Marrow by Yan Lianke [Book Review]

Marrow is not a new book: the original was written by Yan Lianke in 1999. But, with Penguin China’s new translation of Marrow by Carlos Rojas, this short novella with its rural Chinese setting and its themes of sacrifice is…

My review of The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: Protest Music after Fukushima was reprinted in Caixin on April 9th, 2016. It can be accessed here.

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: Protest Music After Fukushima by Noriko Manabe [Book Review]

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, by Princeton University Professor Noriko Manabe, is a detailed study of protest music in Japan’s anti-nuclear movement. Manabe’s goal is not to explain the growth of these songs in the movement, but rather to…

On October 29th 2015, China loosened its “One Child Policy,” allowing all families to have up to two children. This follows an earlier relaxation in 2013, where China allowed those without siblings to themselves have up to two children. Beijing cited…

Cosmopolites: The Coming of the Global Citizen by Atossa Araxia Abrahamian [Book Review]

In 2008, the United Arab Emirates finally offered to provide citizenship to the Bidoon, a stateless population ignored by the government for decades. However, theBidoon soon learned that they were not becoming Emiratis, but were instead being given citizenship in the…

The few days immediately after an election are always dangerous for political analysis.Pundits, and the people that read their commentaries, try to use individual victories or defeats in order to predict long-term trends, or to support conclusions they already had….

Community, Commons and Natural Resource Management in Asia, edited by Haruka Yanagisawa [Book Review]

It is common to conflate “sustainability” with a pre-modern lifestyle, to hold that historical communities lived in harmony with nature until the forces of modernity—capitalism, individualism and political centralization—destroyed communal authority. By unleashing modern “selfish” individuals, those acting in their…

My review of China and Cybersecurity: Espionage, Strategy, and Politics in the Digital Domain was reprinted in The Diplomat on September 29th, 2015. It can be accessed here.

China and Cybersecurity: Espionage, Strategy, and Politics in the Digital Domain, edited by Jon R. Lindsay, Tai Ming Cheung and Derek S Reveron [Book Review]

Hardly a month goes by without a new accusation of nefarious Chinese behavior on the Internet. United States officials have routinely called high-profile breaches of American digital networks, such as the hacking of the Office of Personnel Management, state-sanctioned espionage….

Views in Hong Kong can change quickly. After years telling people outside Hong Kong howconvenient and affordable its taxis were, I returned to a fierce debate over whether our taxisoffer poor service and whether Uber can shake up a staid…