New in @ForeignAffairs: @tendor and I argue that China’s new ethnic-unity law does not abolish minority autonomy on paper. It does something more insidious: it gives statutory force to assimilation while hollowing autonomy out in practice. www.foreignaffairs.com/china/next-p...?

The Next Phase of China’s Minority Crackdown

Forced assimilation is now the law.

foreignaffairs.com

Beijing insists the Chinese nation is not imagined, but a “historical inevitability.” Yet China’s new ethnic unity law suggests the opposite: national consciousness must be legislated, operationalised, and continuously forged. My latest for @chinabrief.bsky.social: jamestown.org/new-law-engi...

New Law Engineers Unity - Jamestown

Executive Summary: Diversity remains part of the show in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), with colorfully dressed minority delegates once again on display at the annual National People’s Congress...

jamestown.org

1/4 New essay out in @madeinchinajournal.com: “Rectifying Names, Erasing Mongols: The Unmaking of Mongolian Education in China”. madeinchinajournal.com/2026/01/20/r...

Rectifying Names, Erasing Mongols: The Unmaking of Mongolian Education in China

On a clear October morning in 2025, two massive cranes rolled up to a middle school in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Workers prised off the large Chinese and Mongolian signs running along the ...

madeinchinajournal.com

While you're making pumpkin pies and cranberry sauce, why not learn about how China has annexed Bhutan's territory, without a single shot fired? Check out our latest #Borderlands podcast episode with Japneet Kaur, @jleibold.bsky.social and @robbiebarnett.bsky.social

Documenting China’s Borderlands Podcast – Episode 4: The Great Wall of Villages - Mapping China's Strategic Space

Since 2016, China has been building or refurbishing hundreds of so-called xiaokang (well-off) villages along its borderlands, complete with new infrastructure and an increased security presence. Some ...

strategicspace.nbr.org

If you want to understand how Xi Jinping’s “soul-casting” [铸魂] project works in practice, read this searing account of one journalist’s journey through—and resistance to—the Xi Jinping School of Journalism: www.equator.org/articles/the... #SouthernMongolia #SoyomboBorjigin @equator.org

The Xi Jinping School of Journalism • EQUATOR

The education and reeducation of a Mongolian reporter

equator.org

China intimidated UK university to ditch human rights research www.bbc.com/news/article... Shame on SHU for caving to Chinese intimidation. Even if they backed off when they were duly warned by the UK govt. But how many such horror cases of selfcensorship by universities go undetected, out of fear?

China intimidated UK university to ditch human rights research, documents show

Sheffield Hallam University apologises to Professor Laura Murphy for restricting her academic freedom.

bbc.com

1/3 I appear on Asia Insight (NBR) discussing “Documenting China’s Borderlands: A Hundred Years of CCP Borderlands Policies.” Benno Weiner & Robert Barnett join. Listen (34m): podcasts.nbr.org/e/documentin... @nbr.org @bennoweiner.bsky.social @kingscollegelondon.bsky.social @latrobeuni.bsky.social

Enjoyed showing an advance copy of my new @columbiagr.bsky.social reports book to UK friends yesterday, at the cafe in Russell Square where I did some of my best interviews with exiles, the book on The Milk Tea Alliance is beside my go-to milk tea, Chai (even though the book isn’t about India)

Al Jazeera: ‘Tidal wave’: How 75 nations face Chinese debt crisis in 2025 Developing countries to pay a record $22bn this year, mostly linked to loans from #China ’s #BRI

‘Tidal wave’: How 75 nations face Chinese debt crisis in 2025

Developing countries to pay a record $22bn this year, mostly linked to loans from China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

buff.ly

New article just out in The China Journal: “Vanishing Quotas" - We track how Tibetan political representation is being hollowed out under Xi Jinping—and replaced by Han cadres in the TAR. www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/... Some highlights from our findings:

In our new essay for @jodemocracy.bsky.social, Tenzin Dorjee (a super talented representative of a new generation of Tibetan scholars) and I unpack Beijing's attempt to erase "Tibet" from global discourse. Words matter—don’t let Tibet disappear quietly. #Tibet #Xizang t.ly/FwE5o

Beijing Wants to Erase Tibet’s Name. Don’t Let Them. | Journal of Democracy

The Chinese Communist Party is attempting to rename the Tibetan people’s homeland, part of a wider effort to eradicate Tibet’s cultural identity. For Tibet, it’s more than just a name.

t.ly

My article on the drafting of the genocide convention and language rights has been published in volume 25(1) of Ethnicities, and it is open access and free for anyone to read. journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

Antisemitism in China is connected to extreme anti-Manchu conspiracy theories as well. In this article, @jleibold.bsky.social looks at fringe Hanist forums. Members of these forums justify the Holocaust and in one case refer to the Manchus (who they want to exterminate) as the "Jews of China."

📢 New Book Alert! Dive into Rivers of the Asian Highlands: From Deep Time to the Climate Crisis. This multidisciplinary examination of the upper Brahmaputra and Yangzi rivers systems offers a unique “braided river” approach. 🌊📚 #RiverScience. Here’s what’s in the book, chapter by chapter. 🧵1/11

Interview: @geraldroche.bsky.social on the Erasure of Tibet's Minority Languages. "We know that the Chinese state can be highly punitive when it wants to … when the Chinese state chooses not to be punitive and controlling, I think we have to assume that that has some kind of significance."

Interview: Gerald Roche on the Erasure of Tibet's Minority Languages

As the Chinese Communist Party has intensified its policy of assimilation for cultural and ethnic minority groups in recent decades, language has been a key part of that effort. Standard Tibetan is re...

chinadigitaltimes.net

My new article looks at Chinese Hui, Uyghur, and Salar Muslims adapting to the dynamics of urban social life in the early years of Xi Jinping. Being Muslim doesn't guarantee social or spatial affinity over class, experience, labor, personal history differences... www.tandfonline.com/eprint/TE97U...

Urbanization, relational space, and practicing Muslim ethnicity in Western China

In recent decades, market reforms, inter-regional mobility, and urbanization have shaped Muslim groups’ social practices, simultaneously encouraging the development of Islamic places (and reinforci...

tandfonline.com

www.cecc.gov/events/heari...

The Preservation of Memory: Combating the CCP’s Historical Revisionism and Erasure of Culture

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) engages in systematic efforts to curtail historical inquiry into subjects deemed “sensitive,” such as the Tiananmen Massacre; control narratives regarding the history...

cecc.gov

What is Language Oppression? Examining the Case of Manegacha www.youtube.com/shorts/Toz-L...

What is Language Oppression? Examining the Case of Manegacha

YouTube video by Manchester China Institute

youtube.com

Great to see this 6 part Chinese language video and podcast series based on the translation of “In the Camps” ( @columbiagr.bsky.social) which was published in Taiwan last year.

北靜 Bei.Jing@beijinglv.bsky.social · 2y ago

「新疆再教育營」by Darren Byler 這本書講完了 一共6集 以後誰再說不知道新疆再教育營是否存在 就讓他先好好聽聽 視頻鏈接：https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfpAxZYHV0zai8O6IIO2wuiO6SXYpnnwB 播客鏈接：https://podcasts.apple.com/es/podcast/beijing-talking-podcast/id1773637852

Digging into this important new book by my @latrobe colleague @geraldroche.bsky.social my copy of the book finally arrived last night. There are so many thoughtful insight behind the cover