That will teach me to be sunny
Deep Dives
Explore related topics with these Wikipedia articles, rewritten for enjoyable reading:
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Senkaku Islands dispute
11 min read
The article references 2012 protests outside the Japanese embassy sparked by tensions over the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu islands. Understanding this territorial dispute provides crucial context for current Sino-Japanese friction and why perceived Japanese aggression on Taiwan is such a red line for Beijing.
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Wolf warrior diplomacy
13 min read
The article explicitly discusses the 'return of wolf warrior diplomacy' and references its height from 2016-2023. This specific diplomatic approach is central to understanding China's foreign policy shifts and the 'vibe shift' the author describes.
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China–Japan relations
19 min read
The article discusses how feelings about Japan in China are shaped by '20th century colonization and war crimes' and Communist Party propagandizing. This Wikipedia article covers the full historical context of these complex relations, including wartime history that drives current tensions.
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On November 4, I published a short article on ChinaFile about two unrelated festivals of independent Chinese cinema, quite a sunny story about signs of a blooming of Chinese culture in cities around the world.
The next day, I recorded an episode of the Sinica podcast with Kaiser Kuo. We started Sinica together in 2010; he’s now doing it on his own, but I occasionally join as a guest. He titled the episode “We were right: Kaiser and Jeremy reunite to riff on the China vibe shift.” It’s the second show we’ve done on a really noticeable change in American attitudes to China in the last ten months or so.
I attribute the shift largely to the clown show in Washington, which makes Beijing look like the capital of global responsibility, and the Trump administration’s purge of China hawks in favor of unprincipled grifters. But there are a lot of other factors which we discuss in the show, including: American TikTok influencers dazzled by high speed trains, U.S. hypocrisy on human rights, and a softening of rhetoric coming from Beijing on the U.S. and on international issues. Whatever the cause, views of China in the U.S. seem to have warmed considerably since the nadir of 2016 to 2023 (which roughly coincides with the height of China’s strident “wolf warrior diplomacy”). We didn’t discuss it on the show, but there even seemed to be some kind of warming between Beijing and Tokyo, after Xi Jinping met Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi on October 31 in South Korea.
My typical schtick on Sinica is as the cynic who can’t help pointing out all China’s failures, the foil to Kaiser’s enthusiasm and optimism about the country. But when we recorded this episode, I shared Kaiser’s exuberance. I’d just published a fun story about Chinese film, and that day, thinking about China seemed so sunny. So much more pleasant than reading the news about the U.S. And I suppose both of us are hoping that less hostility from the U.S. might also give China a nudge in the direction of openness.
A short-lived interlude of sunniness.
The day after recording the podcast, on November 6, the New York film festival announced ...
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