So over the past year or two I’ve read a LOT on china. I thought it might be a bit inappropriate not to share with ya’ll. I’ve definitely read much more, but these are the ones that are the most memorable/I’ve saved. These won’t be organized in any sort of way, but each article will be accompanied by a short description.
Personally I wouldn’t treat this as a checklist to read, but just read what you find interesting and go from there. I think it would be incredibly cool if people drop more resources here in the comments and this becomes a one-stop shop for China resources.
I just made an effort-comment and I thought, huh I haven’t made an effort-post in quite a bit, so here we are.
Qiao Collective
I’ve practically read every single article published by qiao collective and I cannot recommend it enough as a place to get started. https://www.qiaocollective.com/ A few in particular I will point to
Shattering the Iron Wall about China, Palestine, and Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar.
This is a Great Struggle About lenovo, compradors, and socialist construction.
The Revival of Capital and the Left Turn of the Mental Laborer. Amazing piece on the history and development of chinese capital, and how material conditions radicalize(or de-radicalize?, because becoming a commie in china is conforming rather than being non-conformist?) people. Material analysis of internal contradictions and the contradiction of capitalist and marxist thought in China itself. If you can’t tell by how long this description is I love this article.
Why Rebel? A chinese person looks at america and goes like god damn ya’ll’s contradictions r bad there.
American “Revolution”: The “Black Hole” of American Electioneering and the Lessons China Must Draw A (different) chinese person looks at america’s electoral system, goes god damn, and gives a very good analysis of how it serves to placate dissent.
I love the chinese person looks at america and writes an analysis genre, there’s another on the texas snowstorm and american covid response, but for the sake of brevity I won’t delve into them.
How Chinese Socialism is Defeating the Coronavirus Outbreak
The Metamorphosis of Yuangudui, a piece on poverty alleviation.
I linked a bit more of Qiao Collective than I intended, but I truly stand by my statement that they’ve done some truly good work translating and writing articles.
Inside China Business
I really do quite enjoy his channel and analysis. I’ve heard from some other people here that he has some bad takes, but those bad takes don’t make it onto his analysis videos. I am a regular viewer of the channel and would recommend if you like stuff on industry.
CGTN Documentaries
The lockdown: One month in Wuhan , on the Wuhan pandemic response.
China’s war on poverty (Must watch), a documentary behind the process of the campaign on poverty alleviation. It’s genuinely incredibly well thought out and incredibly uplifting to see the amazing work being done. Again, please watch this it’s incredible I think.
Gay Leap Forward: LGBT in China
More Articles
Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom: My Experience of China Today (2024) good account of the development that china has gone through
Article on Xi Jinping Thought .
“Managed competition” in China’s state firms
How a Chinese Engineer on the Ground Reveal About China-Africa Relation?
For my chinese-american comrades, a poignant reflection on chinese-americanness in the modern day.
Giving immigrant workers urban identities: what can be done?. On the Hukou system.
Is High-speed Rail in China a “Gray Rhino”?, tl;dr, no.
Ma Dugong: glad that we are all clowns in different makeup. Not directly related to Communism but a good read.
How Chinese TVs chip away at U.S. market shares
How China Is Like the 19th Century U.S.
Chinese economy hinges on market reform & rule of law, NOT monetary or fiscal policy, says Zhang Weiying. Very interesting take that I haven’t had the time to re-read and digest but interested to hear other people’s thoughts on.
shanzhai. on counterfeit, and open source
Authors/Blogs to check out
CriticalResist. CriticalResist, in the case that you are reading this, love your articles and keep up the good work. Your article about design has actually helped me in college as well, it’s always a treat to see you pop up in my inbox.
Construction Physics, not exclusively about china, but some good writing about china, and just construction in general.
East is Read Good articles to keep up with china news.
Bejing Channel, just some news.
Crossing the River. Very much a blog type author. Hear about china and real chinese people through the author’s experiences.
Ginger River Review. Explainers and things about chinese society.
Threadings not about china(sorry!), but I absolutely adore their work.
