Jacobin's review of Adrift in the South files China's rise under "the universal suffering of capitalism" – indistinguishable from Manchester's dark satanic mills. Such a framing is ahistorical and idealist, downplays China's progress and ignores the nature and trajectory of its political economy. My latest. socialistchina.org/2026/06/1…

i’m sooooo bored of hearing from phd students and academics

Communism is the equal distribution of poverty to the plebs. (The dear leaders are exempt.)

Western feminist film criticism is obsessed with the "Bechdel Test", which means 2 or more female characters have a conversation about something other than a man. It's rare in Hollywood movies, but I translate Chinese TV dramas so the Bechdel Test gets passed every episode.

Communism sounds amazing… Until someone actually has to live under it. Then suddenly everyone wants out. Why do you think that is?

Applebaum: What binds Russia, China, Iran and North Korea is not religion or ideology. China is communist, Russia nationalist, Iran theocratic. What binds them is fear of liberal language: rights, rule of law, separation of powers and independent courts. 1/

It is frankly embarrassing that a sitting U.S. Vice President is unaware of one of the most elementary facts of World War II. Nazi Germany did not negotiate an end to World War II. The war in Europe ended with Germany’s unconditional surrender after total military defeat and the collapse of the regime in May 1945.

Just saying… No Democrat has won the White House this century without a Biden on the ticket.

SPACEX IPO MAKES ELON MUSK WORLD'S FIRST TRILLIONAIRE

Israeli firm BlackCore suspected of meddling in NYC, Scotland elections haaretz.com/israel-news/secu…

To say colonialism is good or bad or in between is kind of missing the point. Anything that a colonialist can stoop to, a “homegrown” ruler can stoop just as low, if not lower. The misnomer “Free” Congo had its non-colonial counterpart decades later in the form of Cambodia under Khmer Rouge rule. And even things like the horrors of racial eugenics are not inherently “colonial” - both colonialists in Australia and non-colonial domestic German Nazis were into it. Further, colonialist behaviour can be every bit as variable as that of a “homegrown” ruler. Just as the Japanese were much more brutal in Korea and Manchuria than in Taiwan, Chinese and Vietnamese monarchs traditionally treated their southern population much worse than their northern counterparts. Also, sometimes a bad colonialist gets judged not by its conduct per se, but by what the alternative might be. The British were terribly racist in the way it ruled Hong Kong for much of the city’s colonial history, but ethnic Chinese kept flooding into Hong Kong over the decades, because corrupt Manchus, chaotic nationalists and stark raving looney mad Maoists (and the Manchurians, the nationalists and the Maoists were all even more repressive than the British in Hong Kong) were much worse as alternatives. And sometimes the very worst of colonialism can have unintended consequences that might not be entirely negative. The Arabs and Turks who colonised their neighbours and at times genocided the then-locals out of existence also spread Islamic scientific and cultural innovations like algebra, carpet making and chess. The Celts were absolutely routed and brutally crushed by Romans, but the Romans created Londinium, which would become a regional and then global behemoth. None of this is a defence of colonialism per se - all I am saying is that they should be judged as rulers in the same way “homegrown” rulers are, with their good, bad and ugly all taken into account.