Dreaded Perspectives
Jeffrey Isaac was one of my favorite instructors during my undergraduate days at Indiana University long ago. He does an excellent job editing the APSA journal Perspectives on Politics. Along with...
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Chinese Real Estate, or Cities and Stability
Caricatures of the Chinese real estate market fall into two camps: bears view it as a remarkable bubble that is going to burst, while bulls believe that it is part of an economic engine that has every...
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The CCP’s Third Act?
What would it take for conventional wisdom to accept that we are presently witnessing the beginning of the PRC’s third act: the Xi Era? Currently, analysts look at post-1949 Chinese domestic politics...
View ArticleSnowpiercer’s Underclass
Bong Joon-ho’s Snowpiercer is a visually impressive and thought-provoking film. While many of the thoughts that it provokes are of plot holes, political themes are evident throughout. As Alyssa...
View ArticleCentralization and Mega-Beijing
Bill Bishop’s Sinocism today links to a nice SCMP story on a proposed “Beijing-Hebei-Tianjin integration.” I think that the piece gets at what is principally driving these discussions–centralization of...
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Institutional Reform or Purge? A Middle Way on China’s Anti-Corruption Campaign
A middle path Two contrasting takes on China’s continuing anti-corruption campaign have appeared in the past couple of days that show the radical differences among perspectives on the nature of the...
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Yet Again, Hukou System Not Abolished
A broken record on hukou reform The Chinese government has announced, and media have reported, another round of hukou reform. Here’s the first paragraph from the China Daily story: Chinese migrant...
View ArticleMultimedia Me
Watch me talking about my new book, Cities and Stability, while staring at a camera in a dark room. Thanks to Laura Chang and everyone at the Asia Society and ChinaFile for putting this together.
View ArticleNames, numbers, and links
Someone mentioned to me yesterday that they had searched for my name and the link to my OSU site was broken. My department, Ohio State‘s Department of Political Science, has redesigned its homepage and...
View ArticleResiliency, Vaccines, and Renewables
If the Covid crisis is a window into our climate change future as billionaire Bill Gates and journalist Emily Atkin have suggested, then it’s worth digging into this comparison. Deaths from the...
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