Looking forward to being a part of the unofficial ‘Harvard Taiwan Week’ this week, ending with a full day Friday symposium (4/17) that Kyle Shernuk, Yedong Chen, and yours truly have put together - and convened by David Wang. Hope to see you there!
now you know what I'll be doing my entire summer...
“Fascist governments are condemned to lose wars because they are constitutionally incapable of objectively evaluating the force of the enemy.”
—From Ur-Fascism by Umberto Eco
get drunk on ice wine
you start by writing a strongly worded post on the Sinologists fb page
AAS Vancouver 2026: Will be presenting at the panel "People's Republic of Bureaucracy: The Politics of Classification and Personnel in the Chinese State" Saturday 10:30-12 at VCC Room 220. With @mt-b.bsky.social @ktai.bsky.social Yi Lu, Juan Wang and Daniel Leese as discussants. See you there!
this is what OCR-ed archives look like!
you should make a flyer at AAS lol
would love to know too! Did Michigan not have a full catalogue?
Characters build character!
imagine being a psychiatrist and having to write 鬱 a million times
back in Taiwan in elementary school the first assignment of the year was to write our names a hundred times. My name in traditional characters is 40 strokes. I remember passing out crying that night. So yeah put off writing as long as you can.
200 for me today lol
my two worlds collide
also, the unfortunate effect of having lived in Toronto is that you confuse leaves with leafs 😅
It was great talking with Lisa from CBC last week. I would also cautiously argue that the full implications of this latest purge of will not be understood until we know who Xi taps for the CMC to succeed Zhang. Back to reading tea leafs again!
Minneapolis is a place that means a lot to me, so I wrote a short Substack about the city, its people, and what we all owe them.
benansell.substack.com/p/my-minneap...
"in communist China, fried pork falls from the sky"
The People’s Liberation Army is in crisis… a piece from me.
#China.
CLICK link to read:
www.bbc.com/news/article...
Twice this week when meeting a new person I've gotten an excited "Wow, it must be an exciting time to be a political scientist!" and both times I've answered "Not really. That's like telling someone it's an exciting to be a surgeon when there's a 63 car pileup on the highway."
Message from the University of Minnesota leadership, in response to the killing of our alum Alex Pretti today.
I stayed for 45 minutes and left because my ears were burning in the cold. Props to Minnesotans for braving the weather.
thank you comrade
I teach a class called Democracy Under Threat. I also live in Minneapolis.
Daniel Bell has always been weird. Here's another crazy recent essay from him: link.springer.com/article/10.1...
The Sage of Nangang speaks! Is Taiwan now having a constitutional crisis?
This: 'On a side note, one of the strangest things about this whole episode is how blasé society seems to be about it.'
frozengarlic.wordpress.com/2025/12/17/c...
Along with wonderful colleagues @jeanhong.bsky.social, @dnsltr.bsky.social, @yuhuawang.bsky.social, and Ann C. Lin, we would like to call your attention to the Asian Political History Workshop to be held on May 4– 5, 2026 in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Apply here by Jan. 20, 2026. forms.gle/H9zPa6r2H1Ke...
Delighted to share a new @carnegieendowment.org report on China’s Foreign Police Training: A Global Footprint. Over 50 entities in China have provided training to at least 138 countries, forming a major pillar of Beijing’s drive to reshape global security:
carnegieendowment.org/research/202...
What a loss, but his timeless work will continue to inspire the next generation of China scholars. 5/5
