Out of respect for the majority of our (English-speaking) visitors, I tried to avoid posting Romanian language materials or RO posts. This time I am making an exception – here is a recent talk on the Romanian Youtube Channel Dezarticulat666 I was invited to participate in. They also have a Twitch channel if you practice this sport. Dezarticast has a mind-blowing diverse range of topics, generally focusing on media, environmental politics, environmental justice, labor rights, cultural labor, the so-called ‘creative industries’, openly discussing working conditions, unionization, exploitation and political economy. What I consider vital is their post-ironic, mediatic and tech-savvy approach to all of the above – I think today it is counter-productive (even suicidal) to not be able to discuss current politics, militarism, refugee crisis, populism without taking into account sucy media as comics, movies, musical videos or web03, tech solutionism or crypto scams, or radical UFOlogy, algo-empowered haterizm or meme magick.
While the discussions was free floating and provocative, sure to be controversial take on a few hot topics in today’s multipolar world, there’s a lot left out to be covered in future podcasts, with different guests & and their experiences. I feel highly indebted to A. Rautoiu for making the invitation and for editing the final material. Here is some of the things discussed:
00:00:00 – Intro
00:06:07 – The mazine „New China” (here is a resource of China Reconstructs mag) from the 1980s
00:09:00 – Chinese mass culture in the 1980s Romania
00:12:05 – the 2008 Financial Crisis and how Adi Schiop became interested in China
00:21:03 – Sinophobia and the COVID-19 pandemics
00:22:43 – multidimensional China
00:23:31 – „Maoism a Global History” by Julia Lovell
00:26:10 – „How China Escaped Shock Therapy” by Isabella M. Weber
00:27:06 – Other informational sources about China
00:30:12 – The polycrisis of today’s China
00:37:55 – Romanian translations from Chinese literature authors
00:40:12 – Chinese SF, especially Liu Cixin
00:47:20 – The way the CCP incorporates criticism & dissent
00:50:41 – Dissidence and popular resistance against the party
00:56:52 – China’s relation with the rest of the world as compared to now
01:03:01 – Maoism in the rest of Asia
01:06:54 – Asian states that developed under dictatorships (including a dirigiste tech leveraging by state institutions establishing development goals in Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea)
01:10:34 – Sinophobia in a larger context of anti-Asian xenophobia
01:16:24 – Conclusions
Other China resources:
Sixth Tone (news culture, politics, trends, economy, trends, etc.) this is one of the few very good portals on lots topics including LGTBQ+ and feminist issues as well as daily aspects of life in China.
Sofia Horta’s TW (Bloomberg) weekly thread on China’s economy, policies, stocks, trends her bombardmenf article again gives me the impression that it’s about China’s importance (or risk management) in Western (investors) eyes, still its vital to keep track and put on these “glasses”.
Global Times (PRC official positions, foreign policy, analysis, etc) it might seem like opaque if one does not actually read btw the lines, yet again it is one of these rare insider perspectives. It also offers quick short 3m videos with recent news (similar to Scmp). Invaluable as to official party line I would say.
South China Morning Post (news portal, international and China news, HK Asia and China focused) as Adi S s-a d its already part of the Alibaba consortium and has a certain independence and works as permitted alternative to the above.
Discourse Power substack (by Tuvia Gering a research fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, a non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub, and a Tikvah’s Krauthammer Fellow, specializing in Chinese security and foreign policy, and emergency and disaster management.). It’s about ‘discourse power’ – and how this is becoming a job advertising the capacity to read China’s entrails. I am pretty cautious of such efforts (since there’s always a bidding going on) but i appreciate the translation effort.
TimeSpace Warps 