China veteran Ian Johnson published earlier this month China’s Underground Historians and their Battle for the Future, “Based on years of first-hand research in Xi Jinping’s China, Sparks challenges stereotypes of a China where the state has quashed all free thought, revealing instead a country engaged in one of humanity’s great struggles of memory against forgetting―a battle that will shape the China that emerges in the mid-21st century.” Read More →

Former China correspondent and author Ian Johnson was forced to leave the country in 2020 and revisited China earlier in 2023 for Foreign Affairs. He found a country in stagnation, that was used to double-digit growth, but lost its economic glamor, the former power base of the Communist Party. Strict government regulations changed China he knew. Also, information on his latest book Sparks: China’s Underground Historians and their Battle for the Future. Read More →

China veteran and scholar Ian Johnson will publish in September 2023 his next book Sparks: China’s Underground Historians and their Battle for the Future. “It describes how some of China’s best-known writers, filmmakers, and artists have overcome crackdowns and censorship to forge a nationwide movement that challenges the Communist Party on its most hallowed ground: its control of history,” writes Ian Johnson at his weblog.Read More →

Political analyst and senior fellow at the Council of Foreign Relations Ian Johnson gives a fast overview of the issues ahead of US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken visit to Beijing, including the US-China relations, Cuba, Ukraine, Taiwan, and more for CBS News.Read More →

China veteran Ian Johnson, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations(CFR), looks at how the groups of China dissents abroad, have dramatically changed since the Tiananmen Square crackdown, on the CFR-blog. “Long known for being riven by personality disputes and having little impact back in China, overseas activists now seem more united and more plugged into China than before.” he writes.Read More →

At the start of his third term China’s president Xi Jinping has been flexing his muscles internationally, while the country also promised to be open for private and foreign business. Ian Johnson, a scholar at the Council on Foreign Relations, tries to make sense of the conflicting messages at the CFR website.Read More →

China calls itself a democracy, to the confusion of people living in democracies. China scholar Ian Johnson explains how China moves between democracy and dictatorship, and how both terms can be defined, in an explanatory video from the Council of Foreign relations.Read More →

China veteran Ian Johnson, senior fellow for China studies at the Council on Foreign Relations think-tank, discusses at Channel News Asia how different China might treat much-discussed political issues like Taiwan after the visit of US House speaker Pelosi and possible new tracks in economic directions. The recent shift of focus towards the private sector as a key part of China’s economic growth strategy is more of a “tactical adjustment” instead of a change in the leadership’s thinking, said Mr. Johnson.Read More →