There's a recurring theme in your translations both social and political... China and the Chinese are like wounded wild animals, I guess?
Like, China as a state has no ability to hold back and not pounce on weakness, no ability to relax control. No ability to say "Hey we don't actually care about that land on the border with India and maybe guys beating each other to death with shovels there for no reason is morally awful and also a fucking embarassment on an international level so we should stop doing that" - because that would mean losing, and China can never lose, because showing weakness as a wild animal gets you killed.
And despite the incredible social technologies of Kong Zi and Mo Zi and the idea that China will always be China and the incredible ability to integrate even invaders into China... somehow, incredibly, China just cannot cooperate on the Prisoner's Dilemma, because individual Chinese can't cooperate on the Prisoner's Dilemma, because the dog-eat-dog nature of everything means everyone grows up viewing the world as a Hobbesian War Of All Against All.
I've been pecking away at a long essay on your comparisons between Han China and Rome for a while (I'll send it to you later? or maybe once I get into the discord?) and this is part of it. Everything I see of Chinese culture is like, hyper-realpolitik! "Not fucking your neighbors/classmates over at every possible opportunity so maybe they will like you and you can both have a mutually beneficial relationship" is a concept that all American kids learn in elementary school that I think a some sea turtle students I saw in high school in had trouble with... It's not that they were bad or cruel people but after being raised in such a cutthroat environment with such resource scarcity, or being raised by parents who were, who themselves were raised by grandparents who were etc etc, they were uncomfortable with people trying to reach out to them. "Oh no, what does she want from me? Money? Expensive gifts? What favors will I have to owe this guy if I accept his help with my homework?" when people just wanted to see if they wanted to be friends. And of course Weibo is like Reddit always going to make the worst stuff visible so people can dunk on it but it really does seem like the race to the bottom is choking the entire populace.
This is an incredibly insightful post that describes exactly what upsets me the most about modern day China. But I do have to point out, China wasn't always like this. I actually had a big long section at the end of my Han vs Rome essay, talking about whether or not you can even say that Han culture has survived to the modern day, or whether it had entirely died when the Qing invaded. Because, I mean, Roman customs definitely survived, in a way, through the fact that a lot of western laws were built on a foundation of Roman laws. But modern day China has gone about as far from Dynastic China culturally speaking as possible.
I'll note that this mentality precisely comes from the reality of not having enough, and being the bitch of the world. China feels like every country is out to get them, because they went through a long history where it felt like every country was. Where every single one of its most prosperous cities was colonised by a different country, and all of them only cared about exploiting people and making them second class citizens. A historical event that nobody teaches in their own history, nobody apologises for. As far as China is aware, nobody involved in the western colonialism in China thinks they did anything wrong, to this day. As far as China is aware, the only reason it's not happening again is because China is too strong and powerful now, and most European powers are too damaged by WWII to try.
There was a really good study I saw once (done by Japan, actually, I think?) about how when it comes to disaster relief work, it costs four time as much in China to produce the same effect as in Japan, even when you adjust for population. Because people in China simply don't just...follow the rules? In Japan, if you need to pass out fresh water to people, you can send out a single teenage volunteer with a truck of water, and people will patiently stand in line and wait their turn. In China, you absolutely must send an entire armed escort, because if you don't, people WILL just rob aid trucks. This is true for public safety stuff too. You can generally put a "Staff Only" sign on doors in Japan, and then nobody will go in unless they're supposed to. In China, if you actually don't want people to enter a certain area, you've got to hire a security guard to keep constant watch. Signs and lines mean nothing to people.
And a lot of Chinese people, even today, have taken on this self-deprecating attitude of like, "Well, maybe Chinese people are just shithead." But I think this fundamentally comes from a distrust of the government. Japanese people are willing to patiently stand in line, because they have faith that there will be enough water. The government isn't going to hand out 200 bottles of water, and then tell the other 1800 people, "Well, we're out, you're shit outta luck, have fun dying." and leave. But that's not an assumption people in China make. They've been abandoned too many times by their government. They've been deliberately sacrificed too many times by their government. Big incidents like The Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution is one thing. Little incidents like asking your entire capital to go out on the streets throughout the middle of a winter night to sweep snow just to save face, ignoring how many people don't even own winter coats, and whether or not this may or may not actually make a handful of people freeze to death is another. And the CCP hasn't acknowledged much of this, apologised for none of it. And as far as the Chinese people are aware, the CCP still doesn't think the Great Leap Forward did anything wrong. The only reason the CCP doesn't do it again is because, well, they are. The One Child Policy probably killed just as many people as the Cultural Revolution, and we still can't estimate the economic damage it's done.
