by David Schlesinger | 19 Feb 2025 | Decoder Replay, History, Media Literacy, Politics
A Chinese AI program negates the Tianenmen Square uprising. Google Calendar has struck out Black History Month. Why remember the scars of the past? Thousands of people at Victoria Park in Hong Kong 4 June 2019 attend a candlelight vigil for victims of the Chinese...
by David Schlesinger | 20 Dec 2021 | China, Culture, Economy, Educators' Catalog, Politics, World
Social media memes are at the forefront of the latest form of passive resistance against China’s grinding work culture. “Lying flat” meme. I’m supposed to write a piece for News Decoder, but if I were a hip young Chinese, maybe I’d just “lie flat”...
So much reporting about China by Western journalists focuses on the Communist Party, human rights and economic growth, that it is refreshing to read an account by an “old China hand” that explores a quiet rebellion by Chinese youth expressed in purposefully ambiguous social media memes. Lying flat, touching a fish, being Buddha-like and saying “Whatever” sound innocuous enough, but they belie deep disenchantment among many young Chinese over “the relentlessness that has driven the economy to growth rates far faster than any developed country in the West,” as David Schlesinger puts it. Schlesinger’s account is all the more relevant as many young people outside China, fed up with COVID-19, are deserting the workaday world for a time out.
Exercise: Ask students to list their main grievances and what they can do about them.
by David Schlesinger | 1 Feb 2021 | Asia, China
A top secret White House document, surprisingly declassified, says the U.S. should seek “primacy” against rival China and promote ties with India. Chinese leader Xi Jinping invites then U.S. Vice President Joe Biden (L) to review an honour guard during a...
by David Schlesinger | 7 Apr 2020 | Health and Wellness
China wasted no time shipping aid to Italy as the European nation struggled to contain COVID-19 — “soft power” to counter criticism of Beijing. A China Eastern flight from Shanghai with aid for the coronavirus arrives in Rome, Italy, 12 March 2020....
by David Schlesinger | 30 Sep 2019 | China, Human Rights, United States
What does it mean when protestors appropriate your symbols to further their national ends? How does it make you feel? A protestor displays a U.S. flag during a demonstration in Hong Kong, China, 20 September 2019 (EPA-EFE/JEROME FAVRE) What does it mean when...