Red Sails, good articles would reccomend
dessalines. Not about china but very good primer to people to, hey maybe capitalism isn’t all that great.
The East is Still Red - Book. decent. Red Star over China. Account of the CPC before the revolution.
In Defense of the Soviet Union. Not about china either, but good video.
Dongsheng news, but their website seems broken… I believe some of their stuff can be seen here, but I have not really checked it out yet.
Jerry’s Take on China, chill dude i like him good videos, disclaimer: apparently transphobic according to a commenter below. Do approach videos with care and take what he says with a grain of salt, but good source to send to libs and introduce people who might not know much about china.
EDIT: somehow I forgot about ben norton, https://www.youtube.com/@GeopoliticalEconomyReport very good analysis on china, and the broader world highly reccomend
___
🙌🙌 ayy qiao collective. they’re great, can’t recommend them enough.
I know you linked “I want to be Chinese” but the article (arguably much darker, also longer a bit more thorough) that they reprinted from Monthly Review “Can the Chinese Diaspora Speak?” is something I’ve been revisiting lately because time and time again I’m bumping into “progressive” sino diaspora who live in the west who keep furthering anti-china narrative/tropes and (as one myself)(well not the sinophobia stuff, not since I turned ML) it drives me up the fucking wall. I don’t think the article is entirely conclusive as it leaves out the factors of more recent waves of diaspora, namely political dissidents that directly have had contact with regime change actors and Falun Gong - not that those are mutually exclusive categories but presently, members of both groups have prominent structural support and thus power, despite appearance of some being at opposite ends of the US American lib-conservative poles.
Anyway back to the sinophobic tendencies in sino diaspora… If they have learned about some of the specifics of diaspora history, they love to tout the times where chinese americans acted in solidarity with black folk in the civil rights era, but none or very little of the “bad” stuff, even if they rally against “model minority” as a myth (rather than a term that conveniently also describes demographic positioning and active participation of such). Sorry been pretty ranty about this lately, sinophobia has been my “special interest” for the last ~6 years, some of these ppl really got on my nerves wrt the recent XHS Rednote events,
expand rant ⬇️ sinophobic tropes ahead 🤡
one such person made a post saying “hey I know you’re like all happy to be at XHS and left tiktok because free speech but you should not actually take ALL the answers that the chinese people tell you at face value, and haha you’re about to experience chinese style censorship.”
biiiitch pleaseeee
- “people in china aren’t trustworthy [because of communism] but I, a chinese diaspora, know better than them as I am not tainted by communism or brainwashing”
- moderation and community guidelines (eg against spreading misinformation) is oppressing freeze peach oh no, oh gosh, where have I heard that one before. not sinophobia but like, chud shit. fans of elon musk, fake news, joe rogan and/or trump talking point
And then another diaspora jumped in and went “yeah. chinese people are soo antiblack and they dont examine it” yeah I know you’ve talked about your lib uncle that you don’t like a lot. you about say that chinese cosplayers do “blackface” too? got so high on idpol that you forgot that the reason racism is fucking problem is structural, is institutional, thus the solutions are structural and institutional… furthermore, you think that american structures are transpose-able to china? the same country where the people around you growing up constantly told you nothing about its actual modern history, just the vague notion of lots of dead people and bad stuff happened and its because they tried a bunch of different things in building communism/socialism??? some people who besmirch “bobalibs” need to actually examine how liberal they are themselves and do some self crit if they want to claim that they are “communist”
I had a bit of a (personal) falling out with Jerry’s Take on China a year or so ago, he had a vehemently transphobic guy on his podcast and was echoing some of that guy’s rhetoric. In the past he had interacted with some of my more thought-out comments under his videos that tied whatever topic he had with geopolitics, which was nice to have some engagement, but that kinda alerted me that I don’t think he’s as aware of bigger picture US empire machinations (such as dollar hegemony) although hopefully my interactions got him into thinking about that more… I wouldn’t call him anything near a communist but he seems overall sympathetic to socialism with chinese characteristics so I’ll give him that.