And when you don't trust the government, and you don't trust law enforcement, and you don't trust doctors, you can't afford to trust your neighbours. Sure, most people are good people. But what if they're not? If that chance happens, you've got nowhere to turn to. Nobody will help you. It's just not worth the risk. This is why, for example, even Chinese dating is so realpolitik. The questions people ask is never the same as you might see on the western internet, of like, "How do I be more attractive to girls?", "How do I communicate about love languages?" It's always incredibly realistic, "How do I go about buying a house without it being in danger if I get divorced?" "How much of a bride price is actually worth it?"
China acts like a wounded animal, because I think a lot of deeply traumatised victims act like wounded animals for a while. You see that obsession in the family of murder victims, or in kidnapping victims, or whatever a lot. That they seek "closure". Without it, it's really hard for them to move on. And China's never gotten closure.
Also, this is like 75% of my western colonialism in China essay, so um. I guess this is an early preview???
Thank you for your reply! I don't mean to say that China is *wrong* to act like a wounded animal - it's an understandable response to a hideous period of history. China gets a lot of flak but it's just the first power that suffered under colonialism to rebuild to the point where it can lash out in ways that affect the global order. The British East India Company was valued at what, over twice *modern* Germany's gdp in blood money? If/When India ascends to the world stage there's going to be hell to pay.
The really awful thing is the way that everything gets twisted. Normal decent people stop being able to trust each other and their government in the struggle for the 200 bottles of water; the government is terrified of admitting anything is wrong because if they show any kind of weakness, they might not even get that 200 out and everything will go to hell. If they didn't have to guard the water so fiercely, they might be able to put that manpower to work getting 300 or 400 bottles - but that still wouldn't be enough, because colonialism turned everything into a zero-sum game.
What scares me is not that the CCP is some evil looming force plotting to take over the world, but the idea that the quality of life is going up and genuinely good decent people are all genuinely trying to do the genuinely good decent thing and most government officials are just trying to feed their families and make sure things don't collapse and everyone really does want things to get better and have a stable life for themselves and their children - and yet even though people all want to do good things, the social dynamics will just keep getting progressively more cutthroat forever - men working more and more hours; women trapped with husbands they can't leave; children stuck in schooling rarely getting to go outside, forever - because nobody ever feels safe.
Yes. This is precisely what keeps me up at night about modern day China. It's 75% of the reason I started this blog. It's really upsetting to see the modern day dialogue about China to default so much to the malice theory. That a lot of Americans think that the CCP is just moustache-twirling villains who are just evil. And it's so hard to go about explaining why that's not the case, exactly because the annoyance of having to get a visa plus the Great Fire Wall plus the language barrier means that the every day lives of the average Chinese person is very impenetrable to most westerners.
And at the same time, Chinese people are very aware that everyone in China is doing the best they can, and for the most part, people are normal, decent people, and nobody really wants the situation that they're in. So why do things keep getting worse? The only answer they can figure is that it has to be those evil moustache-twirling villainous westerners who need to keep China poor and desperate so they can have affordable red solo cups. And the annoyance of having to get a visa and the Great Fire Wall plus the language barrier means the lives of the average westerner is very impenetrable to Chinese people.
And I'm just here like, "oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck, please don't let this end badly."
I just realized that that telephone operator -- a low-level cog who nearly started a war by disobeying orders -- is the evil negative-universe version of Stanislav Petrov -- low-level cog who prevented a nuclear war by disobeying orders.
Is "The Seven Grossest Parts of Chinese Politics" available online?
One thing that seems interesting about his view here, which I've also noted in (the English translation of) The Three-Body Problem, is the depiction of the UN as an important organization, where China's standing is important. This interests me because in the US we tend to think of the UN as a joke. You used to get leftists saying the UN was just a tool to spread American hegemony, but that more or less died out as it became clear that the UN was not competent enough to spread anything. Is the UN viewed differently in China?
"For a major country like China, we don’t have the option of being neutral" reminds me of something I once read about Soviet international relations. Internally, they had a classification for certain countries; the Russian word literally meant "neutral." A "neutral" country was one that could not under any conceivable circumstances pose any threat to the USSR.
