Hoe lees je de toespraak van Xi Jinping?

Eind juli 1921 organiseerde de Nederlandse Comintern-agent Henk Sneevliet de oprichting van de Chinese Communistische Partij (CCP). Onder toezicht van Moskou en met belangrijke materiële steun van de Sovjetunie wist deze Partij zich onder Máo Zédōng (毛泽东) uit te bouwen tot een machtige organisatorische machine die in 1949 de Chinese burgeroorlog won. De Volksrepubliek China …

China’s genocidale projecten in westen logisch gevolg van agressief etno-nationalisme

De Chinese oppressie van de oorspronkelijke bewoners van Xinjiang (新疆, literaire vertaling: Nieuwmark, oude woordenboeken: Kolonie) krijgt gelukkig steeds meer internationale aandacht. Na onthullingen door het AP over systematische sterilisatie spreken sommigen over genocide. Vandaag berichten The Guardian en De Volkskrant over een ASPI-onderzoek dat laat zien dat China nog steeds verder bouwt aan de …

The Hard Hat Revolution will not be Hong Kong’s Tiananmen Square, it might be its February 28 Incident

Tension had been building for a long time. The former colonial power had returned the island to China a while ago already, but rather than act as happy patriots, the local inhabitants were increasingly chafing under what they saw as a breakdown in orderly government, encroachment on their economic opportunities, and discrimination against locals in …

Party Not Required: nationalism’s long-term threat to the Chinese Communist Party

Xi Jinping’s well-documented attempts to become ‘chairman of everything’—as several observers have argued before me—are in fact a testament to his need to shore up weak central power. The Chinese party-state works through broad project campaigns, launched through the apparatus of party committees and propaganda organs. Local leaders take the cue to come up with …

Never Forget Chinese Nationalism’s Ethnocentrism

Saying that Chinese increasingly assertive nationalism has a rather ethnocentric streak is nothing new, at least not for those who follow China. However, only when you actually read the source material in Chinese, is the starkness of the PRC’s racialism really driven home. This is something analysts, and other people paid to have opinions on …

Ironies of history captured in photo

The above picture shows the delegation of the Dutch prime minister, who is currently on a trade mission in Indonesia, meeting with their Indonesia hosts inside the Presidential Palace in Jakarta. The irony here is that Merdeka Palace—named after the slogan of the Indonesia struggle for independence, ‘freedom’—was built as Paleis Koningsplein, the residence of …