I had a busy day yesterday. At 2 pm, I had an interview with the BBC at the Broadcasting House in central London about the Party Congress, then I rushed back for Chicago Council on Global Affair’s Weekly World Review panel discussion and podcast, scheduled at 4 pm. But the taxi from the BBC’s broadcasting… Continue reading Party congress interviews

Has China’s handling of Covid-19 increased the government’s popularity or decreased it? I find the question fascinating and confusing. Here’s my commentary piece exploring the theme, using the idea of social contract. Yesterday I wrote to my oped editor, asking to add the protests reported in Lhasa, Xingjiang and Zhengzhou, but the piece had just… Continue reading My opinion piece on zero-Covid and citizens support for the government

Once again, I found myself marching in central London. This time, it was for ‘rejoining EU’. I took part in all the major anti-Brexit marches before. Today’s was the first major one since 2019. Tens of thousands people turned up. In the warm sunshine, protesters sang, danced and chanted, while holding flags or placards bearing… Continue reading Re-joining EU march

活到老，学到老，never too cold to learn, goes the Chinese saying. This summer, I took a six-week intensive course to study international relations titled China, Russia, the US and the Future of Geopolitics, run by the Economist. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, a monumental event that has shaken the old world order, inspired my interest in geopolitics. I… Continue reading a course in geopolitics

Indian writer Pankaj Mishra is an amazingly talented writer ‘whose magic pen can produce flowers’, as the Chinese would say. Run and Hide is his second novel, after a 20-year break, and I loved it. With his poetic prose and his insight into the Indian society, it is a deeply satisfying novel about the new… Continue reading My Review of novel Run and Hide