"Where would you even bury them all?" reminds me of a Finnish joke from the Winter War: "But they [the Russians] are so many, and our country is so small! Where will we bury them all?"
Granted, I have terrible Google Fu, but I can't seem to find it. This is from a long time ago, in internet time.
I think the smaller and weaker your country is, the more important you think the UN is, because whether or not the UN's actual decisions matter, it nonetheless, is an incredibly valuable platform where your representatives can talk to representatives from every other country on Earth. Whereas if you're not invited in at all, then just getting a phone call with one of these people would be a huge hassle. That's why in the early days of China, being a part of the UN and having Chinese be an official language there, is considered so vitally important. Now that China is big and developed enough that they can arrange their own conversations, the UN isn't that important anymore, and it doesn't come up in political discourse nearly as much anymore.
"all these people are still one vote in the United Nations. Maybe they can’t actually help China, but they can do a lot of damage if they want to" seems to mean the he thinks the actual actions of the UN are important, if the votes matter.
To be honest, I have no idea if this is his opinion, the textbook's opinion, or China in 2009's opinion. All I know is that at least today, in 2023, Chinese people I talk to don't think much of the UN. The general attitude is like, "America doesn't care what the UN thinks. So China shouldn't care what the UN thinks. And if America and China don't care what the UN thinks, then it doesn't matter what the UN thinks."
Like, he ranks the EU and Japan as major countries in his lecture--I do know that that's China's opinion at the time. That the EU and Japan are major countries. But in 2023 China, the only country that counts as a major country for China to worry about is America. The EU still technically ranks in the minds of some people, but not most. Japan definitely isn't considered a major force by anyone.
Oof. This must have taken a lot of work to translate, so thank you!! It just kinda breaks my heart to read this and see all the doors to its own future China has closed in the last 15 years.
My friend organized a one-day conference on Canada’s relationship with China in a multi-polar world. Except the experts who presented all agreed that there is no multi-polar world, because China has no allies, and therefore limited influence on global geopolitics. (They also all agreed that Canada has been horribly flubbing global geopolitics since the end of the Cold War. In a conference funded by a government grant. Because why would the government censor academic criticism, right?)
Yes, the hardest part is just how often I have to shut off the video and go calm down my emotions. It hurts so much to think about how many millions of people didn't have to die at all. How many opportunities there were that the CCP kicked aside. It literally kept me up several nights.
The video cuts off at 1989, because that's where modern Chinese history as a curriculum ends, but down in the youtube comment section, there's a pretty good discussion about how China's diplomacy has evolved since 1990, the "No Enemies" diplomacy.
Currently, the CCP calls the diplomacy the "Warrior Wolf Diplomacy", which is basically lone wolf diplomacy. Everyone is our enemy. Everyone is out to take advantage of us and keep us down. They're all afraid of China, of being overtaken by China. They all want China to shut up and be their sweatshop slaves. And this just feels like yet another time that China is slamming a door shut on itself :(
I'm definitely working on more! I think I'll be posting more once I get through my Chinese History series, since it's taking up most of my time lately.
There is a mindblowingly detailed wikipedia page on Zhou Enlai. It's a little bit empty in the bits of history that China doesn't acknowledge, like the Great Leap Forward, but other parts of it are super in-depth and great!
I know, right? Now, he doesn't even cover controversial topics in Dynastic Chinese history, and I don't think I'm going to translate any of his work past his early stuff on modern Chinese history. Now he doesn't say anything that plenty of other history lecturers don't also say, and he doesn't even cover it in as much detail as everyone else.
There's a recurring theme in your translations both social and political... China and the Chinese are like wounded wild animals, I guess?
Like, China as a state has no ability to hold back and not pounce on weakness, no ability to relax control. No ability to say "Hey we don't actually care about that land on the border with India and maybe guys beating each other to death with shovels there for no reason is morally awful and also a fucking embarassment on an international level so we should stop doing that" - because that would mean losing, and China can never lose, because showing weakness as a wild animal gets you killed.
And despite the incredible social technologies of Kong Zi and Mo Zi and the idea that China will always be China and the incredible ability to integrate even invaders into China... somehow, incredibly, China just cannot cooperate on the Prisoner's Dilemma, because individual Chinese can't cooperate on the Prisoner's Dilemma, because the dog-eat-dog nature of everything means everyone grows up viewing the world as a Hobbesian War Of All Against All.
