Ian Johnson
Ian Johnson is a fellow at the @wiko-berlin.bsky.social He lived and worked in China for 20 years as a correspondent, teacher, and writer. He currently lives in Berlin. More at www.ian-johnson.com
- Coming to this late but the ideas are timeless: Geremie Barmé in @chinaheritage.bsky.social on his youthful infatuation with Hermann Hesse, who learned from reading Laozi that humanity has "a unity and has common potentialities, ideals, and goals." chinaheritage.net/journal/my-b...
- This week's @minjianarchives.bsky.social newsletter is by one of China's foremost public intellectuals, Ai Xiaoming, on an investigation she wrote on the myth that China's natural scientists were insulated from Mao-era political campaigns. EN/ZH. chinaunofficialarchives.substack.com/p/19571967
- Ai Xiaoming
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- One of our most significant newsletters: an intro to the great Chinese writer Yu Luoke, executed in Beijing's Workers Stadium at age 27. Best of all it's by someone who knew of Yu's works at the time, @huping1.bsky.social via @minjianarchives.bsky.social chinaunofficialarchives.substack.com/p/7e7
- I couldn’t be prouder of this piece that we published in @minjianarchives.bsky.social by Cui Weiping on her translations of Havel and Michnik, and her interactions with the recently departed Fu Guoyong. An exclusive essay, bilingual, no paywall. open.substack.com/pub/chinauno...
- Cui Weiping
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- A Mao-era Inquisition: 70 years on, why the PRC's first literary witch hunt is still a template for how the Communist Party controls writers. The latest @minjianarchives.bsky.social newsletter looks at the tragic case of Hu Feng. chinaunofficialarchives.substack.com/p/fb8?utm_ca...
- As part of our efforts to include the erased histories of all ethnic groups in China, @minjianarchives.bsky.social newsletter today discusses a key work of Uyghur resistance: A Land Drenched in Tears. This is also our first trilingual newsletter! chinaunofficialarchives.substack.com/p/a30?utm_ca...
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- Woman Warrior: @minjianarchives.bsky.social with a moving essay on the passing of He Fengming, eyewitness to some of the worst atrocities of the Mao era, including #Jiabiangou death camp. chinaunofficialarchives.substack.com/p/525?utm_ca...
- The essay strikes me as significant, because it's written by a young writer: "Nearly 70 years have passed since the Anti-Rightist Campaign, but for today’s youth, reading this book as a textbook on human nature is more meaningful. We may love humanity, but we cannot fully trust human nature."
- "A good political system is one that places restraints on our darker instincts, while a despotic totalitarian regime deliberately cultivates them. For the evil in human nature is the sustenance of all authoritarian rule."
- Thanks to Tian Jian 田間 for this interview in Chinese on @minjianarchives.bsky.social : its founding, goals, and new features. 非常感謝《田間》簡訊的中文採訪，內容涉及民間檔案館的成立、我們的目標以及我們的新功能https://open.substack.com/pub/tianjiancmp/p/ian-johnson?r=g15&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
- Right where Sparks belongs the #radicalhistory section of @housmansbookshop.bsky.social in london!
- We'd appreciate media coverage of this petition, which is in support of the unjustly imprisoned journalist Dong Yuyu, whose appeal will be decided shortly. The CCP is figuring that the world is distracted by tariffs please help us prove them wrong. www.press.org/newsroom/100...
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- The dystopian movie that proved to be all-too real. Read the @mjdanganguan.bsky.social weekly essay on "Ten Years," a Hong Kong film that predicted the city's sad state today. Bilingual. No paywall. chinaunofficialarchives.substack.com/p/24a?utm_ca...
- An inspiring essay—in Chinese and English—by the legendary Chinese journalist 江雪 in @mjdanganguan on how, in the end, the silenced in China will have their say. Read it and subscribe (for free) on substack. open.substack.com/pub/chinauno...
- How the Israeli government prevented an Israeli philosopher, the grandchild of a Holocaust survivor, from speaking at the Buchenwald concentration camp. @mrothberg.bsky.social writing in @lrb.co.uk www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/ap...
- Book announcement: I have a chapter in a new book coming out this autumn, a more academically grounded look at how digital technologies enabled the recreation of the Sparks magazine. bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/the-digitali...
- The latest weekly newsletter from @mjdanganguan, this one on the emasculation of Hong Kong's media scene. Check it out in Chinese and English 👇 chinaunofficialarchives.substack.com/p/c82
- and subscribe to the newsletter (it's free) here: chinaunofficialarchives.substack.com/subscribe
- or check it and recent newsletter on the CUA website: minjian-danganguan.org/s/china-unof...
- Now unpaywalled: my review of one of the most important--and yet shunned--recent books on China: "I Have No Enemies," a @columbiaup.bsky.social biography of the #NobelPrize laureate Liu Xiaobo. Originally in @nybooks.com Breprinted by @chinafile.bsky.social www.chinafile.com/library/nyrb...
- Kudos to @pressclubdc.bsky.social for reminding us of the plight of Chinese journalist Dong Yuyu. He's been incarcerated for completely normal contacts, including a @harvard.edu @niemanfoundation.bsky.social fellowship. Latest news: his appeal to be heard Monday. www.prnewswire.com/news-release...
