Borderlands… Comment on Haggard: The North Korean Restaurant Franchise 24 Jun 2014 Stephan Haggard is an endless source of extreme quantities of highly enriched North Korea information. His 'blog' posts (which are usually more like mini-journal articles, trenchantly done but lighter and…
East Asian modernity… Pan-Asianism and the Japanese Wartime Empire 9 Jun 201412 Mar 2016 This past spring, upon the invitation of Peter Anderson, I gave a lecture to all of the first-year History students at Leeds University on the following topic, as part of…
Uncategorized Sinews of Revolution on the Edge of Chinese and North Korean History 27 Nov 201123 Oct 2018 Peripheries are everything in the study of China, because they are so dangerous. Whether social peripheries or geographical, those who dwell on the margins -- so tangibly aware of the…
China… Materials for Cognition and Cogitation 20 Oct 2010 In lieu of long missives from Chengdu, where one's ear is pressed so firmly to the Sichuan earth (and also to cellos hewn of spruce and maple from the Russian…
Chinese communist party… Manchurian Base Camp, Part III: The DPRK’s Northeastern Strategy 15 Sep 201015 Sep 2010 Manchurian Base Camp, Part I: In the 1930s Kim Il Song regarded Manchuria, or Northeast China, as an immense area into which to project anti-Japanese struggle and wherein he could…
Beijing… Strength and Sinophobia 8 Aug 2010 Beijing and its great northeastern beyond -- the vast and flooded expanses of Northeast China -- are looming in my immediate future. T-minus five days. Footsteps in Beijing, amid its…
China… Propagandizing Manchukuo 14 Mar 2010 In the mid-1930s, the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo was heavily promoted not just in Japan, but in England, the United States, and Germany. Japanese businesses sought foreign investment in…
China… Ian Johnson on Liaoning Manchus / 黄旗下的蛋 / 满族语在辽宁省 13 Dec 200914 Dec 2009 Ian Johnson of the Wall Street Journal, one of the most solid reporters working in China for the last decade and author of "Wild Grass" (a book which I reviewed…