Thanks for compiling this list to share, I’m happy to see that some of the “sources” that certain flavors of “leftist” love to share for “nuance” on China aren’t here. There’s a couple entities here I’m not familiar with, I’d love to check them out soon
Hey thanks for composing this reply!
Yes, I’ve also read can the chinese diaspora speak, but it’s been a while so I don’t exactly remember the contents of the article, might need to revisit it sometime.
I’m also part of the chinese diaspora and I very much agree that it is incredibly frustrating to see people’s viewpoints towards the homeland. I’ve met very few if any explicitly supportive diaspora, but it’s very interesting because there’s quite a broad range from - love the things and family back there(don’t really care about the gov) to I very much explicitly don’t like the gov. As for your extended rant, very much agree. Have seen the same things here. It’s crazy that like from growing up in the west they too adopt the western superiority mindset - but admittedly sometimes I find myself thinking things along those lines before catching myself.
I did not know that about Jerry’s take on china, I agree with the view that while he is sympathetic I could sort of feel he wasn’t explicitly communist or the sort. I will for sure add a disclaimer, and I think I will proceed to take what he says in the future with a grain of salt. From the videos I’ve watched, I haven’t seen his espouse any such viewpoints and still think it’s a good primer to send to lib friends, but I will be sure to do so with care.
yeah the struggle is real… I think diaspora who are supportive have been quieter about it in this age of renewed sinophobia. It’s very easy to become socially ostracized for “simping for an authoritarian regime”. (edit: obviously this kind of ostracization isn’t unique to just chinese or even asians. after all why call any of us ‘tankies’. but there’s a certain expectation for western sino diaspora that you’re anti-china…) tbh I rarely broach the topic irl for this reason. Also many supportive diaspora, who are able to, have moved back to the motherland (particularly the reverse brain drain class).
I don’t think Jerry himself is overtly transphobic, he’s just an older gentleman who used to live in the UK and/or Australia and has an interest and positive view on China where he’s lived for a while. I don’t think he has much contact or exposure to lgbt communities or people, much less trans ones. Given all that, it’s not totally surprising. I think he has some awareness that he’s not connected to them so he doesn’t talk about it often… I don’t even know if he has awareness that rainbow-washing or dissent manufacturing is a concern among the domestic Chinese lgbt community.
I doubt the podcast guest thought of himself as transphobic, and in that video, complained about his points being censored in the west! The guy had very typical bathroom or sports stuff from bioessentialist talking points, and was very adamant and About that flavor of transphobia… no self awareness, I guess. The discussion veered into western censorship a la “woke” scourge, I recall comparisons being made where China was being praised as a traditional society, not dissimilar to how Jackson Hinkle et al love to claim China is a homophobe’s paradise. 0 mention of where China is more progressive (or rather, neutral, just treating trans people as people) than the west on trans “rights”. Yes there are parents who don’t accept their trans kids in China, yes some of those parents make their trans kids go to conversion-theory-style boot camps. But there are also trans youth clinics and expanded support networks reaching out to parents of trans kids who might not understand trans gender means.
I still sometimes check in to see what he’s posting but I unsubscribed after seeing that podcast. He doesn’t really talk about LGBT or trans topics regarding China, so it’s unlikely to come up, I think you’re overall “safe” in recommending him to lib-ish friends and family.
edit: yeah, Ben Norton is great, thanks for adding him to the list. He recently moved to China and has been posting videos and articles from there, excited to see more of his astute reporting and analysis. Old news, but I’m glad he’s free of blumenthal…
To add to this amazing list, CGTN and Xinhua Youtube channel have awesome content on how democracy works in China. Those videos are pretty useful to dispel some myths from western media.
[saved for future read/reference]
Great collection. Honestly this needs to be pinned or something. I had already read a few of these and now i will definitely be bookmarking this post and working my way through the rest of them. Thank you!
I found YouTube links in your post. Here are links to the same videos on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Link 1:
Link 2:
Link 3:
Link 4:
