Gabriel Corsetti

The West Is Wrong About China’s President Keyu Jin argues that the elimination of term limits will not reduce governmental accountability.

Here's an article she wrote in 2018, for instance.
www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/c...

Keyu Jin and China's new playbook On bridging perspectives and soft apologia

With all the attention and justified sympathy Keyu Jin is currently getting due to the Epstein emails affair, it might be a good time to share this review of her book I wrote last year. She's basically a soft apologist for the Party, in my view. gabriel965.substack.com/p/keyu-jin-a...

Dan Wang's Breakneck: a fair view of China Part-memoir, part-polemic, this book has interesting things to say about China and the US

Breakneck by Dan Wang seems to be the “China book” of the year. I have just read it and it is, I have to say, a very good book. Here's my review:
gabriel965.substack.com/p/dan-wangs-...

Meanwhile the EU has the second largest economy in the world after the US, and larger than China. And ordinary Europeans live better lives than ordinary Chinese or Americans.

This person was the Republican nominee in the 2020 senate election in Delaware. It's extremely dangerous how antisemitism has become normalised again. Extremists of all stripes are now proudly and defiantly antisemitic.

I think much of the anger over this headline comes down to the ambiguity of the word "provoke". It has two meanings: to anger or infuriate someone, and to call forth or stimulate a reaction, feeling, or action. It can be used negatively or in a more neutral way, as I think was the intention here.

Beijing insiders’ plan to play Donald Trump They see America’s president as a golden opportunity for China

Chinese "officials, government advisers, academics and entrepreneurs" tell the Economist that Trump represents a historic opportunity for China, since he is "unconstrained by liberal principles" and "weakens America’s standing". I'm shocked!
www.economist.com/internationa...

Indonesia names former dictator Suharto a 'national hero' The controversial legacy of Suharto's New Order regime has sparked heated protests against the move.

The man who seized power in a coup and presided over the mass murder of half a million people for being suspected communists, then ruled for 30 years and approved the invasion of East Timor that led to awful atrocities, has just been declared a national hero by Prabowo.
www.bbc.com/news/article...

Even setting aside issues of overcapacity and crowding out the competition, simply praising China for its renewable energy capacity while ignoring the country's huge carbon emissions makes no sense.

Even with Trump's U-turn, the fact is that China remains by far the biggest emitter on the planet, and while China's emissions seem to finally have peaked, they need to start decreasing fast if there is to be any chance of staying within 1.5 or even 2 degrees of warming.

Rich countries have lost enthusiasm for tackling climate crisis, says Cop30 chief Brazil’s André Corrêa do Lago says countries should follow China’s lead on clean energy as conference begins

I think this sort of one-sided rhetoric stems partly from an instinctive understanding that Western government react well to criticism, while the Chinese leadership reacts well to flattery. Criticising China on the world stage will not have the desired effect.
www.theguardian.com/environment/...

China Calls On Public to Report Illegal VPN Usage, Man Arrested Follow Expat Focus

"Yes China has censorship, but everyone just uses a VPN!" It's not quite so simple. While private VPN usage is generally tolerated, it's illegal and only tolerated until it isn't, as this translated article from the Ministry of State Security proves.
mp.weixin.qq.com/s/DK-yLJmgfF...

Ah right sorry, didn't mean to make you feel old 😜

I would also disagree about the "good cheap restaurants". In Beijing, most cheap restaurants are sloppy, unhealthy and not even much good. Good cheap places exist, but they're not that abundant, and you have to know where to go.

Except for the pollution I agree, but the things I mentioned about Beijing are still true. Especially in the centre, much of the population lives in old apartment blocks with dark, filthy corridors that look like something out of a slum. The traffic is also still bad, and the subway awfully crowded.

Pollution in Chinese cities is not, by any means, gone. It's improved, but it's still bad by global standards. For instance the AQI in Tianjin right now is 150. Here in Bangkok that would be considered really bad, and Bangkok is notoriously polluted.

I think they want to impress their own people even more than they want to impress foreigners, it's true.

True, but you lived there 20 years ago I believe (or was it less?). Things have changed a lot since then.

Kaiser lived in Beijing, as far as I know. I really wouldn't say Beijing's quality of life is that amazing, especially when you don't have plenty of money. The pollution, the traffic and the ugliness of much of the city can't be overlooked. Not to mention the decrepit state of many tower blocks.

Not that I necessarily disagree with the general point, but the part about "driving to the mall" shows Noah Smith doesn't live in China.

UK university halted human rights research after pressure from China Exclusive: Leading professor at Sheffield Hallam was told to cease research on supply chains and forced labour in China after demands from authorities

"In April 2024, Sheffield Hallam’s Beijing office was visited by three state security officers. An employee was questioned for two hours regarding the HKC. (...) “the tone was threatening and [the] message to cease the research activity was made clear”.
www.theguardian.com/education/20...

Good job the KMT is out of power, and doesn't seem to have much chance of winning again.

Noah Smith is someone who makes a living by spouting his opinions. He says some sensible and interesting stuff and some nonsense, in almost equal measure I would say.

The giant basket case countries More and more of humanity is going to live in a few big countries that can't manage themselves.

Amazing that in 2100 China will have only slightly more people than Pakistan and Nigeria. I do wonder if such projections can be taken seriously. Demographic trends aren’t predictable, all the more so in China, where the state will go to huge lengths to buck the trend.
substack.com/home/post/p-...

In the end, it seems to be about the fact that people can interpret the same events in very different ways, especially in China. Everyone has some bad experiences in China in the long run, but some will blame the "system" and the government, while others will blame supposed cultural factors.

This is not really true. There are people who spend years in China living with ordinary people in ordinary neighbourhoods, and they still end up with vastly discordant attitudes. There really seems to be no certain way to predict how someone's attitudes towards the CCP will evolve.

Also an interesting point. Everyone has biases and has only seen one part of the story. Living in China is meaningful, as is knowing the language, but it's not everything. Nor does being ethnically Chinese automatically give you more insight. Gatekeeping is pointless.

True. Foreign correspondents tend to become very hawkish while in China, due to the way that the authorities do their best to sabotage them, often in ways that are completely pointless and self-defeating. It's less true for Italian correspondents, probably because they fly under the radar.

What is this referring to? What's the controversy?

It's amazing how much this is blowing up on Twitter. Not just Italian Twitter, but global Twitter. Calenda really hit home, and the pro-Russian trolls are going crazy trying to defend Sachs.