I've been pecking away at a long essay on your comparisons between Han China and Rome for a while (I'll send it to you later? or maybe once I get into the discord?) and this is part of it. Everything I see of Chinese culture is like, hyper-realpolitik! "Not fucking your neighbors/classmates over at every possible opportunity so maybe they will like you and you can both have a mutually beneficial relationship" is a concept that all American kids learn in elementary school that I think a some sea turtle students I saw in high school in had trouble with... It's not that they were bad or cruel people but after being raised in such a cutthroat environment with such resource scarcity, or being raised by parents who were, who themselves were raised by grandparents who were etc etc, they were uncomfortable with people trying to reach out to them. "Oh no, what does she want from me? Money? Expensive gifts? What favors will I have to owe this guy if I accept his help with my homework?" when people just wanted to see if they wanted to be friends. And of course Weibo is like Reddit always going to make the worst stuff visible so people can dunk on it but it really does seem like the race to the bottom is choking the entire populace.
This is an incredibly insightful post that describes exactly what upsets me the most about modern day China. But I do have to point out, China wasn't always like this. I actually had a big long section at the end of my Han vs Rome essay, talking about whether or not you can even say that Han culture has survived to the modern day, or whether it had entirely died when the Qing invaded. Because, I mean, Roman customs definitely survived, in a way, through the fact that a lot of western laws were built on a foundation of Roman laws. But modern day China has gone about as far from Dynastic China culturally speaking as possible.
I'll note that this mentality precisely comes from the reality of not having enough, and being the bitch of the world. China feels like every country is out to get them, because they went through a long history where it felt like every country was. Where every single one of its most prosperous cities was colonised by a different country, and all of them only cared about exploiting people and making them second class citizens. A historical event that nobody teaches in their own history, nobody apologises for. As far as China is aware, nobody involved in the western colonialism in China thinks they did anything wrong, to this day. As far as China is aware, the only reason it's not happening again is because China is too strong and powerful now, and most European powers are too damaged by WWII to try.
There was a really good study I saw once (done by Japan, actually, I think?) about how when it comes to disaster relief work, it costs four time as much in China to produce the same effect as in Japan, even when you adjust for population. Because people in China simply don't just...follow the rules? In Japan, if you need to pass out fresh water to people, you can send out a single teenage volunteer with a truck of water, and people will patiently stand in line and wait their turn. In China, you absolutely must send an entire armed escort, because if you don't, people WILL just rob aid trucks. This is true for public safety stuff too. You can generally put a "Staff Only" sign on doors in Japan, and then nobody will go in unless they're supposed to. In China, if you actually don't want people to enter a certain area, you've got to hire a security guard to keep constant watch. Signs and lines mean nothing to people.
And a lot of Chinese people, even today, have taken on this self-deprecating attitude of like, "Well, maybe Chinese people are just shithead." But I think this fundamentally comes from a distrust of the government. Japanese people are willing to patiently stand in line, because they have faith that there will be enough water. The government isn't going to hand out 200 bottles of water, and then tell the other 1800 people, "Well, we're out, you're shit outta luck, have fun dying." and leave. But that's not an assumption people in China make. They've been abandoned too many times by their government. They've been deliberately sacrificed too many times by their government. Big incidents like The Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution is one thing. Little incidents like asking your entire capital to go out on the streets throughout the middle of a winter night to sweep snow just to save face, ignoring how many people don't even own winter coats, and whether or not this may or may not actually make a handful of people freeze to death is another. And the CCP hasn't acknowledged much of this, apologised for none of it. And as far as the Chinese people are aware, the CCP still doesn't think the Great Leap Forward did anything wrong. The only reason the CCP doesn't do it again is because, well, they are. The One Child Policy probably killed just as many people as the Cultural Revolution, and we still can't estimate the economic damage it's done.
And when you don't trust the government, and you don't trust law enforcement, and you don't trust doctors, you can't afford to trust your neighbours. Sure, most people are good people. But what if they're not? If that chance happens, you've got nowhere to turn to. Nobody will help you. It's just not worth the risk. This is why, for example, even Chinese dating is so realpolitik. The questions people ask is never the same as you might see on the western internet, of like, "How do I be more attractive to girls?", "How do I communicate about love languages?" It's always incredibly realistic, "How do I go about buying a house without it being in danger if I get divorced?" "How much of a bride price is actually worth it?"
