4/4 I’m especially grateful to have worked with a talented young Indigenous Mongolian scholar Soyonbo Borjgin who taught me a great deal. And thanks to the Made in China editorial/production team for making academic work open access and genuinely public-facing.
3/4 Key point: school renaming is political. Dropping “Mongolian” from school names is “rectification of names” [正名] in action—paperwork that helps normalise erasure, consistent with Xi-era “soul-casting” [铸魂] and "forging" [铸牢] of identity and memory.
2/4 We chart how Mongolian-medium education is being hollowed out in Inner Mongolia—Putonghua [普通话] expansion, “unified” textbooks, and Mongolian relegated to the “local curriculum”.
1/4 New essay out in @madeinchinajournal.com: “Rectifying Names, Erasing Mongols: The Unmaking of Mongolian Education in China”. madeinchinajournal.com/2026/01/20/r...
While you're making pumpkin pies and cranberry sauce, why not learn about how China has annexed Bhutan's territory, without a single shot fired? Check out our latest #Borderlands podcast episode with Japneet Kaur, @jleibold.bsky.social and @robbiebarnett.bsky.social
If you want to understand how Xi Jinping’s “soul-casting” [铸魂] project works in practice, read this searing account of one journalist’s journey through—and resistance to—the Xi Jinping School of Journalism: www.equator.org/articles/the... #SouthernMongolia #SoyomboBorjigin @equator.org
China intimidated UK university to ditch human rights research www.bbc.com/news/article...
Shame on SHU for caving to Chinese intimidation.
Even if they backed off when they were duly warned by the UK govt.
But how many such horror cases of selfcensorship by universities go undetected, out of fear?
3/3 Thanks to Nadège Rolland for probing questions and for producing a deeply informative series. If you work on policy or research in this area, this episode should change how you frame the problem. Full episode (34m): podcasts.nbr.org/e/documentin...
@rollandnadege.bsky.social
2/3 Key claim — CCP border policy cycles between reluctant autonomy and coercive integration; the Party’s aim remains a single national whole. We unpack the mechanisms, evidence, and the real costs to frontier communities.
1/3 I appear on Asia Insight (NBR) discussing “Documenting China’s Borderlands: A Hundred Years of CCP Borderlands Policies.” Benno Weiner & Robert Barnett join. Listen (34m): podcasts.nbr.org/e/documentin...
@nbr.org @bennoweiner.bsky.social @kingscollegelondon.bsky.social @latrobeuni.bsky.social
Enjoyed showing an advance copy of my new @columbiagr.bsky.social reports book to UK friends yesterday, at the cafe in Russell Square where I did some of my best interviews with exiles, the book on The Milk Tea Alliance is beside my go-to milk tea, Chai (even though the book isn’t about India)
Al Jazeera: ‘Tidal wave’: How 75 nations face Chinese debt crisis in 2025
Developing countries to pay a record $22bn this year, mostly linked to loans from #China ’s #BRI
Co-written with Devendra Kumar—a razor-sharp young Indian scholar a sixth sense for digging up hidden sources on the Chinese internet.
-He has spent years building the most complete database of officials in the TAR, some 12,000+ cadres from 2010-present.
— Representation survives mostly in consultative and ceremonial roles. But the real levers of power? Firmly in Han hands.
— This is state-led disenfranchisement—subtle, data-driven, and deliberate. A reengineering of the political architecture to entrench Han settler colonial rule.
— Tens of Thousands of Han cadres have been sent to Tibet under the Tibet-Aid Project—many now lead TAR cities, counties, and bureaus.
— At the grassroots, Han “second-generation Xizang” (藏二代) (born in or tied to the region) now dominate county Party secretary positions.
— The CCP once promised minorities could be "masters of their own house”. In Tibet, that meant quotas for minority officials in real positions of power.
— Those quotas are vanishing. Since 2012, Tibetan presence in key Party and government roles has plummeted. Han dominance is now the norm.
New article just out in The China Journal: “Vanishing Quotas" - We track how Tibetan political representation is being hollowed out under Xi Jinping—and replaced by Han cadres in the TAR. www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/... Some highlights from our findings:
In our new essay for @jodemocracy.bsky.social, Tenzin Dorjee (a super talented representative of a new generation of Tibetan scholars) and I unpack Beijing's attempt to erase "Tibet" from global discourse. Words matter—don’t let Tibet disappear quietly. #Tibet #Xizang t.ly/FwE5o
screen capture of an online article - black text on white background
My article on the drafting of the genocide convention and language rights has been published in volume 25(1) of Ethnicities, and it is open access and free for anyone to read.
journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....
Antisemitism in China is connected to extreme anti-Manchu conspiracy theories as well. In this article, @jleibold.bsky.social looks at fringe Hanist forums. Members of these forums justify the Holocaust and in one case refer to the Manchus (who they want to exterminate) as the "Jews of China."
📢 New Book Alert! Dive into Rivers of the Asian Highlands: From Deep Time to the Climate Crisis. This multidisciplinary examination of the upper Brahmaputra and Yangzi rivers systems offers a unique “braided river” approach. 🌊📚 #RiverScience. Here’s what’s in the book, chapter by chapter. 🧵1/11
Interview: @geraldroche.bsky.social on the Erasure of Tibet's Minority Languages. "We know that the Chinese state can be highly punitive when it wants to … when the Chinese state chooses not to be punitive and controlling, I think we have to assume that that has some kind of significance."
My new article looks at Chinese Hui, Uyghur, and Salar Muslims adapting to the dynamics of urban social life in the early years of Xi Jinping. Being Muslim doesn't guarantee social or spatial affinity over class, experience, labor, personal history differences... www.tandfonline.com/eprint/TE97U...
What is Language Oppression? Examining the Case of Manegacha
www.youtube.com/shorts/Toz-L...
Great to see this 6 part Chinese language video and podcast series based on the translation of “In the Camps” ( @columbiagr.bsky.social) which was published in Taiwan last year.
Digging into this important new book by my @latrobe colleague @geraldroche.bsky.social my copy of the book finally arrived last night. There are so many thoughtful insight behind the cover
