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Chinese student pleads guilty to violating US espionage act

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Is it naivete or negligence? The American law professor commenting in the article below, Mary Ellen O’Connell at Notre Dame, either really is, or pretends to be,  unaware of Chinese law requiring Chinese citizens to obey all orders to spy for the Chinese state intelligence services — and, not to reveal the circumstances. And it’s just not conceivable that a Chinese grad student in Minnesota takes off on his own initiative, with a drone, to a US naval base in Virginia, to make a spy film. He must have been pressed into it by agents of the Chinese state, just like those lab-thieving students at U. Florida a few weeks ago. On the circumstances of the Virginia case, see also here. –Magnus Fiskesjö <nf42@cornell.edu>

Source: Nikkei (7/9/24)
Chinese student pleads guilty to violating U.S. espionage act
Shi Fengyun is accused of violating rarely used provisions of the Espionage Act
By MARRIAN ZHOU, Nikkei staff writer

Chinese 26-year-old Shi Fengyun pled guilty to espionage misdemeanors for flying a drone near a U.S. naval facility.   © Reuters

NORFOLK, Virginia — A Chinese student pleaded guilty to misdemeanor espionage charges at a federal courthouse here on Monday for taking photographs of U.S. military infrastructure using a drone.

Shi Fengyun, a 26-year-old graduate student from the University of Minnesota, walked into the courtroom in a light green and gray jacket and sports pants. He appeared nervous, taking several deep breaths while shaking his legs before he entered his plea.

Shi pleaded guilty to two out of six counts of violations under two provisions of the Espionage Act, which prohibits the photography of military installations and the use of unregistered drones to do so in national defense airspace. The U.S. Department of Justice dismissed the remaining four counts. Continue reading Chinese student pleads guilty to violating US espionage act →

‘Ink Girl,’ alive or dead?

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The number of people detained by China’s authorities that even family members are not told for years, whether they are alive or dead, is enormous — they include my fellow Swedish citizen Gui Minhai kidnapped by China 8 1/2 years ago, as well as untold numbers of disappeared Uyghurs. Dong Yaoqiong, whose case is raised here below, is also one example from among Chinese people. This sort of targeted news blackout is a particularly cruel weapon deployed by the Chinese regime.–Magnus Fiskesjö <nf42@cornell.edu>

Source: Bitter Winter (7/8/24)
The “Ink Girl” Six Years After: Is She Alive or Dead?
Dong Yaoqiong sprayed with ink a portrait of Xi Jinping on July 4, 2018, and was taken to a psychiatric hospital. Her friends ask the CCP to prove she is still alive.
by Hu Zimo

Dong Yaoqiong and the portrait of Xi Jinping she sprayed with ink. From X.

Dong Yaoqiong and the portrait of Xi Jinping she sprayed with ink. From X.

Remember Dong Yaoqiong, the famous “Ink Girl” from Shanghai? If you don’t, this means that the CCP’s repression, which has tried to systematically erase any trace of her from the web, has been successful. We at “Bitter Winter,” however, do remember Dong Yaoqiong. Remembering may be the only way to keep her alive—unless she already died.

On July 4, 2018, Dong, a then twenty-nine-year-old woman who had come to Shanghai from Hunan and worked in a real estate agency, filmed herself in the act of spraying ink on a poster of Xi Jinping, calling for democracy, and posted the video on Twitter, which is banned in China but widely accessed through VPN, particularly by college students.

Dong was arrested a few hours after she had posted the video and later taken to a psychiatric hospital, reportedly with the complicity of her mother, who signed a statement that her daughter was mentally ill. It is rumored the mother was rewarded with a new and better home. The Ink Girl’s father, Dong Jianbiao, criticized his wife and insisted Dong Yaoqiong was not insane. As a result, the father was also arrested. On September 23, 2022, it was announced that he had died of “natural causes” in jail. His body was quickly cremated, but not before relatives had seen it, covered with bruises and other signs of violence. Continue reading ‘Ink Girl,’ alive or dead? →

Urban Culture in Imperial China panelist–cfp

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Dear Colleagues,

We are inviting expressions of interest for a fourth panelist to join our AAS panel focusing on urban culture in imperial China. This panel seeks to explore the multifaceted city life of premodern China and East Asia through various lenses such as literature, religion, entertainment, and ritual activities.  Our current three panelists will delve into diverse aspects:

  • Political legitimacy and the strategic placement of capitals in Pre-Song China
  • Court entertainment during the Northern Song dynasty
  • Interactions between commoners and monasteries in the Ming Dynasty

We are fortunate to have Professor Steven Miles from Washington University in St. Louis as our panel chair.

We are looking for a scholar whose research complements our theme by examining urban culture from a social, economic, or political perspective. If you are interested in contributing to this intriguing discussion, please contact I-Chin Lin and Frankie Chik at ilin17@asu.edu and HIC24@pitt.edu with your proposal.  We look forward to your participation and contributions to what promises to be a rich and engaging discussion.

Best regards,

Hin Ming Frankie Chik <HIC24@pitt.edu>

Look Back in Anger

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MCLC Resource Center is pleased to announce publication of Thomas Chen’s “Look Back in Anger: The Long Season (2023),” an essay on the TV series The Long Season. The essay appears below and at its online home: https://u.osu.edu/mclc/online-series/the-long-season/. My thanks to Prof. Chen for sharing his work with the MCLC community.

Kirk A. Denton, MCLC

Look Back in Anger:
The Long Season (2023)

By Thomas Chen

MCLC Resource Center Publication (Copyright July 2024)

Figure 1: Marketing poster for The Long Season.

First released in China in April 2023 and now available to stream on Amazon Prime Video, The Long Season (漫长的季节) is the most popular and critically praised Chinese miniseries in recent memory. On Douban, China’s near-equivalent of IMDb, it has over 900,000 ratings, with an average score of 9.4 out of 10. What accounts for this stupendous acclaim?

The Long Season has an arresting storyline: complex, tightly written, and unpredictable. It is a double-plotted crime drama set in the fictional steel town of Hualin in northeastern China, deftly interweaving a mysterious hit-and-run incident in 2016—the present in which the series opens—with a case of murder by dismemberment in 1998.

Generically a whodunit, The Long Season is also a riot. The Northeast constitutes the wellspring of comedy in the Chinese cultural imagination. Some of the country’s most famous comedians hail from the region, and their skits and sketches on China Central Television’s annual New Year’s Gala have entertained generations of viewers. Directed by Xin Shuang 辛爽, a Northeasterner, the dialogue crackles with repartees, delivered impeccably in the distinctive local idiom by well-known actors Fan Wei 范伟 and Qin Hao 秦昊, both of whom themselves are from the Northeast. They play, respectively, Wang Xiang 王响, a former locomotive engineer for Hualin Steel who is now a taxi driver, and Gong Biao 龚彪, a fellow taxi driver who used to be an entry-level manager in the same factory. The third male lead is Ma Desheng 马德胜, a police captain turned amateur Latin ballroom dancer. All three give bravura performances in dual roles spanning almost two decades that anchor the temporal shifts in the narrative. Continue reading Look Back in Anger →

Chinese Theories of Literary Creation

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Dear colleagues and friends,

I am pleased to report that my first monograph on Chinese literary theory has come out at Duke UP. If you are interested in the book, you may place an order at the DUP or Amazon sites for the same price of $16. As Amazon needs to forward the order to DUP, it makes good sense to order directly from DUP unless you have free shipping from Amazon. Below are the DUP and Amazon links.
Thanks, Zong-qi Cai

https://www.dukeupress.edu/chinese-theories-of-literary-creation

https://www.amazon.com/Chinese-Theories-Literary-Creation-Introduction/dp/1478026995/

Description

In this monograph, Zong-qi Cai surveys the long trajectory of Chinese thinking about literary creation, from remote antiquity to the early 20th century. By uncovering the complex connections linking key critical terms, concepts, and assertions, it debunks the common perception of Chinese literary theory as vague and elusive. Instead, Cai approaches Chinese critical pronouncements as engaged in a productive dialogue with each other. Through detailed scrutiny of 184 passages, he shows how critics from different dynasties exploited the polysemy of key terms—drawn from Confucian, Daoist, and Buddhist sources as well as criticism of calligraphy and painting—to arrive at ground-breaking new perspectives on literary creation. The book concludes with a brief comparative look at Chinese and Western literary theory aimed at being mutually illuminating for both traditions. Intended for general readers as well as specialists, this monograph will be followed in the next few years by three similar studies on theories of literature, aesthetics, and interpretation.

Posted by: Prism Editorial Office <prism@ln.edu.hk>

Asian Food–cfp

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AAS 2025 Annual Conference: call for panelists
Topic: Asian Food: Culture, Literature, Philosophy, and Religion
Abstract submission deadline: July 22, 2024
Contact: Dixuan Chen <chenyuji@grinnell.edu>

In-person presentations at the AAS 2025 Annual Conference in Columbus, Ohio, March 13 to March 16.

We invite submissions of paper abstracts for the panel “Asian Food: Culture, Literature, Philosophy, and Religion.” We encourage studies from diverse academic disciplines, transregional studies, and studies of local food cultures (China, Japan, Korea, Thailand, etc.).

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

  • How does food consumption construct the collective memory of a cultural, religious, or social community?
  • Asian food choices and eating habits in the contexts of culture, society, philosophy, politics, and religious beliefs.
  • The concepts, values, and practices of taboo, purity, and spirituality in Asian diets.
  • The symbols of food, ingredients, and other edible materials.
  • Eating and identity.
  • Ethical food and sustainability.
  • Fasting and abstinence from food for health, ritualistic, religious, or ethical purposes.

Paper abstracts (250 words) and a short biography or CV should be sent to the panel organizer Dixuan Chen, Grinnell College, chenyuji@grinnell.edu by July 22, 2024 (Eastern Standard Time). Communication will be in English. Files should be sent as PDF or Word documents (doc or docx).

Contact the panel organizer with any questions at chenyuji@grinnell.edu

Beyong Exoticism: Rethinking Southwest China–cfp

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Call for Contributions – Beyond Exoticism: Rethinking Southwest China
Special feature for China Perspectives
Guest editors:

Peter Guangpei Ran (pran@nju.edu.cn), Assistant Research Fellow at Institute for Social Anthropology, Nanjing University
Paul Kendall (p.kendall1@westminster.ac.uk), Senior Lecturer in Chinese studies, University of Westminster
 
Deadline for abstracts: 2 August 2024 
Deadline for papers: 1 March 2025

Since the 1980s, southwest China has enjoyed considerable academic attention, including a particular focus on representations and everyday practices relating to the many “ethnic minorities” within this region (e.g., Oakes 1998; Rees 2000; Harrell 2001; Mueggler 2001). While important theoretical tools, such as the notion of internal orientalism (Schein 2000), have subsequently emerged, recent years have seen a decline in the profile of southwest China in English-language academia and beyond. At the same time, a major shift in ethnic policy and governance, the deepening of infrastructural development, the intensification of translocal exchanges encouraged by global economy, and the unprecedented measures to tackle environmental issues have all profoundly affected this region, which continues to be remembered, imagined, practiced and contested in discursive and material terms. This special feature for China Perspectives aims to renew scholarly attention towards the historical complexity and contemporary transformation of southwest China, as well as put forward new ways of thinking about and researching the southwest as indispensable to wider understandings of China today.

For the full CfP, please see https://www.cefc.com.hk/call-for-contributions-beyond-exoticism-rethinking-southwest-china/.