- #OTD five years ago: the Chinese scholar and filmmaker Ai Xiaoming publishes her heartfelt diary of the COVID-19 #lockdown in Wuhan, one of the first accounts of China's ultimately counterproductive policy against the virus. @mjdanganguan.bsky.social republishes it below in Chinese and English.
- The Comminist Party’s ultimate taboo: a landmark novel on China’s brutal #landreform campaigns in the 1940s/50s that laid the groundwork for authoritarian control. It’s just been translated by Michael Berry. My review for @theatlantic $$ www.theatlantic.com/books/archiv...
- "The American system is tearing itself apart with no outside pressure--similar to what the Communist Party did at the peak of the Cultural Revolution in 1966." Thanks to @liyuan6.bsky.social for quoting me in her piece on America's ongoing Cultural Revolution. www.nytimes.com/2025/03/06/b...
- Flying blind: "Unlike during the Cold War, when the United States preserved scholarly exchanges with Moscow, academic and other engagement with China has fallen out of favor." -->>Outstanding piece by Yanzhong Huang of @cfr.org www.nytimes.com/2025/03/02/o...
- Hard to argue with this piece by David Sacks of @cfr.org --Trump is undermining Taiwan's security and making the US more vulnerable in Asia. www.cfr.org/blog/trump-m...
- I was honored to send a video message to this event in support of the Chinese journalist, Dong Yuyu, a @niemanfoundation.bsky.social fellow. Sponsored by the National Press Club, it marks the third year of his unjust incarceration. You can listen to my remarks here: www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/veb2p...
- Thanks to Leo He @pekinghotel.substack.com for posting part 2 of our series of interviews on reporting from China. In this one, I talk about the realities of winning a @pulitzerprizes.bsky.social. Also some thoughts on religion in China and spiritual vacuums. open.substack.com/pub/pekingho...
- Kudos to @chinaheritage.bsky.social for translating Zhang Qianfan's outstanding essay on the threats to US democracy and parallels to China's Cultural Revolution. chinaheritage.net/journal/gode...
- A really excellent piece by @johnkampfner.bsky.social , currently a @wiko-berlin.bsky.social fellow, writing in @theguardian.com on how the far-right could take power in Germany--maybe not this year but in the coming years. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
- OTD 2020: death of Li Wenliang.
- In the current @nybooks.com , Perry Link's review of my book Sparks. (Paywalled but if you register you get a few free articles a month.) www.nybooks.com/articles/202...
- Thanks to Leo Pape of China Table for this interview in German and English. DM if you want PDF (auf deutsch or english) of the chat. table.media/china/interv...
- Reposted by Ian JohnsonSparks: China’s Underground Historians and Their Battle for the Future, by @iandenisjohnson.bsky.social . I’m learning something entirely new to me, and thoroughly enjoying it.
- Interested in China and free Monday evening? Join me, @jwassers.bsky.social @michaellaha.bsky.social Minh An Szabo and @mareikeohlberg.bsky.social at the DGAP to discuss's Jeff's new book on Hong Kong and China's slide toward authoritarianism. dgap.org/en/events/wh...
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- Thanks to @richardhaass.bsky.social for his recommendation on the @ezrakleinbot.bsky.social show of my book Sparks. It was an honor working for Richard @cfr.org And thanks to the show for listing all the books that their guests recommended in 2024. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...
- Sparks inspired me to start a non-profit to showcase Chinese independent thinkers--we used to know all the big names in Cold War Eastern Europe but now we know too few of their counterparts in today's China. Here's the first phase of our project: minjian-danganguan.org
- Phase two--new graphic interfaces, mapping functions, better searches, and a weekly newsletter--is coming in 2025. Watch for it!
- A fascinating piece by Andrew Stokols on a "seedbank" of Chinese civilization--the National Archives of Publications and Culture 中华文明的种子库： 国家版本馆.--the government center for curating history. There are four in China and Andrew reports here on two of them. sinocities.substack.com/p/xi-jinping...
- And for those interested in Catholicism in China, China Source has an excellent series of articles on this topic: www.chinasource.org/resource-lib...
- An important corrective to gloom about life in China in "Desiring God" by one of the most balanced observers of Christianity in China, Joann Pittman, on the resilience of Christianity and Chinese society in general. www.desiringgod.org/articles/bam...
- On the 50th anniversary of his death, an important esasy in China Thought Express on Gu Zhun, a pioneering economisti persecuted to death in the Mao era. The essay doesn't mention it, but he was also a committed Christian, which also informed his thinking ctexp.substack.com/p/gu-zhun-th...
- The China Unofficial Archives also holds his diary. Below is a link to the English introduction to Gu. The Chinese version has the book as a PDF download. minjian-danganguan.org/collection/%...
- One of the many features of the U.S. political system that no one should imitate is the presidential pardon. Can this be reformed or abolished? Guess not. #ossification www.nytimes.com/2024/12/01/u...
- Clandestine stories from China: Thanks to Italian publisher Neri Pozza and two Italian academics who made the arrangements, I'll be giving a series of talks this coming week in Rome, Naples, Milan, Pavia, and Florence. Check out my site for details ian-johnson.com/italian-tour...
