Just a very quick thing: it has come to my attention that someone is using my name (Charles Custer) to comment on China articles at various news sites (see this and this for examples). This person is not me. For the record, any comment you see on any news site using my name is...
Longtime readers will know that I have been alluding to a “big project” on this site for quite some time. In fact, it has taken long enough to get here that you would be forgiven for thinking this “big project” was actually just an excuse to not update this site much. Today, my friends,...
I came across this short piece by Wang Gengxing in Southern Weekend today; I think it’s quite worthy of discussion. (All the links were added by me for the purposes of providing extra context; none of them are in the original piece). Recently officials have been falling one after another: “Watch brother” Yang Dacai,...
So after a wave of rather violent anti-Japan protests I argued were state-supported, the madness has wound down — or rather, been wound down — by the same folks who drummed it up: the government. This is not an uncommon tactic at all, but it is an exceedingly dangerous one. Let us take, for...
Like many people around the world, I’ve spent some of the past few days looking at photos and reports about the escalating anti-Japan protests in China. There is an excellent collection of them here for those that are interested. Browsing it, your first inclination may be to marvel at the particularly insane bits, like...
A couple days ago we looked at one way to fail at soft power, but while we were doing that, China’s highest levels of leadership were working on a way to fail way, way harder. In case any of you have been living under a rock, Xi Jinping — China’s presumptive next president —...
This is less of a post and more of a PSA: Zhao Liang’s excellent documentary Petition (上访) is available on Youtube. I should note that this is probably an illegal upload of the film, but it is so difficult to find a legitimate copy of the film1 that I thought I would call your...
I came across this story a couple days ago, and found it mildly amusing, but eventually decided it was worth sharing here because it’s indicative of the larger trend. First of all, here are the basics for those that haven’t already read the article: Citing “strong resentment from the local Chinese community,” the Chinese...
Here’s another one for the annals of Party members being assholes in their cars. This story is being passed around on Weibo and other social media like Tianya right now, though it appears to have happened a couple weeks ago. Here’s the text of the post: “Fuck your mom! You dare to inspect my...
I haven’t the time or, at the moment, the patience to go into this in depth, but let’s look for a second at the trailer for the upcoming documentary Death By China and let its ridiculousness wash over you like a wave: Now, with the huge caveat that I haven’t seen this film so...
Apparently everyone else (read: two other people) decided to leave China around the same time as me. And since I guess even the New York Times can’t keep from implying that my departure had something to do with the Yang Rui incident, I guess I have to explain some things. (Note: I don’t mean...