Paul Kendall <p.kendall1@westminster.ac.uk>

Private Revolutions review

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Source: NYT (7/5/24)
6 Years, 4 Raw Human Stories From the New China
In “Private Revolutions,” Yuan Yang follows the lives of women in a rapidly changing modern superpower.
By Michelle T. King (Michelle T. King is the author of “Chop Fry Watch Learn: Fu Pei-mei and the Making of Modern Chinese Food.”)

PRIVATE REVOLUTIONS: Four Women Face China’s New Social Order, by Yuan Yang. Viking | 294 pp. | $30

There’s an unforgettable moment in Yuan Yang’s new book, when an idealistic university student is tasked with conducting a survey by going door-to-door to random addresses in Shenzhen, China’s manufacturing megalopolis.

In one poor neighborhood, the female student asks a young man, living in a tiny apartment with four other adults and a baby, to rate his current job satisfaction. His immediate reaction is to ask whether she has been sent by the Communist Party.

Though she denies it, he responds, “I’m guessing they did send you, so let’s just say we are completely, utterly satisfied with everything in our lives.”

That story, which takes place in the early 2010s, highlights Yang’s concern with the fate of China’s laborers, as well as the class distinctions that structure the encounter.

In 2016, Yang returned to China, where she had spent her early childhood, to work as a journalist for The Financial Times. Over the next six years, Yang followed four young women as they navigated what she calls China’s “new social order.” All of them, like Yang, were born in the late 1980s and 1990s, coming-of-age after the “optimistic giddiness” of their parents’ generation, one characterized by increasing prosperity in the wake of Deng Xiaoping’s market reforms in the 1980s. Continue reading Private Revolutions review →

Crackdown on extreme nationalism

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Source: China Digital Times (7/3/24)
Chinese Social Media Platforms Launch Crackdown on Extreme Nationalism and Xenophobic Hate-Speech after Fatal Suzhou Stabbing
By

Chinese social media platforms have announced a belated crackdown on “extreme nationalism” and xenophobic hate-speech online, following last week’s fatal stabbing at a school bus stop in Suzhou, Jiangsu province, in which a Japanese mother and child were injured by a knife-wielding man, and Chinese school bus attendant Hu Youping was killed after trying to intervene. Just two weeks earlier, four visiting American teachers were stabbed and injured by another man at a public park in Jilin, in northeastern China. Both stabbings are believed to have been motivated by xenophobic sentiment, and many online commenters have witheringly described the attackers as “modern-day Boxers,” referring to the anti-foreign rebels who launched the Boxer Rebellion approximately 125 years ago.

In the last few weeks, CDT editors have compiled numerous essays, articles, and netizen comments pointing out apparent links between the recent spate of attacks and the vitriolic anti-Japanese and other xenophobic content that is tolerated on Chinese television, social media, and even in school textbooks. It is worth nothing that several of these essays were censored and taken offline in the days following the Suzhou attack. The hate-speech crackdown announced by social media platforms this week seems to reflect a belated realization that xenophobic online content may be fueling hatred and even radicalizing some individuals to carry out offline attacks. Continue reading Crackdown on extreme nationalism →

Prism 20.2

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Publication News | Prism 20:2
Edited by Prof Zhiyi Yang and Prof David Der-wei Wang

We are pleased to announce the publication of “Classicism in Digital Times: Cultural Remembrance as Reimagination in the Sinophone Cyberspace,” a special issue of Prism (20:2), edited by David Der-wei Wang and Zhiyi Yang.

Contributors to this special issue explore “Chineseness” in the digital age, presenting the many facets of the multicentered, multidimensional, and multifunctional phenomenon of “Sinophone classicism.” The authors posit that digital technology leads to intense disruption and fragmentation of geopolitical and ethno-cultural communities by building kinetic connections among atomized individuals who act as agents of cultural remembrance and imagination. The ramifications of this virtual cultural-linguistic nationalism remain to be observed in long-term academic studies, the authors argue, beginning with this special issue.

