A bold new China proposal for Biden: Draw red lines and focus on Xi
Visitors are seen in front of a picture of Chinese President Xi Jinping during an exhibition on China s achievements marking the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People s Republic of China (PRC) at the Beijing Exhibition Center, in Beijing, China. REUTERS/Jason Lee
An anonymous author, self-described as a former senior government official with deep China expertise and experience, published an extraordinary
Its aim is nothing less than to shape Biden administration strategy toward Beijing with Chinese President Xi Jinping as its prime focus.
What makes the paper worth reading, all 26,000 words of it, are the author’s insights into China’s internal workings and party fissures, the author’s solutions to the current lack of any coherent US national strategy toward Beijing, and the paper’s controversial call that the Biden administration draw “red lines” that, “should deterrence fail, will prompt
“In the end, this is how you describe us: Banshee, shrew, whore, and hooker Fishwife, bitch, slutty man-eater. Look, this is how you belittle us”
These lyrics from Mandopop star Tan Weiwei (Sitar Tan) are powerful in their own right, but they take on a new urgency in a year when China saw several especially brutal cases of violence against women in the national spotlight. Soon before Tan’s song hit the internet, screenwriter and activist Xianzi appeared at a court in Beijing to hold a powerful CCTV host, Zhu Jun, accountable for sexual harassment. Hundreds of Xianzi’s fans gathered in the cold outside the courthouse in solidarity.
Longreads Best of 2020: Essays
All Best of Longreads illustrations by Kjell Reigstad.
All through December, we’re featuring Longreads’ Best of 2020. This year, our editors picked and featured hundreds of beautifully written and poignant essays published on the web. Because of the wide range of writing across many topics and themes, it was a challenge to sift through them all over the past several weeks to compile a definitive Best of Essays list. As I shortlisted stories, I realized there could be many different versions of this list, but, in the end, these eight reads really spoke to me.
Vanity Fair)