Suixuan

标签：China

  • On the Diaoyu Islands

    Culture & Public Commentary

    On the Diaoyu Islands

    Recently the internet has been filled with cries for killing and slaughter, with rancor spilling everywhere; it’s heartbreaking to watch, and I can’t help but state my own position as well. First, I have always clearly leaned toward the “traitor to the nation” camp. I do not think that so-called “sovereignty” is anything particularly important, especially “territory.” Unless it is a place like Qufu, which is indeed a cultural or religious shrine, territory is nothing “sacred” at all. The foundation of a country is its people; land without people is at most just some property, and in diplomacy it is a bargaining chip in a game of strategy, nothing more….

    cultureChinacommentarystate
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  • Olympiad Math: The Side Road to the Gaokao

    Culture & Public Commentary

    Olympiad Math: The Side Road to the Gaokao

    After talking about the Olympics, I wanted to talk about Olympiad mathematics. Today I happened to see a report again, so I might as well write down a few thoughts. When I was talking about the Olympics, I was also reflecting on myself: is my enthusiastic support for the Olympics related to my own Olympiad-math experience? The answer is yes. When I have recalled my growing-up years, I have also mentioned many times how important Olympiad mathematics was to me. My experience with Olympiad math not only helped me get into school on recommendation all the way, but, more importantly, gave me the exhilaration of peering into truth and the…

    cultureChinacommentaryeducation
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  • The Shameful Greek Spirit

    Culture & Public Commentary

    The Shameful Greek Spirit

    The London Olympics are over, and I should also turn my jet lag back to the timezone of my graduation thesis. This essay can count as a bridge between what came before and what comes after~ Let me give a heads-up first: this should be a fairly loose, freewheeling conversation, not entirely centered on the title. During the Olympics there were obviously two kinds of people on Weibo: those watching the Olympics, and those not watching the Olympics. Among the latter were a considerable number of people who were either cursing the Olympics or using the Olympics as a pretext to curse the system. Basically speaking, the left in China…

    Chinafreedomautobiographypursuit
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  • Solving Problems and Institutional Reform

    Culture & Public Commentary

    Solving Problems and Institutional Reform

    The previous article mentioned that a despotic system constantly needs imminent crises to overcome, with hatred and struggle as its basic posture. Of course, a democratic system too must keep solving immediate problems; “solving problems” is the normal state of governance. However, the basic paradigms for solving problems differ under different systems. This is not merely a matter of keeping pace with the times or adapting measures to local conditions—for example, Chinese people solving China’s special problems, Americans solving America’s problems, and so on. The difference in paradigms is not limited to that kind of distinction; it also includes differences in standards of judgment, such as what counts as a…

    philosophycultureChinahistory of science
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  • Disasters and Despotism

    Culture & Public Commentary

    Disasters and Despotism

    A few days ago Beijing was hit by torrential rain. Unfortunately, I had just returned to Shanghai and missed this rare spectacle. Once a rainstorm turns into a disaster, there is inevitably all sorts of praise for skillful command and unity of purpose, and then a call for donations appears, something we have long since grown accustomed to. Calls for donations are of course met with a flood of abuse online, but the reality is that they will still work. Setting aside the many uninformed people who are only too happy to donate, just think of how much can be wrung out by those “progressive” Party-state organs, enterprises, and schools…

    cultureChinapoliticsdemocracy
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  • Youth and Politics

    Culture & Public Commentary

    Youth and Politics

    Today Huanqiu Times published a good commentary, “Young Students Should Not Be Encouraged to Rush to the Front Line of Conflict,” which says: Middle school students are minors. Their minds are not yet mature enough, but they are full of enthusiasm and highly sensitive. They have few worries and little social pressure, so they fear nothing and have strong explosive force and impact. They have no clear political interests to demand, nor any stable beliefs, so they are easily pushed along by adults, either becoming an expression of the correct social psychology or being led in the wrong direction. Since the founding of New China, the most striking eruption of…

    cultureChinacommentaryeducation
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  • Joining the Party Burdened by Guilt

    Life & Notes

    Joining the Party Burdened by Guilt

    On this special day today, I served as a Party introducer for the first time and signed the recommendation statement. Why am I not only willing to join the Party, but also willing to recommend others to join? I need to explain. Indeed, this is not only something I am willing to explain, but something I must explain. I joined the Party when I was in high school; if I had not joined then, I would probably be too lazy to apply now. But I would never simply attribute that decision to youthful ignorance. Certainly, as I have grown older, my life plan has changed enormously: from initially wanting to…

    Chinahistoryautobiographytradition
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  • Patriotism and Hatred of Enemies

    Culture & Public Commentary

    Patriotism and Hatred of Enemies

    In an earlier article about the left and the right, I mentioned that the spiritual driving force of the so-called left is in fact narrow nationalism, and that although this nationalism flies under the banner of “patriotism,” it is in fact not proclaiming “love” at all, but rather preaching hatred: We might notice the contexts in which those people extol and emphasize the word “patriotism”: how many of them are gentle, affirmative scenes full of love, and how many are destructive scenes of brave struggle, courageous sacrifice, pressing forward wave after wave, and dying together with the enemy? The essence of the left-wing nationalism is resentment—xenophobia and enemy-hatred, hatred toward…

    philosophycultureChinapolitics
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  • The Left and Right, Chinese Style

    Enlightenment & the Spirit of Freedom

    The Left and Right, Chinese Style

    Recently I’ve been mentioning the left and the right quite often, but always rather cautiously, always wanting to add a couple of lines: I don’t like taking sides, I only use labels because I have no choice, and so on. To keep on like that is not really a solution, so I might as well write an article and talk through my understanding of the so-called left and right. My first acquaintance with the concepts of left and right probably came in middle school political class, where the teacher explained that the left was progressive and reformist, while the right was backward and conservative. We children, brainwashed by China’s rote-learning…

    Chinafreedomautobiographytradition
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  • Do the People Have the Right to Be Ignorant? — With a Discussion of Enlightenment and Unconcealment

    Enlightenment & the Spirit of Freedom

    Do the People Have the Right to Be Ignorant? — With a Discussion of Enlightenment and Unconcealment

    People have the right to stupidity—this is Tian Song’s claim: “The people have the right to stupidity; if they are deprived of the right to stupidity, they will only have the right to be made stupid. The key question is: who has the authority to draw the line between civilization and stupidity?” Back then (almost six years ago now—terrifying), I already had reservations about this, though I did not discuss it in detail. Yesterday Jing Qi raised this claim again, and recently I have also been paying attention to pedagogical questions, so this is a good moment to talk through my thoughts. First of all, Teacher Tian, including Teacher Liu,…

    Chinasciencefreedomeducation
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