Contributors to this issue include Fangdai Chen, Yedong Sh-Chen, Tarryn Li-Min Chun, Rossella Ferrari, Chieh-Ting Hsieh, Liang Luo, Michael O’Krent, Xiaofei Tian, Laura Vermeeren, David Der-Wei Wang, Zhiyi Yang, and Michelle Yeh.

Browse the table of contents at https://read.dukeupress.edu/prism/issue/20/2. Buy this issue at https://dukeupress.edu/classicism-in-digital-times.

Prism Editorial Office <prism@ln.edu.hk>

Professionalism and Amateurism (MCLC)–cfp

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CFP: Professionalism and Amateurism in Modern and Contemporary Chinese Arts
Special Issue of Modern Chinese Literature and Culture
Guest edited by Ruijiao Dong, Man He, and Yizhou Huang

This special issue welcomes essays on professionalism and amateurism in modern and contemporary Chinese arts. From the anti-commercialism in the 1920s to the unification of “red and expert” (Mao Zedong, 1958) in socialist China; from the market-oriented professional artists after 1978 to current-day practitioners who work with foreign commissions and the international festival circuit, the evolving meanings of professionalism in Chinese arts has yielded various (un)spoken rules in the making and the reception of arts in China. Correspondingly, the definition of amateurism has also transformed in a shifting political and cultural terrain. Once, it was celebrated as the mode of participatory mass art, and, at other times, it was disparaged as cheesy and unproductive. Understandings of these two concepts, as well as their porous boundaries have been repeatedly ruptured and redefined. How do we trace this shifting ground on which professionalism and amateurism have assumed new meanings and significance? How do the expressions of professionalism and amateurism in the social, political, and cultural discourses channel into Chinese arts, and how do Chinese arts, in turn, continuously shape and reshape these discourses? How do professionalism and amateurism produce and formulate each other in Chinese arts?

We invite scholars from various backgrounds, such as literature and media Studies, art history, sociology, and Chinese studies, to name a few, to formulate an interdisciplinary conversation. To hold together such a vast area of studies, we, as theatre and performance scholars, are keen to bring in performance studies as a theoretical approach and performance as a generative concept in Chinese studies. Since the 1960s, performance studies has significantly reshaped humanistic inquiries by expanding the object of studies, interrogating critical theories, and championing interdisciplinarity. Despite their prevalence, performance and performance studies are often suggested but remain unarticulated in Chinese studies scholarship, especially when the concept of performance is evoked beyond theatre, dance, and performance art. Guobin Yang and Hongwei Bao are among the few scholars outside of theatre, dance, and performance studies who deploy performance as an analytical lens. Yang uses it to examine Red Guard radicalism and social activism during the Wuhan lockdown (The Red Guard Generation and Political Activism in China, 2016; The Wuhan Lockdown, 2022) whereas Bao explicates how “the articulation between queerness and performance inevitably generates political and critical potentials” (Contemporary Chinese Queer Performance, 2023). Continue reading Professionalism and Amateurism (MCLC)–cfp →

Netizens reflect on anti-Japanese propaganda

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Source: China Digital Times (6/26/24)
Netizens Reflect on Anti-Japanese Propaganda after Stabbing at School Bus Stop
By Alexander Boyd

A stabbing at a school bus stop in Eastern China that left two Japanese nationals and a Chinese national injured is the latest instance of anti-foreigner violence to rock China in the last month. Two weeks ago, four instructors from Iowa’s Cornell College were stabbed in a park in northern China. Details of this latest attack are sparse: a Japanese mother and her child were stabbed while waiting for a school bus to Suzhou’s Japanese School, a school for Japanese children that follows a Japanese curriculum. Both sustained minor injuries. A Chinese bystander who attempted to prevent the attacker from boarding the school bus was grievously injured and remains in the hospital as of publication. On Weibo, reactions to the news ranged from despair over xenophobic propaganda to admiration of the Chinese bystander’s bravery. Particular ire focused on a Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson’s insistence that this attack—like the one in Jilin—was “random”:

Cor-Universe：When certain emotions get stirred up, they can lead to murder.