China acts like a wounded animal, because I think a lot of deeply traumatised victims act like wounded animals for a while. You see that obsession in the family of murder victims, or in kidnapping victims, or whatever a lot. That they seek "closure". Without it, it's really hard for them to move on. And China's never gotten closure.
Also, this is like 75% of my western colonialism in China essay, so um. I guess this is an early preview???
Thank you for your reply! I don't mean to say that China is *wrong* to act like a wounded animal - it's an understandable response to a hideous period of history. China gets a lot of flak but it's just the first power that suffered under colonialism to rebuild to the point where it can lash out in ways that affect the global order. The British East India Company was valued at what, over twice *modern* Germany's gdp in blood money? If/When India ascends to the world stage there's going to be hell to pay.
The really awful thing is the way that everything gets twisted. Normal decent people stop being able to trust each other and their government in the struggle for the 200 bottles of water; the government is terrified of admitting anything is wrong because if they show any kind of weakness, they might not even get that 200 out and everything will go to hell. If they didn't have to guard the water so fiercely, they might be able to put that manpower to work getting 300 or 400 bottles - but that still wouldn't be enough, because colonialism turned everything into a zero-sum game.
What scares me is not that the CCP is some evil looming force plotting to take over the world, but the idea that the quality of life is going up and genuinely good decent people are all genuinely trying to do the genuinely good decent thing and most government officials are just trying to feed their families and make sure things don't collapse and everyone really does want things to get better and have a stable life for themselves and their children - and yet even though people all want to do good things, the social dynamics will just keep getting progressively more cutthroat forever - men working more and more hours; women trapped with husbands they can't leave; children stuck in schooling rarely getting to go outside, forever - because nobody ever feels safe.
Yes. This is precisely what keeps me up at night about modern day China. It's 75% of the reason I started this blog. It's really upsetting to see the modern day dialogue about China to default so much to the malice theory. That a lot of Americans think that the CCP is just moustache-twirling villains who are just evil. And it's so hard to go about explaining why that's not the case, exactly because the annoyance of having to get a visa plus the Great Fire Wall plus the language barrier means that the every day lives of the average Chinese person is very impenetrable to most westerners.
And at the same time, Chinese people are very aware that everyone in China is doing the best they can, and for the most part, people are normal, decent people, and nobody really wants the situation that they're in. So why do things keep getting worse? The only answer they can figure is that it has to be those evil moustache-twirling villainous westerners who need to keep China poor and desperate so they can have affordable red solo cups. And the annoyance of having to get a visa and the Great Fire Wall plus the language barrier means the lives of the average westerner is very impenetrable to Chinese people.
And I'm just here like, "oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck, please don't let this end badly."
I just realized that that telephone operator -- a low-level cog who nearly started a war by disobeying orders -- is the evil negative-universe version of Stanislav Petrov -- low-level cog who prevented a nuclear war by disobeying orders.
Is "The Seven Grossest Parts of Chinese Politics" available online?
One thing that seems interesting about his view here, which I've also noted in (the English translation of) The Three-Body Problem, is the depiction of the UN as an important organization, where China's standing is important. This interests me because in the US we tend to think of the UN as a joke. You used to get leftists saying the UN was just a tool to spread American hegemony, but that more or less died out as it became clear that the UN was not competent enough to spread anything. Is the UN viewed differently in China?
"For a major country like China, we don’t have the option of being neutral" reminds me of something I once read about Soviet international relations. Internally, they had a classification for certain countries; the Russian word literally meant "neutral." A "neutral" country was one that could not under any conceivable circumstances pose any threat to the USSR.
"Where would you even bury them all?" reminds me of a Finnish joke from the Winter War: "But they [the Russians] are so many, and our country is so small! Where will we bury them all?"
Granted, I have terrible Google Fu, but I can't seem to find it. This is from a long time ago, in internet time.
I think the smaller and weaker your country is, the more important you think the UN is, because whether or not the UN's actual decisions matter, it nonetheless, is an incredibly valuable platform where your representatives can talk to representatives from every other country on Earth. Whereas if you're not invited in at all, then just getting a phone call with one of these people would be a huge hassle. That's why in the early days of China, being a part of the UN and having Chinese be an official language there, is considered so vitally important. Now that China is big and developed enough that they can arrange their own conversations, the UN isn't that important anymore, and it doesn't come up in political discourse nearly as much anymore.
