Social commentator Zhang Lijia, author of  “Socialism Is Great!”: A Worker’s Memoir of the New China, used a visit with her daughters to the Nanjing memorial hall to discuss the recent tensions between China and Japan in the South China Morning Post. “In a region where history is unresolved, even forward-looking security policy is dragged into the past. The ghosts of the 1930s still whisper. It is tempting to ask: why can’t Asia reconcile as Europe did,” she asks herself.Read More →

Former rocket factory worker and author Zhang Lijia discusses labor relations in China in an opinion piece at the South China Morning Post after a video about a dismissal of a worker caused an online uproar. “The government’s commitment to protect its workers is on the line here,” she argues.Read More →

Foreigners have left China in large numbers, but the most important reasons were other than COVID-19, argues intercultural coach and consultant Gabor Holch in his video. Already before the coronacrisis, the exodus was taking place because economic growth was dropping, career opportunities for expats were diminishing and the expat community was already severely hit before the lockdowns, he argues.Read More →

Now China suddenly started to retract its zero-Covid strategy, strategic analyst Ian Johnson looks back at how the country got itself into this unprecedented mess at the Prospect. The economic slowdown and high unemployment “are all underlying issues that actually make the government’s challenge greater than first appears,” says Ian Johnson.Read More →

Former president Jiang Zemin was not only known for his relaxed way of dealing with foreign leaders, he is also fondly remembered by many of the Chinese who met him, recalls author and journalist Zhang Lijia at China File. “Now he is gone. Amid economic downturn and political repression, the Chinese public are remembering his positive side, his warmth and color, and his many talents, such as singing. Nostalgia, like old wine, tastes better as time goes by,” Zhang Lijia writes.Read More →

Author Zhang Lijia talks about the importance of learning English, for herself and for the country, as anti-Western attitudes in China make it today less important for students to dive into learning English and other languages, she tells at the weblog of the China Institute.Read More →

E-commerce firm Shein from Nanjing has been operating much under the radar, until last week it last week came with plans of an IPO in New York with a valuation of US$47 billion. E-commerce expert Matthew Brennan, author of “Attention Factory: The Story of Tiktok and China’s Bytedance” explains at Yahoo Finance what Shein has been doing right. Read More →

A raving review of the appearance of Zhang Lijia, author of Lotus, a novel, on prostitution in China, at the Jaipur Literary Festival in London, at The Citizen. “I was very fascinated by prostitutes. However, the only prostitution I have done was intellectual prostitution,” Zhang Lijia says.Read More →

Western media too easily assume the protests in Hong Kong are supported by many mainland Chinese. Wrong, says author Zhang Lijia. There is a wide dived between mainland Chinese and Hongkongnese, and that is not only because of the media censorship in the mainland, she adds at the South China Morning Post.Read More →