@iandenisjohnson.bsky.social
Ian Johnson is a fellow at the @wiko-berlin.bsky.social He lived and worked in China for 20 years as a correspondent, teacher, and writer. He currently lives in Berlin. More at www.ian-johnson.com
Coming to this late but the ideas are timeless: Geremie Barmé in @chinaheritage.bsky.social on his youthful infatuation with Hermann Hesse, who learned from reading Laozi that humanity has "a unity and has common potentialities, ideals, and goals."
chinaheritage.net/journal/my-b...
Ai Xiaoming
This week's @minjianarchives.bsky.social newsletter is by one of China's foremost public intellectuals, Ai Xiaoming, on an investigation she wrote on the myth that China's natural scientists were insulated from Mao-era political campaigns. EN/ZH.
chinaunofficialarchives.substack.com/p/19571967
A book to watch for in 2026 (have been eager to see it since reading and liking some magazine pieces by @yilingliu95.bsky.social) bookshop.org/p/books/danc... + it comes with blurbs by @karenhao.bsky.social & @iandenisjohnson.bsky.social (who refers to it as a
"masterful piece of reporting")
How does religion work in China?
@iandenisjohnson.bsky.social (@minjianarchives.bsky.social) joins us to explore how religion is viewed by the government and people in China.
▶️ Watch: https://www.ncuscr.org/video/religion-in-china/
One of our most significant newsletters: an intro to the great Chinese writer Yu Luoke, executed in Beijing's Workers Stadium at age 27. Best of all it's by someone who knew of Yu's works at the time, @huping1.bsky.social via @minjianarchives.bsky.social
chinaunofficialarchives.substack.com/p/7e7
Cui Weiping
I couldn’t be prouder of this piece that we published in @minjianarchives.bsky.social by Cui Weiping on her translations of Havel and Michnik, and her interactions with the recently departed Fu Guoyong. An exclusive essay, bilingual, no paywall.
open.substack.com/pub/chinauno...
this is psycho
New for @nybooks.com: @iandenisjohnson.bsky.social reviews my biography of Xi Zhongxun, father of Xi Jinping. Thanks Ian!
www.nybooks.com/articles/202...
A Mao-era Inquisition: 70 years on, why the PRC's first literary witch hunt is still a template for how the Communist Party controls writers. The latest @minjianarchives.bsky.social newsletter looks at the tragic case of Hu Feng.
chinaunofficialarchives.substack.com/p/fb8?utm_ca...
As part of our efforts to include the erased histories of all ethnic groups in China, @minjianarchives.bsky.social
newsletter today discusses a key work of Uyghur resistance: A Land Drenched in Tears. This is also our first trilingual newsletter!
chinaunofficialarchives.substack.com/p/a30?utm_ca...
Ten years on, the dystopian movie that proved to be all-too real. Read our weekly essay on "Ten Years," a Hong Kong film that predicted the city's sad state today. Bilingual. chinaunofficialarchives.substack.com/p/24a
Subscribe our newsletter on Substack:
chinaunofficialarchives.substack.com
Thanks for the note. In Souls of China one of the stories was about a meditation practice that was essentially new age--people hung out in caves and hugged trees. It was Daoist inspired by quite eclectic...
"A good political system is one that places restraints on our darker instincts, while a despotic totalitarian regime deliberately cultivates them. For the evil in human nature is the sustenance of all authoritarian rule."
The essay strikes me as significant, because it's written by a young writer: "Nearly 70 years have passed since the Anti-Rightist Campaign, but for today’s youth, reading this book as a textbook on human nature is more meaningful. We may love humanity, but we cannot fully trust human nature."
Woman Warrior:
@minjianarchives.bsky.social with a moving essay on the passing of He Fengming, eyewitness to some of the worst atrocities of the Mao era, including #Jiabiangou death camp.
chinaunofficialarchives.substack.com/p/525?utm_ca...
Thanks to Tian Jian 田間 for this interview in Chinese on
@minjianarchives.bsky.social : its founding, goals, and new features.
非常感謝《田間》簡訊的中文採訪，內容涉及民間檔案館的成立、我們的目標以及我們的新功能https://open.substack.com/pub/tianjiancmp/p/ian-johnson?r=g15&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
Right where Sparks belongs the #radicalhistory section of @housmansbookshop.bsky.social in london!
We'd appreciate media coverage of this petition, which is in support of the unjustly imprisoned journalist Dong Yuyu, whose appeal will be decided shortly. The CCP is figuring that the world is distracted by tariffs please help us prove them wrong.
www.press.org/newsroom/100...
Awful.
//The situation affected nearly 40 people who hold employment-based visas at RFA and came from countries known for harsh crackdowns on press freedom, including China, Vietnam and Cambodia, where journalists are routinely harassed or jailed.//
The dystopian movie that proved to be all-too real. Read the @mjdanganguan.bsky.social weekly essay on "Ten Years," a Hong Kong film that predicted the city's sad state today. Bilingual. No paywall.
chinaunofficialarchives.substack.com/p/24a?utm_ca...
An inspiring essay—in Chinese and English—by the legendary Chinese journalist 江雪 in @mjdanganguan on how, in the end, the silenced in China will have their say. Read it and subscribe (for free) on substack.
open.substack.com/pub/chinauno...
How the Israeli government prevented an Israeli philosopher, the grandchild of a Holocaust survivor, from speaking at the Buchenwald concentration camp.
@mrothberg.bsky.social writing in @lrb.co.uk
www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/ap...
Book announcement: I have a chapter in a new book coming out this autumn, a more academically grounded look at how digital technologies enabled the recreation of the Sparks magazine.
bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/the-digitali...
or check it and recent newsletter on the CUA website:
minjian-danganguan.org/s/china-unof...
and subscribe to the newsletter (it's free) here:
chinaunofficialarchives.substack.com/subscribe
The latest weekly newsletter from
@mjdanganguan, this one on the emasculation of Hong Kong's media scene. Check it out in Chinese and English 👇
chinaunofficialarchives.substack.com/p/c82
Now unpaywalled: my review of one of the most important--and yet shunned--recent books on China: "I Have No Enemies," a @columbiaup.bsky.social biography of the #NobelPrize laureate Liu Xiaobo. Originally in @nybooks.com Breprinted by @chinafile.bsky.social
www.chinafile.com/library/nyrb...
Kudos to @pressclubdc.bsky.social for reminding us of the plight of Chinese journalist Dong Yuyu. He's been incarcerated for completely normal contacts, including a @harvard.edu @niemanfoundation.bsky.social fellowship. Latest news: his appeal to be heard Monday.
www.prnewswire.com/news-release...