吃瓜的专业群众SH：If we don’t reform our education and propaganda systems, there’ll only be more of these “Boxers” going forward.

迷路的羊羔：Xenophobic propaganda: scares off foreign business → leading to job losses→ which inspire attacks on foreigners → scaring off more foreign businesses → causing more job losses → leading to even more xenophobic propaganda → scaring off more businesses → thus more job loss … I term this an “Okamoto cycle.” [A reference to a 2022 incident in which Chinese men, the Six Okamoto Gentlemen, opened up a Japanese convenience store franchise and then pretended to be anti-Japanese to drum up business.]

千里虽遥：Random attacks happen randomly, but xenophobic social media videos that incite hatred against everyday people and businesses should be brought under control.

你的眼我的脸：Why are these “random attacks” happening so regularly?

紫雨hz-1974：Once the Boxers rise up, it’s hard to suppress them. Continue reading Netizens reflect on anti-Japanese propaganda →

TAP 15.2–cfp

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Greetings,

We are pleased to announce a new CFP for Trans Asia Photography.

CALL FOR PAPERS – Vol. 15, No. 2 (Winter 2025)
Trans Asia Photography invites submissions for a general issue, Volume 15, no. 2 (Winter 2025). The journal examines all aspects of photographic history, theory, and practice by centering images in or of Asia, conceived as a territory, network, and cultural imaginary. It welcomes:

• articles (5,000–7,000 words) that broaden understanding of Asian photography in transnational contexts
• shorter pieces (1,000–2,000 words) in formats that include interviews, curatorial or visual essays, and portfolios

Deadline: September 1, 2024

Trans Asia Photography is an international, refereed, open-access journal based at the University of Toronto and published by Duke University Press. It provides a venue for interdisciplinary exploration of photography and Asia.

Guidance for authors on submissions can be found at: transasiaphotography.org/submit

For more information, contact the editors: transasiaphotography@gmail.com

The TAP Editorial Team
Deepali Dewan, Royal Ontario Museum & University of Toronto
Yi Gu, University of Toronto
Thy Phu, University of Toronto
transasiaphotography.org
@transasiaphotography

Global Asias in a Deglobalizing World–cfp

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Global Asias in a Deglobalizing World?
The 64th Annual Meeting of the Southeast Conference of the Association for Asian Studies
Hosted by the University of Kentucky in Lexington, KY
January 24-26, 2025
https://www.sec-aas.com/conf

As an academic discipline with roots tracing back to the Cold War era and its associated ideologies, Asian studies is currently facing a host of new challenges and opportunities due to the evolving geopolitical landscape within the Asia-Pacific region and globally. The forthcoming 2025 SEC-AAS conference serves as a vital platform for scholarly engagement and debate aimed at advancing the field of Asian studies amidst what could be arguably termed as a process of “deglobalization.” Factors such as the wars in Ukraine and Palestine, the escalating tension between China and the United States as well as other countries in Asia, and the rise of ultranationalist groups worldwide collectively contribute to this significant restructuring process that could bring about profound changes.

We cordially invite conference participants to evaluate the dynamic concepts and methodologies that are paramount to our understanding of Global Asias at this pivotal moment. These encompass, though are not confined to, overarching themes such as “Global,” “Asia(s),” “Asian/ness,” “Asian American,” “Asian Diaspora,” “Asia-Pacific,” and “Transpacific.” Of particular interest are submissions that focus on understudied areas, notably South and Southeast Asia, and that offer innovative and unconventional perspectives on the following submissions that engage with, but are not limited to: Continue reading Global Asias in a Deglobalizing World–cfp →