Iza Ding

Iza Ding · Studying is harmful: China sits the Gaokao In a country plagued by corruption, China’s national college entrance exam, the gaokao, is remarkably clean. ‘Open...

‘China’s gaokao factories and America’s college-industrial complex are not accidents. They are the logical outcome of a global system that has mistaken education for investment and human life for capital.’

@izading.bsky.social on China’s university entrance exam.

www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

No way—must try!

Schopenhauer’s East Asian Renaissance How a forgotten 19th-Century German philosopher became a TikTok sensation

New essay for my readers! Sorry-this one is long :)

Anora, Russia, America Beneath a Cinderella story gone wrong lies the tangled reality of class, sex, and Great Power politics.

Beneath a Cinderella story gone wrong lies the tangled reality of class, sex, and Great Power politics. My new essay: "Anora, Russia, America"
izading.substack.com/p/anora-russ...

Thanks Nat. This is encouraging as my next essay will be on Mary W, who I believe is 2 centuries under-read and misread!

So many great lines in this piece, but Mary Wollstonecraft's take on Edmund Burke feels fresh two centuries later: “Misery, to reach your heart, I perceive, must have its cap and bells.” 🔥

The Sorrows of Burkean Liberals - The Ideas Letter The liberal temperament espoused by Edmund Burke and revered by contemporary conservatives is marked by a profound ambivalence. Committed in principle to ideals like liberty, equality, and justice, Di...

The father of modern conservatism considered himself a liberal. My new essay in The Ideas Letter explores liberalism’s existential crisis—from 1789 to now.
www.theideasletter.org/essay/the-so...

#21 - Iza Ding: Social Polarization, Climate Change Perception, and the Power of Stories A Seat at the Table · Episode

Really enjoyed this conversation with two young leaders I met in Berlin, meandering through the worlds of climate change, belonging, polarization, and how to break out of echo chambers.

Young people are by definition on the right side of history, and we all need to pay attention.

tiny.cc/fp3c001

Authoritarian Teleology After the fall of the Soviet Union and the withering away of planned economies, the 20th-century literature on communism shifted decisively toward the 21st-century literature on authoritarianism. Iza ...

The brilliant @izading.bsky.social will be giving a talk at Leiden University on March 19th, discussing authoritarian teleology 🔥 www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/events/20... Looking forward to it.

This was a great episode and @izading.bsky.social dissected the pre-existing discourse in a brilliant manner.

Political Scientist Iza Ding on Authoritarianism, Legitimacy, and "Resilience" This week on Sinica, Iza Ding, associate professor of political science at Northwestern University and author of The Performative State: Public Scrutiny and Environmental Governance in China, joins to...

Definitely one of my favorites of the year was a conversation with political scientist @izading.bsky.social, who offers trenchant critiques of some current ideas in Western studies of Chinese politics. art19.com/shows/sinica...

Goodbye, Gibbon - The Ideas Letter Western historiography generally understands history as a line and is preoccupied with the rise and fall of empires. In China however the line of history is an ever-repeating circle, with…

@izading.bsky.social 's deep dive into Chinese view of "declinism". TLDR: "We should be careful not to let a question turn into a prophecy. Rises and falls need not be an inter-civilizational zero-sum struggle, however seductive Thucydides’ lair may seem"

www.theideasletter.org/essay/goodby...

Goodbye, Gibbon - The Ideas Letter Western historiography generally understands history as a line and is preoccupied with the rise and fall of empires. In China however the line of history is an ever-repeating circle, with…

My essay “Goodbye, Gibbon” for The Ideas Letter theideasletter.org from the Open Society Foundation. In which I offer non-answers to the question “Is America in decline from a Chinese perspective?”