2017. A major goal is also to recruit both domestic and foreign tourists into supporters who “see for themselves” that Xinjiang is safe and good.

Domestic tourists are lured to Xinjiang with new infrastructure, remodeled cities and new attractions, from fake dinosaur parks to wholly new faux-historical “mystery” sites that re-appropriate Uyghur culture while exoticizing and primitivizing it. Continue reading China’s genocide tourism strategy →

A disappearance in Xinjiang

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Did not see this gripping feature on our imprisoned anthropologist colleague Rahile Dawut, until today. It says her elderly 80+ mother was allowed a prison visit, only through a screen. Unclear when. The Chinese Communist regime is so profoundly cowardly, it is hard to grasp, no-one can make sense of it. –Magnus Fiskesjö, nf42@cornell.edu

Source: Financial Times (4/26/24)
A Disappearance in Xinjiang
By Edward White

© Iris Legendre. Based on a portrait by Lisa Ross

A car pulls up outside an apartment building in Ürümqi. An elderly woman, in her eighties and frail, emerges and is helped into the vehicle. She is driven to a prison on the outskirts of the western Chinese city. She is taken inside a room where she is shown, via a screen, her 57-year-old daughter, the Uyghur anthropologist Rahile Dawut. Days later the old woman relays the encounter to her granddaughter, Akeda Paluti. “Your mother is doing well,” she says. “Try not to worry.”

Rahile’s life was devoted to the preservation of cultural diversity across the vast Xinjiang region, nearly three times the size of France and covering about one-sixth of modern China. For centuries, ancient Silk Roads wove past its mountain ranges, lakes, deserts and valleys. Today, officially called the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, it shares borders with Russia and Mongolia; Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan; and Afghanistan, Pakistan and India.

Rahile insisted on conducting gruelling fieldwork. She regularly travelled hundreds of kilometres from the capital Ürümqi to isolated villages to research the local Mazar — the shrines and tombs, sometimes attached to mosques, where saints have been buried or where miracles happened — as well as the farmers and craftsmen to understand the traditions etched into their daily lives. She recorded the oral histories that local leaders had for centuries offered to pilgrims; their poetry, music, folkways and other traditions. Continue reading A disappearance in Xinjiang →

China warns students about anti-China rhetoric

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Source: China Digital Times (8/14/24)
China’s Spy Agency Warns Students Against Anti-China Rhetoric In College Application Essays
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China’s Ministry of State Security has issued a warning to students seeking to study abroad: don’t cast yourself as a regime opponent in your college application essay. An article shared by the WeChat account of the Ministry of Public Security, a top domestic policing body, but attributed to the powerful intelligence service the Ministry of State Security, warned about the alleged risk college consultancies pose to national security. In the MSS’ telling, college consulting services are illegally inserting “anti-China prejudices” into students’ application essays to make them more attractive to foreign universities. Specifically, the article claims that foreign universities want essays with “run” flavor to them, a reference to content encouraging emigration from China. The essay further claims that negative information about China is a result of the infiltration of “hostile foreign forces.” It offered an anonymized retelling of a purportedly true story, in which a young person named Zhang was tricked into including “false reactionary political speech” in his college application by an unscrupulous college consultancy:

In order to realize his dream of studying abroad, a student named Zhang purchased the VIP services of a study abroad consultancy, hiring a team of professionals to help him develop an optimized study abroad plan. The head of the consultancy, “Little Rui,” told Zhang that one foreign university had rolled out the red carpet for Chinese students, with their odds of acceptance greatly increased if their application essay had a sufficiently “run” flavor to it. Under the consultancy’s guidance, a great deal of rhetoric pandering to anti-China prejudices—including false reactionary political speech—was grafted onto Zhang’s essay. Zhang had unknowingly transformed from a young student with a simple background into an anti-China “crusader” in the blink of an eye. Zhang is a victim of the college consultancy’s illegal behavior. [Chinese] Continue reading China warns students about anti-China rhetoric →