Tweets of the Month + Work For ChinaTalk!

Hiring for part time editorial and business manager positions

ChinaTalk is hiring! I’m looking for 1-2 folks to join Callan and me part-time. Here are google forms to apply for the editorial and business manager positions. Interviews will begin in mid-May.

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Aurelia V @senjatanuklir

If you feel like giving up, remember that Xi Jinping was rejected seven times to join the Communist Youth League of China & rejected nine times to join the CCP until finally made it in his tenth time in 1974 🤝 nothing is impossible.

Mike Forsythe 傅才德 @PekingMike

Apropos of something: -Tesla's second-biggest market in 2021 was China (after the US) -Chinese battery makers are major suppliers for Tesla's EVs. -After 2009, when China banned Twitter, the government there had almost no leverage over the platform -That may have just changed

Jordan Schneider @jordanschnyc

中宣部 asking Sony to take the Statue of Liberty out of Spiderman is some S-tier trolling

puck.newsThe Chinese Had One Note on Spider-ManSony Pictures drew the line at editing out the Statue of Liberty (yes, really), as Hollywood studios reconsider kowtowing to Chinese censorship of American movies.

Xujun Eberlein @XujunEberlein

From Shanghai (translation mine)

Jonathon P Sine @JonathonPSine

Simon Leys on Mao's writing and philosophy

Jam @Jam79922967

习近平又折腾了，要求政府、国企、事业单位全部上缴原先的电脑，一律换成国产电脑与中国系统，导致工作效率倒退20年。美其名防止外国势力盗取中国数据,维护国家安全。

The tweet above says that Xi forcing SOEs to stop using Microsoft is disastrous for productivity. If you thought Microsoft Teams was bad, imagine being a poor Chinese government official who now has to work with whatever tech stack SOEs are having to adopt. If anyone wants to dig around on this theme would be fun to explore for a ChinaTalk column.

Tarhuwa 🧮 @Tarhuwa

This image could pass as the ending cinematic for alternate timeline where Fukuyama's End of History actually occurred

Jordan Schneider @jordanschnyc

How to edit the People’s Daily. Thanks @ChuBailiang for the recommendation! @BeijingPalmer you’re going to love this book

Peter W. Singer @peterwsinger

The PRC State & Defense Laboratory System: An Overview airuniversity.af.edu/Portals/10/CAS… Deep dive report on how China is doing R and D from @BluePathLabs

Bluepath Labs is putting in serious work—they’ve assembled quite a corpus on PLA-adjacent questions over the past few years.

China Digital @China_Digital

A little rant about the problem of China literacy in Europe. Welcome to my Ted talk. For starters, in European governments and other institutions, the lack of China expertise and knowledge is shockingly lamentable. Put bluntly, in no European foreign affairs ministry, you'd ...

Ingrid d'Hooghe @ingriddhooghe

New UK report by @Michael_Natzler highlights urgent need to address severe UK deficit in China literacy. Situation is no better - or even much worse - elsewhere in Europe. @HEPI_news 1/2 https://t.co/D16Yp1jShg

Important thread!

Steve Hou (“CONSUME LESS!”) @stevehouf

Taiping Rebellion 🧵. In the late Qing dynasty, Hong Xiuquan was a disgruntled mandarin scholar in Guangdong who failed the imperial bureaucratic exam multiple times. He became bitter and became aware of Christianity by hearsay. And in Guangzhou, he chanced an evangelist pamphlet

Steve Hou (“CONSUME LESS!”) @stevehouf

I’ve been obsessed lately with the history of the Chinese Taiping (Heavenly Kingdom) Rebellion, which took place during late Qing dynasty and killed some 20-30 million. The rebel leaders claimed they were sons of Christian God and brothers of Jesus. Might do a 🧵 of my thoughts https://t.co/WSu3z6QqHm

Taiping Rebellion is just the wildest thing.

Jordan Schneider @jordanschnyc

metmuseum.org/art/collection… this "new piece of art from the met collection every time you open a tab" is such a joy chrome.google.com/webstore/detai… @ZoharAtkins @tylercowen

Wenji Jill Zheng @jill_wenji

the evolution of the writing of '藝/艺 art'. in the earliest oracle-bone script, it's a kneeling person caring for a plant. that is ART. and 艺 is one of those few simplified characters that kept the essence of the origin.

SLAM: Arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas @slam_african

Unidentified Ngala artist, Sword, late 19th century–early 20th century slam.org/collection/obj… #museumarchive #slam

(Not Chinese but incredibly cool…)