"all these people are still one vote in the United Nations. Maybe they can’t actually help China, but they can do a lot of damage if they want to" seems to mean the he thinks the actual actions of the UN are important, if the votes matter.
To be honest, I have no idea if this is his opinion, the textbook's opinion, or China in 2009's opinion. All I know is that at least today, in 2023, Chinese people I talk to don't think much of the UN. The general attitude is like, "America doesn't care what the UN thinks. So China shouldn't care what the UN thinks. And if America and China don't care what the UN thinks, then it doesn't matter what the UN thinks."
Like, he ranks the EU and Japan as major countries in his lecture--I do know that that's China's opinion at the time. That the EU and Japan are major countries. But in 2023 China, the only country that counts as a major country for China to worry about is America. The EU still technically ranks in the minds of some people, but not most. Japan definitely isn't considered a major force by anyone.
Typos and grammatical errors:
"I've went" should be either "I went" or "I've gone" because "have" requires the past participle, not the past tense.
"where your right" should be "were you right"
"structure a North" should be "structure as North"
"They’re hearts" should be "Their hearts"
"have actually" should be "have to actually"
"Because of lot" should be "Because a lot"
"has been declassified" should be "have been declassified"
"was overthrew" should be "overthrew"
"2st" should be "2nd"
"That’s two thirds" should be "That two thirds"
Inconsistent spelling: sometimes you use "Zhu Kaiyin" and sometimes you use "Shu Kaiyin"
"Chine’s" should be "China's"
"couldn’t even break" should be "could even break"
"breaking edge" should be "cutting-edge"
"This model of plane" should be "This model of helicopter"
"DEFEAR" should be "DEFEAT"
"languages in the United Nations is" should be "languages in the United Nations are"
"joint any" should be "join any"
"even worst" should be "even worse"
"laying in bed should be "lying in bed"
All fixed! Thank you!
Oof. This must have taken a lot of work to translate, so thank you!! It just kinda breaks my heart to read this and see all the doors to its own future China has closed in the last 15 years.
My friend organized a one-day conference on Canada’s relationship with China in a multi-polar world. Except the experts who presented all agreed that there is no multi-polar world, because China has no allies, and therefore limited influence on global geopolitics. (They also all agreed that Canada has been horribly flubbing global geopolitics since the end of the Cold War. In a conference funded by a government grant. Because why would the government censor academic criticism, right?)
Yes, the hardest part is just how often I have to shut off the video and go calm down my emotions. It hurts so much to think about how many millions of people didn't have to die at all. How many opportunities there were that the CCP kicked aside. It literally kept me up several nights.
The video cuts off at 1989, because that's where modern Chinese history as a curriculum ends, but down in the youtube comment section, there's a pretty good discussion about how China's diplomacy has evolved since 1990, the "No Enemies" diplomacy.
Currently, the CCP calls the diplomacy the "Warrior Wolf Diplomacy", which is basically lone wolf diplomacy. Everyone is our enemy. Everyone is out to take advantage of us and keep us down. They're all afraid of China, of being overtaken by China. They all want China to shut up and be their sweatshop slaves. And this just feels like yet another time that China is slamming a door shut on itself :(
Would love it if you do more of these translations of his lectures. Thanks for taking the time!
I definitely will! These take a long time though, because I keep getting too upset to continue and have to go calm down
really liked this! would love to see more
I'm definitely working on more! I think I'll be posting more once I get through my Chinese History series, since it's taking up most of my time lately.
Super interesting. What a strange teacher. Now I want to go read a biography of Zhou Enlai.
There is a mindblowingly detailed wikipedia page on Zhou Enlai. It's a little bit empty in the bits of history that China doesn't acknowledge, like the Great Leap Forward, but other parts of it are super in-depth and great!
Thank you for the translation. A fascinating read.
What a shame to waste a talent like that by arresting him. Hope to see more of this content!
I know, right? Now, he doesn't even cover controversial topics in Dynastic Chinese history, and I don't think I'm going to translate any of his work past his early stuff on modern Chinese history. Now he doesn't say anything that plenty of other history lecturers don't also say, and he doesn't even cover it in as much detail as everyone else.