Ian Johnson has been awarded a 2020–2021 Public Scholar grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to write a book on underground history in China. (November 2020)
@iandenisjohnson
How China Beat Its Covid Crisis
China's bureaucracy controlled the pandemic. But some Chinese see flaws in the authoritarian state.
The Art of Political Control in China
by Daniel C. Mattingly
Wuhan Diary: Dispatches from a Quarantined City
by Fang Fang, translated from the Chinese by Michael Berry
A Difficult Birth in Britain's Stressed Health Service
The NHS, for example, has one of the lowest ratios of emergency-room beds per capita in the developed world. The battle was lost before it began.
Pandemic Journal, March 30–April 5
Brief dispatches by New York Review writers documenting the coronavirus outbreak around the world, including Danny Lyon in Bernalillo, Andrew McGee in New York, Nicole Rudick in South Orange, and more.
An Interview with Yuan Ling
Ian Johnson: What is the best way to approach Wuhan in your writing? Yuan Ling: During normal times, people aren't free but they don't feel it, but now everyone feels their unfreedom.
The Flowers Blooming in the Dark
Voices from the Chinese Century: Public Intellectual Debate from Contemporary China
edited by Timothy Cheek, David Ownby, and Joshua A. Fogel
Rethinking China's Rise: A Liberal Critique
by Xu Jilin, translated from the Chinese and edited by David Ownby
Minjian: The Rise of China's Grassroots Intellectuals
by Sebastian Veg
China's Rise, Hong Kong's Decline
The international headlines proclaimed a triumph for the pro-democracy movement in the district council elections. Beijing, though, will spin recent events as another staging post in its policy of "strategic patience."
The Eastern Jesus
R.S. Sugirtharajah's 'Jesus in Asia'
Jesus in Asia
by R.S. Sugirtharajah
What Holds China Together?
A Realist View of Tibetan Buddhism
Probably only the Rubin, with its extensive collection of Tibetan art and its deeply informed curatorial staff, could pull off such a show. The exhibition and catalog offer an unsentimental, non-Orientalist perspective on Tibet, in which violence is a normal part of the political and religious discourse, as elsewhere in the world.
China's 'Black Week-end'
A case study in how the Communist Party has managed to keep itself in power
The Last Secret: The Final Documents from the June Fourth Crackdown
edited by Bao Pu
An Interview with Chen Hongguo
Chen Hongguo: My main view is: no secrets. You have to realize they'll hear everything, even our conversation right now. They will know. Absolutely. Don't think you can keep a secret from them. They really do know everything. It's a system. It's not one guy following you.
The Specter Haunting Xi's China
Enter Xu Zhangrun. A fifty-six-year-old professor of constitutional law at Beijing's prestigious Tsinghua University, Xu is well known in Beijing as a moderate and prolific critic of the government's increasing embrace of authoritarianism.
China: A Small Bit of Shelter
An Interview with Jiang Xue
Jiang Xue: 1989 left a deep impression on me. We collected money for the Tiananmen students. Everyone supported the students then. We went to the post office and asked them to send it to them. After they used guns on the students, we put out white flowers to honor the dead.
An Interview with Zhang Shihe
Zhang Shihe: Mao ordered young people to the countryside. I was sent to work on the Xi'an to Qinghai railway, with some 26,000 others. Most were broken when they came home. Today, they have children and grandchildren, but thousands died prematurely after coming back. These old guys don't want that forgotten.
How Slovakians Beat the Oligarchs
At a time when democracy is under siege around the world, Slovakia's spirited response is an important counterpoint, a small victory built on luck, guile, and courage.
China's Trouble with Islam
It would be tempting to say that this is typical Communist excess, something in the party's DNA that forces it to turn to repression and violence to solve problems. But its approach to Muslim presence in China is part of an older, deeper problem.
In Search of the True Dao
Dream Trippers: Global Daoism and the Predicament of Modern Spirituality
by David A. Palmer and Elijah Siegler
China's Green Religion: Daoism and the Quest for a Sustainable Future
by James Miller
Taking Back Philosophy: A Multicultural Manifesto
by Bryan W. Van Norden
Breaking Eggs Against a Rock
Blood Letters: The Untold Story of Lin Zhao, a Martyr in Mao's China
by Lian Xi
Censored: Distraction and Diversion Inside China's Great Firewall
by Margaret E. Roberts
Ruling Through Ritual
Guo Yuhua: In Chinese society, everything that seems impossible or completely weird actually does happen, so how can you not comment on it? It's intolerable.